When you speak of “guardians of truth” I hear “guardians of social order.” I don’t think the Inquisition thought of truth in epistemic terms, the way we do. They thought of “truth” as the order of the world that was under constant assault by dark forces.
Truth guardianship in science might be understood as defending Kuhnian “normal science” from assault by people outside of the dominant paradigm; or perhaps the process of indoctrinating new scientists in the accepted norms of that paradigm.
When you speak of “guardians of truth” I hear “guardians of social order.” I don’t think the Inquisition thought of truth in epistemic terms, the way we do. They thought of “truth” as the order of the world that was under constant assault by dark forces.
Truth guardianship in science might be understood as defending Kuhnian “normal science” from assault by people outside of the dominant paradigm; or perhaps the process of indoctrinating new scientists in the accepted norms of that paradigm.
Kary Mullis talks about this, in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1993/mullis-lecture.html