It explains not being willing to look outside one's usual favorite habits and assumptions. It also means thinking that your usual way of doing things is the ONLY valid way of doing things, and that no other approach to life is even worthy of your consideration.

For instance, you might get a person who respects nothing except math and science and logic...and material things. (like my father)

How is he going to assess what is a good poem and what is not a good poem? Math, science, and logic will not assist him in doing so.

My father was incapable of assessing what is a good poem and what is not a good poem (and he freely admitted to this on one occasion I remember)...because it didn't fall in an area he could relate to...or wanted to relate to.

This didn't mean, ipso facto, that there are no good or bad poems, and it didn't mean that poetry has no value. It just meant he had no comprehension of what constitutes good poetry, and he never would, and his math, science, and logic couldn't do a thing to change that.

They are not the answer to everything in life. They are just the answer to some of the things in life, in the particular areas where they can effectively be applied. To think they ARE the answer to everything is to adhere to a form of fundamentalist dogmatism that is quite similar to the most dogmatic forms of religion, in that it thinks it already has all the answers to all the questions worth asking.

It doesn't. And it never will.