"Trust Science" is a BAD Idea

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Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: http://pauljernberg.com

The apparent obligation to “trust science” has possibly never been more imposing than it is now. It’s gone from a slogan used in debate to having our fundamental rights granted or withheld for the people who choose to adhere to it or question it.

But when people say “trust the science” how are we supposed to make sense o that? Because, science means knowledge that we possess through our intellectual faculty and because we possess it and because it is within the grasp of our intellectual potential, there should be few if any unknowns about it as distinct from faith which is laden with mystery – which can often make us uncomfortable.

But in the modern age, science and technology have become so specialized and sophisticated, that the average lay person like you and me, have to admit, that when we speak of scientific knowledge, we aren’t talking about a knowledge that we personally possess – it isn’t our own knowledge.

If it were our own knowledge, we wouldn’t have to trust it, the way we do with faith. We simply access it and live according to it. When someone says “trust the science”, they’re saying, “trust my knowledge which is superior to yours.”

Trust me because I’m an authority and, therefore, your skepticism, your concerns, questions, and criticisms, are inappropriate and invalid.
The great hope of science is that it would liberate us from our limitations, especially, those imposed on us by the laws of the natural world. We often resent those limitations, and so we sought to develop knowledge and technology that would help us to transform the world around us according to our own desires and expectations.

Karl Marx once wrote that “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” In otherwords, we used to use science to understand the nature of things and then conform ourselves to those laws, but according to Marx it is nature that should genuflect to us through science and technology. Yea, what could go wrong?

And what did we get for this expectation. We went from being subject to the laws of nature, to the great conquest of nature by science such that now a select few scientists can wield a knowledge and a technology that is so sophisticated that most of us don’t understand it.

The conquest of nature by science is actually the conquest of scientists over the world that includes their fellow man. We went from being subjects of the natural world, to being subjects to those in lab coats.

Podcast Version: https://brianholdsworth.libsyn.com/