The Cult Of Modern Science - By Michael Hallam

Article

The Cult Of Modern Science - By Michael Hallam.

According to current scientific wisdom you do not exist. This may come as some surprise to you but nevertheless this is the currently held belief of modern science. What thinks it is you is a set of self-generated ‘thought-loops’ created by the chemical activity of your brain at the behest of the genetic material in your cells. It is this genetic material which is the real boss, and in order to perpetuate itself as much as possible it has organised the assembly of your body and created within it the illusion of a sense of self in order to get that body to move around and seek out other genetic material with which to combine.

This might be a shock to you. Obviously you will think this to be untrue, for even on a bad day you are still able to hold together a reasonable sense of self-coherence. Let us aspire to be good scientific investigators and ignore our initial reaction to this. We will continue on the basis that the above might be true. What then is the reason why these proteins wish to go on dividing and spreading? According to science there is no reason. The four proteins, which make up all of our DNA material, do not think or have a mind or any sense of self, they are after all, simple chemicals, which have stumbled onto the ability to self-assemble themselves. Mind, identity and sense of self are merely illusory features of this replicating strategy.

Far from having a purpose our hapless quartet of proteins, (1) are the result of a random chemical accident arising out of the seething mineral and energy rich ‘sea’ of our early primeval earth environment. And just as our origins (sorry! their origins) were accidental and random so to is their no meaning in our (their) future, For the ultimate future of the universe is for all of its distinctive features to be boiled away leaving a uniform ever-expanding void, slightly above the absolute freezing point. This, in its turn, is the consequence of the second law of thermo-dynamics, which states that energy cannot be created, only transformed and that with each transformation the distinctiveness of the various different structures in the universe is diluted. As a result of this we (they) are on a one-way trip to nothingness.

To recap, then, all structure in the universe is the result of a series of random accidents. It has no future of any distinction and we are a self-delusion created to help facilitate the transition from accident to oblivion. This is the inescapable conclusion of 500 years of scientific research and development into the nature of being.

Before we suffer too much from the illusion of being depressed, I would just like to make one heretical statement. There is another point of view! But before we can look at this we must continue to explore the cult of modern science.

Grimm though the above account might be, surely it makes no impact upon our real lives, so can we not ignore it for the nonsense it is and leave its perpetrators to get on with their business? If we do then we do so at our peril. It is the untruth of such a thought, which has prompted me to write this article.

Increasingly every aspect of our lives is being brought under control by governments who justify their action on the basis of scientific advice. This scientific advice is regarded as undisputable and thereby not subject to question or challenge, and any person or group who does challenge government policy once scientific judgment has been given is regarded as irrational. For the toleration of such irrationality we can thank the Enlightenment and the liberal humanism, which arose out of the Reformation and gave us a culture that tolerates freedom of thought. Nevertheless, it remains the case that thoughts which are not so ‘scientifically based’ have a lower status that those which are, especially when it comes to public decision-making. This would be all well and good if the kind of science, which underlies much of our collective thinking, strived to be a truly objective mirror for Reality. Unfortunately it does not.

It is the main contention of this article that the current scientific world-view is in error about the true nature of existence, to such an extent that it would be more accurate to regard the scientific community, as it is currently composed, as a scientific cult, rather than as the guardian of objective knowledge. It is a further contention that far from aiding and enhancing the prospects for humanities future life on earth, this scientific cult is now threatening life’s very survival. Whilst this may sound dramatic it is based upon the fact that somewhere in the course of the last 500 years of scientific development it has become a fundamental ‘truth’ for the scientist who wishes to be regarded as respectable and to be accepted into the scientific community, that the Spirit and Soul do not exist.

This cult of science believes that the only thing that exists and is worth accounting as real is the physical world, which itself is made up of the 100+ fundamental elements of the chemical periodic table. In essence, any explanation of things, which strays beyond a purely mechanical explanation is inadmissible and regarded as unscientific. The utterance of this word has become a cultural put-down which, if need be, can be supplemented by its two linguistic handmaidens, ‘superstition’ and ‘irrational’. These two daughters of ‘unscientific’ can be left to their liberty if they are wearing the prefix ‘harmless’, that is if the ideas they describe do not influence too many people. Otherwise they quickly morph into their doppelgangers ‘dangerously superstitious’ or ‘dangerously irrational’.

Where is my evidence for these assertions, you might ask? Alas, I do not have any. Furthermore, due to my status as a layperson I cannot have any, as the capacity to accumulate evidence is beyond my personal abilities. My thoughts, reflections, experience and observations are purely anecdotal, and as such so is this article. As these words represent only my personal understanding I leave you free to categorize them as myth, fiction or scientific according to your own predilection.

I would like to look at this notion of anecdotal. What is its practical meaning. To discover a scientific truth we must first be objective, that means we must set aside our own personal relationship to that which we are studying, and view the phenomena as if we did not exist. In practice this means that any evidence which you or I, or the scientist him/herself, may have for a phenomena which is of a soul-spirit nature is be completely disregarded, this includes any personal experience, or group experience, and any feelings you may have towards the subject matter. Put simply any evidence of your own personal inner senses is to be disregarded if you want to be objective. (2) What does this leave? Only our sensory observations of nature itself, but even these are gradually being relegated to a secondary observational status.

If they cannot trust their inner sense and don’t hold much store by looking at nature directly, how, you might ask, do scientist ever gather any evidence about anything at all? Over the last 100 years observations made by machinery and results based upon statistical analysis have come to eclipse direct observation. Since the acceptance of the sub-atomic model of nature, scientific investigation has been looking into and manipulating realms in which our ordinary outer senses are blind, and the only way we can see into these realms and manipulate them is through the aid of ever more sophisticated (and expensive) machines. The simple and artistic answer to the question of “what is anecdotal evidence’ is any picture of the world which is not provided by mechanical instrumentation.

The relationship between science and technology is a long and close one and stretches all the way back to ancient Persian times (3). Although science and technology are not the same things they are close cousins and their development has gone hand in hand. Science gleans the laws of nature and technology re-applies these laws in the transformation of nature. (4) In the last 300 years, since the freeing up of individual thinking, the revolving-door relationship between these two has gone from strength to strength, with observations of natures processes leading to the development of more precise and powerful machinery and manipulating techniques, which in its turn enhances the artificial sensory abilities of the investigator. Indeed, so fruitful has the relationship between the two been that somewhere around the end of the 19th century scientists understood enough to be able to have machines built which would do the observing for them. At this time science crossed a threshold, and it no longer became possible, in a general sense, to do scientific research without the use of increasingly expensive laboratory machinery. (5) Such instrumentation needed to be funded, and it was only governments and later commercial organisations which could afford to foot the bill. Thus, during the 20th century the capacity to ‘do science’ passed away from the realm of personal individuals, or groups of individuals who were known to each other directly and became mainly the province of government and commercial institutions. (6)

The main impulse behind the scientific enterprise has gradually shifted away from being the province of all rational minded enquirers to a more esoteric high cost, practical results-based enterprise, in which those who wish to do serious science must seek the patronage of corporate product-based employer/patrons. In this 300-year journey, a lot of science observation has fallen by the wayside, by virtue of it not being commercially useful. (7) The ability to participate in the scientific enterprise might have long left the individual standing at first base, but again does this matter. Can we not just get on with our lives and ignore the problem. This may well have been possible to some extent in the past but it is no longer possible, for one simple reason. The same forces of change which have rendered personal experience ‘unscientific’ and which have made it impossible for all but the most wealthy institutions and corporations to do officially recognized scientific research have also made it impossible for anyone to challenge the results of science. This is especially pertinent when it comes to deciding which technologies, processes and products are safe for use. .

In the last 200 years our entire society has been transformed by the relationship between science and technology. During that time our relationship to nature has become unrecognizable and the result is that we have far less contact with nature directly, but only meet it though its processed and industrialized form. Similarly we live our lives less and less in accordance with natural rhythms and more and more in accordance with mechanical rhythms. An increasing number of people are finding this existence soulless and inherently meaningless, which is not surprising if within your own soul you feel the constant tidal forces at play between the worlds of matter and spirit, and strive to enter into social dialogue about such matters. Such people, dare I say such souls are questioning and challenging the wholesale conversion of living nature to machine nature and this has given rise to the worldwide tapestry of ‘alternative’ and green movements.

General alarm is growing as more and more plant and animal species become extinct and as the various pollutants from our industrial processes and discarded products are sloshed around in the sea and air and fed back to us in diluted form. Even more alarming, to many is the new-found ability to graft the mechanical to the living, made possible by genetic engineering. The scientific priests announce the necessity of their application whilst the heretics see nothing but a natural disaster following in their wake, for the release of self-replicating plants and animals into the wild will inevitably corrupt all natural stock. The battle over the release into the wild of this technology hinges around the scientific evidence for the safety of GM engineered organisms. Both the companies who produce them and the activists who oppose them are fighting the rational battle in the scientific arena. In a culture which has long abandoned questions of soul and spirit as factors in its decision making process and which only admits the most indirect of observational evidence in its deliberations of safety it is only a matter of time before such releases are deemed safe and authorized for widespread release.

But there is more bleak news. So divorced has the modern human being become from nature that most of us no longer have any real knowledge about the processes of transformation, which render the rock, the plant or the animal into the products which we purchase in order to service our day-to-day lives. Not only have experiences of spirit and soul become ‘second class experiences’ but our experience and concern for living nature is also being relegated, leaving only the view provided by the prism of our technological instrumentation and artifacts. Increasingly this is the only view that has any meaning in the arena of real decision-making.

If we take this trend to its logical conclusion then science will eventually declare wild and living nature to be anathema. Absurd? Consider the theme of an article published in an in-house journal of a large pharmaceutical-chemical company in the late 1980’s. The title of this article was “Is nature safe?” The thesis of the article was that foods and medicines taken from nature were likely to be less safe that those produced in the laboratory because the latter had been scientifically tested for their safety whilst the former had not. Leave aside the fact that many foods and natural medicines have been used traditionally by human cultures for thousands of years, because all of this traditional knowledge has not been laboratory tested and so is merely anecdotal, as are the direct and personal claims for well-being resulting from avoidance of the artificial varieties. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that even as you read these words legislation is passing through the European Parliament to draw up a list of legally authorized plants, foods and medicines. This will overturn the natural principle that a substance is deemed safe unless it is scientifically proven not to be, and replace it with the ruling that a natural substance is unsafe unless it has been scientifically proven to be safe. Thus only that which issues out of a scientific laboratory will be deemed safe, and it will cost a great deal of money to do so. (8)

Because our legislators are increasingly the servants of the incorporated bodies, which pay for almost all scientific research, and because they base their legislation upon the same science we are doubly disenfranchised. (9) Many people have lost faith in the capacity of elected governments to look after their interests or the capacity of industry to safeguard our planet, but, whilst people may no longer believe in the integrity of politicians or executives, they still inwardly bow before the altar of the cult of machine-science. In deferring reason to the current scientific paradigm, with its increasingly manifest self-contradictions (10) and denials of the full scope of reality, we abandon reason.

If we want to create a healthy durable society which gives due regard to individual human experience and to the long-term needs of humanity and nature, then our only recourse is to wake up to the fact that science, as it is currently practiced and applied, is no longer scientific, and the rational citizen should reject its authority. 500 years ago Martin Luther nailed his thesis on the door of Wittenberg Cathedral questioning the Holy Roman Churches authority in matters of spiritual experience. I would advocate a similar gesture with regards to our modern day Scientific Priesthood, questioning its legitimacy as an authority on matters of physical reality. (11)

NOTES

It is so difficult to avoid the habit of anthropomorphizing and bestowing character upon nature. Until recently the only social forum in which it was tolerated to characterize nature in this way was when explaining the world to little children, but to ‘humour’ children in such a way is being regarded as an increasingly disreputable practice.
In contrast to the development of this literally soulless objectivity stands the scientific outlook of such researchers as Goethe. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1749 - 1832) chose to tread a different scientific path in which he included his own human nature within the embrace of nature as a whole. As a result he considered his own soul responses to what his physical senses observed in outer nature to be an integral and essential part of the observation process. In keeping open to the changing mood of his own soul in relation to his sense-based observations he was able to make a bridge between the natural forms and the living archetypal self-aware thought-forms living behind the phenomena. This led him to the reflective observation that the physical form changed over time and that the gesture of this changing form reflected the evolution of the spiritual being expressed through the form. Such observations, particularly with the plant world, had a further implication, for he realised that by making an inner bridge between the body of the outer form and its inner spiritual reality, via the mediation of the soul, that some of that self reflective capacity passed over to the phenomenon. To a degree that conformed to his overall understanding he found that he was able to influence the way that form unfolded in its future. Thus a full 100 years before the advent of the quantum mechanical theory Goethe established in a living way that the observer influences that which they observe through the mere presence of the attention of the scientist.
In the third millennium BC in the area of the Persian gulf (modern day Iran and Iraq) settle farming and the domestication of animals allowed the first permanent city states to come into being. This process also saw the establishment of organised labour, accounting and construction mathematics and the first recorded written languages. The surpluses generated by these efficiencies allowed for the building of magnificent state buildings. It is the remnants of these artifacts that mark the beginning of “recorded history”. From our modern perspective even the past is validated through technological artifacts.
We re-apply these laws out of their natural context in order to support human existence. For example, the pressures that build up inside a capped volcano, eventually lead to an eruption. Understanding this principle allows one to build an ‘artificial volcano’ (heating an substance within a confined space) and by regulating and channeling the explosion we can create a steam engine, which can be used to transport people and things faster than any animal. There is nothing intrinsically or morally wrong with this procedure provided that society is so organised that what is taken from nature in this way is replaced in another. Our current, rather belated attempts to establish an atmospheric carbon balance, is an important illustrator of the need to act on this principle.
The development of the telescope-microscope principle. In essence all technologies are extensions of human capacities. The animal kingdom as a whole also has many capacities that are extensions of the human. There is not a single human faculty, be it sensing, moving, strength, tolerance to adverse conditions, etc, which is not greatly exceeded by one or more members of the animal kingdom. But the animal kingdom is en-souled, and if we want to make used of it we have to win it over to do our bidding. In contrast our own machines are en-souled by human beings. It therefore puts a far greater moral responsibility on humanity when machines are used than it does when animals are used, for when we work with animals we do so in conjunction with their own soul nature. If we leave our souls at the door when we create our machines then, this begs the question as to what does en-soul our machinery.
Almost everything that is being said here, in relation to science, is also applicable to the mode rn economic system, by which our modern world is regulated. A parallel ‘hijacking’ of the modern economic impulse has taken place that almost exactly matches the corporatisation of science. This is not surprising as economy reflects the energy liberated by the application of technology to nature.
The excellent observation of the English scientist J Bell Pettigrew (illustrated from his 1908 publication “Design in Nature”, which contains a staggering 2,000 detailed line drawings of natural forms) is one of many cases in point. It is not that good science is not done, but that it is relegated to a secondary status if its fruit do not bear technical and commercial fruits. Thus the official history of science tends to be the history of the development of useful technology, whilst all else is relegated to the footnotes.
The acceleration of sciences dependence upon corporate sponsorship over the last decade has been marked. Unlike machine-science, which even within its own restricted boundaries still holds to the ideal of objectivity, the modern trans-national limited company has, as its goal, not the pursuit of truth but the pursuit of growth, through the ever-increasing sale of its products. Its relationship to the truth is totally different and the priority of is research is to reassure the political regulators that its products are safe and to reassure the public that they are both safe and will do what they are claimed to do. At best this leads to an objective conflict of interest and at worst it relegates ‘science’ to a subdivision of the marketing department. Recently there has emerged a further complication. The traditional open nature of scientific discovery relies upon peer review of ones research. When your peers may be employees of rival companies this becomes extremely difficult and somewhat problematical. There is yet a further conflict of interest, for when a government body wishes to assemble a committee of expert scientific opinion to determine the safety of a product or procedure its scientific experts are often drawn from the very industry that stand to benefit from a positive ruling.
The General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs (GATT), subscribed to by the world’s governments in the early 90’s delegated many its political functions to global economic interests. A subsequent raft of such trade agreements have made it possible for predominantly corporate influences international institutions to legally challenge government policy when it stands in the way of their ‘right’ to market their products. Thus it is that most of what passes for protective legislation and government funded services is, or soon will be, technically illegal according to international economic law. This is a move which has largely gone unnoticed by most people, whose ability to influence their own society has rapidly diminished. This has largely been compensated for by the increased ability to choose the next pop star, or the next celebrity eviction from our media screens.
This self-contradictory nature is further supplemented by the schizophrenic way in which the “no evidence” rule is used. It is typically used like a switch, and turned whichever way is convenient at the time, so that, on the one hand, there is no scientific evidence that a traditional herbal remedy is safe, even though it might have been used for many hundreds of years. On the other had there is no evidence that a highly toxic byproduct of the aluminum smelting industry (fluoride), which is routinely placed into the drinking water of most Americans (and the population of Birmingham UK) is harmful because there has been no extensive research into the long term effects upon humans.
I hope that the reader will have discerned by now that I am not anti-scientific. On the contrary. If the reader mistakenly feels that I am advocating irrationality this is not true. The whole point of my argument is that science itself has become irrational, in its current form, and if we want to continue to develop a rational society we must reject it in its current limited form. Neither am I against technology or the fruits of science. It is the narrow context in which they are judged and applied that I am questioning. Seen in a wider context we would probably choose not to apply many of science's discoveries and would quite probably chose different priorities for research than those pursued at present. By restoring the human dimension to science and re-validating personal inner and outer experience the priorities most surely would change, and no doubt greatly increase, as would the eligibility of people to train their re-humanised scientific faculties in the pursuit of a compassionate objectivity.