"I feel for all faiths the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness groping for the sun.” - Will Durant
The
accomplishments of Western science and technology can be described as one of
its greatest achievements.
Although all societies have developed technologies, none has reached the
level of the Western world. MIT
professor Thomas Kuhn asserted that, “The bulk of scientific knowledge is a
product of Europe in the last four centuries. No other place and time has supported the very special
communities from which scientific productivity comes.” p. 168 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Scientific knowledge has been
accumulated through the centuries by a civilization that was open to often
unappealing conclusions. Much is
often made of the conflict between the church and the scientific community,
however historically the church has often been the key supporter of scientific
research. The Bull of Pope
Alexander IV in 1255: “The science of the schools of Paris is in the Church
like the Tree of Life in the terrestrial paradise, a shining lamp in the temple
of the soul. . . . It is at Paris that the human race, deformed by original sin
and blinded by ignorance, recovers its power of vision and its beauty, by the
knowledge of the true light shed forth by divine science.” p. 197 Dawson Kuhn is essentially correct, however, the foundations
of western science were based on previous civilizations. The modern scientific method, upon
which much of Western science rest was first developed in the Muslim world,
especially in the works of Alhazen in the eleventh century.
To
describe something as “scientifically proven” gives it tremendous status
similar to describing something as being the “gospel truth” in previous
centuries. As a result many
fields that could more properly be described as philosophy have adopted the
trappings of science to increase their status. The Twentieth Century has seen the blossoming of many
academic disciplines masquerading as science. Many people believe that these new “sciences” can be used to
organize society on a more rational basis. The idea of governing a state by scientific principles was
popularized during the Enlightenment.
The French philosopher Aguste Comte (1798-1857), who is generally
described as one of the founders of sociology, proposed in his “Plan of the
Scientific Work Necessary for the Reorganization of Society” that, “Men who
make a living out of methodically forming logical theoretical combinations,
that is the scientists engaged in the study of the sciences of observation, are
the only ones whose type of ability and intellectual culture satisfies the
necessary conditions (to form theory for reorganization of society).” P.
75 Comte Early Political
writings As George Roche has
stated, “Many have dreamed of a brave new world built on purely ‘scientific’
principles. At last, they say, men
could escape chaos and manage their affairs with rational, objective
standards. All conflict and
deprivation would disappear.” A
World Without Heroes, George Roche, Hillsdale College Press, 1987, Hillsdale,
Michigan, p. 317
The
idea of organizing society on science and reason certainly has its appeal. Early in the twentieth century Winston
Churchill wrote, “One of these days the cold bright light of science and reason
will shine through the cathedral windows and we shall go out into the fields to
seek God for ourselves. The great
laws of Nature will be understood - our destiny and our past will be
clear. We shall then be able to
dispense with the religious toys that have agreeably fostered the development
of mankind.” (Buchanan p.
399 Churchill, Hitler and the
Unnecessary War) Entertainer Bill
Maher described a viewpoint that is held by many of the elite when he said on a
national television show, “Half this country wants to guide our ship of state
by a compass. A compass, something
that works by science and rationality, and empirical wisdom. And half this country wants to kill a
chicken and read the entrails like they used to do in the old Roman Empire.”
(CNN Larry King Live, July 22, 2004) Maher understandably ignores the fact that
several societies attempted to guide their ship of state by a compass in the
twentieth century with disastrous results.
There
are several reasons why the dream of a world based on “scientific” principles
cannot be realized. The primary
reason is that it is based on the assumption that the “scientist” is a
dispassionate, objective, rational observer and not a flawed human being.
Irving Langmuir, the 1932 Nobel prize winner in chemistry, coined the phrase “pathological
science” to describe a process in science in which “people are tricked into
false results ... by subjective effects, wishful thinking or threshold
interactions" According
to Langmuir, “These are cases where there is no dishonesty involved but where
people are tricked into false results . . . being led astray by subjective
effects, wishful thinking or threshold interactions.” (The War Against Boys, Christina Hoff Sommers, Touchstone
Books, New York, 2000, p. 100)
Gary Taubes claimed in a 1994 Atlantic article that the history of
science is, “littered with examples of . . . ‘pathological science.’” In addition to what is described as “pathological
science,” there is the intentional distortion of research results to achieve a
desired outcome This is termed
scientism, defined by Stephen Carter as, “manipulation of the scientific
evidence and the scientific method to reach the desired results.” Carter describes it as an “effort to
disguise as science things that have little to do with science, in the hope of
making them look more attractive.” Civility, Stephen L. Carter, Basic
Books, New York, 1998, p. 204 Judith Reisman points out that, “intentional
misrepresentation in science is not an isolated aberration.” Kinsey, Sex and
Fraud, Dr. Judith A. Reisman, Lochinvar-Huntington House Publication, 1990, p.
15
An
additional impediment to achieving accurate outcomes in research is described
by philosopher Herman Kahn as "educated incapacity." Kahn defined this as, “a concept which
maintains that on the average one's ability to understand and solve real-world,
practical policy problems declines as one's level of education increases.” Kahn explained that our government is
increasingly staffed by people with little or no “real-life"
experience. They have little
knowledge of how the private sector works and are often hostile to its
welfare. Kahn explained that as
our society becomes more prosperous those afflicted with “educated incapacity”
have become more numerous. The
Coming Boom, Herman Kahn, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1982, pp.188-189 The concept of "educated incapacity" can be
applied to all fields of social research.
C.G. Jung described how education often became divorced from reality, “Scientific
education is based in the main on statistical truths and abstract knowledge and
therefore imparts an unrealistic, rational picture of the world, in which the
individual, as a merely marginal phenomenon, plays no role. The individual, however, as an
irrational datum, is the true and authentic carrier of reality, the concrete
man as opposed to the unreal ideal or normal man to whom the scientific
statements refer.” C.G. Jung, The
Undiscovered Self, Mentor Book, New York, 1957, p. 20
As
opposed to genuine science which strives to determine the truth by weighing
evidence, scientism has a low tolerance for individual who find evidence
opposed to the prevailing ideology. As an example, social science researcher Mohammedreza
Hojat published an article protesting a “the conspiracy of silence (that)
prevails among scientist on the importance of mother hood and the family.” Hojat claimed that , “a new
cultural mentality of political correctness “ prevailed in academia - enforced
by “interest groups, including extreme feminists or those who personally prefer
a nontraditional lifestyle” - makes it all but impossible to discuss the
adverse effects of nonmaternal child care. He further complained that prominent academics have even
suggested “that research on detrimental effects of nonmaternal care must be
interrupted or abandoned.”
Psychologist Penelope Leach asserted “there is a cover-up going on.” There’s No Place Like Work, Brian C.
Robertson, Spence Publishing, Dallas, 2000, p. 29 Dr. Charles Socarides described the consequences of opposing the redefinition of
homosexuality in the psychiatric profession. “Those of us who didn’t go along
with the political redefinition were soon silenced at our own professional
meetings. Our lectures were
canceled inside academe and our research papers turned down in the leading
journals.” The Death of the West,
Patrick J. Buchanan, Thomas Dunne Books, New York, 2002, p. 196 In 1983 anthropologist Derek Freeman
published Margaret Mead and Samoa, a book demonstrating the Margaret Mead had
been incorrect in her finding on Samoan culture. The 1983 general meeting of the American Anthropological
Association did not reassess Mead’s finding but condemned Freeman. If scientific findings conflict with
modern ideology they must be suppressed. Neuroanatomist Laura Allen claims that she was warned not to
continue her research in physiological sex differences because they say “It’s
too provocative.” Attorney Gloria
Allred asserted that this research should not be done because, “This is harmful
and dangerous to our daughters’ lives, to our mothers’ lives, and I am very
angry about it.” p. 89 The War
Against Boys.
People
with specialized knowledge are a necessity in our complex modern society. However, when they claim expertise in
fields where they only appear to have special competence they frequently
produce more harm than good. Eva
Etzioni-Halevy has written that, “the value judgments of social scientists, of
experts in the humanities . . . though they sometimes assume the mantle of
scientific knowledge, in fact have no greater validity than anybody else’s
value judgments.” p. 43 Their value judgments may in fact
be less valid as Irving Kristol described in his comments on the “common people”
who are “not uncommonly wise, but their experience tends to make them
uncommonly sensible. They learn
their economics by taking out a mortgage, they learn their politics by watching
the local school board in action, and they learn the impossibility of ‘social
engineering’ by trying to raise their children to be decent human beings.” Neo Conservatism p. 134 Historian Lewis Feuer concluded that
"The Intellectual Elite in both the United States and Europe has a record
of recurrent misjudgment and misperception of social reality. Its members have yielded to wish
fulfillment, emotional indulgence and even insincerity while claiming to the
public at large that they were inspired by scientific reasoning.” Political Pilgrims, Paul Hollander,
Harper Colophon Books, New York, 1981, p. 53 Malcolm Muggeridge was astounded by the behavior of Western
intellectuals who visited the Soviet Union at the height of the Stalinist
repression, “The almost unbelievable credulity of these mostly
university-educated tourists astonished even Soviet officials use to handling foreign
visitors…” Political Pilgrims,
Paul Hollander, Harper, Colophon Books, New York, 1981, p. 102 Eva Etzioni-Halevy has concluded that , “Western
intellectuals . . . are prophets who have failed. They have failed in that their knowledge and advise has
itself created problems for society.
When their knowledge has been applied, and their ideas have been put to
the test of actual practice . . . they have frequently proved disappointing.”
The Knowledge Elite and the Failure of Prophecy, Eva Etzioni-Halevy, P. 2 Etzioni-Halevy was being generous. Their ideas have often been more than
disappointing. They have been
disastrous.
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