On The Practice Of Science

Science Delivers An Ever-Evolving Understanding Of Reality — Not The Truth, Because That Is The Death Science

Science as practiced brings us incremental improvements only, because it operates within a paradigmatic bubble. Any phenomena that lies outside of that bubble that cannot be explained away, or recast into a more plausible outlier within the bubble, or just ignored, is then labeled a supervenient phenomenon, an “epi-something-or-other,” as consciousness is today. It is labeled an epiphenomenon because it cannot be incorporated into the paradigmatic bubble of mechanistic materialism, and yet is somehow, in some non-verifiable way, not separate from the phenomena that are incorporated.

What is glossed over in these newly minted epiphenomena is that there is no return relationship — no possible causal influence. If there were, then they would be a part of that which they are said to supervene upon, and thus they would be subject to strictly determined material mechanisms.

Here is the problem with that: if we take consciousness as an epiphenomenon that supervenes in some unknown way upon the brain, its operations, its matter, structure, or anything else about it, then conscious activity would not, and could not, have any influence upon what the brain does. But, for example, our heartfelt feelings have an effect on what we think about, where we go, what we eat, who we love, and what we desire. There is also the placebo and nocebo effects that arise because of what we know and what we feel is the case — so consciousness cannot be an epiphenomenon that supervene’s upon the brain since it affects so much that goes on in the brain.

The practice of science should be focused on delivering well-evidenced, useful, practical knowledge,⁠¹ and maybe, from time-to-time, deliver an indubitable insight or two. What it should not be focused on is the kind of ‘protection of the faith’ behavior of all too many scientists today who feel that they have to attack those critical of current scientific practice, or its results — both of which are asserted to be the one true way to the truth. Disagreement in the scientific disciplines is healthy and motivating. But its expression should be restricted to experimental research and competing hypotheses — not criticisms of ‘nonbelievers’.

This evermore frequent belittling of opponents, their motives, their intellectual capacity — even their sex (argumentum ad hominem) — accompanied by vociferous and unjustified proclamations that their ideas are ‘pseudo-science’, rather than showing their invalidity, is not science, and anyone who engages with others in that way should be anathematized from the field.

Like many purveyors of pseudoscience, he suffers from Galileo syndrome, the belief that he is a lonely genius who sees further than anyone else, but whom the scientific establishment fights against in order to preserve the status quo.

That is Massimo Pigliucci, Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York who is an “advocate for secularism and science education,” referring to Rupert Sheldrake, whom he labels as “An unabashed purveyor of nonsense.”⁠²

Science does not need inquisitors for the ‘protection of the faith’. Sound familiar?

It may only be a small minority within the scientific community doing this, but as scientists only ever speak of “science” as a collectivity. Scientists themselves, and Science as a human endeavor, can equally be victims of this behavior (see Max Plank’s comment that “science advances one funeral at a time” and “Greta Keller’s Thirty-Year War”), so it’s up to the scientific community to excise this disease from within itself — or give up the fantasy that science is any better than the dogmatic religions that preceded it.

One only need consider the significant number of people today who have partially or completely turned their backs on science — not because they are stupid, or misled by others, as they are often portrayed, but because they question the authority of science to control their lives — given scientists’ insistent assertions that science knows the truth, while at the same time they acknowledge their limited current understanding of so many important aspects of the world, which they themselves characterize as the state of “real science” when shouting down ‘pseudo-science’. Scientists can’t have it both ways. Either science delivers the truth, or science is a set of protocols for delivering an ever-evolving understanding of reality. The former is the death science.

There are sufficient grounds for questioning science today, given the widely reported deficiencies in contemporary science and the very public arrogance of some science advocates — and this provides fertile ground for the manipulation of many individuals simply because they have been habituated to accept the proclamations of authority figures, and who suddenly, or over time, find themselves confronted with discordance between what they feel to be the case, and what is proclaimed — loudly — to be the truth, and thus they lose faith in science.

And to be clear, the cause of their stupidity is this: they suffer from learned helplessness because they have been inculcated with the idea that they must accept knowledge by authority, rather than from their own experience — even to the point of obediently ignoring their experiences because they fall outside of the currently acceptable range of the imposed limiting understanding of reality.

Science has imposed the understanding on us all that we cannot believe our unaided senses. It has done this by shifting the scale at which things happen — and to which Science gives their utmost technological attention — to scales which are forever beyond our human ability to experience directly.

Eastern spiritual traditions are noted for their assertions that what we experience is illusory as well; but they don’t leave it there, expecting us all to rely on them forevermore for their hand-me-down knowledge as to how things actually are. Instead, they have honed meditative practices over millennia so that each of us — if we wish to do so — can work it all out for ourselves. Few of us have access to a Large Hadron Collider, Webb Space Telescope, or a robotic rover on Mars. We are in the servitude of science here.

As well, there is a difference between learning facts and concepts — and their relationships — versus viscerally experiencing something for oneself. Being the authoritative source of facts, concepts, and how they go together, can be, and all too often is, a means of controlling populations of people who often don’t even realize just how controlled they are.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.⁠³

Science should be an edgeless cooperative practice, because knowledge has no borders, and thus, no divisions should exist between artificial islands of knowledge.

We all live within a single reality, and that means a single body of truth — if we can’t find a comprehensive and coherent understanding for all experience, then we simply haven’t finished the work.

Spiritual mind-training traditions and Science could enrich each other, but instead, today, we have much discord between them — mostly on the part of scientists towards anything considered to be spiritual, in part because of the myths that have grown between them, but also because of the fear of being ostracized by one’s colleagues for having even suggested entertaining something that is beyond the pale of mechanistic materialism.

If science was truly cooperative in practice — and without borders — scientists would be less inclined to be working on weapons of mass destruction, extortionary drug commerce, and ecocidal agricultural technologies, for example. Scientists would be less likely to be contributing to committing crimes against humanity, and more likely to be contributing to fulfilling the promise of a golden age of Science — all science, even that of Spiritual Science, because science is the search for veridical knowledge.

And a big part of this edgeless cooperation is to stop treating the general public as if they were a mob of innumerate idiots — after all, does science, ultimately, only serve some self-appointed Elysian deities with deep pockets? Should we not try to elevate our brothers and sisters? And aren’t they — these innumerate ones — who pay for the work of scientists?

If the practice of Science is not directed to the betterment of all of humanity — improving the lot of everyone in a healthful, sane, and life-supporting way — then it serves little good at all, not even that of Science. It would be, in short, what many today claim it to be: Science for sale.

It’s funny how some otherwise rational people do not believe in prophecies, but do believe that everything that happens is controlled by natural laws and is instigated by a specific cause. It’s remarkable that those two behaviors — predicting what will happen in the future, and holding to the understanding that everything is causally determined — are not seen to be matching bookends.

But it’s astounding that scientists, whose sole purpose is to work out how things work so that they can predict future behavior, laugh at such prophecies. Aren’t they in the business of doing just that — observing nature so that they can make better predictions?

Granted there is a difference between human behavior and physical activity of non-living matter, so that predictions of future human conditions would seem to be a stretch. But aren’t they forgetting that it is the same with the physical activity they study statistically? Isn’t it the case that even the actions of individual units of study, like atoms and molecules, can’t be predicted with any degree of accuracy, but large quantities of them can? Isn’t this the whole point of statistics — looking at things in the aggregate to discover the often bell-curve-like clumping of results? Well, it’s like that with prophecies about future human conditions, even future environmental conditions. It would seem that scientists are confused.

Perhaps that explains why the rise of Scientism today is not seen to be a religion by adherents who have an excessive faith in scientific knowledge and practices. They are blind in regards to their own faith, and dismissive of the faith of others. Scientists, as an aggregate, don’t seem to notice that their experimental method, when applied to the education of future generations — that is, by tightly controlling initial conditions in schools so that desired focus, understanding, and behavior of students is achieved — completely undermines human creativity, which is our natural curiosity and responsiveness to uncontrived conditions.

So, while “science”, with a lowercase “s”, is a word that means knowledge, “Science” with an uppercase “S” is not a bastion of knowledge, nor claimant to the natural curiosity that is part of our human nature. Also, “Science”, again with a uppercase “S”, does not speak. So when some scientist repeats the post-modern mantra of Scientism: “Science says,” they are simply anthropomorphizing scientific knowledge as a system of prediction and control.

Science, that is, knowledge, however gained, is simply a way to harness nature for human ends — even if that end is just to satisfy our curiosity about how things work. But Scientism is a philosophy that limits and controls human behavior by suppressing our range of possible actions. It is the third leg of fascism: Control. The other two being Power and Consent.

Scientism and its crusaders represent an attempt to suppress exactly what it professes to desire — open curiosity about ourselves and our world.

But that would be irrational, to be suppressing what you profess to want, so my basic premise that Scientism desires open curiosity about ourselves and our world — that is, that the goal of Scientism is universally sought for all humans — must be wrong. It isn’t sought for all humans. It is only sought for scientists. And therefore, Scientism’s goal is to control human thought and understanding, limiting the range of our reasoning, and the creativity normally present within it. Non-scientists — those innumerate masses of humans who lack any real understanding of mathematics and arithmetic — are necessarily anathematized, since they cannot be otherwise assimilated into Science.

Their beliefs are dismissed and their thoughts are denigrated as something laughable, like a prophecy, while scientists’ own attempts to predict future results is seen as the height of rationality. This is why Scientism is fascist. And this is why University programs are being whittled down to just STEM — Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

STEM… now that is in acronym that is so appropriate today, given that the control that modern Scientism seeks, removes all the flowing branches, leaves, and flowers of human creativity and spiritual growth.

My own university, enticed by large cash gifts — always with a quid pro quo — offered by some billionaire adherent to Scientism’s basic fascist premise, was actually considering focusing solely on these four subject areas, and dumping everything else into an underfunded “Humanities.” That was a dozen years ago. I see there are new shiny buildings there with titles like “Center for Advanced Geometries and Physics,” while the Philosophy department is still housed in the rundown Colonial brick buildings that were there half a century ago, so STEM is probably winning out.

I truly Loved teaching and was once awarded my university’s “Excellence in Teaching Award.” But my kind of teaching, guiding rather than indoctrinating, while fitting the philosophical subjects that I taught, had no home in the new world of Scientism, so I was anathematized. Not just let go, but actively blacklisted.

I suppose the freedom to choose between reduced choices, and to think a subset of possible human thought, is still freedom to choose, but it reminds me of dogma and slavery — what Science was supposed to free us from. But evil always reproduces itself in its victims. Always.

We have to wake up before it is too late.