Lewis on how culture received, revered, and embellished Darwin’s teachings:
…If science [had] not met the imaginative need, science would not have been so popular. But probably every age gets, within certain limits, the science it desires.
– C.S. Lewis, The Funeral of a Great Myth, from Christian Reflections
This quote is loaded. The imaginative need of a person (or culture) determines what knowledge that person (or culture) will seek; and the knowledge a person seeks determines what he or she will find; and none of this necessarily determines whether that person will find truth. If you send Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton into a forest to study trees and insects, their findings may differ altogether; and their findings may or may not be received as truth, regardless of whether or not either is actually true (depending on the imaginative needs of a culture); and if this is so, it is time to start questioning presuppositions – not just findings.
