What’s Wrong With The World Part XVIII—More Folly—The Role of Science
The Role of Science
Oddly enough, this is the only aspect of the rot of the modern world which I think could be solved by a diligent application of philosophical learning. If students and scientists were trained, not only in science, but in the philosophical and metaphysical underpinnings logically necessary for science, and if scientists publically and frequently repeated the rule and hence the limitations of the scientific method, then those things which claim to be science but which are patently absurd unscience and antiscience, such as socialism, materialism, eugenics, social engineering, would be etiolated of their usurpative and abusive claim to be science or scientific.
All that would be needed is for famous scientists and partisans of science—including science fiction writers—to admit that (1) science as the study of nature form no theories and draws no conclusions about the supernatural, not even to say whether it exists or not; (2) science does not and cannot apply any theories to those aspects of human nature or human existence which are non-empirical, i.e., the only part of human life open to scientific study is biology; (3) science does study neuropsychology, which is the study of the physical substrate of human thought; psychology aside from neuropsychology is not science; (4) science does not and cannot apply its methods and theories to metaphysical or philosophical speculation, such as the nature of cause and effect, the existence and nature of free will, and so on; modern theories of physics that deny the existence of cause and effect a fine level are metaphysical speculations, by their nature unsupported by experiment and innately undisproveable; (5) science does not and cannot apply its methods and theories to economics nor politics. Socialism is not more ‘scientific’ than Capitalism; (6) science does not and cannot apply its methods and theories to speculations about the conditions before the Big Bang, outside the cosmos, beyond the edge of reality, not even to say whether or not such things exist. The claim that nature is ‘all that exists’ is a metaphysical claim, neither confirmed nor denied by any possible empirical observation, and therefore is not science; (7) science can neither confirm nor deny any ethical nor normative statement of any kind whatsoever, since such things are not open to empirical confirmation or refutation. Scientists have no moral authority to hold forth on any issues of the public weal, except in cases where expert testimony is needed to clarify disputes of fact. In other words, the role of honest scientists is to abolish junk science, ecological scaremongering, and so on, not to support it.
Since the modern error here is merely an exaggeration and idolatry of science in a fashion any honest scientist would find repugnant, the honest study of science would soon soberly and utterly defeat the claims of the various pseudo-sciences and leeches attempting to impersonate the prestige of science.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
