Why Science is Fundamentally Meaningless
Todd Hayen
Oooo, I’ve probably got a few raised eyebrows on this one.
It is a rather bold statement.
Notice, however, I was careful to use the word “meaningless” rather than “useless.” “Usefulness” is usually determined by the intention behind the knowledge or action.
If I want to mend a broken bone, for example, and I learn something about the science behind the act of mending a bone, then the science is “useful”—it was useful in the accomplishment of the intention of mending the bone. If I want to kill a huge number of people with a single blast, the science behind an atomic bomb is “useful.”
But is it meaningful?
Considering my article title, I could have qualified even that statement with “beneficially meaningful,” but then the title would be too long.
So, then you might ask, “beneficially meaningful to whom?”—us (humans), animals, the planet, the universe? I may touch on this dilemma a bit in this article, but that question is more for philosophers and theologians. Briefly, I would say what is beneficially meaningful to any one of these things (humans, other animals, the planet, the universe) is also beneficially meaningful to the others.
To put it in religious/spiritual language, it would then resonate and correlate with God’s plan. And what is God’s plan? I think I know, do you? If you don’t know, ask Him. I don’t think it would be right for me to try to tell you, I could be wrong. Being “beneficially meaningful” to humans, animals, the planet, and the universe certainly correlates with probably the most universal spiritual concept: unity consciousness.
Let me pick apart my article title a bit more, so all of this makes more sense.
Science is usually defined as the study of nature. To be precise, here is the Webster dictionary definition:
1. Such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena.
The word “system” in the above covers my word “study,” and the words “physical world and its phenomena,” covers my word “nature.”
It is important to note that nature is generally defined as “the material world” as science has little interest in metaphysics, non-material phenomena, and religion or spirituality. This has not always been the case, and maybe I am too quick to judge. Maybe this Webster definition includes the “science of metaphysics,” but I seriously doubt it.
So, after going over these definitions, why is it so important that we have “knowledge of the physical world and its phenomena”? The knowledge of these things doesn’t seem to be the issue (at least not the one that causes harm in a physical way), it is the use of that knowledge that is usually of concern. And if how we use it, for the most part, is meaningless, then science is meaningless. Why is the knowledge not the problem? Well, in fact, it ultimately is. It is the problem only because humans cannot refrain from acting on knowledge. Our God-given gift of free will ensures that.
So, we are in quite a dilemma then, aren’t we? Do we decide to refrain from educating ourselves about the world around us? Or do we just refrain from using that knowledge in bad ways? Maybe a little bit of both. We typically want knowledge because we believe it will better our lives in some way. If we knew that the fundamental basis of our life was really not in our hands to alter, that it was rather in God’s hands, then most of the things we could gain knowledge over would be pointless to know.
This might be an utterly weird concept to grasp, but if we look at how the rest of the planet (and assuming the universe, too) functions without factoring in humans, it will be a bit easier to understand what I am getting at.
First, consider that mammals are rather close in structure to humans, then consider how they function in an ecological system as well as they do if humans don’t interfere. They know nothing they do not need to know, and all that they know, we could argue, comes through instinct, and genetic “knowingness.” Although we also could argue there is an awful lot they learn through their living experience—they know very little that is not “beneficially meaningful”—they do not know about the science of physics, medicine, how an atom functions, or how cells work. They know or learn what they need in order to survive, find joy and happiness, and procreate. They are in God’s hands. That’s it.
Most humans do not want to live like animals. They feel they are above that. Maybe they were when they were “above animals” in the Garden of Eden before they ate that nice apple pie that Mr. Snake baked for them—from the tree of knowledge, no less. Isn’t that “science”? Or maybe that very thing is what made them feel superior to the beasts around them. Whatever it was, or however it was, they subsequently knew stuff. Science was invented, and here we started around the mulberry bush, waiting for the weasel to pop.
How come this didn’t happen to all humans? I have no idea, I am not an anthropologist and have not read much, if anything, about why some cultures never became mesmerized about knowing so damned much. “Primitive” tribes don’t know much more scientific detail about the natural world than the animals that occupy it with them. If it weren’t for the more “advanced” humans bent on destroying their existence, they probably would have lived for millions of years fitting comfortably within the eco-structures of the world around them. They still would be humans, still “smarter” than the beasts, but whatever knowledge they acquired, whatever science they managed to handle, would not have destroyed them as it has unquestionably destroyed us (or at least on its merry way to do so).
What is the evidence of this destruction? Let me count the ways. Where do I start? There isn’t room here to even begin: atomic war, poisonous food, poisonous pharmacology, poisonous social media, pornography, pollution, AI, robotics, you get the picture. I could go into detail about the price we have had to pay for nearly every seemingly glorious invention science has given us, and yes, we certainly could argue whether the price to pay was reasonable. But eventually we would end up where we are right now.
It all led to this. And this ain’t so good. Suicide rates at an all time high, drug abuse at an all time high, kids so lost they have to identify as a different sex, government so corrupt there is no return to decency. Depression, anxiety, drug abuse, meaningless and purposeless lives. What more can I say? It isn’t good.
So, what is good? Lots of things, of course, but even the good things are not ultimately good. They lead to overpopulation, to the destruction of our waterways, the extinction of countless living creatures, the poisoning of the air, the land, and our minds, which have lost nearly all thought of meaning and purpose.
Think about tribal people again. Think about the sophistication of their culture, their rituals, their magic, their natural medicine. Sure, if a crocodile gets to one of them and rips out one of their kidneys, there isn’t much the medicine man can do. But that is the way of nature, isn’t it? The way of God.
I am not suggesting we toss all of our technology in the dumpster, stop all medical research, and destroy all microscopes, computers and test tubes. No, there is no turning back at this point. We are where we are with our technical acumen, and we cannot undo what we have already done—nor un-know what we already know.
All I am really saying is that this worship of the pursuit to know everything that God created (something Mr. Snake taught us) has got to stop. It is a destructive obsession and a transfer of worth away from the mystery of nature to science, the thing that continually rapes nature just to know how it works.
Todd Hayen PhD is a registered psychotherapist practicing in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He holds a PhD in depth psychotherapy and an MA in Consciousness Studies. He specializes in Jungian, archetypal, psychology. Todd also writes for his own substack, which you can read here
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The Moral dimension of Science has been usurped by utility as defined by stakeholders – not least by usurpation of a moral integrality by ‘moral’ pretence of guilting and shaming manipulations – ‘justified’ by the symbol of their goal as idol-ogical capture.
If the ‘official’ narrative is ‘sanctified’ and protected by the idol of its goal, then ‘Noble Lies’ run as power struggle framed in ‘virtue’.
Thescience runs corporately pimped sci-modelling under cover of ‘Human Progress’ framed as an unstoppable ‘evolutionary necessity’.
Beneath runs the secret of the science of money and power – set in private agenda, masking in ‘market forces’.
Law is at it root moral – integrally so – not weaponised coercion claiming moral high ground.
What then of vengeance and weaponised grievance?
The attempt to seek outside our self for completion renders a split-mind framed in lack-driven substitution, for true needs.
Addictive compulsion is never set on reality – but in substitutions – symbolic representations – a matrix of ‘coded meanings’ from which the mind cannot escape its own thinking.
Science may indeed be the study of nature, but how it is studied is what makes science ‘science’. The key is what is called the ‘scientific method’.
This is really quite simple to summarise:
It is about the testing of falsifiable hypotheses.
Curiosity about some aspect of nature leads to observations and then human nature leads some human, nominally termed a ‘scientist’, formulating a hypothesis about how something works, comes about.
The first essential skill in being a scientist is in framing a hypothesis that can be falsified through experiment.
The reason that science is about testing falsifiable hypotheses is that it is impossible to prove something is true, whereas it is eminently possible to prove it to be false. That is what is behind Einstein’s famous quotation: ‘No number of scientific experiments can prove me right, but a single one can prove me wrong’. The gist of science is that the longer a hypothesis remains unfalsified, the more likely it is to be sufficiently close to the ‘truth; as to be indistinguishable from it.
The difficulty about science is that it is essentially disinterested in anything that cannot be framed as a falsifiable hypothesis. So it is inevitably on a collision path with faiths, whose central tenets are certain unprovable assertions which from the basis for value systems. No-one today can ‘prove’ that ‘God’ made the universe, any more than anyone can prove today whether the ‘Virgin Mary’ was or was not, in fact, a virgin whose gestation of a son was due to ‘immaculate conception’. All that can be said is that no-one has seen such a phenomenon in the past 100 years.
Funnily enough, there are many aspects to ‘organised science’ which display remarkable similarities to ‘organised religion’. You have your Cardinals (aka Nobel Prize Winners, Fields Medal winners etc etc), your Archbishops, call them what you will. Certainly such people are used to being fawned before in many cases, just as lowly congregationalists are expected to look up to priests etc (I don’t, which is why I have never joined an organised religion). There are often dogmatic unquestionable ‘truths’, which may not be questioned by those that wish to ‘get on’ in science. Just as you are unlikely to rise up the Christian faith by question whether Jesus’ conception was immaculate, whether his resurrection truly happened in physical terms or not. You have gatherings of the ‘faithful’ at international conferences etc.
Organised science is actually a pressure group with privileges for the favoured, including honours, lots of money and prestige, TV appearances, consultancy fees etc etc. It is also a way of ensuring that those practicing science take inordinately longer to solve problems than might be necessary, since it is much easier to continue to try to solve one problem than to have to start to solve another one, given the nature of rat races in the modern world.
What science indubitably is NOT, is being a mouthpiece for favoured clients. That is lobbying pure and simple, a way of earning money that has absolutely nothing to do with the scientific method whatsoever. You only have to look at how ‘vaccines’ have been plugged by the Great and Good of the Scientific world to see how far away from science such folks have strayed.
As for whether science can be ‘meaningful’, well it can certainly bring meaning to some people’s lives, which, makes it very meaningful for them. It does not have to meaningful to all human beings for it to have meaning. That would be like saying that every mod, rocker and punk would have to adore Mozart for Mozart’s music to have any meaning. It is enough that Mozart is revered by a subset of humanity for the greatest youthful vivacity of harmonic musical composition yet created. Leave the mods, rockers and punks to enjoy what they enjoy, even if you hate it. It’s not harmful to you if others listen to loud music outside your earshot, after all.
For some, the scientific method brings order, structure and discipline to their lives. For some people that freedom from chaos is what they crave, even as other humans thrive in the chaotic uncertainty that can be found all over the earth’s ecosystem.
Applying the scientific method to arenas traditionally the role of skilled artisans can often bring advances hitherto unimagined. It can also bring problems many people would rather had remained in the genie bottle.
If, after all, you believe the Bible, ‘everything is meaningless’. It may be to those who see the end coming and feel they have not achieved what they wished in their time on earth.
For those who have experienced seminal things akin to spiritual enlightenment, most things can have meaning.
The conclusion in the last sentence is a little smokey: ‘can have meaning’, maybe, you are not very sure.
“No-one today can ‘prove’ that ‘God’ made the universe“:
Couldnt we limit it to our universe? Isnt it a little too large big to consider our human attitude to the whole unlimited universe?
If we take only our universe we at least know a little about, the sun, the planets, the moon and our earth. Then we have the watchmaker argument. You find a watch, take it up, look at it and say:”Some intelligent specie must have made this watch”. No animal, vegetable, nature phenomena can have made it.
This is the ‘scientific way, we also see the way our planet and our universe is built:”Some intelligent feature must have made it.
Its too Intelligent designed and made to have been build by any human.
The circulation around the sun, the circulation of the moon around the earth, low and tide, streams and winds, the water cycle, m.m.
Thus ‘God made our universe’ is proved, and your long retirade challenged on a few points !
….to have been build by any human nor by any nature phenomena.
The last addition is important because we have these fake theories of Big Bang and a fish developed into an ape, who developed into cro-magnon who developed into Obama who developed into the binary logarithm Elon Musk.
My chicken-and-egg question remains: Who or what created God?
God is not created but the Creator. God is eternal and immutable. God was never born and will never die. God doesn’t change. God is the absolute truth, all-knowing, omniscient. God is absolutely good and perfect: everything truly good is in God. God’s truth is perfect, God’s wisdom is perfect, God’s justice is perfect, and so on.
Whatever has been created can’t be God. Humans have been created. Things that humans create are human creations. There is no reason to think that a human creation is good.
For example, money is a human creation. God had nothing to do with that evil.
God is not a person, or a man, and to call God ”he” in English language is very misleading.
God is Pure Spirit, and spirited beings like humans connect with God in spirit. When we align with God, our thoughts and deeds are pure.
I AM sent you.
I can’t believe people listen to this dribble and tell themselves it actually makes sense.
It is funny how you left out the part that instantly falsifies your narrative: That your god is supposedly omnipotent. This assertion alone makes nonsense of your entire moral paradigm, which must logically ever and always boil down to “mysterious ways” – by far the greatest cop-out ever invented. By man.
Documentation and some evidence pls? You claim the truth is nonsense and postulate that dribble was invented by man.
An insect will probably see an animal as omnipotent, and a poodle dog probably sees humans as omnipotent.
So you can imagine the ape story from Darwin, but not the next step human and God?
The older I get the less I know, or care to know about creation other than where my next meal is coming from and when are we going to throw a gaggle of banksters and such ilk in the slammer.
That is not a real question – but a statement set in the form of a question.
Though the symbol, image or concept of God is in the mind of it maker – it is not as such in All That Is.
But God – as All That Is – cannot be limited or defined by time or place – yet all time and place is in the Mind (of) God.
While we think that we think alone, apart and in private – we project such a claim or ‘gain’ of function onto other minds – no less onto concepts of God – who thus becomes framed by Meanings we took for a self-specialness – ie a jealous vengeful terror as the basis of ‘Power over Life’.
Nothing could be further from the truth, yet the worship of nothings is set over truth feared and hated.
To be still and know, does not demand intellectual achievement or any special merit, so much as to recognise that we (of the self of our own thinking) DO NOT KNOW.
Science can serve the questioning of questionable masking ‘reality-substitution’ as an opening to a a more embracing perspective.
Stepping stones are not destinations to make home and protect against change, but the fear set in risk as self-protection, will seek to invest in the FORMS of the new world as a basis to repackage false solutions as a ‘self-boosting possession and control’ – ie ‘The Reset’ of a mythic back-story in place of a Living Relationship as the moment at hand.
This ‘sacrifice’ is set in narratives where guilting leverages power as masking, distancing and attack.
Thus the ‘separateness’ of a ‘private agenda’ is given continuity for a self-specialness that seeks to become real.
Science may be meaningless. But “The Science” means business.
The cull goes on and subtlety was never a factor. Time Magazine:
Clima Change is the weather negative.
The inversion of Jesus is the Devil, the inversion of God’s weather is Devil’s Clima.
The weather is a non-linear chaotic system predictable only up to 8-14 days.
Clima is an office invention and concept from the City of London to make the weather a negative risk because they cant manipulate the stocks, control people and the sales figures, when the weather is unpredictable.
Here are your words for today.
https://inews.co.uk/news/tv-show-adolescence-sparks-rise-in-hate-on-worlds-biggest-incel-site-3695181?srsltid=AfmBOoptKsScJS9R3OP3y1MY_Cz-trrtwF1wbrIX0r2TKBK5ow0FMde5
Inews.co.uk tell us
“TV show Adolescence sparks rise in hate on world’s biggest incel site
…. triggered an outpouring of misogynistic abuse on incel forums”
More than that!:
“The release of Netflix’s drama Adolescence sparked a surge in misogynistic, racist and anti-semitic activity on the world’s biggest incel forum, new research has found.”
How nice of “research” to find this! But what research precisely? Ah here it is ….
“Analysis from the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) ….”
Bet you didn’t see that one coming!
“The hugely popular show …..”
Really? I didn’t see it. I didn’t hear anyone talk about it.
Imran Ahmed, chief executive of CCDH said : “I don’t think the programme makers thought this but people say we should show this in every school.”
“people say”. What people? Cut the crap Imran. Nobody said it except your spooky masters.
And then,
“People on the forum reacted angrily to Adolescence and rejected both its findings and any sense of responsibility for the violence [of] incel communities.”
“Incel communities”? What the fuck is that? Little hamlets of male psychos leading psycho-activities and having psycho-chats?
“Better investment is needed, he added, to help teachers tackle the growing problem of misogyny among school children”
Oh yes we have a nice new totally contrived bandwagon that is trying to stir up the very violence it claims to be against.
“The i Paper found that some users praised the actions of Southport killer Axel Rudakubana, who went on a fatal knife rampage during a children’s Taylor Swift dance class last year.”
So this Southport stabbing – presumably factual – is being mentioned in the context of a piece of TV fiction? And notice the compulsive mention of the Taylor Swift connection for maximum “Oh my God, that could have been my daughter!” sentiment.
If you struggle to the end of this plastic psycho-pantomime you may well wonder what happened to “antisemitic”. Oh here it is:
“Researchers found that one in four posts discussing the programme contained misogynist hate, racism or antisemitic conspiracies.”
So just slipped in there for the sake of brand recognition then.
Oh and this article features a touching shot of mother hugging her child as they look at floral tributes. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was AI generated.
I agree that science is meaningless as far as true reality of universe beyond our immediate human experience is concerned. Science is meaningful only for engineering and planning applications. We don’t really care to know what’s really going on as long as we can predict important to us outcomes with decent accuracy and high probability.
Otherwise science may enter a sphere of human inquiry in the past shared with religion.
In hard sciences we are trained to believe that our mathematical models based on scarce empirical data and huge highly subjectively biased interpretative pyramid are real and not as Newton concluded just mental contraptions to fit or simulate limited experimental data interpreted completely subjectively within a realm of the tested theory.
For example we are all told that Einstein Special and General Theory of Gravity (STR and GTR) has been experimentally confirmed. True. But still it’s nothing but a simulacrum of reality.
Few remember that in fact STR is based on dogmatic never proven postulates (like invariance of speed of light or rejection of instantaneity) and that GTR was multiple times disproved by ever changing new hard cosmological data. Relativity was never a “settled” science it was a tool or a method used in certain applications like GPS.
The first it was steady state universe fixed by adding artificial Cosmological constant in his field equations, Einstein itself did not believe, invented to stop collapse of Einstein’s initially self collapsing cosmological model as experimental data at that time indicated steady state universe.
Later as Hubble galaxies red shift and expanding universe was experimentally discovered, the Einstein model was fixed again. And then just in few last decades when it turned out that expansion of universe actually is accelerating not slowing down new invisible world or invisible matter, dark matter (30% of all matter) we did not know about or needed and invisible energy, dark energy, that amounts to 70% of all energy in the universe were invented in desperation. The failure to predict galaxies rotational speeds was the last nail to GRT coffin.
In fact since 1980s multiple other theories like MOND relativistic theory, were developed. Those Theories that reject dogmas of Einstein relativity while fully and correctly explaining experimentally confirmed behavior of Universe expansion, galaxies rotation and anomalies of cosmic background decades before confirmatory experimental data was obtained and invisible energy and matter was invented to again patch Einstein theory up.
More recently new theory of Universe expansion based on the same Poincare mathematics ,Einstein and Planck used, but assuming in contrast to Einstein easily intelligible universal instantaneity of events across all inertial frames of reference was developed that also correctly explains universe accelerated expansion with no need to invent new invisible matter or energy. Those are not just discrepancies to be ironed out but fundamental rejection of Einstein’s cosmic mechanism relegating it to generator of simulacrum of universe. Todays unified field theory has similar fundamental problems.
The point is that no mathematical theories as Newton found out actually describe reality of universe but only at least partially mimic some of interpretatively skewed available experimental data. As new data comes in theories are invalidated and picture of universe they supposedly discovered but actually didn’t fades into oblivion.
So how universe really works? Who cares as such knowledge, if even possible to obtain, has no meaning as long as can’t be practically exploited and hence matters only as an exercise of poetic imagination and serves as a form of self reflection of cosmic humility and human spirituality.
I came across a “science” website of [apparently] meaningless wankers today:
https://ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/
I am paying for these arseholes.
Then YOU are responsible.
Sometimes when I am seeing a lack of substance in my regular reading, I will go to Denis Rancourt’s website and just look around for something interesting. Below are snippets from a 2007essay by historian David F. Noble about science and scientism. I think it relates to the malaise about science in Todd Hayen’s piece.
~~~~
“Sometimes the Left is its own worst enemy, particularly when it uses its enemy’s tactics to silence internal dissent. In response to recent challenges to the current crusade against global warming, this dogmatic tendency of the left, here rooted in a naive scientism, has resurfaced with a vengeance. In its resolute repudiation of corporate “deniers,” the left has allied itself wholeheartedly with the “advocates,” adopting a stridency intolerant of doubt or dissent. Those on the left who dare to disagree are instantly denounced as deluded or, worse, deniers themselves. Perhaps most importantly they are accused … of launching “an attack on science,” of adopting an “anti-science tone”, and taking “anti-science positions.”
~~
From the late nineteenth-century on, the professionalizing practice of science was increasingly monopolized by a privileged elite and harnessed to the pecuniary ends of corporate capitalism, both subverting whatever liberatory potential it might ever have had. But periodically there have emerged popular challenges to this class-bound institutionalization of science. Taking the United States as a prime example, following the First World War and throughout the 1930’s there was continuing criticism of the nefarious military uses of science, the corporate command over the agenda of science, and the private monopolization of the patented fruits of science. World War Two constituted a pivotal moment for this popular challenge, with its unprecedented government-sponsored mobilization of the nation’s scientific resources for the war effort. For the first time, and forever thereafter, the taxpayer became by far the major source of funds for scientific endeavor, through a new system of government contracts and grants. And, in a democracy, if the taxpayer was paying for science, the taxpayer would have to have a degree of control over the content and agenda of science. Indeed, corporate and scientific leaders had in the past eschewed public support of their activities precisely for that reason, out of fear that reliance upon the public purse would bring with it public interference and oversight. Now, however, the scale of the financial support available made it too good to refuse, or ever give up. The problem was what to do about democracy.
~~
During the war the problem was solved through military security. Under wartime pressures, the direction of science was vested in a civilian agency but dominated by leaders of the elite academic and professional institutions with close ties with major corporations.
~~
Predictably, the lion’s share of contracts and grants went to the elite private universities and the largest corporations, along with patent rights to the most lucrative inventions. But by the middle of the war, just when the privileged few had begun to plan for the postwar continuation of this largesse, those left out of the arrangement and opposed to the wholesale corporate subsidy it entailed, had begun strenuously to object, and to propose a more egalitarian and democratic peacetime scientific establishment.
~~
Central to this plan was an agency that guaranteed professional rather than lay control over science, was insulated from political accountability, and gave its director discretion over the awarding of patent ownership. In essence, the Bush agency was designed to guarantee public support for scientists – and, indirectly, for the corporations they served as well – without public control, a regime of science run by scientists and paid for by the taxpayer.
~~
As a bulwark against democratic oversight and lay involvement in the awarding of scientific contracts and grants, the agency adopted a new mechanism of exclusion: “peer review.” Only peers – fellow privileged professionals, whatever their unacknowledged ties to commercial enterprise – could be involved in deciding upon the merits and agenda of science.~~
Peer review was a relatively novel concept. Editors of journals had in the past, at their own discretion on an ad hoc basis, referred manuscripts to anonymous reviewers before publication to aid them in their decisions, but this would now become required and routinized into standard practice. Peer review certainly had its benefits, such as credibility (peer review as PR), convenient credentialling (no need to read it if it has been peer reviewed), and consensus-building (through mutual back-scratching). But it also had its costs, such as prior censorship (by interested parties), and, especially, the coercive encouragement of conformity. If peer review served to immunize science from democratic scrutiny and intervention, it also imposed a measure of like-mindedness upon the scientific community itself, mistakenly celebrated as consensus. Invariably, this tended to narrow the scope of respectable discourse and, hence, of the scientific imagination, inbreeding often entailing a degree of enfeeblement. A safeguard against error, it might also eliminate eccentric approaches and illuminating mistakes, often the key to significant discovery.
~~
In the midst of the corporate globalization movement, the giants of the oil and gas industry, fearing a threat to their soaring profits, launched their campaign of denial against the spectre of global warming. At the height of the anti-globalization movement, other corporate players, seeing new profit-making opportunities in the same spectre, launched their opposing campaign of advocacy and alarm.
~~
(For a fuller discussion, see my article “The Corporate Climate Coup.”) Meanwhile, in the face of mounting repression, a war on terror, corporate cooptation, and the need to divert energies into an anti-war movement, the global justice movement eroded. With the dissipation of that movement, its critical revolutionary voices were once again marginalized, along with its radical critique of science. In remarkably short order, debate within the left on the issue of climate change became a mere reflection of the orchestrated duel between corporate rivals, deniers and advocates, shorn of any radical substance of its own. Regressing instead, in apparent disarray and desperation, to the false securities of its former innocence, the left has all but abandoned the field on its own terms, avoiding any confrontation with power. Relying now upon the weapons of the left’s erstwhile enemies to defend their own witting or unwitting complicity, its mainstream mavens, ever protective of their respectability astride the corporate wave, condemn and dismiss the remnant of critics of science as “anti-science” and disregard dissenting arguments on the grounds that they have not been subjected to “peer review.”
http://climateguy.blogspot.com/2007/05/regression-on-left.html
Science is intellectual capital ?
How did you get that from what I posted?
What you should glean if nothing else, is that science under capitalism serves the interests of the capitalist ruling class – and always has. It has never been neutral. (This is the big flaw of the left as the article indicates.) That doesn’t mean that it can’t serve the interests of democracy, of serving the interests of the great majority, of empowering them, it just doesn’t under a ruling class that seeks to exploit, control and kill us off.
1) Answer: from my brain’s meddling right hemisphere ?
2) Answer: Maybe from Jacques Camatte. He stated in one of his
essays that ‘science is capital’…
Not a very good writer. Is he saying that both the deniers and the advocates of climate change are full of it? How does that work? I daresay it’s true. A pox on both their houses. But I’m just wondering how it works.
Why is that odd to you? Both “sides” are controlled just like Liberals and Conservatives, just like the official Covid Narrative TM of “naturally mutated bat virus” vs the Lab Leak Theory TM.
I must admit that although I was cynical about politics and economics before covid, I hadn’t been very suspicious of science, beyond perhaps the ‘moon landings’ and ‘climate change’. The alleged pandemic changed everything for me, because it couldn’t have been clearer at that time that ‘science’ was being used for political and economic control of the masses, much as organised religion had been in the past, and still is in some nations. It was also very clear that at least some ‘science’ was absolutely bogus, which therefore, obviously suggested that plenty of other ‘scientific orthodoxy’ was bogus too. What I hadn’t quite grasped in the past that, as with the law too, ‘science’ was used by the wealthy to both promote and enrich their own, and control ‘the truth’. With the political clique too, they string people along in collaboration with the media with non-existent improvements to technology as well as promises for the future. We’re still waiting for even effective and safe drone deliveries, never mind ‘flying cars’, and I have been waiting all my life for any real advances in the cancer treatment – people with many cancers have no better prognoses than they did 50 years ago (hence, I assume, the pushing of early diagnosis by the medical establishment to hide the fact). I am not sure all science is meaningless – if you drop something it doesn’t float in the air so there is gravity and if you fall over you feel pain, but there is a lot of ‘science’ that we’re told is settled but isn’t, and probably a lot of religion that is actually true.
The current treatments for cancer are too profitable. Too many want to believe. See articles at globalresearch.ca by (a) Dr. William Makis on ivermectin (b) Dr. Joseph Mercola on DSMO, Vitamin D, etc..
Here we see how the ineradicable cancer of pernicious Nazi ideology has poisoned Scott Adam’s brain. How can anyone intelligent like him ever doubt the honorability of the eternal victim people of Judea a.k.a. Judah? Behind the lying pretext of “freedom of speech”, Adams has even questioned the number of Holocaust victims. https://archive.is/6X5ge
https://ftjmedia.com/video/.iUu2drZzVhbQMAcUL-cgJg
A sheer incomprehensibility. As a prominent personality with international standing and popularity value, this shabby and underhanded action is particularly fatal, devastating and irresponsible, as Adams influences gullable young people whose brains are not yet fully established in their protective philosemitic anti-fascist world view in the most negative way.
This can only be explained by the legacy of his German genes; the genocidal enemy of the Jews lurks in all of them! We know exactly where this must inevitably lead in the end, such words have serious consequences! And these continue to have an impact to this day (although this cannot refer to the real genocide currently taking place in Palestine, as this serves solely to protect the young Jewish state on Palestinian territory).
Shrunken heads of indio cannibals from colonial times, soap & lampshades made of Jewish fat & skin, huge chimneys with no physical connection to the alleged crematorium (which was an air raid shelter) whatsoever, even thin and fragile wooden doors in “gas chambers” (from which the walls were removed), and deadly masturbation machines are among all those horrible irrefutable facts.
O.T.
Has anyone noticed that valid links provided by correspondents here often fail with an error such as “site not found.’ This just happened on following a link to dissidentvoice.org.
A search for the website produced multiple links all of which also failed.
Site was successfully accessed only after switching VPN from UK to elsewhere.
Anyone else have this experience?
Yes, numerous times 😟
PS I am in Ireland
Meaning is not, in my opinion, what matters.
What matters is the why and the upshot.
What do I mean by “the why”? I mean, “Why does Scientist X do experiment Y instead of experiment Z?” because the reasons why scientists do things are never scientific. They are societal, emotional, biased, trend-influenced, etc., basically non-objective, basically subjective. Anything but “scientific,” whatever that means.
By “the upshot,” I mean what happens to the results of Scientist X’s experiments after he is done with them? To what purpose are they put? Because the purposes to which they are put are never “scientific,” whatever that means. The purposes to which they are put are always societal, emotional, biased, trend-influenced, etc., basically non-objective, basically subjective.
I think that “scientists” today will make exactly the experiment they were paid for (by some interested entities) and get exactly the results those entities need to maximize their profit or power over others.
Making the first fire to cook dinner was a meaningful experiment. All the experiments which are related to our survival and making our life easier (or cozier) are still ok. There is no point looking for some funny particles just to “know” how world was created and there is no point in decyphering the human genome just because we can and we think we will do a better job than God (or nature, if you want).
RE;The purposes to which they are put are always societal, emotional, biased, trend-influenced, etc., basically non-objective, basically subjective.
Good start but you missed the primary purposes: profit, power and control.
Often, but not always. Sometimes they do an experiment just because it’s sexy and exciting and it fits with some science fiction thing they read and they know they’ll get a lot of admiration and publicity from it. Not everything is Machiavellian. Some things are just dickhead.
An article about religion, i.e., God, that rails on science? We’re being ruled by psychos, man. That’s the ticket. It’s the fucking psychos.
Most phones are now smarter than their owners:).
So you think a phone has a life like a human?
This is what I have warned about Technocracy since Ruder King was Knight. People will begin to believe that machines have a consciousness, a soul and are able to do things better than us humans. Wrooong!
No Zane, an Iphone cannot think smarter than us. An Iphone cannot think at all no matter what you say!
A Follow up to Johnny’s Comment .. our Orstralian ABC Science Boffins Claim that “Bird Flu” is rapidly Jumping Species.. From Birds to Seals what next? .. in Antarctica no less …!!
We are drowning in absurdity, could this be another Plandemic in the Works.. or is it Just Pharma PR To keep the Gravy Train Rolling.?.. they are still Milking “Birdflu”after all these Years..Hard to imagine they think this is still credible!
The “Bird ‘flu” propaganda is simply the medium for introducing into
and instilling in the masses minds that zoonotic transmission Really Is Real…
Cows cant fly, so that makes wild birds are the ideal Spreaders…
Should there be an outbreak of ‘Bird ‘flu’ among hoomins, The Authorities
have The Culprit already set-up: The Domestic Cat, which We Know (because
They told us) are always catching Wild Birds to supplement their Canned Food
Diets (and, as the Experts like to point out, Pussy Cats are responsible for
the declines in wildlife)…
And as the invisible variant varmints can jump from pussycats to puppy dog,
The Authorities will have to mass cull them, as well, to protect Granny (that’s
the Grannies who havent yet frozen to death because the government stopped
paying them a Winter Fuel Allowance so the Grannies could keep warm)…
They’ve been coming for our cats for the last 5 years. I don’t trust the cat vaxxs any more than the human ones but possibly it’s easier to target them via the soon to be compulsory microchipping. There are two possible reasons for this: they actually want to rid the world of the domestic feline or they want to wake us up. I think it’s the latter.
Hope it’s the former
Still, the problem is not which absurdity is next but the 4/5 of the global population who are 100% horny to get masked and all the jabs and boosters against it………
If I were you I would find and join the little group lead by Morpheus: https://youtu.be/tbhBucM6L98
Science, if not driven by destructive political agendas, insane profit motives and egoic considerations, would make a beneficial partner for old healing knowledge.
Then it would actually be of benefit for all of humanity.
Speaking of science, this piece will make your eyes water:
‘Driven by the profit-maximising motive of the pharmaceutical industry and the capture of lawmakers, health bureaucrats, and regulators by lobbyists, the public health sector today is guilty of medicalising ordinary human suffering and pathologising the natural life cycles of human beings, including ageing. The entire system is built to put and keep people on medication, from the cradle to the grave. No one dies of old age anymore.’
More here:
https://brownstone.org/articles/ahpra-public-health-watchdog-big-pharma-lapdog-or-drug-enabler/
No one has ever died of ‘old age’. They die of the heart stopping or organs failing. All that counts in the cause of death statistics is what someone decides to write on the death certificate. They wanted to write ‘Covid’ on my mother’s death certificate even while acknowledging she’d never had it. We refused to allow them to do that. The next go-to was ‘dementia’ even though she didn’t have it. She’d had a stroke, had had her medication stopped and was put on end of life ‘care’ (ie culling). The reason they couldn’t write what really killed her was because it resulted from them stopping her medication. They do this at the ‘end of life’. Well there’s a self-fulfilling prophecy if I ever saw one!
They made my father die of thirst.
Because we refused to give him his usual bottle of whiskey?
I wish they had given him whiskey. Anything better than the slow murder they practice every day in every hospice in the country.
People should die in their family’s arms if…….everything was right.
Most “covid” victiims died or were crippled by starvation, thirst, withheld treatment for pneumonia or flu, prohinited cheap medicines, deadly medicines (remdesivir), drugs (used in executions) to suppress breathing or the jab.
More drug enabling salesmen:
“For children especially the risk of severe illness or death from Covid is very slight”
Off topic.
A short, sharp, brilliant critique of $ocial Media ($ intended) :
https://dissidentvoice.org/2025/05/how-social-media-is-devouring-itself/
Thank god Off G hasn’t stooped to this.
Science stems from the one simple question, “Why?”. We live in a world full of phenomenon and the curious among us try to figure out how things work. That’s science in a nutshell. To actually do science, though, requires a bit of work. We may start with a guess — educated or not — about how things work but then we have to devise ways of testing that guess (aka “hypothesis”) to see if it proves what we think is correct or not. As you can imagine, this path can be fraught with missteps but gradually over time we get some accepted theory about how and why something is the way it is (only to have some clever sod then disprove it; but then that’s life — or science).
There’s nothing mystical or fanciful about this. You can give it as much meaning as you want, that’s up to you. Its a good idea to mentally separate ‘pure’ science from ‘applied’ science, aka ‘technology’. since science on the whole is a harmless pursuit but technology is open to rampant abuse, it harbors the potential to make our world either a Paradise or a Hell. This is entirely a human choice, though — there’s no natural law that says you just have to weaponize everything, its just we humans seem to have a problem not doing so.
Here’s something you never thought of. There is no such thing as “Science.”
Science is an abstraction. Abstractions do not exist. Especially abstractions so broad and generalized as “Science.”
What actually exists is people who call themselves “scientists” performing acts they call “experiments.”
So, really what you have is, employees (read: scientists) performing experiments, experiments which always conclude with the conclusion the employees’ employers requested in the first place.
Of course abstractions exist. Truth exists. Knowledge (knowing the truth) exists. True justice exists.
Abstract thought exists.
In science, truth is the only purpose. The scientific method seeks the truth for its own sake, using the right methods to know the truth, and this seeking can only be based on true premises. Whenever the premise is wrong, or false, it can never lead to truth.
Logic exists.
Science institutions like universities, academia, research centers are organizations, not science. We must, with our abstract thought, see the difference between different things or categories. A scientist employed in an organization is not the organization or science – he or she is a human being.
Things are what they are. Every thing is identical with itself, meaning that X = X, X is never anything else but X. We can’t add ”knowledge of truth” to a scientist who is probably more interested in earning money than knowing anything.
Professions, institutions, official widely held beliefs and stuff are not the truth or science in that sense.
But science can study even those things, and does. Human sciences include social sciences.
It is only the scientistic false idea that excludes real knowledge about humanity, spirit and abstract logic, love of wisdom.
If matter and materialism is all that is believed to be true and existing, then truth itself is excluded, and insanity is welcomed.
Truth and other abstractions can’t be found in nature or anything material. Yet they do exist, absolutely.
You don’t really understand what the word “abstraction” means.
What is it about abstraction that I don’t understand?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction
Anything
Clearly not the national colors of the state
that this suspicious individual has to serve.
https://x.com/AdameMedia/status/1918733959715864901
According to these scientists are fate is ‘sealed’:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-18/antarctica-avian-flu-h5n1-evolution-pandemic-potential/105271154
😖 ‘our’ not are.
We are not stupid Johnny. We understood immediately that it should be ‘our’, only YOU didnt understood it……………………..LOL.
That the links to the pig-ape origin have gone missing is not suspisioousiouso
You are not the decendent of a pig-ape, however I spell it
You are your own creature
I’ve run out of meds, again,
Alreet? | Edvard Graham Lewis
The dark is upon us
repeated seiziers
drifting di
no drugs of control
The idea that only natural sciences are science is not scientific but scientistic. Scientism is a religious cult that is formed on the idea that scientists (natural scientists) have the best solutions to every problem. These men worship themselves religiously.
Originally, and you should know if you ever went to university, science means knowledge. Originally, all science was philosophy, love of wisdom.
God is omniscient. Nature is not God and can’t be.
Knowledge, of course, is beneficially useful.
Beliefs, on the other hand, are generally useless.
It’s a belief that the primitive man was ignorant, like an animal, less developed and inferior. That belief is baseless and untrue. So-called primitive peoples knew much more about nature and everything else than so-called civilized men, who with their weapons and lies destroyed lives and ancient knowledge.
The modern man in America has been fed with all kinds of lies so that he thinks he’s superior.
Lust for private property, land and world domination steal what is common and make it a privately owned business for profit. Hence, the money system. All this theft requires massive changes in the human mind. Violence is used and must be used to make the theft successful. Hence, brainwashing. Feed them the ideology that they are better than those they kill and steal from.
Money requires the state, which is the violent organization to protect money. The ideology of capitalism is the belief system where everything exists only for profit. It’s the idea that humanity must pay debt (= money) to those who say they own the land and everything in it.
As long as humanity serves this idea, there’s constant war, as evidenced by the history of the United States and christianity.
The capitalistic empire is now global, so the whole world is under its spell.
But its fall is imminent and inevitable. This world can’t be saved, and every attempt to save it is doomed to failure. It does say so in the Bible, the most misunderstood work of art of all time.
When was the original bible, believer ? ( ca 1500s)
Still unsure about that, since there is no good evidence before about 1800, for your christ sake.
Forged, faked, everything before 1800.
“God is omniscient.”
Must be very boring making a creation with an alleged free will.
Belief in God seems generally useless.
We don’t have to believe that Truth exists. We can Know it.
God is not all-believing but All-Knowing.
The belief that truth doesn’t exist is not even logical.
God necessarily exists.
Without God, nothing would exist.
The fact that you exist proves the existence of God.
False gods are obviously not God.
False gods can be believed, as it is possible to believe a lie.
“False gods are obviously not God”
Is the real one Ahura Mazda?
Must wish it had never existed by this stage.
”Is the real one Ahura Mazda?”
Yes, the list of names is correct:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_God_in_Zoroastrianism
God cannot not exist.
Also, there is absolutely no reason for God to not exist.
“God cannot not exist.”
Which 2 of the 3 (father, son, holy spirit) are liars.
God is One.
They all have, alleged, different personalities.
The god you believe in is as real as Santa.
God is the Father, Holy Spirit is God’s power/influence, Son is God’s best Angel.
Like we humans, Christ is nothing without his Father, and we are nothing without God. (Ref the Scriptures).
Remember to meet the rest, if there is a shred of backbone left, when the commandment to circulate the other way around the throne is announced.
Get up off your knees from that infinitely deep trench you will wear while circumnavigating.
‘wear a trench’? Excuse me, this is not poetry nor rap but fog talk.
Bokhtar
Bokhtaar بوختار Liberator
Giver of Freedom for Progress
Until, of course, you say you’re fed up worshipping in a clockwise direction but it insists that you must.
Hu-sepas
Hu-Sepaas هوسپاس Worthy of our profound thanks
Worthy of Thanksgiving
until, of course, you say you are tired of traipsing round the throne.
“For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God”
An omniscient psycho.
“…this worship of the pursuit to know everything that God created..”
“…the pursuit to know everything that God created..”
‐—————–
‘worship’ is the problem here – not the pursuit, in & of itself. The consensus mood validates the worship of science. Or pretty little things. Or oneself. Anything, in fact, but God. Which is the road to…
What is required is a hierarchy of epistemology; with metaphysics as the highest order followed by philosophy, science and politics/economics. Sadly, in today’s world economics, politics and science take precedence over any form of metaphysics. That is all! RGB-Y5 out!
This argument is more about the failure of language to define anything accurately or for talk, the mobile form of language, to resolve anything. Language is a tool, an utterly plastic one at that, and just good enough to vet human issues thru discussion, before action that solves the desired intent of society. Science is a tool to study and understand our proprietary localized Universe. Logic and empirically assessed and counter assessed knowledge is the root tool/method of “science”, which should help society make the best decisions to improve our lot in life. Tools are not the problem. Applications of knowledge and decision making is the problem.
This is why mathematics is so important. Its entirely divorced from human language, it is exactly what it is. The fact that even seemingly simple arithmetic can get really complex (“number theory”) once you start delving beyond “We all know what we mean (we think)”.
Its difficult to be both a scientist and a human being because scientists have to think precisely which results in them being boring pedants in everyday conversation. A key scientific skill (which is never taught, BTW) is learning how to turn this on and off. Some of us never quite get it, others (like my wife and her two sisters (all physicists) are masters of the craft. (They masquerade as normal ‘ladies of a certain age’ unless activated.)
Sounds like you’re surrounded Martin.
When we’re in Love, or in a state of awe, all numbers and words disappear.
Magical, isn’t it?
That’s academia, not science!
You find this little bug doing something strage. So you look the bug up online and in that process you find a bunch of stuff and end up readi g about the cytoskeletons of Asgard archae, then you end up learning about atp in krebs… By the time you find out what the bug is and was doing, your curiosity is sizzling with the turbulent buzzing of all the unlikely stuff you just learned!
Next day you wonder why the moon looks smaller on the photos you took of it with your phone. Soon you are reading on digital halftoning and the minimum squared error solution…
The more you know, the more there is to know, and the world becomes an adictive never ending story of never ending stories; and just about everything in the world now shines magical!
That is scientific spirit.
Academia on the other hand… it forces you into frameworks, and language, and ISOs, and RFCs, and APA… the more unintelligible and retorted the phraseology in papers, the better. Of course that sharing scientific knowledge has to be done systematically because the proper analysis, archival, and dissemination of acquired knowledge helps to build uppon it. But we should not be obsessed with structure. Substance is the meat! Simple, direct, digestible papers are the best scientific papers. The most honest, and often the ones sharing the most valuable knowledge. The kind of read that you just dive into like kid learning the names of new candy at the candy store. Instead of the typical “omg I have to read all that?” papers saying too little with too many words, and with the most obnoxious parlance.
Science (discovery) is fun!
Science may well be meaningless.
But $cience butters a lot of parsnips.
I’ve noted this before: Science should be put on hold until such time as humans grow up and stop evaluating everything in terms of toy soldiers. Humans simply are not ready for Science and won’t be until they reach a stage where they’re able to separate living from conquering.
Almost every “advancement” in Science or Technology has either been funded by or expropriated by the military. With the blessing of the masses, who crave “safety” and “security” above all else.
The fate of humanity should be to exist until the time when the sun begins expanding. That, and perhaps that alone, will let them know at long last how valuable “safety” and “security” actually are. In that moment, perhaps they will finally come to realize they wasted a billion years seeking something that doesn’t exist.
I am reminded of Volvo who, I believe, invented the three point seatbelt in the fifties and deliberately didn’t patent it to save lives worldwide.
There are some good guys around.
“…until such time..”
Three little words, holding within them a whole world.
I vaguely recall Roger Scruton putting it this way (paraphrased):
That’s quite beautiful.
He was once described as ‘The unthinking man’s thinking man’. Which was deeply unfair.
Lies?
More like deliberate misinterpretation for the purpose of exploitation, methinks George.
Same thing I suppose.
Your alternative update on #COVID19 for 2025-05-14. Jab-related HEART ISSUES skyrocketing active duty naval officers – heart failure up whopping 973% (blog, tweet, pic1, pic2, pic3, pic4).
“the science” is nonsense.
It claims to be the ultimate font of knowledge, but then constantly changes its mind.
Who is to say “the science” today will be valid tomorrow?
Then: We never went back to the moon, because there was no reason to!
Now: there might be water on the moon, we should go back!
Science is ultimately a cult just like christianity, only the priests wear lab coats not dresses……
Science itself isn’t the cult, it is the USE of what is now called “science” that forms the cult. Real science will “change its mind,” as real science is never truly settled. But of course, under corporate capture The Science has indeed become a cult, and anyone who even slightly questions that cult is labeled an ignorant denying stooge. The truly scary thing now is that people have been lied to so long about science and what it actually is about that of course they no longer believe it is real and can help us find truth when used to truly seek truth. Now we’re captive to dogma that uses “scientific consensus” to stifle all further inquiry. Just one more example, to put it simply, of the dumbing down and propagandizing of the public. And that ugly fact has indeed made science as dogmatic as most organized religion, if not more so.
There’s a great older interview with Kary Mullis, inventor of the PCR, where he states that true scientists BELIEVE nothing, and of course that can make them seem merely grumpy contrarians when that isn’t true but another simplistic label the dogma uses to discredit those who see that real science is not consensus at all.
Yes science is meaningless but we can say that about the whole shit: Its meaningless!
Life’s absurdity. Many have wrote and talked about it, Albert Camus, The Sisyphus Myth, m.m.
Since God lowered life from Methusaleh’s 1000 years to max 100 years, we have ALL died within this frame no matter how good or evil we were in our lives. Time do not forgive any of us.
Therefore revenge is meaningless. We are all being ‘revenged’ in the end.
Cara a cara (face to face) https://youtu.be/P4J2U2aSb5o
I would not necessarily disagree with you. Whenever a client of mine asks “what is the meaning of life?” I just say, “life is the meaning of life, the fact you lived, that’s it”…not a satisfactory answer for most.
I personally found the definitive answer in the scriptures. It was and is the only thing that make sense, and were logical compared to our ancient history, the sun, regulating planet, moon, and the circulating globe, and our physical reality with a church in every little city, monasteries, cathedrals, m.m.
But I know this too is not a satisfactory answer for most, and probably also not in your practice as you cant go Priest there.
‘Life and living are not the same thing’ (Barry Long).
Life (Or God?) is what animates us, and what we feel inside.
Living is how we go about our activities each day.
The former being beautiful.
The latter can sometimes be a struggle.
It would be more helpful to tell someone that the meaning of life is to find the truth. At least it is a non self-indulgent pursuit. A few more truth-seekers would definitely improve this world. Navel-gazers not so much.
Just to add, teachers and especially science teachers should tell children more often ‘We don’t know the answer to that’ to incentivise them to go looking for the answer themselves. The certainty in the way in which many teachers spout unprovable and unproven nonsense puts up a barrier to truth-seeking in the minds of the recipients of these pronouncements. But of course regurgitating the nonsense is the only way to pass exams. Subjects such as literature have been devalued because they were always based on personal interpretations and not scientific facts – hence their removal from the courses of many universities.
Often, the correct answer is “I don’t know”.
How much more mature we’d be if we could just recognize the things that we don’t know and figure it out, or to make peace with a thing nobody seems to know.
Rather than making sht up and burn at the stake those who don’t believe the random stuff we made up.
Life has different meanings for the same person (as a child, as an adult and then in the golden years) and it has different meanings depending on the personality of that specific individual who asked the question. There are people who want to leave a mark, in the history books, in Forbes top 100, in the square as a mounted knight or just in their own families. They will not be happy with your answer. The other people take life as it is, never asking “why me?”, never complaining. I am ok with your answer but you should have known, there are shrews and sheep 😁
All right, let Papa will tell you guys what life is about, since you all are so confused.
“Master, which one is the greatest commandment in the law?”,
“Jesus declared, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ “This is the first and greatest commandment.”
“And the second is like it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. Love!
It is THAT fokking simple Gentlemen.
Science can be useful when you want to go from place a to b, ie science can be useful when conditions that science is built on are well defined.
Science in humans, can for that reason not be useful, since humans are Ill defined.
In 2020 scientists tried to circumvent this problem (ie that humans are Ill defined) by assuming that all humans are well defined simpletons. But the only simpletons during that time were… scientists.
I once had a conversation with a physicist who became a researcher in medicine. He said: ‘To me Medicine was a shocker. Not anything can be scientifically tested in Medicine. There is too much random variation in Medicine, where anything is possible. Therefore it is not a science.’
That physicist was mostly right. Science in Medicine is not completely useless, but apart from counting the number of deaths (a well defined concept) science cannot do much more in Medicine. However the overall death toll is -surprise surprise- rarely counted in scientific experiments.
That should tell enough…
It is difficult to profit from physics, except though greater harm. It is easier to profit from medicine, especially through harm.
“You had no Faith to lose
and You Know It”
(1960’s folksinger)
Knowledge of Nature? More an impression of biological sensible aspects of the material world. Like 9 blind feeling an elephant and proclaiming to know it.
What needs drastic self change is humility for us 9 blind PhDs which opens a path to losing the old mental meme blinfolds. Intuition is highly undervalued in this era of Internet and AI – no not gut feeling, go a bit higher up in the back.
“go higher up in the back” with what exactly?
Not the heart (higher emotions) nut behind the heart (zero emotions).
One day this planet will be destroyed by our own sun as it blows up into a Red Giant, or a meteor will hit causing devastating damage – I’m surmising that humanity might still be around on this planet for a long time – or maybe not, we might have destroyed ourselves by then, but if not – science will help get what’s left of humanity – off the planet – God and ethics will have nothing to do with that, science and advancements will.
Humanity can be ugly at times, but like other species we a driven by survival that’s how we got to where we are today, without that drive – however ugly it looks – humans would not be around and that ugly drive, which could, no will, result in much more sacrifices, is installed in humans just like other species – regardless of morals and ethics or philosophy.
Space is a hoax.
Only if we are 2d data on the event horizon 🙂
Science has the pretence of being objective. Meaning is always subjective (although there is such a thing as collective subjectiveness).
“Hear ! Hear !!”
What do you call 2+2=4, the basic colour of grass is green, water is wet, is my opinion or my meaning. This must be my objective meaning yes?
My opinion or meaning is that 2+2=7, basic colour of grass is blue, water is dry. This must be my subjective meaning yes? Thus your ‘always’ this and that is dismissed.
I think you talk about ‘I believe’ = subjective vs ‘I know’ = objective. The confusion all comes from the “there are many truths”.
Which is a wrong statement but common semantic in Western language (English influence).
When I tell people in West “there are only one truth” they reject it with a high laughter and all their might, plus tell me its you who are stupid.
2+2=4 is the one and only truth. 2+2=3, 2+2=5, 2+2=7, are many lies.
‘Water is wet’ is the one and only truth. Water is dry, water is greasy, water is stiff, are many lies.
People who insist on ‘there are many truths’ have the turned the world on its head.
i think ultimately there are two major dividing lines where one can find a clear boundary in the spectrum you are describing, where some human cultures stepped over the line and in a sense broke some divine laws. the first boundary was crossed quite a long time ago – it was the adoption of the particular kind of cultivation which folks like quinn term ‘totalitarian agriculture’.. but even the outcome there eventually settled down into a world which perhaps we might characterize by the middle ages or the renaissance – still a world living within the biological budget and still a world where different regions were separate enough that when they overstepped their local limits they collapsed, locally, and were brought back into balance.
the next major and much more deadly line we crossed was industrialization, and that is where we facilitated, in a sense, the emergence of, and subsequent conquest of the globe by, The Machine. that same Machine having devoured pretty much everything else, it has also been devouring _us_ for decades now as well. this is the much deadlier trap than agriculture could ever be. for one, the Machine is absolutely doomed by the laws of thermodynamics, to collapse catastrophically, and as it is capable of (and already has done) conquering the whole planet, that collapse is blown up to planet wide scale, with almost unimaginable destruction along the way. the Machine, in a sense is something that one could characterize as demonic – ti’s not really alive but it exhibits many aspects of a life form, and its primary function, observing from a distant persepctive, seems to be at overturning and inverting every single law in god’s creation. that we can describe the Machine in its own purely mechanical, dead, non spiritual language, and get the same results (described drily as destruction, overshoot, collapse, and so on), only reflects the reality we see in so many other things around us, which we can describe in dry, lifeless mechanical terms, but we can also understand more deeply by realizing the spiritual aspect.
Science itself as an attitude or approach to understanding things around us, i think , is capable of contributing to meaningfulness, insofar as humans, which we are something different from other animals, obviously have as part of our god-given nature, a knack for reasoning about things. however science also gave us just enough rope to hang ourselves, so to speak, by facilitating and feeding what was essentially a demonic conquest of the living world by a lifeless imitation – the Machine – which destroys everything it touches.
one might describe a third line we crossed with the invention of computers, but this merely gave expanded powers to the Machine which it was already assuming even without the aid of computers. the beastly empires of the first half of the 20th century and their gruesome misery (not just in war but also in ‘peacetime’ when the Machine is merely waging war on ordinary living things without having big branches of Machine fighting each other) were accomplished by co-opting human intelligence to serve as its eyes and ears. Even with the new fad of ‘AI’ thats just another Machine generated phantom, anything of any meaning it might spit out was something a living human had already imparted meaning to before it got swallowed by the Machine. so i’d stick with the real line having bee crossed a couple hundred years ago with the industrial age and the rise of machines which competed against living things, using resources from outside the range , reach, or scope of the living world.
This should also give some hope that when the Machine crashes and burns, if living humans can survive the destruction, the stink of machine-ness, the demonic undead, nonliving emptiness of the Machine Empire, in not something innate to humanity , and we can learn to live in god’s hand again.
Barry Long, an Australian spiritual teacher, (There’s another eyebrow raising term for you Todd) warned us over forty years ago about scientists and science becoming the new priests and religion.
Barry said he loved science, but was extremely wary of their motives and lust for authority.
He was right.
PS Still working on that ‘Who Cares’ song Todd.
I’ll post it soon. I hope.
Science is a method, not a worldview.
That’s rather ‘binary’ !
Science IS neither !!
I am screeching inside.
Science IS meaningful if understanding the inner workings of the world brings philosophical insight or spiritual meaning to you. It does to me. Why do we watch a movie or a painting or listen to good music? These are not pragmatic activities; just like caressing the cheeks of a loved one has no practical virtue of defoliating their cheek’s skin.
Your statement is so gross and sad: “continually rapes nature just to know how it works”. I am sorry that you are unable to appreciate knowledge and the wisdom that can be built from it. I am sorry that that which is not practical is meaningless to you.
One cannot compare a painting, a film or good music to what is today “science”. There is no fulfilling or spiritual meaning in calculating how much carbon dioxide a cow can regurgitate. I agree that there are unpractical things and knowledge which are very meaningful but the article was about the “science” (with the Webster definition).