Time to get more clear about the true boundary lines for the most secret yet authoritatively unchallenged religion of our era…

(Still shot from video to Thomas Dolby’s delicious 80’s music video “She Blinded Me With Science”.)

— Lay Of The Land —

I’m tempted to launch into this clarification project by focusing first upon What Science Aint (WSA) since that is where most of the chaos and confusion arises. So I will! Hopefully after this segment, what is left unscathed will be something resembling actual scientific activity.

WSA #1 – Science Fiction Authors’ Tropes

Ten-year-old boys can be forgiven for judging the quality of their sci-fi stories on the basis of which sorts of cool aliens and bizarre planetary systems feature in the tale. Truth is, the subject matter of the great majority of science fiction offerings, be they films or books, bears only a passing reference to actual science. The trappings are usually there. Radioactive spiders which confer super-powers, wormholes to other dimensions, computers made of pure quartz, alien timeships, and robotic trees. Every conceivable future invention has figured as the maguffin in some imagined tale or other. But an author can get by with very little in the way of actual hard science and have his sci-fi work win an award in the category. Invisibility surfaced with some acceptable scientific pretense when H. G. Wells had his scientist protagonist devise some organic chemicals which rendered human biomatter incapable of absorbing or reflecting light waves in any part of the spectrum, thus mirroring perfectly the surrounding visual context. But Tolkien’s far superior, literary-wise, work had Bilbo and Gollum disappearing visually merely via the device of slipping a magic ring on their finger. Star Trek’s universal food dispensers whipped up anything from Klingon delicacies to chicken on rye sandwiches because the problem of radically manipulating and fashioning matter in any configuration of particles and compounds had been mastered and reduced to technical practice: a voice-activated appliance. Taking this construction-deconstruction prowess a step or two further, a Federation starship also came equipped with transporter pods to effect travel via disassembly and remote re-assembly of all of a human’s constituent particles, as well as holodecks for creating temporary ‘physical’ environments for recreational purposes. You cannot really call these depicted innovations science-justified; they are more like showcased imaginations. Need to break the lightspeed barrier to enable plots involving the entire galaxy? No problem — just invent something called subspace warp drive as well as a substance known as dilithium crystals which are necessary to power such engines. And that’s about as much explanatory detail you need to concoct.

I think the first inkling of this distinction seeped into my impressionable mind when I came across the 1944 short story by then popular sci-fi author A.E. Van Vogt, titled A Can Of Paint, readable for free here. Van Vogt was a prolific, not a great writer. Still, what little boys wanted back then was to have their modernity and near future images expanded in marvellous and varied ways, and he delivered. The story has a pioneer earth explorer coming upon something resembling a paint can in something sort of like a grassy meadow on planet Venus. That’s the premise. (It is left entirely unexamined how preposterous a grassy meadow as well as an astronaut strolling about it would be on a planet whose surface temperature is estimated at 800°F and whose atmosphere would kill and sear human lungs instantly.) Unusually, for a sci-fi story, the hero proceeds to explore and analyze the strange object in a detailed experimental manner, using various tools he brought along to conduct tests, gather data, form concepts, and then experiment with their veracity. The stakes grow higher when toxicity and a race against death to confirm the correct theory unfolds. This short story is actually a paean to real, boring, methodological science, and the author seems primarily preoccupied with preaching that word. The writing is mediocre and superficial. Yet it is fundamentally about science. The doing of science.

The real grist for quality sci-fi’s mill these days, and for at least half a century or so, has been the exploration of post-modern social issues and interspecies misunderstandings — all couched in some suitable sciencey plot contrivance. Because there was no, or very minimal, real Martian appearances within Ray Bradbury’s famed The Martian Chronicles, I recall as a young ‘un being disappointed and mortified at its sterling reputation. But returning to it after puberty for another look I realized the caliber of its writing and psychological insights. There were some really nice imaginative vignettes like the ethereal female Martian in the very beginning who commits telepathic adultery with one of the first approaching Earth astronauts several thousand miles before he landed in her wild almost empty desert neighborhood. Or those gorgeous Martian wind sail ships which whipped across the Martian sand dunes under the proper conditions. Or consider Mary Doria Russell’s excellent novel The Sparrow wherein the Jesuits, next century, fund an exploration to a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri because a peculiar alien ‘music’ is detected as originating from there. Science elements? Well, they commandeer a convenient asteroid and hollow out a spacecraft living quarters inside it and then contrive to propel the thing at quarter light speed with gravity bouncing or something. Plus the two alien species vaguely resemble kangaroos. But the story is extremely compeling! It involves the misguided misadventures of interplanetary proselytizing across species and philosophical boundary questions around what is and is not universal when it comes to the values of cultured and intelligent sentient beings. Personally recommended, nice writing, and by the way presently under consideration to be rendered as a Hollywood movie.

(Ylla, a Martian woman is aroused by her telepathic discovery of a far-off approaching Earth astronaut in “The Martian Chronicles”. The TV film was from 1980 whereas the novel arrived in 1950. Wonderfully performed by British actress Maggie Wright, last seen raising a Thai orphan girl on the island of Phuket.)

The point is: science fiction, by and large, is not science. Which would be fine if most science enthusiasts kept this in mind. But the fact is that a surprising amount of scientific effort has derived its agenda as well as its worldview perspectives from the sci-fi inspirations of childhood. I wrote about some specific pitfalls of this often hubristic unrealistic enthusiasm last year.

WSA #2 – Stagnating Theories Propped Up Via Orthodoxy

This syndrome is more entrenched than people realize, especially laymen. It also, tragically, extends into the more pragmatic world of health care, and pharmaceutical research and marketing. Actual academic practitioners, on the other hand, have become painfully aware of it. Consider for example these recent sentiments expressed by various luminaries in the fields of evolutionary biology and theoretical physics, respectively:

“In the jungle of modern science, ‘survival of the fittest’ isn’t measured by truth, but by who wins the research grants.”

“Theories like String Theory or the Multiverses do not dominate because they are proven right, but because they have created a massive, self-sustaining ecosystem of tenure, citations, and funding grants. When a theory captures the funding agencies, it becomes “too big to fail,” forcing younger physicists to work on it just to get paid.”

Entrenched othodoxy creates a very effective moat against creative criticisms which would normally come mostly from that demographic the very heroes we cherish inhabit. Einstein was 26 when his two big ideas revolutionized his field, but one legitimately wonders if he would have even been permitted to publish under the present climate. In today’s scientific criticism bottleneck it is not science as an activity which is defusing innovative skeptics, but plain old ordinary foibled human nature. Ironic then, that the hordes of indignant offended apologists for conservative thought hold up science’s methodology as their golden defense.

A compellingly interesting example I came across not too long ago is the strictly mathematical objection, in terms of probability and statistics, that has arisen to the so-called Neo-Darwinian picture of evolution driven by random genetic variations. This appealed to me because one of my university degrees back in the day was for math. The challenge itself came not from professional biologists, but from outsiders like mathematicians and philosophers of science and this is telling because it tends to indicate that the pure theoretical biology never got around to a rigorous examination of the implied probabilities beneath its flagship theory: Darwinism. (This seems a damning methodological omission to me.) To clarify things, let me begin by describing what the phrase ‘Neo-Darwinism’ typically means. While Darwin himself never believed this, modern evolutionary theory, formed after the discovery of DNA, holds that every change in the evolutionary life tree on Earth, including all transitions between species, has arisen because an entirely random mutation (in the DNA string), often thought to be attributed to passing ultraviolet or X-ray particle radiation and chemical copying malfunctions, has produced a minor functional change in the organism which then survived and became ‘conventional’ in the species due to natural selection over subsequent generations. The inevitable mathematical puzzlement which leaps forth to anybody who seriously thinks on it then goes something like these:

1) How many such gazillions of random mutation events would necessarily have had to happen over the course of eartlhly evolution to produce what we now witness in the biosphere, not to mention the numerous extinct species unveiled within fossil records. assuming all began from a single cell in a steamy marsh?

2) How many or what ratio of those gazillions would fail to create any functional difference and therefore need be discounted?

3) How many or what ratio of those gazillions would manage to create an actual functional difference but due to this result in a non-viable organism which never survives until reproduction age or even birth?

4) How many or what ratio of those gazillions would manage to create an actual functional difference which turned out to be simply inconsequential and never got passed along into the the general genome?

You get the idea. The math needs to be made rigorous, but the basic qusetion is how likely is it that all this could have ever happened randomly? Well, it turns out that several pioneering math guys did get rigorous with this question after thoroughly familiarizing themselves with the specifics of the biology and cosmology and so on. It turns out the liklihood is preposterously miniscule. By some simplifications, about a 1 in 10^44 chance. That means a once out of 10 with forty-four zeroes after it probability. There are five or six public intellectual nay-sayers with scientific credentials bopping around at present making this sort of case. And some biologists are taking it in, though they do not all evince a willingness to speak about it. (It has needed several decades since the ra-ra onslaught of Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene (1976) to erode the generated collective taboo against any truly penetrative skepticism concerning Neo-Darwinist dogma.) Bear in mind two important logical corrolaries here. First, this has nothing — zero — to do with promoting Intelligent Design as an alternative theory necessarily. You are free to propose that theory but the actual thrust is simply that Neo-Darwinism can’t be true. Secondly, none of these considerations address the big meatball question of how did the first living cell arise in the first place. There are no theories at present about this which have academically ‘stuck’. As you can likely guess, the proponents of this skepticism have been roundly dismissed as sub-human by the orthodox community even though not one of them makes any sort of mathematical argument which is persuasive.

Again, it is not the science but the human nature which obstructs the progress. Without wanting to spread the impression that literally no legit science is happening anywhere, which is untrue, I will nevertheless mention that I could give many other examples of runaway orthodoxy.

WSA #3 – Gadfly Scientism

It should go without saying that if a deeply credentialed, respected, say, Oceanography researcher with oodles of influential publications to his name begins expounding in the popular press/media on the topic of global Economics and 3rd world Micro-Banking theory, then his predictions should be taken with a heavy dose of skepticism. Specially if his agent is somehow generating kickass renumeration, speaker fees, podcast invites, and book advances for this lucrative hobby. But this is exactly what is going on when a Richard Dawkins (once an evolutionary biologist) or a Lawrence Krauss (astrophysicist) begins making rational attacks against theology, even as a principle, in the marketplace of ideas. And I do mean marketplace. Scientifically-justified athieism was extremely profitable in the ’90s. The partially educated general public was hungry for rationalistic talking points in order to put to bed their more existential questions such that the technological near future could be enjoyed and its convenience and wealth shared free of guilt.

It worked for about fifteen years. Gradually, the intelligentsia in opinion columns, think pieces, and longform debate interviews began illuminating the holes in the swiss cheese. British philosopher Mary Midgely eviscerated Dawkins’ presumably triumphant coffin nailer “The God Delusion” in 2006, shining a light on his ignorance about history and cultural realities in a New Scientist review. Many voices pointed out the intricate contradictions within Daniel Dennett’s several tomes endeavoring to de-mystify and even de-certify the phenomenon of human consciousness. One of my favorite prideful absurdities was the early 2000s “flying Spaghetti monster” meme of Sam Harris. Educated in neuroscience and philosophy, Harris joined the atheism wars by attacking religious dogma as illogical and non-evidence-based and promoting that religion has been a cultural force for war and bloodshed over the centuries, and needs to be outgrown once and for all. Priding himself as a meditant and flawless rationalist, Harris consistently reveals himself as profoundly ignorant about the intuition-driven aspects of any sort of spiritual inquiry. For him, all psychology must be algorithmized in order to be legitimate. He offers his Flying Spaghetti Monster as an alternate god proposal among the many hundreds in human history: Zeus, Ra, Odin, Apollo, Jesus, Joseph Smith, Mohammed, the Great Spirit, Zimbabwean ancestors, Krishna… perhaps he should have added Scientism and Rationalism to the mix. Harris displays his complete disdain, disinterest, and ignorance about the entire panoply of human myth and legend in arguing that any theist is merely a cultural product who has quite arbitrarily selected the appropo god for his own milieu to proclaim and worship. Of all these thousands, what possible justification could there be for your chosen One, besides subjective whimsy? But Harris-style intellectuality is too blandly factual and unstimulated to notice or ask about the numerous relationships between these mythical figures. What if Egyptian seekers glanced inwards upon Hermes for their epoch and consciousness while the same mentality in ancient Persia named their equivalent perception Ormuzd? What if Osiris, Sun Being, was but an earlier depiction of Christ who had not yet come to the brink of earthly incarnation? What if Australian aboriginee flood legends harkened back to the same Atlantis that Noah did? It seems to me that the only imaginary deity left out of this chain of possible equivalencies is precisely Sam’s derogatory Spaghetti denizen, along with L. Ron Hubbard.

Ignorance about myth is a forgivable oversight within contemporary culture. But appending therefore a hubristic dismissal of it as fear-driven caveman fairy tales is not.

WSA #4 – Worldviews Minus The Bacon

The factor I’m leaving for last in this discussion is probably both the subtlest and yet most pernicious, in that it leaks into the very definitional foundations of science as widely understood. Two unrelated Bacons stand out in a seminal way as leading influencers in terms of how Science was to be conducted in the West, Roger in the 13th century and Francis in the 17th. Both were British.

Roger’s main thrust, as far as scientific methodology is concerned, was to espouse the value of experimentation. He worked in a dizzying array of fields for the time, Mathematics, Astronomy, Languages, Optics, Alchemy, Philosophy, and Mechanics, as well as esoteric elements within Arab culture and his own Franciscan heritage. Before him, acamedicians were more content and used to propounding theoretical work and treatises, but Bacon pushed the reliance upon experiences and as such was a forerunner of the scientific explosion some centuries later. He was the first Westerner to describe in treatise form how gunpowder should be constituted and manufactured. From this and also his applying of geometry to optics study can be seen his new emphasis for reliance upon empiricism, in contrast to the more standard medieval approach of relying upon ancient texts back to Aristotle and forming rational deductions around them. One sees a healthy skepticism towards acceptance of prior learned authority within Roger Bacon’s influence in favor of personally devising experimental and empirical explorations into matters.

Francis, a philosopher and stateman active 350 years later was more concerned with societal direction. He did not limit his polemics to the academic sphere; rather he saw a new world to be ushered in. The core would be his ‘Baconian Method’ which encapsualted the beginning of the current scientific method. He advocated putting to bed the old practices of formulating a theory and then striving to prove it via deductions. Instead, he said reliable knowledge can only be gotten by first making detailed systematic observations and then attempting to induce (induction) underlying rules or facts. Francis introduced several ideals into the scientific process which were not present for Roger, though both despised intellectual authority. First, he professed a highly systematic approach, making measurements and keeping records. He also systematized the cataloging of frequent mental errors which a true system devoted to the pursuit of knowledge had to eliminate: categories of mental delusions stemming from personal bias, cultural prejudice, imprecise language, and unexamined convention. Francis also outlined what he saw as the proper goal of scientific investifations: to benefit mankind by increasing our technological control over the natural world.

One cannot really argue with Roger’s new directions. They form a legitimate foundation for rational inquiries of various kinds. With Francis, we also see much that is laudable, but the subtle specter of later problems are already present within his rhetoric. For example, the blind attachment to technical progressions works against a purely curiosity-motivated relationship to the studied topic. And this, if extended, would eliminate free speculation and questioning in the face of conventional knowledge edifices, which is where radical innovation always seems to arise from. The other main problem is that Bacon’s method formulation promotes an exclusively physical, or material, conception of the world and reality because it insists upon weighing, measuring and counting things which are accessible to the senses as the mark of worthy researches. In the 17th century this crystallized, after figures like Galileo, John Locke, Newton, and Kepler, into a strident philosophical materialism which negated the possibility to deepen understanding about mentally interior impressions concerning all phenomena. Gradually and in a way surreptitiously, capital-S science became study of the physical reality only, and all else became marginalized. Which is tantamount to eliminating the better half of the human psyche from methodologically free and healthy investigaton. What matters about a potential bio-weapon under development is the numerics of its contagious spread rates and the ratio of lethality among infected populations — not what some researchers might feel about it.

In Summary

If you remember back to grade school — well. my grade school years, cause who knows WTF they are soup-spooning out nowadays — the edifice of Science was glorified in conjuction with rampant technological domestic advances, a series of World’s Fairs, and universally shiny bright prognostications about the imminent future: Jetson flying cars, lunar luxury resorts, exploding prosperity for all achieved by 15-hour work weeks, human climate control, and the evaporation of social problems. I’m probably leaving out some forgotten assurances from this list. This miraculous Renaissance II, it was promised in not so many words, would become our Western birthright by sometime early in our adult lives, give or take. And the delivery vehicle would be: capital-S science. And while it should not be denied that technological wonders have been sprinkled into our lives at a massive pace since the mid 20th century, nobody is very good at forseeing which particular ones will actually transpire or take root. Most of all, it is clear that any future forecasting which considers only the scientific parameters while ignoring societal, political, and ethical realities will be wildly off target in surprising ways.

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(‘She Blinded Me WIth Science’ – Thomas Dolby, 1982)

_______RS

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