The central message of the introduction is one must understand science if one wants to do science well. This requires a holistic educational approach, one that not only teaches the whats and hows of science, but most critically, it's whys. Why is the sky blue? Why do normal cells turn into cancer cells? Why do we use the scientific method and from where did it come? Why would one want to be a scientist in the first place? Why is science done in the way it is, that is, what is the gestalt of science? The whats and whys of science are practical in nature. The whys, in contrast, encompass theoretical, philosophical, historical, and social underpinnings of science. The whys are particularly important now when the probity and veracity of science are being attacked, and people seek to replace actual facts with "alternative facts" (falsehoods) for political, religious, or economic purposes or out of plain ignorance.

Contemporary moral education could learn a thing or two from the ancient Greco-Romans. This essay introduces the two major varieties of ancient Skepticism: Pyrrhonism and the New Academy, situating them within the current resurgence of interest in virtue ethics that includes, for instance, Stoicism. I then make an argument that the Academic Skeptics – authors like Carneades and Cicero – pursued two major intertwined interests: ethics and natural philosophy. “Ethics,” in the Greco-Roman conception, had a far wider scope than the field of study that we now identify by that label, having to do with how to best live one’s life. In turn, a crucial component of good living was thought to be the ability to understand, through natural philosophy, how the world actually works, in order to avoid taking refuge in psychologically reassuring fantasies of the kind that we refer to nowadays as pseudoscience.

Holmes was one of the founders of the Atlantic Monthly, which quickly achieved a large readership, helped by a pithy serial that appeared in 1857–58. This was Holmes’s The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. It involved an erudite man and others at a Boston boardinghouse, who expressed opinions on many subjects. The series proved so popular that he came forth with a sequel in 1859. He called it The Professor at the Breakfast-Table. Holmes used the Professor in the latter to pillory phrenology. He repeatedly referred to it as “pseudo-science,” explaining that it was based on only accepting positive cases and ignoring all exceptions. Using a two-column format and a lot of humor, his Professor contrasted what a phrenologist might tell a client and what he might reveal to his pupil. And he emphasized that phrenologists were not really reading heads, attending instead to other cues, such as how a client dressed and answered questions. The remainder of this chapter shows how others lampooned the head readers before Holmes, and presents his 1861 Harvard lecture, which has the same take-home message. Notably, he praises phrenologists in this lecture for helping to draw attention to human differences, inborn tendencies, and the brain.

The introductory chapter defines pseudoscience as it relates to therapy. Potential harms of using pseudoscientific interventions are discussed. Pseudoscience is contrasted with attempts to identify science-based therapies. The chapter identifies the challenge in distinguishing between science and pseudoscience due to the fuzzy boundary between these two constructs.

Our young and originally tropical species Homo sapiens has spread, in an amazingly short period of time, to occupy more areas of our planet than any other animal species has ever contrived to do. Human beings reside on all five continents, and in virtually every environment that those continents have to offer.

Like every one of the many millions of other organisms with which we share our planet, the species Homo sapiens is the product of a long evolutionary history. The first very simple cellular organisms spontaneously arose on Earth close to four billion years ago, and their descendants have since diversified to give us forms as different as streptococci, roses, sponges, anteaters, and ourselves.

A description of some of the methods used in racial genetics and genomics is essential if we are to understand why claims have been made that modern genomics establishes the existence of race.

As scientific knowledge increased, the outward physical variation of humans on this planet posed a mystery to natural historians, and begged explanation. Why were there so many different “kinds” of people on the planet? If scientists could understand how this variation worked in nature, then perhaps, the reasoning went, we could understand why people appear different.

Why do some researchers care so much about race in their experimental designs? It is easy to understand why a racist forced by inherent bias would take this approach. But why would a nonracist biologist insist on doing racial science? As far as we can tell, there are two major reasons for this: medical expediency and the discovery of the genetic basis of complex traits. We would suggest that the first of these is a red herring, and the second a brick wall.

Research prior to human genomics opened several doors to race-focused research, but the availability of genomes was a game-changer. As we pointed out in Chapter 4, there is nothing inherently wrong in using racial or ethnic boundaries as research tools for trying to discover biological patterns within the human species – if they are justified.

A big part of the story of our species, and of how variation is apportioned within it, involves how our ancestors spread over the globe. After all, if we had simply stayed in our place of origin in Africa and not ventured out, there would be no question that we are a single entity. That is because if our species had been restricted to a single location (as many others are), two things would have ensured that differentiation into separate entities would not have occurred.

Humans have been roaming around the planet since the very beginning, encountering other humans in the process and doubtless forming opinions about them. And since human beings seem to have an innate urge to classify everything – doing which, after all, lies at the core of our way of mentally organizing and understanding the world around us – there is little doubt that, from the earliest days, our symbolic forebears categorized each other in some way.

As the nineteenth century dawned, the idea that species might not forever remain as the Creator had made them was no longer unthinkable. At one end of the range of possibilities was Buffon’s limited notion of within-species change; at the other was Lamarck’s vision of lineages transforming themselves through inner impulse.

This introduction provides an overview and brief history of New Thought and Christian Science in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly not only in America but also in Britain and Canada. The introduction also describes how popular literature written for and about children circa 1900 helped spread New Thought ideas while simultaneously critiquing them. As I explain, New Thought proved especially popular with female novelists and readers seeking escape from domestic duties and greater opportunities outside of the domestic sphere. Finally, the introduction includes a chapter breakdown outlining which works and concepts will be discussed later in the book.