The resolution of the question of whether science does map the truth of reality or whether it is just another myth has consequences for us in our daily lives. In the 1920s, fundamentalists wanted to outlaw the teaching of evolution in public schools; today, they want to give creationism equal time with evolution.
For close to 40 years, Eoanthropus dawsoni, a.k.a. Piltdown Man, was taught as fact. His australopithecine and pithecanthropine relatives are still taught as fact. If they are really as mythical as he was, then it seems the just thing to do would be to give equal time to competing facts or myths. If science is nothing more than myth, then biblical stories are agreeable alternatives and render, serendipitously, more wholesome ethics.
The paleontologist Earnest Hooton pushed the Piltdown case aside as unique; but the creationists pulled it back as typical of what evolutionists always do: deceiving themselves ...
