 |
||||
|
||||
|
|
Prayer for You
|
Science is God?
During my booksigning in Santa Cruz last year, an audience member launched a hostile query at me during the question-and-answer segment. "Why do you diss science so much?" he complained. "Science is the source of a lot of pronoia these days, so I would think that you'd love it." My accuser obviously wasn't a thorough reader of my weekly column. Otherwise he would have come across many horoscopes that belied his theory, like the ones in which I reverently quoted astronomical research from "Sky & Telescope" magazine, conjured metaphors from my study of bird migration patterns, and invoked the work of seminal physicists Max Planck and Ernest Schrodinger. The fact is, I don't diss science more than any other discipline. Even astrology gets the full brunt of my open-hearted probing. I am an equal-opportunity skeptic! But in the moment, I responded rather flippantly to my accuser. "Some of my best friends are scientists," I said. In hindsight, it would have been better if I'd have said simply, "I believe in science about 80 percent." And that's the truth. My attitude towards science is the same as my approach to all the systems of thought I respect and use: I hold in reserve a degree of loving skepticism. To be honest, though, I do believe that science is more in need of loving skepticism than all the other ways of knowing. As the dominant ideology of our age, it has acquired a magisterial reputation comparable to the infallibility accorded to the medieval Church: that it is the ultimate, most perfect arbiter of truth; that its assumptions and techniques are above criticism. Now there are many scientists who, upon reading what I just wrote, would discharge a blast of knee-jerk, emotionally charged, non-scientific derision in my direction. Like true believers everywhere, they can't accept half-hearted converts. If I won't buy their whole package, then I must be a superstitious, fuzzy-brained, New Age goofball. To which I calmly reiterate: I love the scientific method. I aspire to evaluate all my experiences and information with the lucid objectivity characteristic of a true scientist. On the other hand, in order to embody the ideals I just described, I have a duty to aim them at science itself. Many souls braver than I have dared to challenge the orthodoxies of modern science. Unfortunately, only a very few of them have also been clear thinkers and careful researchers. In my appendix below, I provide a list of some of the best. Maybe someday I will attempt my own extensive critique of the dominant ideology of our time. In the meantime, I will briefly bitch about the way science has steadfastly chosen to ridicule the study of UFOs, thereby making it nearly impossible to discern any reliable truths about the curious phenomena that have been unfolding in abundance (though largely unreported or ridiculed by the media) in the skies all over the globe for more than 50 years. Look even cursorily at the history of science and you see that many other phenomena have had the same credibility problem that UFOs do now. Meteors and dinosaurs, for instance. Until the 19th century, scientists simply did not believe that meteorites came to Earth from outer space. Because they were so sure of that, they didn't go looking for the evidence it would have taken to disprove their belief. And neither would they even examine the evidence brought before them by non-scientists. As far as they were concerned, what ordinary people saw falling from the heavens couldn't possibly be seen. "[T]he scientific community scoffed at those who believed stones fell from the heavens, despite the fact that meteorites had been seen to fall and had been collected since ancient times by the Chinese and EgyptiansS SKY & TELESCOPE; JANUARY 1999 The history of science's resistance to meteors had parallels with its relationship to dinosaurs. Though dinosaur fossils lay in the earth for all of human history, they weren't identified until 1822. Scientists didn't believe in dinosaurs before then, so the curious remnants ordinary folks had long found in the earth could not possibly have been the remains of ancient extinct species. Since then, of course -- once belief was finally certified by the scientific establishment and once daring scientific pioneers set out to find more evidence -- thousands of fossils have been found. It's so obvious as to sound stupid, but scientists in every age have always believed they've explained all there is to explain, and that any other phenomena that exist beyond the frontier of their theories and evidence simply could not exist. And therefore, why even search for, examine, or test the evidence? Our age couldn't be any different. As an example, many astronomers say that the strange flying things seen in the skies all over our planet could not possibly be visitors from other solar systems, and must therefore be hallucinations, swamp gas, the planet Venus, misidentified planes, or anything except a previously unexplained phenomenon. How ironic that modern astronomers rely on the same excuse that the Church has historically invoked to discredit pioneering scientists. After Galileo acquired the new-fangled device called the telescope in 1609, he made radical claims about the solar system. The caretakers of the old guard were pissed. "It is impossible for moons to revolve around Jupiter," they told him. "Therefore there are no such things." They refused even to look through Galileo's tool, adapting the same attitude most scientists today take towards the mounting proof that UFOs are real. "It's impossible for beings from other star systems to traverse the vast distances between them and us," they declare, "so why should we even study the evidence?" There's a giant bias hidden in this belief: that creatures from other worlds could only have ships that are limited to the means of propulsion we have thus far mastered here on Earth. Arthur Koestler said that to the ancient Greeks, electricity was as bizarre and unfathomable as telepathy is to us today. Yet electricity existed before it was believed in. It's just that there was no culture and no mechanism for gathering the evidence. Human culture had to change in order to be able to know where to look and how to create the proper instruments. How would we know about things like red shift, black holes, dark matter, and quarks unless we had instruments to extend our senses? Is it wise to brag that we've already developed every sense-extending technology that will ever be invented? When Columbus's ships first appeared on the horizon, the Arawaks saw them as giant floating monsters. They didn't have the conceptual framework to know them for what they literally were. "You can't perceive what you can't conceive." An adult who's been blind all his life and through surgery is suddenly given the power of sight takes quite a while to be able to learn to interpret what he's looking at. The eye alone doesn't see and the ear alone doesn't hear. The mind and the cultural biases it has internalized interpret and shape the raw data. The particular form science has taken in our age is a fabulous way of understanding reality, but it's not the ultimate, never-to-be-surpassed crown of creation. Surprise: Just as meteors, dinosaurs, and electricity (and radio waves and black holes and dark matter) were not possible and therefore not real to earlier generations, there are phenomena here with us now that won't be capturable and studiable until our culture and minds evolve further -- and probably our instruments as well. Perhaps those phenomena include some of the events we now call UFOs. Go here to find a host of further sources with which you can cultivate more loving skepticism towards the dominant ideology of our time. |
|||
© 1995-2008 -- Rob Brezsny. All rights reserved
|
||||