With sciences “triumph” over religion modern scientific academics have supplanted the previous “religious” academics as the purveyors “truth.“ The problem, however, is that while science is great in figuring out the workings of things, at least to certain small scale, it has no moral foundation to guide people on how to use this information. So almost from it’s modern inception science has been struggling to find “it’s way” so to speak in not just providing information but in telling people how “best” to use it.
Except the small things after science, I agree. Science and religion are about different things. I see no incompatibility between the two if you have a reasonably open mind.
This is where pure science quickly devolves into ideology which in the opinion of many is just another form of religious belief.
Its not about how science is devolving, its about the politicization of science: people using science as a lever for an end goal without caring much about the actual science. Political ideology, left or right is not particularly helpful in the current debate on climate change.
(Note: Most people confuse market based and command directed economies with capitalism and socialism respectively). Science itself can’t seem to prove which or what combination of these or other economic theories is best.
Most people view the left and right as a linear scale. I see it more like a circle with communism on the extreme left and fascism on the extreme right ending up being much the same thing in a different guise. In both cases the world of politics and economic endeavor are completely controlled by one group. They hate each other so much because they are exactly the same and thus occupy the exact same niche. They are both equally unsustainable.
The best is when there is some sort of balance of power between the 'left' social and the 'right' economic/business. The Scandinavian countries seem to do this balancing trick the best and have both strong social programs and strong economies.
Another problem for modern science is it’s deconstructionist nature. In order to progress quickly and more “accurately” (at least at the small scale) science breaks things into parts. While this may hasten “progress” it often overlooks the consequences of such progress on the large scale.
That is not a failure of science, but a failure of the application of science. There are also branches of every scientific area that examine large scale systems.
Sometimes, very simple science can quite elegantly explain seemingly complex things. Robotics have done some really cool things in understanding some basic bug behavior by putting together robots with as little as 6 simple pieces of decision making logic.
We as a species have a bias toward the simple and immediate that leads to a failure in the application of things discovoured by 'science'.
This is one of my biggest gripes about the we-must-reduce-carbon-emissions-to-stop-global warming/climate change crowed is that this “solution” itself is based once again on deconstructionist narrowly focused “scientific” study. Data suggests Methane could easily be a greater problem.
Again, this is the politicization of science, this time by the left.
The political left has seized upon CO2 as its big stick and has chosen it as its primary weapon in the war-on-climate. The world of science has known about the risks/issues of methane as a greenhouse gas for quite a while.
The short term suppression of 'contradictory' evidence in the scientific community is a short term issue that deserves to be brought to light and corrected. The right wing claim that it is 'smoking gun' proof that all climate science is false is yet another politicization of science. The right's next big stick in the war.
So is “science” the best way of learning about our world?
It is a tool. No more, no less. It needs to be applied properly and judiciously to help us better understand our place in this world and how to best manage it. Pure science is the best tool for figuring out the how of things. Applied science is an art that requires pulling together multiple disciplines to achieve a goal or objective.
