Although I was at one point an avid student of chemistry, I decided quite some time ago that my interests lay, not in the mysteries of molecules, atoms, and beyond, but in those of the world of humanity. Thus it is not as the result of some scientist's parti pris that I am dismayed by the absurd statements about science I have heard, on a regular basis, in the literary seminar room. These statements range from subtle but perverse argumentations to the rather blunt and pathetic ``science is just rhetoric too,'' but the thrust is always the same: the poetic and critical luminaries could not justifiably be thought to be shadowy in relation to scientific work because the latter is all darkness anyway; if progress in literary criticism is a dubious matter, so is that of sicnece -- and so on. I think these views are definitely ill informed and probably dead wrong, and yet I have noticed that they are repeatedly asserted in literary circles in a self-assured and dogmatic manner. Nor is this only a matter of cursing an overly privileged neighbor, for critics actually orient their own research in relation to these same dubious ideas about science and knowledge. [4]