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How should scientists respond to the allegation that our "faith" in logic and scientific truth is just that — faith — not "privileged" over alternative truths? An obvious response is that science gets results. As I once wrote, "Show me a cultural relativist at 30,000 feet, and I'll show you a hypocrite... If you are flying to an international congress of anthropologists or literary critics, the reason you will probably get there — the reason you don't plummet into a ploughed field — is that a lot of Western scientifically trained engineers have got their sums right." Science supports its claim to truth by its spectacular ability to make matter and energy jump through hoops, and to predict what will happen and when.

It is simply true that the sun is hotter than the earth, true that the desk on which I am writing is made of wood. These are not hypotheses awaiting falsification, not temporary approximations of an ever elusive truth, not local truths that might be denied in another culture. They are just plain true. It is forever true that DNA is a double helix, true that if you and a chimpanzee (or an octopus or a kangaroo) trace your ancestors back far enough, you will eventually hit a shared ancestor.

A little learning is a dangerous thing. This has never struck me as a particularly profound or wise remark, but it comes into its own when that little learning is in philosophy. A scientist who has the temerity to utter the t-word — true — is likely to encounter philosophical heckling that goes something like this: "There is no absolute truth. You are committing an act of personal faith when you claim that the scientific method, including mathematics and logic, is the privileged road to truth. Other cultures might believe that truth is to be found in a rabbit's entrails or the ravings of a prophet atop a pole. It is only your personal faith in science that leads you to favor your brand of truth." That strand of half-baked philosophy goes by the name of cultural relativism.