I had a chat with a mathematician the other day. He was friendly enough and cordial. We chatted about the ancient world and its thought, which possessed a decided lack of empirical verification, almost no falsifiability and which trusted the senses in no manner. It makes great sense to critique the ancient thought because it did not respect the experiment, yet we live in a scientized culture. If one is not a scientist, they yet believe in science, even without realizing. If one does not believe in science, then one can find oneself misled significantly. Great care must be one's main objective. So, critiquing science is perilous, since one does not wish to find oneself in a conceptual madhouse, believing in nonsense that is unverified and unverifiable. Yet when I think of the smile on this person who mocked an ancient world that took too far the criticism of perception, I see that scientization. This person no doubt demands evidence for what one tells him, not without reason but not with enough reason. These scientized citizens do not wish to speculate about reality, only prove. They lump in one category those who take great care of their reasoning and those who believe alien visitors made the Egyptian pyramids. This person is also the same kind who places full faith in mathematical reasoning (a form of logic of course) while they continue our orange nightmare with their vote. Mere technical reasoning led some earlier ancient Greek thinkers into believing that beauty was mere structure and harmony, that it did not go beyond some fine arrangement. That limited understanding led them to produce the most beautiful of nightmares.
The smile on the technician's face means something nefarious, I suspect.