escargot
Disciple of Marduk
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2001
- Messages
- 43,455
- Location
- HM The Tower of London
you can either have science or religion. You can not, in my particular opinion, have both.
The lines are often blurred, though it's probably cultural rather than purely about religion. Superstition is present too.
For example, on launch days at NASA free doughnuts are served across the site. It's supposed to bring good luck and is somehow connected to the round shape of the wheels that the module is moved on.
The CERN campus has a statue of Lord Shiva, a gift from India.*
This lovely (safe) biospace.com page has a list of scientists' personal superstitions -
7 Weird Superstitions and Rituals of Scientists
Here's the most ludicrous -
When he was a graduate student at Brown University, Michael Long, now a neuroscientist at New York University School of Medicine, had a ritual of having a hot-dog lunch at Spike’s Junkyard Dogs, because he believed it helped him with his work studying rodent brains.
“The days I ate at Spike’s, I had beautiful slices. It happened every time, so then everyone else in the lab started going to Spike’s more,” Long claims.
*I did a bit googling about that and found a photo of the Higgs Boson discovery conference with Escet and me on it, haha!