There are few things as terrifying to some men as new ideas – especially those ideas that do not comport with their own, established worldview. This is less common among scientists than among others, I suspect. But, every generalization has exceptions. Consider the case of two-time Nobel laureate Linus Pauling who could not accept the conclusions of Dan Shechtman’s studies of quasicrystals. Pauling derided Shechtman’s work proclaiming that, “there are no quasicrystals – only quasiscientists.” Shechtman went on to win a Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on quasicrystals.
The more classic examples of ideophobia concern the leaders of the Catholic Church during the lifetimes of Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei. Bruno was burned at the stake for his heretical writings postulating exoplanets and alien civilizations. Galileo spent his last years under house arrest for his writings concerning a heliocentric rather than anthropocentric solar system. But, these are extreme examples of ideophobia. The most common examples are those of common men with neither extraordinary Power (Linus Pauling or Pope Urban VIII) nor extraordinary Knowledge/Insight (Shechtman or Bruno or Galileo). No, I think that ideophobia is far more common among ordinary men who have neither much knowledge, insight, or power.
Consider the wave of book banning and book burning zealotry that is raging across Red America today. I would wager that the proponents of removing books from school library shelves, and even burning those books, have never read most of them. These zealots know only that they feel threatened by the ideas that might be in those books. Interestingly, many of those books were not published recently. In other words, the ideas in many of them are in no way “new.” They are simply unfamiliar to those that oppose them either because they have never read those books or because those authorities, political or religious, that they respect, have distorted and misrepresented them.
I suppose that some natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis, events which are largely unpredictable and that arrive with little warning, are as terrifying as an unfamiliar idea – especially when the idea poses a threat, real or imagined, of losing something important. We humans are risk-averse creatures. That’s one reason why most of us suck at investing. We fear losing $100 more than we relish making $200. And, regarding ideophobia, we are talking about the risk of losing things we believe in – that we are “the chosen,” that our worldview is the “correct one,” that we actually deserve the privileges that we enjoy, and so forth. So, it is not surprising that so many “conservatives,” fear new ideas. New ideas invite the prospect of change, and the core ethos of conservatism is constancy – holding on to what one has.
To paraphrase the memorable Carl Sagan, I would rather have to learn to cope with an unpleasant truth than accept a comforting lie. Burn the books, if you like. Just remember that there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. Ask the Catholic Church.