Modern Science

[Fomalhaut]

My criticism was / is mostly for those who take modern science as a religion and support the idea that we should not question it at all. Doesn't it become a dogma itself then?

There is such thing as religious attitude towards science; thinking for example that science can some day answer to some question before even thinking is it conceptually possible. For example, what the hell does it mean that science could "explain love"?

But taking science as the most reliable instrument in empirical knowledge is not a dogma. Science is not one dogmatic structure, it is a multitude of different methods always open to criticism, and continuosly criticized.

How can it be unbiased?

No one claims it is unbiased. But the point of science is exactly to be always open for further findings and to correct its biases.

How can it develop and be more beneficial for humanity?

This is completely another question. I would say nothing can be done before we human beings collectively, scientific or not, develop to a level in which we no more use neutral knowledge destructively. In the end, science is not to be blamed any more than religion (just think about how much evil is also done in the name of religions), we human beings are.

To make one more thing clear here: "How can it develop and be more beneficial for humanity when it cannot be questioned?" should this whole question be.

I knew / know so many people who think that modern science is unbiased, so my criticism was due to my personal interaction and communication with those people.

[Sebomai]

There's way too much going on to quote, and I just kind of want to distill a certain portion of this discussion. I think what I am kind of getting out of the talk between Fomalhaut and Wyrmfang is that science must not be taken as dogmatic in one sense, and that sense is that if it is taken dogmatically in a certain way, the way of not questioning what we *think* we know, we are missing the whole point of science, which is that former theories may have seemed workable but later discoveries by those who were not satisfied with scientific dogma proved them untenable.

I am not a brilliant scientist but the one big example I can pull off the top of my head is that Heisenberg didn't let Einstein saying uncertainty was total bunk dissuade him from pursuing an anti-dogmatic line of inquiry. He proved as well as it could be proved in his time that uncertainty was the likely way that those particles worked and later experiments have certainly seemed to justify his faith in that. But again, there's a certain degree of faith involved. And right now, whatever the search for a Grand Unifying Theory of physics may produce, it will require undogmatic thinkers to figure it out, assuming it is ever figured out. And even then, that may lead the way to new discoveries that expand upon or tear down part of the structure of the GUT.

So, ultimately, like science and religion itself, no form of human knowledge is truly benefited by dogma, because whether it be science or religion or something else, we build our knowledge partly by tearing down older, false conceptions. I'm not saying we'll determine that the earth really is 6000 years old. But, some non-dogmatic thinkers may someday discover evidence that it is either younger (unlikely) or older (more likely) than we think it is now. May not happen but we will need some skeptical young scientists who don't take today's findings as gospel to know any more certainly than we do now.

But, ultimately, we must take on faith but I suspect it is a well-founded not entirely dogmatic faith that, as Wyrmfang said, "What the hell does it mean that science could 'explain love?'" Some things, hopefully, will remain outside the purview of science and we will be left to tangle with those mysteries for humanity's duration.

[Nefastos]

But, ultimately, we must take on faith but I suspect it is a well-founded not entirely dogmatic faith that, as Wyrmfang said, "What the hell does it mean that science could 'explain love?'" Some things, hopefully, will remain outside the purview of science and we will be left to tangle with those mysteries for humanity's duration.

Yes, I too think that the problem is mainly that of associations of words, and what burden the words are carrying without people really understanding it. When it isn't understood, those invisible associations rule our thinking. We see something and think "of course it's like this, everyone can see it!" not seeing that it is only one side of multidimensional structure we are looking at. Many very intelligent people are awfully dumb in this particular way.

In fra Wyrmfang's example, the word "explain" would already be under very limiting world-view. For I think not many people would disagree with the thought that "science explaining love" without any kind of reductionism involved would cease to be mainly "science" as that word is nowadays used. Love would break the scientific apparatus, because it doesn't fit into it. That is not to say scientific apparatus isn't needed, it just has its limits, its points of focus. Everything has! That's the beauty of being. Occultism is the ability to use all these different keys with care, not just to force one's own will into nature in order to enslave it.