This book is built on an allegory. In "The Phantom of the Opera" - the famous musical - a genius composer with a disfigured face conducts the performances from the dark undergrounds of the Paris Opera. The audience enjoys his creations, yet they refuse to look at his face.

Science, like another phantom of the opera, is a creative force that also governs the world from the "subterranean." However, it appears in two different versions: the phantom in nature and the phantom in our culture. The phantom in nature represents the fundamental laws - the laws of the microcosm - that govern the physical world from the depths of matter, while the phantom in our culture is now science itself as a social institution.

In both versions, the phantom has a very unfamiliar face. The laws of the microcosm are the strangest things we have seen in nature so far, while the face of science as a social institution is no more beloved by the modern person. Our societies admire science. They know that they owe the material prosperity they enjoy to it. However, its true face, its fundamental anti-dogmatism, the spirit of healthy skepticism that characterizes it, they prefer not to see. It is better left in the dark; in the basement.

This book attempts to reconcile the reader with these less familiar aspects of science, while also highlighting the moral content inherent in the scientific method itself: the right to doubt rationally and the duty to think freely, recognizing empirical reality as the only authority.