WHAT IS ‘SCIENCE’?
Although bandied about in general conversations,
newspaper reports and television shows with the implication that it is the
fount of all knowledge, the home of rationality and the universal arbitrator,
‘science’ is neither so easily defined nor clearly understood even by those who
regularly invoke it.
The
concept planted in our perception by education and the media is one of earnest
professionals studying and experimenting to uncover universal truths, and
seeking the means to better the lives of those it serves.
Though
such people surely exist, a cursory examination shows the generality to be a
myth. There is no universal science. The word is here being used as a catch-all
for a number of diverse and often contradictory disciplines. It is almost
inevitable, therefore, that it will be used to bamboozle.
‘Science’ says there
are hundreds of tiny nicotine receptors in your brain that force you to go on
buying pharmaceutical products instead of cigarettes. Exactly which science -
which scientist - would that be?
Physics is
a science that has served us well. It has practical applications; it can
predict things; and it has greatly facilitated our progress. Chemistry,
likewise, has beaten a path to greater understanding, though its practitioners
might not have reached the same conclusions
as their physicist colleagues. With biology we get into a rather woollier area
in which the ‘scientific method’ as we fondly believe it to exist has come
something of a cropper.
Who
decides what is a ‘science’ and what isn’t? And on what criteria?
A TV
‘science correspondent’ will consult the opinion of a psychiatrist, but would
run a mile from an astrologer; yet astrology, in all but name, is very much
closer to being a science than psychiatry.
There is
no effort in this book to disparage the achievements or motives of the many
people who have played a part in the advancement of the various sciences, or
their valuable contribution to our understanding of the material universe.
But it is
not logical - not scientific, in fact - to allow our lives to be ruled by false
and idealised notions.
Science as
a method of questioning, exploring and learning is greatly to be supported.
‘Science’,
the vague and undefined authority with a spurious claim to mastery of life and
the universe is nothing more or less than another dodgy belief system spreading
ignorance and slavery under the guise of enlightenment.
From BLINDED WITH SCIENCE available from The Book Depository
From BLINDED WITH SCIENCE available from The Book Depository
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