Ah, I think I see your problem!
You don't actually have a problem with science. What you have is a problem with engineering.
Engineering is the dumber, more promiscuous cousin of science. Engineering takes scientific principles or results and seeks to apply them to every situation it can. It is the act of advocacy and application of what comes out of that lab. Engineering is, by it's nature, prone to excess and a lack of self-reflection. It is the place where questions are cut off and methods are brought to bear.
It is not science.
When you talk about science as something about which there is inadequate skepticism, I think people who love science - like me - get upset because science is skepticism itself - almost literally. The scientific method demands eternal skepticism. No facts are facts - only observations. There are no truths, only theories.
Engineering - where the scientific rubber meets the human road - is filled with prejudices and excesses and is known to lack humility and skepticism. Engineering is okay when it applies the actual rules of science to itself, but it rarely does.
I think you are combining concerns that need to be separated. First, there is the concern that science will pull back the romantic/social/human veil and just reveal ugliness. True, science demands we look at the skull beneath the face, but if science doesn't look at the face itself, that's because there are questions that are simply so complicated that scientists don't try to solve them. Science can only reveal small pieces of the universe at a time. So that's not a problem with science itself, only the analytical technology.
Consider the fact that at the same time we sent a person to the moon, there was not a single scientist in the world who could tell you with any precision how it was that a bumblebee could keep itself aloft. That is actually true. Nobody understood how bumblebees and other heavy-bodied insects could generate enough lift to fly. All the equations they had predicted that, from an engineering standpoint, a bumblebee could not fly. Why these equations were inadequate was simply too difficult a question with too little reward and so it went unanswered for decades (the answer is that the bumblebee creates vortices in the air with one stroke of its wings that it pushes against with the next stroke. It actually turns out to be a useful question to answer. It has helped people design far more efficient propellors and even come up with concepts for other propulsion systems - mainly nautical.)
In that situation, a scientist would have been comfortable saying "I don't know why bumblebees can fly". An engineer would have said (as many did) that the equations were adequate, they just hadn't been applied properly. Scientists say "I don't know" all the time. Engineers are paid to come up with answers, whether the science is there or not.
But you also seem to be suggesting that answers to unknowns people have come up with without applying science should be trusted OVER science. And this is a very bad suggestion. Because, in the absence of knowledge, a romantic suggestion of why a bumblebee can fly is just as valid as a pseudo-scientific suggestion - so long as we agree that the real answer is "I don't know". Once you imply that there is some fount of knowledge that science has no recourse to or that somehow disappears in the presence of science, you are talking superstition. Anything can be tested scientifically, so long as we are content with the answer "I don't know". And we should be, but seldom are.
Finally, you seem to be suggesting that science has some power. The only power of science is as a method that is accessible to anyone. Engineering is an entirely different matter. There you are talking about the application of scientifically-created capital, and that really is a power relationship.
Boddi
On 10/5/06, ravi <gadfly at exitleft.org> wrote:
> At around 5/10/06 3:54 pm, Dwayne Monroe wrote:
> >
> > And so, at the end of the day, what it comes down to
> > is a request that as we face what might be called the
> > universe’s big strangeness (which is almost surely
> > bigger and stranger than our capacity to fully
> > understand) we show a bit of humility when choosing
> > investigative tools and methods. What we call science
> > (the method and the machinery) is good â€" very good
> > indeed â€" but there are questions it can’t answer
> > and powers it shouldn’t claim.
> >
> > Indeed, when people are excessively dazzled by the
> > burning chrome glow of “science†and forget its
> > limitations as well as the value of other,
> > ‘non-scientific’ techniques they tend to mis-use
> > “science†and wield it as a rhetorical weapon â€"
> > a ferocious thing unleashed like Fenrisulfr, set loose
> > to devour Odin at Ragnarok. This is “scientismâ€,
> > the abuse of science’s achievements for the purpose
> > of supporting various elitist ideas.
> >
> > This, at least, is my understanding of Ravi’s
> > position.
> >
>
> Now, if you had posted this bit (but what's with all the strange
> characters?) a few days ago, I could have spent less time explaining
> myself in my tortured, verbose manner, and more time reading my primes
> book :-).
>
> Regarding the rest of your post, it is in fact the overwhelming success
> of science (and I am leaving the quotes out here since I think you and I
> probably define it fairly similarly) that calls for greater scrutiny of
> how it is put to use (in the world and in rhetoric).
>
> --ravi
>
> --
> Support something better than yourself: ;-)
> PeTA: http://www.peta.org/
> GreenPeace: http://www.greenpeace.org/
> If you have nothing better to do: http://platosbeard.org/
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