Opinion/Editorial
THE DEATH OF SCIENCE
Science will not kill us. It’s only a process. Science is merely the formulation of a hypothesis, the testing of a hypothesis, and then repletion by others to see if the hypothesis holds. After that, it’s all about application. But science does require empiricism, which is results derived from measured experience, observation, and experimentation. All of this seems so straightforward and simple to understand and discuss, but newly expressed social values are seeking to change and possibly destroy science and us. Recently a writer for the New York Times wrote a piece about science. He titled his article The New Humanism.
But it’s not about humanism, rather it’s all about the murder of science, and its replacement with people’s opinions about what is going on. He decries “experts who are comfortable only with correlations that can be measured, appropriated and quantified.” He wrote about the results of scientific methodology, which he cast down to be replaced and based upon ‘educated emotions.’ “Over the past few decades,” this man wrote, “we have tended to define human capital narrowly, emphasizing I.Q., degrees, and professional skills.” But, according to this powerful and well-published author, who also happens to be speaking for quite a huge chunk of American society today, we need to junk this dependence on such reality and go in another direction.
According to this man and supported by none other than the New York Times, this man writes that we need to judge talent based upon attunement (the ability to enter other minds and find out what they have to offer), Equipoise (the ability to serenely monitor the movements of one’s mind), metis (the ability to see patterns in the world) and finally sympathy (the ability to fall into rhythm with those around you).
What does this mean for you and me, as part of the human species that has crawled from the muck over the last three million years, basing each brutally difficult step forward upon the knowledge learned from what came before? From the trillions of failed experiments and the few successful ones? From the sifting of facts, hard one fact, that can be depended upon, from the lies that pervade our entire construct of cultures? From the celebration of our grand successes all across the arts and sciences because of our unflinching pursuit of these facts?
Much of the current conservative movement (supported by a giant slice of Western Evangelical Christianity), is attempting to sell science down the drain to install control elements based upon their conjecture and subjective opinion. The death of science leads directly to the death of freedom, civilization, and potentially the human species as we have come to know and understand it. We must fight this kind of vapid and celebrated stupidity, not because it’s selfish and uneducated, but because all of our lives are at stake, as well as much of the comfort that has been so hard fought for and won in the developed countries.
A hundred years ago there was no air conditioning, vehicles that worked dependably lasting for years, or decently operating telephones. There was no television and there were no computers. A thousand years ago humans averaged five feet in height and lived to be between thirty and thirty-five years old. It is science and depending upon the application of its results has allowed for the amazing ‘rise of humanity’ to populate the earth and control most of it in every area. This writer was motivated, to write this article, by the fact that it was carried by such an influential mass media outlet as the New York Times. This drove me to write about how we cannot proceed into any kind of smiling, comfortable and hopeful future without studying intensely, and then applying universally, what only science can teach us. Mr. Wizard was a beloved host of a television show in the fifties, and he charmed a growing population into falling in love with the discoveries of and the process of scientific inquiry.
Where is Mr. Wizard when we need him most?
