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With the word science being used broadly to refer to an extensive variety of ideas and activities, it is helpful to clarify how the concept is used in any given context. As a body of accepted facts, science is a key element in a widening cultural mindset arguing that both science itself and facts are beyond dispute. Many minds even regard science as the highest form of truth – there being no shortage of institutions around the globe promoting this idea throughout the discipline’s growing number of fields. But science is also the pursuit of knowledge based on certain assumptions about the world and how it is to be understood.
Not only is the science concept promoted in many fields and at just about every level of education, but it also drives countless research activities and umpteen manufacturing industries. Meanwhile, cultural credibility comes from being scientific – the word often being found in numerous areas that actually appear quite distant from the original fields in which science took hold. Hence, we now have political science and economic science, as well as various social sciences that appear dubiously remote from the so-called hard sciences, and which have a distinctly argumentative rather than objective feel to them.
The origin and etymology of the word science is essentially concerned with ideas of knowledge, but interestingly has nothing directly to do with the much-acclaimed scientific method. That method is simply a later add-on that in effect curtails the means by which any knowledge becomes accepted within today’s science-mad culture. Hence, for better or worse, the advent of the scientific method, to the extent that it has become highly respected, represents a narrowing of what passes for knowledge. Simply knowing something does not qualify it as science, and therefore the value of such knowledge is culturally downgraded. Before anything becomes accepted science it normally has to be peer-reviewed or otherwise approved by those acting as culturally appointed judges of what passes or fails. Thus, knowledge itself is arguably incidental to a scientific mindset in which even accepted science can be subsequently rejected for supposedly better science.
In this respect, the world of science has largely exchanged mankind’s original and unfettered interest in knowledge, for an authoritarian approach that arbitrates what is accepted legitimate by virtue of being good science. Hence, the increasingly common practice of equating science with knowledge operates more through subliminal indoctrination into the ideals of scientism than through any critical thinking regarding science’s cultural evolution. And almost no consideration exists for any other possible paths to knowledge.
Prior to the advent of science, accepted ideas of what constituted knowledge no doubt embodied a wider outlook, even if other authoritarian controls existed in most cultures as regards what could be expressed openly as knowledge. In particular, religions functioned as guardians of truth and were extensively used to either brainwash minds or at least suppress challenges to ruling doctrines – both being enduring means of social control throughout many cultures to this day. However, the idea that someone could simply come to know something and share it with others was never as highly policed as it is in today’s age of science. Previously, it appears that speculative attempts to understand the world and our place within it were largely ungoverned matters – provided dominant ideas were not threatened, and those in control were not openly ridiculed. Hence, whatever the exact history, the development of factual knowledge and technology prior to the advent of modern science likely proceeded mostly through accident or ad hoc experimentation at best.
But with growing industrialization, the means of developing new technologies obviously evolved from a fairly impromptu pursuit to a dedicated industry. In this sense, science can be seen as just the technology of technology: an organized and dedicated endeavor to study the world with a view to exploiting it, as opposed to just gaining an understanding of matters in a more or less haphazard manner. Much as we nowadays tend to think that technology flows from science, this is only true in terms of specific modern technologies; technology itself vastly predates organized science. If language and cognitive abstraction be regarded as core technologies, the growing number of creative technologies that have followed in the wake are the distinguishing hallmark of homo sapiens over many thousands of years.
Against such a background, modern science, given its ability to deliver apparent miracles in the here-and-now, was obviously a potential problem to the socially powerful of yesteryear; their religions could only offer promises based on invisible heavens to be relished after death. The ability to wield control over others by means of religious and monarchical doctrines was obviously threatened by the more immediate power of science and its increasingly clever technologies. But as with anything formidable, science itself also offered new opportunities for social control.
The modern explosion of science was in any case rather inevitable once human civilization had reached a certain development. Progressing from the early origins of tool-making and weaponry, the species had eventually reached a technological sophistication where the control of conditions, measurements, substances and processes enabled the organized investigation of all things material for the apparent betterment of all. Minds envisaged wonderful new horizons, plus the means of reaching them and even transcending them. Combining existing knowledge with systematic experimentation put the processes of discovery and invention on an industrialized scale that promised new riches and hitherto unseen possibilities to be realized by an increasingly empowered species. God, as both creator and destroyer, had serious competition. Consequently, the belief in a materialist ideal of human progress is more alive today than ever – even as many talk openly of our impending doom as one possible result.
The cultural history of how this played out to create today’s technology-obsessed societies is more than involved, but the impact on what passes for knowledge is less obscure. Inasmuch as today’s organization of science is largely dedicated to the creation or development of technologies, there is an obvious baseline need to verify that any would-be scientific knowledge is sound inasmuch as specified procedures produce predictable and repeatable results. And although knowledge thereby derived is often incomplete and indifferent as to whether its technological use is actually in the common interest, its basic model of simply detailing in a limited manner what happens is solid. But unfortunately, today’s world of science is not quite so simple. The idea that knowledge is power perhaps accounts for a lot of what might be generalized as the human abuse and perversion of science.
As regards the range of subjects laying claim to being science, physics – sometimes seen as king of the sciences – is perhaps the field that appears most amenable to the scientific method in terms of following a supposedly clinical approach and formulating laws that appear close to universal. Economic science, as an example at the opposite extreme, appears as a fake science, inferring from its name that money – a human invention of changeable social role and value – is somehow governed by discernible laws of science.
If science really was a suitable paradigm for economic studies, the relevant laws would be revealed by scientific experimentation. But the idea that anyone is willing to seriously undertake such experimentation stretches the thinking person’s credibility. Unsurprisingly, there seems to be no recognized institution dedicated to such experimentation. The financial impact of failures would presumably prove unacceptably costly – common intuition suggesting that those with money are too interested in specific outcomes to do anything in a suitably clinical manner. Although economists and the wealthy no doubt perform certain after-the-fact analyses on the results of their actions, we are surely not to believe that anyone plays with large chunks of money purely to discover the consequences of uncertain experimentation. In general, money simply wields far too great an influence on the human mind for it to be viewed with the impartiality scientific procedure demands.
Such an observation is informative as regards the comparative true values modern culture places on money, science and academic integrity. Notably, in the absence of any true economic laws of science, we actually have extensive civil laws that enforce economic control and can of course be altered simply through human volition. Therefore, given humans cannot similarly change the laws of physics by mere volition, the term science is obviously being used very casually and for very different things. Why? Perhaps the motivations of some to cloak the world’s monstrous economic imbalances within an air of scientific law and inevitability might help explain why the attendant lack of academic integrity escapes serious criticism.
What is to be gleaned from social power and society in general being so heavily organized around money that almost every individual believes in monetary value and that human behavior therefore exhibits powerful norms around everything to do with money? Regardless of any answers, such mere observations render economics no more a science than acknowledging a religious doctrine to control human behavior makes the relevant religion a science. The deceptive naming of certain ideas as a supposed science of economics constitutes a travesty of the scientific paradigm, but nonetheless finds parallels in other would-be sciences.
For example, as regards so-called political science, could activity based around speechifying, habitually quarreling, and juggling with laws as befits fleeting human interests be any less suited to scientific investigation? Given any would-be laws of this supposed science are literally just made up to suit human agendas, it is obvious how eager certain minds can be to imbue their own interests with an air of scientific authority.
Social sciences are little different in this respect. As regards psychology, it is obviously possible to herd people into human laboratories and attempt methodologically controlled experiments, but the fact that the subject matter is the living person rather ridicules the deterministic idea of scientific laws – just as it also does within economics and politics. In fact, it is debatable if the word science can legitimately be used for any study that involves the general behavior of complex living organisms. Although it is obviously possible to study behavior in an organized and quasi-scientific manner, the mere acknowledgment that beings do not appear wholly governed in a deterministic manner suggests that findings will exhibit loose trends at best, within paradigms where few reliable laws can be established. Moreover, even where convincing results from strict lab conditions may appear, these are of dubious value when the reality of the societies in which we live is one of unlimited and uncontrolled complexity: a situation completely at odds with clinical laboratory conditions.
Just why are such fundamental issues so consistently glossed over within so-called social sciences? The answer to this question perhaps has more to do with academia being seen to do science than in any would-be sincere efforts to understand real people and human society. In any case, the simple fact that the specific momentary behavior of individuals so thoroughly eludes both simplistic and complex theories actually suggests that conventional science is far from an optimal approach for such matters.
Meanwhile, science’s goal of being objective includes a deep suspicion and sometimes a complete dismissal of the subjective experience that nonetheless permeates every moment of our lives. This amounts to a generalized assertion that all valid knowledge necessarily has to be approved by the gate-keeping processes of scientific proof. As such, it also amounts to a privatization by the scientific community of knowledge itself – or at least an insistence on a highly policed set of rules and procedures governing the production and control of culturally accepted facts.
The general view of this – which is also the proffered excuse for this policing of knowledge – is that any ideas about how our world behaves must be thoroughly tested and verified, as well as framed in terms that are as universally applicable as possible. Therefore, so the reasoning goes, it is necessary to check candidate knowledge by offering it up for the approval of peers or experts who are familiar with the relevant field of knowledge and judged competent to endorse or reject whatever theories or supposed facts are laid out.
In terms of basic logic, this is obviously perfectly sound in the same way that a basic theory of gravity can be tested by letting go of heavy objects and observing how they consistently fall to Earth. However, there are numerous issues with scaling this thinking up to the truly monstrous scale on which scientific work now operates.
Anyone can check that heavy objects fall towards Earth by direct experimentation – without theorizing or examining any tales of reality told by others who seek to explain matters or approve ideas. But the argument would then be made that most science is far more complicated and eludes such personal experimentation – an argument that notably diminishes the value of direct experience in favor of scientific tales of reality.
However, the fact that some scientific work is highly involved is not a logical argument against the individual using his own mind for work falling within his capabilities. And in any case, there is no law stating that all knowledge needs scientific verification; do we use scientists to verify our apparent hunger or thirst? What about the essential truths of other key needs such as shelter, clothing, and protection from danger? In fact, anyone stepping outside the current cultural obsession with scientifically derived knowledge might question just why we seemingly need all this science in the first place. Who really cares what happens inside atoms or in the depths of space?
Although scientific investigation can obviously be highly involved and require coordinated teamwork, such a requirement should not be allowed to obscure the fact that the objectivity science pursues in fact equates to an inherent, blanket and irrational distrust of all subjective knowledge and perspectives. But if asked how this can be an intelligent approach given all human experience is arguably nothing but subjective, conventional thinking would respond that science is inherently a truthful pursuit and that, whereas individuals are corruptible and occasionally dishonest, groups of scientists avoid this by pursuing a consensus.
But what is the basis for this thinking, and what is it to be truthful? The scientific model of truth – if one exists – appears rooted in the idea of factual knowledge. This in turn relies on the subliminal faith humans hold in abstract thought, which in turn relies on the equally subliminal notion that reality should be conceptually broken down into things, analyzed in terms of those things, and then understood in terms of what those things are, and how they relate to one another.
But however any of this is framed, the whole scientific endeavor would be pointless if not that through technology it provides control over the environment: the main goal of science and technology as abundantly manifested in today’s world. So, as with knowledge in general, it should be noted that science is not primarily driven by a quest for factual knowledge of itself; it is largely driven by the desire to use that knowledge as an element within a wider process – to the benefit of an individual, group, or both.
In any case, the idea of the scientist as an independent researcher or pure truth-seeker is a myth. Scientists in the real world are ordinary people pursuing wage-earning careers and thereby making themselves answerable to the demands of whichever corporations or academic bodies fund them and direct their activities. In short, scientific activity is primarily driven by financial and institutional agendas with truth being only somewhat incidental. In contrast, the scientist who compromises his safe career, assured income and peer-group respect in the interests of ruthlessly pursuing truth wherever it leads him is a very rare exception.
More generally, and even if true facts are the ostensible goal of most scientific activity, research often provides an effective façade that helps obscure less noble agendas – facts and knowledge understandably enjoying a certain cultural high-ground not so readily granted to the pursuit of money and political power.
Hence, the public is served up a falsely sanitized version of science as some great humanitarian endeavor to improve human existence through knowledge and invention – typically within the wider ideal of human progress by which the world’s entire population will one day be fully emancipated. This is a naturally credible view given a historical development of our species in which factual knowledge, technology and science have unequivocally underpinned apparently beneficial change. It is also a view through which individuals can flatter themselves with cleverness and the acquiring of scientific knowledge and facts as a means of seemingly explaining reality. For many, the superstitions and wild imaginings of religions and other traditional ideas are at last being pushed aside in the name of pragmatic and objective truth. Primitive delusions are to be burned in their own ignorance as science probes every corner of reality and reveals how humans can become masters of their own fate.
But however appealing and superficially credible such a perspective might appear, a different reality lurks behind the façade of scientific activity. The fact is, scientific research and discovery have often peaked in times of war, precisely because technological developments – far from emancipating all concerned – were often a means of one faction outsmarting the other in terms of killing efficiency. Through sophisticated and more lethal guns, bombs, missiles, rockets, planes, tanks, warships, and drones, science has moved us into a world where technology is demonstrating in ever-more-deadly manners that minds have not yet moved beyond the might-is-right mentality. Far from science being some sort of inherently beneficial pursuit, human conflict actually appears as one of its key drivers – there being no barriers at all to harnessing any and all scientific discoveries for the subjugation and murder of our fellow beings. Even in apparent peacetime, industrialized nations can be seen enthusiastically developing new weaponry to consolidate their dominance through tacit militaristic threats, or by selling such weaponry to other nations and even private armies – profit being revealed as an underlying motive behind superficially scientific activity.
Of course, science did not invent human aggression – such a drive being evident throughout human history as well as in other species. However, it is quite clear that science has done little or nothing to manage such instinctive forces whilst simultaneously enabling the means by which humans are by some margin the deadliest species on the planet. It is also notable in this respect that the supposed sciences of the humanities exhibit a stunning failure in terms of developing any would-be social technologies that might meaningfully help the species simply cohabit without slaying one another.
But what other outcomes should we expect from a world-view that by negating the value of subjectivity tacitly blanks all issues of self-examination, ethics, spirituality, and even common self-respect? Concepts such as spirituality may have a vagueness about them that invites charlatans, but they at least consider looking beyond the surface appearance of the physical world. In contrast, the world according to science is an impersonal place of deterministic activity: a set of rules ostensibly to be comprehended in the name of a type of knowledge considered inherently beneficial – even if some real-world science is very obviously pursued for far less lofty reasons. And while human suffering is obviously not the direct goal of much science, many other more or less nefarious goals of exploitation hide within its shadows – notably the ruthless quest for excessive wealth and social control, as currently enabled via the runaway materialism of a narcissistic consumer society.
Science’s heaven
Given much social control is achieved through what is in effect a generalized indoctrination to consumerist values, any sincere and unbiased social sciences would surely focus on this. But therein lies a dilemma for the would-be radically honest researcher of social reality: the hard truth about how human societies operate is inescapably critical of both those who hold power and the means by which they do so. Such issues are unavoidably political and, depending on the regime, anything from academic shaming to life in a gulag or death itself might be the cost of detailing them in their raw state, simply because otherwise hidden truths might be revealed in all their political awkwardness.
Meanwhile, the goals underlying the pursuit of industrial science are even easier to understand given today’s commodity-driven world. Scientifically developing new technological gadgetry and products in conjunction with business interests assures that the consumer society’s ideal of having everything is pursued with great zeal, but never actually attained. Instead, it is arguable that people are deliberately and permanently enslaved by their indoctrinated needs for the latest products.
Of course, unless this propensity to instrumentalize consumerism as a means of exploiting people is framed as a very nebulous, diffuse and mostly subliminal phenomenon, it readily sounds like a too-tall conspiracy theory. Nonetheless, any quick glance at today’s saturation levels of publicity reveals just how extensive efforts have become to fuel endless public desires for more and more of whatever industry has just dreamed up to sell them – all of which is integral to a wider political and economic rhetoric of growth as somehow desirable and necessary. Those promoting all these goals tend to call the shots to the extent that they convince people of consumerism’s tales of reality, and thereby profit from the resulting frenzy of trade and industry. Given their obvious greed, they can even be seen as having fallen victim to their own propaganda.
Meanwhile, within the business-to-business world where directly persuading the consumer is not necessary and the raw profit motive is more overt, science is pursued very much as just another means of furthering the overall money-making hysteria. Anything that might increase the bottom line is worthy of investigation, whether it be shortening the lifespan of a product to increase subsequent repurchases, or developing automation to lay off workers. Criticisms of the role science plays in all this need not concern science itself or science as a form of knowledge; the cultural impunity with which the scientific community reflexively prostitutes itself to business interests suffices to put its integrity in question.
Just as very little we humans do occurs in a social vacuum, very little we do should be considered innocent of its recognizable consequences in the wider world. Even the science of nuclear weaponry could be considered harmless were it limited to ideas that only existed as abstract knowledge. But both experience and common sense would indicate that scientific activity never exists without an underlying motive – even if the motive is only to bolster the personal prestige of the scientist.
One great hypocrisy within the scientific outlook lies in its pretensions of being some puritanical form of knowledge that rides sanctimoniously above other human objectives. This ridiculous stance is nonetheless adopted by many who happily mock religious positions, not just for their lack of proof, but also for the same sort of human abuses as science has enabled on an even grander scale. Traditional religions may furnish the dogma ostensibly fueling certain human conflicts, but the technological means of inflicting large-scale death and destruction are invariably rooted in scientific developments – even in the absence of any such religious dogmas.
In an attempt to offset such criticisms, the many medical miracles enabled by science are defensively cited to imply that any criticizing of science is the criticizing of life-saving treatments. But this is often a cheap emotional ploy that subliminally seeks to equate the dedication and kindness of people who work as medics with the scientifically derived treatments they deploy. Hence, keeping a balanced mind within this emotionally charged area entails looking at medical technology in itself, as well as understanding that the criticism here is not that science is bad, but more that scientific knowledge should be seen as neutral at best, at the same time as certain motives behind its use appear nefarious.
No doubt the vast majority of medics act primarily in what most would con