I was thinking this morning about a comment on one of my blog posts that the older the person got, the less they believed in science. That's a fair call when science can be used to justify agendas, or that seemingly verified truths are debunked, that data can be manipulated and results skewed. I like science. It's discovered some pretty awesome stuff. I'm a science fiction fan. I'm married to a guy with a degree in astrophysics just because he was stoned and wanted to know how the world works, so went to uni to do some maths and shit.
I mean we always have to circle the question whether the science is the ulimate authority, or whether it's just the best tool for testing reality and truth. They're not even the same thing, even if we treat them as if they are.
Things get messy when you start tugging on that thread, because I start getting into that realm of 'oh not everything is verifiable by science' as an excuse to defend absolute bollocks. Jamie'll say that about star signs, and I like astrology and still can't shake it as just a pattern we've made up about ourselves to understand ourselves. It feels true for me, really deeply true, and I'm unwilling to discount it as a knowledge system.
So yeah. Things can feel really right and still be wrong according to 'science'. It's a subject Jamie and I often disagree on.
But going the other way โ pretending that only whatโs been measured and verified counts as real โ doesnโt quite sit properly with me either. We have to know that science is super powerful but it's also pretty human - it follows trends and government priorities and funding. I believe in plant medicine and the knowledge that's come down through grandmothers about herbs, for example, and just because they haven't funded tests into how comfrey can knit bone, as it's folk name suggests, doesn't mean it's not truth. It just hasn't had that focus on it yet. Science is always correcting itself, which is awesome, but that means what we 'know' according to science is always, always shifting. It's fucking mercurial.
Even Jamie will totally agree that there's a layer that doesn't come from studies or data - some things we just feel things are true. But then he'd turn around and say firstly, there's a heap of universal truths you can't argue with, and that perhaps we just haven't found the right tools yet.
I keep thinking about how I've always had this utter belief, this undeniable faith, that the natural world isn't inert - that animals and plants and even places carry a lot more than their physical parts. Kids will start there even before they are taught, giving rocks names or picking up on 'energy' in trees and forests even if we're looking at it as something separate to us.
So on the way into work, I was thinking about how there's this innate, pre science instinct to attribute awareness to the world, like a default setting, and that what we call the scientific worldview is just the learned behaviour over the top of it all. Because how often does science 'prove' or circle back to stuff we 'knew' all along? Not in a hippie 'the forest has a spirit' kinda way, but how they've only recently 'proved' that trees communicate through fungal networks, that plants respond to stress, that systems in nature are way more interconneccted and responsive than science used to believe. They don't call it 'animism' - it's just different language to describe what we always knew, whether on some deep tribal, cultural level, or just a suspicion or a feeling.
It's like the problem of consciousness - we dont' really have a solid, scientific explanation for subjective experience, not just about how we process, but how we feel it. If we can't answer that precisely, how can we say where it stops - animals? insects? rocks? Just because we confidently assert something - 'souls are bollocks' - does not make that truth either. We don't as much as we like to think, even though modern science is always correcting and finding new truths.
Science doesnt know everything, but that's not the same thing as saying the thing you believe in, the pattern you have found, is true. We're pretty good at seeing patterns - some brains are harder wired for it than others - and they can be complex, and almost indisputable, to a point - but at some point we have to verify them somehow, or they could be dangerous.
But some things are crazily, inherently true - for examples, animist traditions and indigenous relationships to land. They weren't random. They were ways of living that were totally grounded, sustainable, attentive, and based on the idea that the natural world was responsive and not inert. So whatever you call it, whether it's spirit or fungal networks or animal consciousness or oneness in all things, it's a belief that leads to a different behaviour and one that we probably should go back to instead of fucking up the entire world so we have no natural world to support life at all.
I mean, we can't build up a whole belief system based on vibes alone - like God will heal my child and fuck modern medicine, or will stop me being run over by a car if I walk into the middle of the road or if I swallow bleach I can rid myself of COVID. Or that Israel is chosen by God and has the right to kill everyone else to spread the kingdom. Some things are morally fucked up and need to be questioned if not outright quashed.
To me science is the best tool we have for testing claims we make about reality - I don't believe science in itself is evil or in fact a God, but stops us believing just in feelings, just in case those feelings can be dangerous. It's a good way of making sense of the world, which is all any of us are trying to do. We can't get rid of these older instincts that can be messy and unreliable, because they're pretty good at pointing at something undeniably true and real and tangible, but just uses different language in a pre science kinda way. Like I know love is the greatest bond we have, and we should default to compassion and kindess, before I know that it's actually a biological imperative and helps with social cohesion.
Look, I'm a Libran. I'm about balance. I believe in science, but I also don't think it's the final word. When it works to challenge, revise, question, discover - without the vested interest - it's pretty bloody cool. I'm happy to put my faith in it and question it and I sure as hell love it when it 'proves' something I've known all along.
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I believe in science but also believe that there's pretty sizable gaps in human knowledge of conventional science/physics. A lot of what we still consider mysterious or unexplainable exist in these voids just waiting to be discovered/explained. This is one use case of AI that excites me. Quite a few researchers are doing amazing research on antigravity now using elements like bismuth and high voltage electrical fields. I think this is just one of many mysteries that will be cracked in our lifetimes. Curiosities will be satisfied but part of me will be a little sad when there are no mysteries left.
It's wild that most of this has been realised in the last twenty odd years. AI is still fallible, of course, but it's certainly enabling us to move 'forward' even faster which freaks me out. Sometimes I just want to go back to the '90's.
There are some very scary elements to AI, for sure. I think advances in medicine and the sciences will be very good for humanity though. I long for the 90's sometimes too. We didn't realize how good we had it (at least I didn't)!
No
.I mean did we even think about it??? Too busy living IRL
Amen to that!
Believe in Science... I have no idea how that became a thing to say... But it poops me out.
Understand is better than belief... But for some reason, believe was better marketing?
I think we are all trying to find meaning in a world that is very fluid with 'truth'. I too hate having to justify it, or be told that somehow I'm lacking intelligence for putting any faith in science. Yep, it's all about the stories we tell and what FEELS believable to us, even if you can't verify it by any means at all, and even if it's revealed as a lie.
I like the science behind growing plants healthily with adjusted soil and supplemental feeding but I also "know" that different plants have different "likes" that should be addressed to help them grow well. Hence the notes about how they do each year. It helps me remember what I "know".
Well, yes. You are applying your own tested methods... This too is 'science'.
Science is not supposed to be an object of faith. I use science as a method of investigation, testing, falsification, prediction, and refinement. The moment someone says โtrust the scienceโ as an unquestionable doctrine, theyโve shifted from science into authority and belief.
To believe is have faith because there's uncertainty. To know wouldn't require belief.
Knowledge itself may still be provisional, but belief begins where verification ends.
Science is extremely powerful at measuring mechanisms. It is far weaker at answering questions of meaning, value, consciousness, beauty, purpose, or moral direction.
That's my two cents anyways.
No it's absolutely not, I agree. But people pitch it as such, as if 'belief' and 'faith' draw a line in the sand. In this instance, I would say 'belief' is 'accept as truth', and even that gets fuzzy as people tend to now see story and emotional experience as also a kind of truth.
Yes. And this current world seems to expect us to outline where we stand on those issues, constantly, and even with tested, measured outcomes, we are expected to also have a 'feeling' about this, to back up 'beliefs', if this makes sense. Science does get political, even if we do not wish it to be.
It can answer questions about those things, however, disassembling the why we, for example, experience prejudice (both neg/pos) or other biological imperatives we accept as a greater truth or moral imperative.
I agree! Thank you for your time.
Love your user name by the way
Thank you.
It wouldn't let me add an "!" At the end of it.
Science isn't perfect, but scientific method is the closest we have to a decent system to figuring out how stuff actually works; ideally, with an open mind to everything else not science-explained. Unfortunately, nowadays a lot of pseudo-science (and a huuuuuuuuuuge lack of critical thinking) puts science in a bad light.
I don't blindly believe in anything, especially the "science". I believe in the Scientific Process, which is being tossed to the side in the name of Partisan Science.
Yes, I think again this is what we should be doing - always questioning. It doesn't mean science should be outright dismissed, because sometimes valuable funding MUST be sought - that's not a bad thing if there are checks and measures. But we can't just dismiss all science.
I guess my point is that much of what is being quoted as 'The Science' these days hasn't been a product of the Scientific Process. The Science that results from those actually using the Scientific Process should be taken seriously. Most of the Science today comes from meta analysis' of bulk topic studies, which follows much looser standards.
Yeah and there are a heap of cases where research has been poorly done yet is accepted as truth. There's one, for eg, about how women who adopt a power pose can have higher levels of testosterone and be more successful - this has been going for years and people believe it, but they redid the studies and there was no correlation at all. SOOOO many egs like that - yet once these ideas are in the popular consciousness (vaccines cause autism) they become runaway trains, even if people find out they are dubious/untrue - the myth making becomes very pervasive.
I believe in science and that it has a great future ahead. Science will explain all the wonders of this world.
Thanks so much for the kind tip. It's really appreciated.
Fungal networks proving what animists knew, natureโs way of keeping secrets.
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as they say, word. I don't think "believe in science" is correct, since science, unlike religion, doesn't ask you to blindly believe. I'm hugely skeptical of the medical system, as I know it's been heavily perverted by the interests of Big Pharma. I don't believe in Big Pharma. Or politicians. But science is pretty freaking awesome.
I think a great mistake was made esp during covid, because all skepticism was met with "you don't trust the science or believe in it". In reality, the scientists working on anything have very little to do with the marketing and leadership, e.g. how that something is used and promoted afterward. So the question was never over assuming the scientists were malicious a-holes.
Also, we have a tendency to say "now we know" because we're scared of not knowing, which kinda goes against the very idea of science. And I'm skeptical of that. The best we can do is, this is what we know so far.
Have much to say in response, have drunk wine, later x
Update: @riverflows, I paid out 17.621 HIVE and 0.000 HBD to reward 7 comments in this discussion thread.