What does it actually mean to be intellectual? I see this used quite a bit by people either describing themselves ( noun) or referentially (adjective). I am coming, more and more, to the conclusion that in either usage, it is something meant to be condescending to those that are being spoken to or about. I used to consider myself an intellectual, and in that I believed that what I thought was more important, or better informed, than those uneducated, hoi-poloi.  I meant, at that time, that no one, less educated than myself, could possibly understand complicated political or social issues, or even methodology in the sciences. In other words: you are less than me.

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What we know about our world, our physical world, and what we currently believe about the universe, comes from the decades, even centuries, of scientific inquiry. Even those things we’ve learned about ourselves, humans, whether it’s physical or psychological, come from these same people, over time, and we refer to it as scientific investigation, Most reading here understand the scientific method so I won’t go into the specifics of that here, but it’s becoming more and more interesting to me that those that may make some claim of scientific credulity when what they may be proposing is not reality based science, but eschatological.

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