Science and cultural relativism

[sawyl]

After finally knuckling down to some philosophy, I came across the following quote from Janet Radcliffe Richards on relativism, which I thought summed up the position rather nicely:

"And the same applies to part-time relativists who want trained surgeons rather than witch doctors to operating on them, and would be most unlikely to think that if they were in India they could safely jump out of an upper window because a guru had assured them they could fly. Nobody can be a full-time relativist."

Well, quite.