Some general notes on science and scientism

Science.

Most people have no real idea what science actually is. They know a couple of parlor room tricks, a few systems of organizing and labelling identifiable structures, and a bit of engineering that exploits said systems of organizing and labelling to achieve reproducible and predictable results.

(This is, of course, only applied metaphysics, but if you make the mistake of uttering that word in polite company, the semi-literate crowd will quickly start plotting to burn you at the stake)

On this foundation (and an incredible amount of propaganda and marketing) is built the monolithic edifice of Science, this pseudo-religious structure of foundational mythology from which westernized industrial civilization draws so much of its free energy, labour and faithful support.

Our mythology has been that native peoples live with the awful oppression of "subsistence economics" - a term that by its mere utterance invokes feelings of pity and images of squalor. Our machines, our technology, and our superior systems of economic management offer freedom from back-breaking labor, the opportunity for leisure, and protection against the arbitrariness of nature's cycles.

Pre-technological peoples, living hand to mouth in a never-ending search for food and protection from the elements, need and want what Western society brings. So goes the story. Given this logic, most Westerners are shocked to find that the majority of native peoples on the earth do not wish to climb onto the Western economic machine. They say their traditional ways have served them well for thousands of years and that our ways are doomed to fail.

Jerry Mander, In the Absence of the Sacred

In reality, though, it's a fucking racket.

Science doesn't really exist as such. It's best understood as a semi-coherent set of overlapping institutions, a patchwork of human traditions of knowledge that do not operate according to any common set of principles, but rather opportunistically explores, probes and creates according to whatever potential their practictioners can envision and discover.

The notion of science as a unified, coherent endeavour is nothing but ideology. And it’s a supremely useful piece of ideology that can be harnessed to support almost any conceivable political practice.

For example, consider the role science now plays in education. Scientific "facts” are taught at a very early age and in the very same manner in which religious "facts” were taught only a century ago.

There is no attempt to waken the critical abilities of the pupil so that he may be able to see things in perspective. At the universities the situation is even worse, for indoctrination is here carried out in a much more systematic manner. Criticism is not entirely absent. Society, for example, and its institutions, are criticised most severely and often most unfairly and this already at the elementary school level. But science is excepted from the criticism. In society at large the judgement of the scientist is received with the same reverence as the judgement of bishops and cardinals was accepted not too long ago.

The move towards "demythologization," for example, is largely motivated by the wish to avoid any clash between Christianity and scientific ideas. If such a clash occurs, then science is certainly right and Christianity wrong. Pursue this investigation further and you will see that science has now become as oppressive as the ideologies it had once to fight. Do not be misled by the fact that today hardly anyone gets killed for joining a scientific heresy. This has nothing to do with science. It has something to do with the general quality of our civilization.

Heretics in science are still made to suffer from the most severe sanctions this relatively tolerant civilization has to offer.

Feyerabend, “How to defend society against science”

If you look to the sociology of science, you'd be amazed how often high-theory constructs are put together AFTER their supposed predictions have been verified empirically.

Or how method is just jury-rigged completely ad-hoc.

And this is how it's supposed to be, precisely because the epistemic warrant that scientific practice necessarily is predicated upon CANNOT be supplied by these traditions themselves.

This is done through metaphysics. Through experience. Through art. Through various forms of logic. Through language. Religion. Love. Friendship. Communication. Through PLAYING WITH WORDS.

Science gets its warrant from reality. And for that very reason, because its epistemic legitimacy is supplied by its level of accordance with the immensely complex and ultimately always mysterious and elusive world around us, it has to be eclectic. Creative. Quick on its feet.

But - so the impatient believer in rationalism and science is liable to exclaim - is this procedure not justified? Is there not a tremendous difference between science on the one side, religion, magic, myth on the other? Is this difference not so large and so obvious that it is unnecessary to point it out and silly to deny it? Does the difference not consist in the fact that magic, religion, mythical world views try to get in touch with reality while science has succeeded in this business and so supersedes its ancestors? Is it therefore not only justified but also required to remove an ontologically potent religion, a myth that claims to describe the world, a system of magic that poses as an alternative to science from the centre of society and to replace them by science? These are some of the questions which the 'educated' liberal (and the 'educated' Marxist) will use to object to any form of freedom that interferes with the central position of science and (liberal or Marxist) rationalism. Three assumptions are contained in these rhetorical questions.

Assumption A: scientific rationalism is preferable to alternative traditions.

Assumption B : it cannot be improved by a comparison and/or combination with alternative traditions.

Assumption C: it must be accepted, made a basis of society and education because of its advantages

Feyerabend, Science in a Free Society

Science cannot reify one narrow set of methodological approaches from one corner of the immense set of human traditions of knowledge and attempt to exhaustively explain reality as it actually and finally IS.

But that degenerated and ultimately stultifying approach is precisely what we see predominating contemporary discourse and the popular consciousness to a greater degree than ever. The institutions of science are captured by marketing and by a thoroughly politicized expertocracy, whose ultimate teleology is the reproduction of the power structures and property relations of our current economic and political system.

It's been reduced to ideology and marketing, with science's role as myth far superseding the actual pursuit of knowledge representative of the best intentions of the traditions that once formed it.

Bobby Wells of Kotzebue, Alaska:

I remember our fathers, how they survived in this world, in strong winds, in cold temperatures .... They were taught to share, they were taught to help each other .... This time, we are fighting to survive among different people, among different races in this Western civilization. What does this Western civilization have to offer? Business.

Alice Solomon of Barrow, Alaska:

The people are happy ... they caught a whale. They get really excited, and it goes all the way, deep inside. And when you go into the house that caught the whale, there's that happiness, that excitement, that crying for joy, because they are glad they have been given that gift.

On the rare occasion when Westerners hear such views as these-it was a point of Berger's book that native peoples are hardly ever asked-we tend to relegate native opinions to mere ignorance.

We are so thoroughly convinced of the rightness of the Western technological project that we are determined to "improve" the native condition, even over their objections. And so it has been for hundreds of years. Western attitudes today on such matters are no different than they have been since the seventeenth century. Our sense of superiority justifies the continued expansion of our economic system, of digging up, cutting down, and paving over the natural world, without guilt toward the native peoples' lands we destroy in the process. Our mythology supports this, our economic system is based on it, and our financial institutions-from your local bank to the World Bank-aggressively seek to ensure that these ways continue.

Jerry Mander, ibid.