"Physics and chemistry occupy the top echelons in the hierarchy of intellectual pursuits owing to their quantitative exactitude. But such precision in characterizing how nature works is possible only under highly controlled, wholly unnatural conditions, divorced from any particular history or moment. Their designations as the 'pure' sciences is revealing; they are pure in being essentially atemporal - unsullied by time, concerned on with universal truths and eternal laws. Like Plato's 'forms', these immortal laws are often considered more real than any speciific manifestations of the (e.g., the Earth). In contrast, the fields of biology and geology occupy lower rungs of the scholarly ladder because they are very 'impure', lacking the heady overtones of certainty because they are steeped through and through with time."

Slots and Values
ref	p13
source	Unnamed