Hubris

This is in response to Mrs. set.element, who is not only cute but highly observant of the human condition as well.

Speaking of ill-informed, post-modernist style thinking we have the following. In a famous October 2004 article on the Bush administration, journalist Ron Suskind described his encounter with a 'senior adviser' to the president:

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way that the world works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."

This was, naturally, taken from Chris Mooney's excellent book, "The Republican War on Science."