*!"Do You Believe in Science?"!*

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Sigh.

Your point seems to be that science can't be trusted because its objectivity brings with it subjectivity, a view based on a philosophical tenet of Taosim, no less. The apparent implication is that subjectivity is bad (never mind the irony). Then you go on to say that science needs to accept more subjectivity. Maybe it's not all bad, but how do you tell which is which? That's obviously, by definition, too subjective to know for sure. It's not like you can take anybody's word for it.

That is why science relies solely on objectivity. You can only trust what you can measure or otherwise infer from measurements. Nobody is saying that subjective evidence is invalid, but rather unscientific and unreliable. If you have a gut feeling about global warming, should everybody just trust you? Why? If some experiments don't work out under lax classroom conditions, does that mean that the scientific method is wrong? Why would it?

Lots of scientists spend a lot of time measuring and remeasuring and calculating and tabulating and correlating, ect. Why do they do it? Because they don't trust even their own gut instincts and subjective views. If they do trust themselves too much, then they produce results that nobody else is able to reproduce, and they get ignored. Science is self-healing, and subjectivity doesn't survive when the entire scientific community is checking your results.

Sigh.

No, my point was that images of/use of the term "objectivity", the very idea itself, may in fact provoke the "experience" of, aswell support for/belief in, concentrated "subjectivity", because the very creation/construction of the concept "pure objectivity" as an approach/position automatically produces its opposite concept, pure subjectivity.

Whether this approach to life ( objectivity) is possible, whether it actually exists, or is an illusion, is another question. I believe that it is an illusion. But I think that "objectivity" as a concept has real power, and that science's promulgation of this concept inevitably validates/strengthens the opposing concept of "subjectivity" with every reiteration. ( like belief in "goodness" suggests "badness", "chastity" the idea of "promiscuity", etc. )

I believe that it has been convincingly shown that science is far from being free of "subjectivity" ( as it is known since science invented the concept by inventing objectivity), and in fact that is where the problem lies, that science believes or pretends that it is objective, whereas it is powered as much by what it calls subjectivity as is the rest of the world.

This would not be a problem if it was acknowledged because then it could be dealt with, taken into account, but while science refuses to admit that it is in fact impossible to divide up behaviours and observations into subjective and objective, subjectivity is unchecked , as iamnotaparakeet's wonderful quote above makes clear.

http://www.cosmologystatement.org/

I believe that the very idea that we can divide human behaviour/perception/knowledge up into "objective" and "subjective" is an illusion and has destructive effects.

See above quote, ( iamnotaparakeet's ) and my refs to work by Schaffer, Kuhn, and others, which shows that even if believe in scientists' best intentions and the greatest of rigour, scientific activity is influenced by non-objective factors, amongst them that of considerations of social order.

Again, see above re cosmology, and Kuhns work on how scientific theories get abandoned.

That's kind of what i was thinking when i answered above:

I was actually wondering whether entry into the pure sciences, or even just faith in it, sometimes functioned in the same way as the creation of gamblers.

In a complex ( ..and/or random? ) system a certain number of positive/confirming results in the first few exposures tends to create belief in its having laws which can be counted on/discovered, that if keep at it will discover the secret/system and win the jackpot.

Apparently it is precisely the uncertainty which is the hook; a certain number of misses will have more effect than none at all, but particularly large/frequent wins early on ( esp. compared to other/neighbouring players) will encourage further investment in the system.

Also it is interesting to see some ideas that are held by scientists promoted as science. Or theories, such as in political, social, cognitive, & etc "science" being given the same credence as chemistry and physics which has given us such wonderful technology as we have today.

The "label of "science" is very fiercely guarded, like a french "Appellation Controlée", which means that in order for a traditional french cheese, rather like a cheddar, to be able to call itself a "Conté" worth more than a banal "emmental", it must come from the Jura, not only be made there but that it must be made from milk from cows grazing there.

The thing is that although it is definitely in the cheesemakers interest to maintain such strict standards because it keeps the price up, it is not them that regulate/control the attribution of the label, but a central body, able to examine impartially the merits of each cheese, and other food products submitted for an "appellation controlée" label.

Where is such a body in the science world? Peer review, already exposed as lacking in critical power because it is within the group, is not enough.

The wonderful science and technology has led to some of the worst disasters of the last 100 years, and in fact it was the nuclear, ecological, BSE, and other messes which have contributed to increasing demand for some sort of regulatory body or greater transparency and accountability from scientists.

A long but extremely illuminating article/paper to this effect on this subject at:

www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.11 ... 2.issue-v1

"Sociological Knowledge and Scientific Knowledge". 2007. by Matthew David. University of Liverpool.

Last edited by ouinon on 04 Mar 2008, 4:58 pm, edited 4 times in total.

Link says Error.

yeah, i can't seeem to get it to link. but the article is there. Don't know what problem is. i have now double checked the link and corrected but it still won't .

Probably keeps track of where the traffic comes from.

Anyway, peer review is subject to the opinions of the people who review (although it can be blocked from outside by organizations like the ACLU if necessary.) I haven't seen this film, but from the previews I recommend it: http://www.expelledthemovie.com/playground.php Peer review being good for things which wouldn't alter underlying presuppositions but poor for things relating to origins, geology, or cosmology.

Thanks for the link. The preview is fun, sort of ID equivalent of "The Great Global Warming Swindle".

I don't see any need to overturn the Darwinian Theory of Evolution though. I think it's beautiful just as it is.

The really weird thing for me about all this is that i wasn't expecting it. I took for granted that, on the whole, science was an authorative, reliable, impartial, "objective" approach to the world. I even took "objective" relatively for granted!!

It's only because i was struggling to work out what i believed about "catastrophic climate change" that i discovered i was "dubious" at some fundamental level, that i didn't fully believe certain central tenets of scientific analysis/reality, and most astonishngly of all that it WAS a question of belief/faith. I realise it might seem very naive, after serious challenge to scientific hegemony from many heavyweight thinkers in society over the last 50 years, not to know anything of these kinds of doubts. All this is a learning curve for me.

The thing that i find the most difficult to explain to myself, if science is largely good, is why we have dangerous climate change (allegedly), and massive pollution, huge increase in many degenerative and chronic diseases, widespread species extinction, etc etc. By their fruit ye shall know them. Truly truly, science's fruits are so mixed, so full of awful things, aswell as good, that it probably attains the record of the organised christian churches, esp catholicism.

The tale of global warming ressembles doomsday prophecies, ( or a modern "flood myth"), and Space Travel and colonisation like a carrot, "Life After planet earth", something we get if we are good and continue to believe in science. Science may have unconsciously taken on the role of organised religion and be acting out some of the oldest mythologies of western civilisation.

Today though I began seriously thinking that perhaps science IS where the "word of god" is coming from now. That perhaps the increasingly refined/purified processes used in science ARE the modern equivalent of ancient divination rituals, and DO produce truth, and that i should believe in "dangerous human-caused climate change" before it's too late.

I now pretty much think that the scientific establishment is no less than a church, and science no less than a religion. This needn't be a problem, if it teaches us how to live in healthy and positive ways.

Last edited by ouinon on 05 Mar 2008, 11:21 am, edited 3 times in total.

But I don't think it does, because most of science suffers from the same flaw as the older western religions, that of taking one side of a duality, of in fact of constructing/teaching fundamental, divisive, and perhaps unavoidably destructive, dualism.

Last edited by ouinon on 06 Mar 2008, 7:46 am, edited 2 times in total.

Kuhn's rantings are merely a caricature of science. Most so-called "revolutions" in science only look like revolutions from an outside vantage point as a result of the influence of stubborn elder scientists and an inherent conservatism in lower level science curricula (When I was in high school biology, 2001-2002, I was still taught the 40-year-old "5 Kingdoms" taxonomic system, even though it had been pretty much abandoned by most biologists except for old veteran biologists like Lynn Margulis). From an inside vantage point of papers in specialized technical journals and personal communications between scientists things are much more fluid then Kuhn's conception of "normal science" claims.

That pretty much would be part of transhumanistic philosophy. What I really don't get is "why colonize Mars?" other than a publicity stunt it wont prove much. Go ahead though, move from one (according to some) soon-to-be-dead planet to an already-dead planet. If we ever find a habitable planet it will probably be so many light years out of our reach to be impractical to go there.

Colonizing Mars would be a first step in colonizing the rest of the solar system, which is rich in resources to exploit once we have the technology. Colonizing other worlds also offers a new source of cultural and societal diversity to off-set the increasing degree of cultural homogenization on earth. Colonies would also give utopian types, from Marxists to Libertarians to Anarchists to religious communities the chance to try out their ideas so people can see if their ideas have merit of are just unworkable BS.

I already answered but got a question. What if you didn't believe in science. I don't mean like someone who's a religious fanatic but haven't we already proved through science that science exists.

Yes.. Without science our world would be very.. Well, behind. Wheather matter truely exists or not isnt important. It is real to us, so its important to learn about. With all the matter suplied to us, we could easily populate the universe. Personally I think that if anything we will pathetically die out eventually on this world never to be heard from again.

Dibs on earth when everybody else leaves!