| 1888 Articles Home | Personality Development Articles | Spirituality Articles | Persuasive Articles | Spirituality RSS |  |
||
How Science Caught a Cold |
||||
|
In our society, we've laid upon science a burden that it can't carry. Science deals in the present. It looks at the present world and analyzes it in order to explain or manipulate what it finds. If we are to keep it healthy we need to keep it out of the business of trying to explain pre-history. |
||||||||||||
| Author: D R Wilson |
|
|||||||||||
Not many people understand how a flourishing and fit science industry should look. This includes a great majority of those who practice it. For instance, in today’s society we have a job title called ‘philosopher of science.’ People who call themselves by this moniker analyze the philosophical motivation behind how we use science, how it should be applied in the culture and the implication of its methods and conclusions on society. It is these folks that should know how sick modern science truly is. Unfortunately, for many of these people the gaunt, red-eyed and wheezy look of today’s science represents the picture of health. But the high calling of analyzing, describing and manipulating the physical world for our benefit (a.k.a. science) has been afflicted with a cancerous growth.
What has happened to science is that it has been taken out of its proper environment. Like a tree frog taken from the rain forest to live in a cage in some little boy’s bedroom in the desert, science has been transported to a place in which it is ill suited to thrive. The proper home for science is the present. The power and purpose of scientific method lies in explaining our physical world, how natural laws work together and how they can be manipulated to provide wonderful advances for our society, and in enlightening us about how nature is structured and how it works. When science is about this business, it looks strong and flush with youthful health. But it doesn’t do well when forced by its practitioners to explain the past, especially the deep past, or when the course of its inquiry is driven by a pre-decided conclusion. We’ve sort of strapped onto science’s back a heavy burden; the burden of our society’s most dominant presuppositions, agendas and world views about who we are as a people, how we arrived at this point in history, and what we should be doing with our planet. The weight of this tumor-like burden, which grows larger and heavier each year, slows science down, diverts it from its proper path, and saps its energy. In truth, the questions of how today’s observed physical world got to be the way it is and what that means for modern man are the proper purview of history and philosophy IN COOPERATION WITH certain observational sciences.
Now, a healthy and fit science profession certainly requires speculation --generous helpings of it, in fact. A good scientist has an expansive imagination because making new discoveries requires brain-storming, wild speculating and dreaming of what could be. Scientists call their often seemingly-crazy ideas hypotheses. Hypothesis is the beginning point for discovery. Who, except a scientist, would ever have speculated that microscopic magnetized bubbles on various media would be able to free mankind of myriad limitations: from the dull, monotonous hours required to make ultra complex calculations to the need for ‘white out’ when writing an article, and innumerable other impediments to modernity. It took thousands of good scientists, with their unrealistic ideas over the better part of a century, to bring this wild speculation into the realm of reality and expand its potential to what we see today. The achievement of computerizing society is a shining example of healthy, robust, properly-applied science. Science, at its best, takes knowledge of nature and its laws and applies it to physical problems, ideas and issues in the present time.
And therein lies the point. Rather than keeping science within the appropriate boundaries of observation, hypothesis, testing, revision, retesting and proof, the current practice is to try to force science to strengthen the viewpoints of certain philosophers and historians by laying the burden of justifying their theories on its shoulders. This is an inappropriate use of science. A scientist has no more power to see clearly into the past than you do (assuming you don’t consider yourself a scientist). In reality, all statements about the past are speculative in varying degrees. Even claims about relatively recent historical events about which we may have copious records, documents and other evidences can be skewed and spun to the point that they would be unrecognizable to the people who experienced them. History is rarely written without a particular political frame of reference or some agenda surrounding it. Part of the work of the best historians is to find ways to see through the agendas of the human beings who recorded past events.
Why, then, do we feel that scientists and historians can accurately explain prehistoric past occurrences of which we have no written testimony? Most of these events left only one record; typically some bit of rusty, decayed, fossilized or petrified matter found at varying depths under the ground. Because these objects appear interesting to us and speak of a time long gone before, we naturally want to ‘figure out’ what events and forces brought them to be where and how they are. But the vast majority of the time, such objective understanding is plainly not possible. There are many possible scenarios for explaining any given item of evidence found in the present. Let’s take, for instance, the popular example of a Dinosaur fossil. There are a number of problems that arise when someone, scientist or otherwise, attempts to reconstruct the actual chain of events and timeline that brought that particular bit of bone to be where it was found and in the condition in which it was found in the present time.
Problem one: How did it become fossilized? Without getting too detailed (because as a layman, I can’t), fossilization is the migration of minerals from the soil, or the earth’s crust (usually mineral-laden ground water), into the bone material of a formerly living creature. The word can also be applied to the hardening of minerals around the soft tissue of a formerly living thing, or its footprint, feces, etc., leaving its impression in the resulting stone. We know this from applying healthy, observational, laboratory science to the objects that we have found. So from appropriate use of science, applied in a logical, consistent manner, this is essentially no longer a question. We know quite certainly what a fossil actually is because it is something we can observe, analyze and duplicate in the present. Problem solved.
Problem two: How long did it take the item to become fossilized? Here, opinion and presupposition enter the picture; enter speculation and agenda, exit science. I said in the previous paragraph that observational science has been properly used to discover and prove (essentially) how fossilization takes place. Well, in a laboratory, liquid minerals seem to migrate into the spaces between the cells of bone tissue very slowly. So slowly that if an observer’s view of the world includes the belief that billions of years have been available for this occurrence, this slow mineralization will fit right in. But the idea that this must always be the case is the convenient assumption of a human being, not science. The inconvenient truth (for some) is that science has no power to prove, or even to suggest, that all processes we see today have always occurred at the same rate at which we now see them occurring. This is a philosophic theory that has nothing to do with actual science; only with the sickly kind that is operating out of its element. In the case of fossilization, it happens that mineralization of tissue has been shown to occur within a few weeks under the right conditions, contrary to the previous beliefs of scientists whose agendas are set for reasons other than objective inquiry.
Of course, there are other interesting questions that arise when trying to explain the presence of fossilized Dinosaur bone in sedimentary rock, such as how did the animal become trapped and how long has it been there? What was the animal like and why is it extinct? Because we love to solve mysteries, we want desperately to know these things, but looking to science for many of these answers is not a reasonable expectation. The most fundamental reason for this is that science, being a conceptual methodology for looking at nature (as opposed to a person), can’t “explain” or “answer” anything! When someone supports an argument by claiming, “Science says...” or “Science reveals...,” they are employing a fallacious, and therefore invalid, argument. Any explaining or answering that is done as a result of the application of scientific methodology is done by a human mind, and is subject to all of the opinions, motives, vagaries and pressures that are integral to all human thinking. Of course, perceptive readers have already noted that I am personifying science in the same way when describing it as sick, gaunt and wheezy. The difference is that I am using it in a poetic way to create a picture in the reader’s mind rather than as the basis for an argument. That makes it metaphor rather than fallacy.
Trying to discover the truth about history is not the only misapplication of science that occurs regularly in our society. Other diseases are weakening this honorable vocation and diverting its energy to useless pursuits. Often, something as simple as needing to earn a living can cause a capable scientist to get lost in pseudoscience. People and entities pay, sometimes handsomely, to have their agenda advanced by the rubber stamp of ‘science.’ The idea that any proposition is based on science has wonderful public relations value and is a powerful tool in shaping opinion. The public reverence for it makes it highly vulnerable to manipulation and corruption. This kind of science is much like the ridges of snow alongside the streets of Detroit in late winter. It began pure and white, but because of its environment, not much of it stayed that way.
So what are we to do, we ordinary people who don’t hold an advanced degree in any science? How can we know when we are hearing the truth? Well, in our own wisdom, we often can’t. We must do what we do in all areas of life. When truth-claims are made, we hold them up against what we already know to be true, we consider the agenda that may be behind them and we show great care, proportionate to the importance of the issue to our lives and our understanding. We don’t let the word ‘science,’ or any other word, mute our common sense. In the military I knew a young man who was from Missouri, the “show-me state.” It’s no joke. They really are a hard bunch to convince of anything. I think we should all have a little Missourian in us when it comes to the big questions and the most important issues of life. And when we’re presented with claims backed by “science,” we should ask ourselves, “Is that the healthy kind, or the sickly kind?”
Christians, of course, have a leg up on this problem of knowing error when we hear it. The bible is, in the Christian world view, a collection of truth-claims made by the Creator of the universe and the Author of logic and reason. Because He created matter and established the laws that it obeys, whatever He says about the history of this matter and its laws cannot, by definition, be incorrect. If anything the Creator claims is, in reality, incorrect, then reality falls to chaos and it has no definition. So science, being a methodology devised by man for understanding nature, cannot overrule the objective statements of the Creator of nature.
That’s the long way of saying, “Check your bible. If something conflicts with its objective statements or narratives, then reject it as error.” God has made it as simple as that. We’re the ones who complicate it.
About Author
Donald Wilson has enjoyed a career as a pilot of luxury private jets serving large corporations
and very wealthy individuals in worldwide operations. His thirty-seven years of traveling the globe has given him a unique perspective on our world and its people. Donald holds a degree in Professional Aeronautics from Embry-Riddle University, and has served in a number of leadership and training positions during his career. Always interested in writing, he has published several articles in various aviation publications and written on family issues for Home Life and Parenting. Some years ago, he became interested in the underlying evidence and logic for his lifelong faith in a Creator God. In studying and considering this issue, Donald realized that Christianity, indeed faith in God in general, could not stand unless its key claims, when dissected under the brightest-possible light of scientific, philosophical and logical scrutiny, and without bias or presupposition, were found to be credible. This journey has confirmed for Donald the amazing truth that the Creator God is real, that He can be shown to exist through logic alone if need be, and that the biblical claims that He created all that exists in our reality in flashes of power and brilliance beyond anything we can imagine, are true in the most authentic sense of the word. Further, the histories presented in the bible, the claims of Christ and His disciples, and the Christian teachings about life and the future provide a complete understanding of the real nature of our existence.
Donald resides in the southeastern United States with his wife, Debbie.
Article Source:
http://www.1888articles.com/author-d-r-wilson-38319.html
Other Related Articles Principles of agile Practices by Spec India Tips To Keep Your Computer Safe From Attack by Roberto Sedycias History of Diamond Jewellery by Christina Xio How Science Caught a Cold by D R Wilson Denver Museums and Art Galleries by Christina Xio Wrongful Death? by Andrew Calcagno |
