… is from page 26 of Roger Koppl’s superb 2018 book, Expert Failure (references deleted; link added):
Defoe contrasts skilled physicians with the “Quack Conjurers” brought forward by the plague. He laments “the foolish Humour of the People, in running after Quacks, and Mountebanks, Wizards, and Fortune tellers.”
DBx: Yesterday’s Bonus Quotation of the Day was from George Will’s recent column lamenting the genuinely lamentable turn away from modernity by many American conservatives. “Progressives” shouldn’t think themselves superior. They, too, very often reject modernity. Despite doing so under the guise of science and rationality, “Progressives”, too, peddle a great many pre-scientific superstitions and quack remedies.
…..
Here’s what is surely one of the peak ironies of our day: The typical “Progressive” is among the first and the loudest to point out – correctly and rightly so – the ridiculous scientific pretenses that constitute so-called “Scientific Creationism,” yet this same “Progressive” is also among the first and loudest to endorse the equally ridiculous scientific pretenses that constitute “Progressivism” – that is, that constitute the superstition that the economy is the creation of a higher power (the state) that will intervene in benevolent and all-knowing ways if it receives from the faithful enough prayers, devotion, and blind obedience.