THE RANDLE REPORT

DEFINING TERMS

The Oxford Dictionary defines science thus:

‘The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.’

It’s clear enough from this, and from  most people’s understanding, that it is a process, an activity, an ongoing endeavour, in the direction of ever further understanding and comprehension.

However, even at this early stage in its mission, it has also spawned something else; something that feels itself qualified, not only to pronounce with certainty upon, but to physically interfere with, those structures and behaviours it remains its theoretical mission to fully apprehend.

In the light of this exigency, the British Science Council, itself very much a part of this new stultification of scientific enquiry, recently dedicated a year to coining a new definition of the term; one that would better reflect the dogmatic, exclusive and coercive aspects that increasingly characterise the subject’s public face.

Their definition:

‘Science is the pursuit of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence.’

Intellectual and practical out; systematic methodology in.

The stated purpose of the Council’s redefinition more clearly underlines the shift of emphasis from enquiry to arrogance: ‘In an era where practices such as homeopathy are becoming widespread, and 'detox' is an acceptable aim for a diet, a definition creates a clear distinction between what is genuine science, and what is pseudoscience.’ Thus chief exec Diana Garnham.

The clear inference here is that homeopathy and detox programmes are that not so easily definable thing, ‘pseudoscience’. Why are they pseudoscience? Because the ruling elite of ‘genuine’ science has so defined them. Genuine science has no truck with them because it has so structured its systematic methodology that it would preclude their acceptance, even if their evidence had not already been dismissed out of  hand, ignoring the fact that homeopathy was more widespread before it was vilified by pharmaceutical profiteers (whose science is mainly rubbish).

The paymasters of Genuine Science believe in overwhelming the natural processes of bodies with ever more powerful chemicals; they’re interested in getting toxins into people rather than out.

True science would have no need  for, or fear of, ‘pseudoscience’; would recognise it as part of the infinite range of ‘evidence’ toward its ultimate understanding. Genuine Science, for all kinds of reasons, decides what constitutes evidence on the basis of whether it delivers an authorised verdict.

A science that claims omniscience but excises certain manifestly existing aspects of human behaviour from its purview, or approved list, is  no such thing.

So that we can stay on the same page from here on in, in simple terms, I have no argument with the extant definition of science - definition one above. What I’m questioning is science the opinionated, science the excluder, science the half-assed pontificator, with due respect to the Science Council and definition two. Embracive science good; Dogmatic ‘Genuine Science’ worse than no science.

Our second used and abused term is secular.

Lord knows what the people who most use it think it refers to. It actually relates to the French ‘quotidien’ or the English ‘diurnal’ in suggesting the daily round; the housekeeping - those things needed to support an enterprise or activity. The Lords Spiritual pursued the secrets of thought and life and the Lords Temporal looked after the accounts and the toilets.

Every religion that has churches, mosques or synagogues has a particular interest in things secular.

‘Secular’ is properly defined as ‘having to do with the here and now, the nuts and bolts.’ It does not stray into, or in some way invalidate, the there and then or the nutless and boltless universe of religion or spirituality. It shares its root with the French siècle, meaning century, or a section of time.

Which brings us to religion:

‘Something which binds people together, common cause or belief,’ from the Latin religare, to bind. So a shared belief in the omniscience of present-day science would be a religion.

What the word certainly isn’t limited to is a specific religion, such as Christianity, although those who use it pejoratively often do so in that context, little realising that they are dismissing a whole panoply of causes and beliefs at different degrees of variance to it.

The clergy of omniscient ‘Genuine Science’ know very well that that is what they’re doing, but their purpose is not illumination and increased understanding, but the forcible insertion of the square peg of material science into the round whole of life and the natural world.

The word spirit conjures up for many something between the thing that will go off up to heaven for the Lord to keep if you lay you down to sleep permanently, and something Madame Blavatsky might have summoned from the ‘other’ side.

The Oxford Dictionary defines it as:

‘The non-physical part of a person, which  is the seat of emotions and character, the soul.’

Its etymology has to do with the breath of life, as in respiration, aspiration and, finally, expiration.

For the purposes of this discussion, it is the life which animates, directs and monitors life forms - animals, plants, microbes, viruses; anything with a life of its own - the non-material essence which is there when a  thing is alive and departs when it dies.

No matter how much  plumbing or wiring it has to go through first, a bit like a call-centre, it is the thing that eventually receives messages and signals as to what is going on around it. It is capable of staggering levels of stupidity, but also of stellar conceptual understanding, humour and absurdity. It alone in this universe is capable of formulating the idea that it doesn’t exist.

From BLINDED WITH SCIENCE available from The Book Depository