why such huge veneration of science?

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Why do people have such extreme, almost fundamentally religious, veneration of science?

There are two main reasons I don't hold science to the heights that a lot of people, most people in the secular sections of the West, do, and they are related to one another.

A) There is a huge amount of corruption if you will in science. However, this has led me to think a lot about what corruption really is, but anyway. What I mean is that there is a huge amount of steering of results of research, manipulation of data, careful planning of what you present and how, choosing the methods of research, more or less lying with statistics, hiding things you don't want people to see, and showing what you want to show etc.

B) The more science and technology advance the higher the capabilities are to control people and their minds. There are countless examples of this. I'll take two. Surveillance. If you can see exactly who is doing what, you can silence anyone you want very efficiently for example. The second example is video production and distribution. I thought about this when I watched a stand-up clip recently. When you have very advanced video production technology you can for example cut out boos from the audience on an original recording of a live stand-up performance so that you won't have that on youtube, DVDs etc. If people who attended the live performance notice this and write about it online, you can use surveillance to detect all mentionings of this and have those discussions removed.

I'm a believer in logic, tempered by common sense.

Science comes up with the answers to perplexing things. Anecdote provides the actual evidence.

There are many "in-between" people on WP. They just don't post in PPR.

Your two sample objections are related to each other in that they both place you outside the scientific process. Science isn't an end product. It's a process, a way of approaching and evaluating information about the world. If you place yourself inside the process by using a scientific mindset, you can evaluate information scientifically . Consider your first objection:



This^^^right here is a perfect opportunity to use the scientific mindset. Instead of using an 'it's all true/it's all lies' dichotomy, evaluate the information as objectively as you can and within the limits of your expertise. Given this post, I suspect you think people who cite scientific studies are defaulting to 'it's all true', but that's not so. Critical thinking is always needed. It's a lot easier to do a critical evaluation of a research paper (and they do need to be considered individually) if you are familiar with the format and easier still if you've done some papers yourself, but it's not mandatory. In deciding how much stock to put in a particular piece of research you can look at who paid for it (sometimes obvious, sometimes not), where it is presented (peer reviewed journal? or not?) and the academic history of the researchers. The internet makes this much easier than it used to be. *



Here you have confused the product with the process. Just because it's possible to make poison, does that make the whole field of chemistry (or botany) suspect? Information can be used in infinite ways.

*Once you are familiar with the format and have foundational understanding of the field the paper is in, you can evaluate in greater depth; does the data support the conclusions? would the methods have led to holes in the data? etc.

The scientific method is what is held up for admiration. The scientific method is a way of looking at the world which builds a consistent and verifiable model of things. Religion and science are after the same aim and are effectively the same "thing" they employ different methodologies however. Blind obeisance of either leads to ignorance. The scientific method demands that both be analysed and tested. If claims cannot be tested directly one must determine whether the available evidence verifies the claim.

Why do people have such extreme, almost fundamentally religious, veneration of science?

A) Sciences is self-correcting. Any error or "corruption" is eventually found out and corrected.

It is governments and corporations that "steer" scientific discoveries to their own use and profit. Careful planning is inherent in the Scientific Methods, as is choosing the proper research methods. Hiding failures and showing off successes are just parts of human nature.

B) Science reveals the Truth. Religion only tells you what it wants you to believe.

"Mind control" - that bogeyman of paranoiac fever-dreams - is more a part of corporate advertising, religious evangelism, and government propaganda than Science. It also plays a heavy role in religion, and convinces people that raping children, enslaving women, and flying planes into buildings is the right thing to do.

I hold religion in contempt, because it has corrupted the relationship between Humanity and the Divine since the first scoundrel convinced everyone that he was a prophet, and that the sins of the people could be atoned for with "donations" of food and wealth.

It is religion, not Science, that seeks to keep people ignorant and controllable. Science only seeks knowledge and understanding. It is people that corrupt Science to their own ends.

If you want to remain ignorant, then go to church and study those dusty old books written long ago by dirty old men. But if you want to understand the universe, then go to university and study Science, and find out for yourself how things really are!

Science is something we need to have make any real progress even if we argue about the direction we're going in.

Mostly though, the research or product of science can be corrupted by governments, corporations, or even religions as Fnord said.

Unfortunately, in some cases a Scientist might be seen as 'heretical' by the establishment and their career ruined if they dare to challenge certain ideas. This is mostly because Scientists can become to much like Politicians after spending so much time chasing after grant money. It's unfortunate that researchers often wind up seeking funding from sources that have a biased interest.

I am not convinced by any of the arguments put forward in this thread. And I don't think anyone really understood what I mean. I might have to think of other ways of wording it.

Thank Ford

There is no 'veneration' and science is not some "god"; empiricism, skepticism, and rationality are merely methods of viewing the world, which happen to lead to desired outcomes and a minimization of incorrect assumptions. The scientific method produces useful results and accurate predictions about the external world.

Religion and philosophy don't.

While there is no "veneration" per se, there is much to be admired about any system that is consistent, predictable, and self-correcting. The fact that Science is always striving for ever greater accuracy puts it far and above any philosophic, political, or religious system that merely tries to explain things without ever really investigating them.

There are two aspects to science - the method and the human factor.

As for the latter, you will always find corruption in any institution, but like anything, you don't judge the whole by the small minority. Science has attracted a lot of disrespect, and for two reasons. The first is that people learn about an incident of scientific dishonesty and think the whole thing must be dishonest. The other is that because a finding of science disagrees with someone's agenda, they will use some form or rhetoric to throw mud on science, or worse, to vilify science.

As for the scientific method, it is highly logical. Many pundits don't fully grasp just how logical it is. Many think people just come up with a theory, have other scientists verify it and then decide it's true. If that was the whole of it, then I would have a very low regard for science. It would be politics, not science.

How well does the scientific method work?

If science was just theory, validated by other scientists, then we would not have been to the moon yet. We would not have LED televisions. We may not even have radio, let alone television. We certainly wouldn't have GPS. We would not have microchips. We would not have WiFi. We would not be able to fit gigabytes of data onto a pinhead. We would not know DNA. Half the diseases of the world would still be killing us. Most medicine would still be stuck in the 18th century. We would not have tall buildings. We would not have plastics. And the list goes on.

When scientists decided to create a tiny black hole in the lab, those who don't understand science got worried that scientists were about to destroy the planet. That is the difference in understanding, and where those with an agenda can insert their wedge.

Who understands calculus? Not many. And people do not trust what they do not understand.

Tackling A) There is a huge reporting of corruption in science, most of which is agenda driven. Once again, when people have a prejudice or an agenda, ignorance is used to exaggerate and vilify a whole group.

Tackling B) Generally, it's not science that is doing the evil. It's the products that come after the science has been done. To use your two examples, surveillance technology was not originally developed with the intent you mention. The ability to filter out boos would have come from the development of filtering technology for other purposes.

Scientific developments almost never come from sinister motives.
It was science that developed the aircraft, it was not science that crashed them into the twin towers.

Sure, there are cases as with the so called Piltdown Man, which was presented to the world as a missing link in human evolution discovered in England. In truth, Piltdown was a hoax created by the perpetrators by joining an ape's jaw to a human skull, then putting it through a process to appear ages old. For years and years, British men of science had obstinately refused to accept it as a fraud, primarily motivated by nationalism. After all, Germany had Neanderthal Man and Heidelberg man, and France had Cro Magnon Man - why shouldn't England have a claim to human antiquity, as well? But in the end, Piltdown was eventually accepted as the fraud it was, and that is, while scientists can make errors - purposely and not purposely - science itself is self correcting and the truth will eventually come out.

Because science tends to provide more answers and realistic explanations than religion does!

To each their own, but I still think that nobody really understood what I meant. I see advantages in science. It's the blind veneration of science as the be all and end all, which you people, although claiming not to have it, in effect have. I see this mindset as being like the absolute outermost exoteric layer of any religion. I'll take another example. Since any one person has limited intelligence and knowledge, you have to put some degree of trust in other people, in media etc. in order to function. We are not ourselves applying the scientific method to each and every thing that we trust as right. We simply trust it, and so there is something other than the scientific method that is quite substantial in science. And even just the scientific method in itself is something that I think people do not question enough. But I won't try to put my point across anymore. I have seen people's views, and that's fine, even though my view remains that nobody really gets to the core of what I'm talking about. I'll think of other ways of wording it, keep philosophizing, and search to see if anybody has expressed it differently somewhere.

Last edited by tomato on 26 Dec 2014, 5:14 am, edited 2 times in total.