Dear Friends,
It seems to me, one thing we know, is that everything science teaches us is wrong. How do we know this? Because science is evolutionary… not static. If science teaches us anything, it is that science is subject to change, when a better theory comes up. Isn’t science constant, like 1+1=2? To that line of argument I would point out, addition is math, not science, and math is a static realm of research. Science in its purest form is merely empirical observation. As our tools to sharpen our senses become ever more precise so do our observations. Our knowledge however can never be total and complete. Because we are limited to our five senses and the tools we are able to devise to magnify them. Therefore, science is never absolutely correct, it provides only an approximation of reality.
Science is a tool, not a way of ordering one’s life, mystical, nor is it a god. It is a measuring device like a ruler. Its theories are elegant and have been empirically proven over and over. As were Newton’s laws of motion… until they were discovered to be insufficient to explain some motions. Now we have Einstein’s theory of relativity and special relativity, that better explains motion, yet someday even that vaunted theory will fall to a better one. Plate tectonics describes the movements of the Earth pretty well, but if it were perfect, we could accurately predict volcanoes, earth quakes and tsunamis. Once geologists quantize their measurements sufficiently, we will be able to predict those things… and more. Then we will ask new questions we don’t know enough to even ask yet.
Don’t we have the standard of living we do because of science? While you cannot build a house without a tape measure, you need other things as well. The fact that evaporating liquids cool the surface they evaporate from, was observed when Ben Franklin and John Hadley realized that if ether evaporated from a thermometer, the temperature of that thermometer would drop. Others measured the effect and quantized it, then engineers used those quantized measurements to create air conditioning, refrigeration and heat pumps. Science provides the observations, the measures, and engineers provide the craftiness to do something useful with those measurements. So, yes and no, science is a partner with engineering to improve the lot of Mankind, but it didn’t and could not have done it alone.
Because of the advances in our condition, science has become the new Shiva, Quetzalcoatl or Moloch. A god we are willing to sacrifice others to. By idolizing science as an infallible god we have taken it out of its rightful place and made it something it is not. Which perverts it. It has been so successful at measuring the world, we want to replace religion, politics and humanity itself with it. We have become so enamored with science we forget history. Because of this, many people are willing to cede their sovereignty, agency and humanity, to anyone who preaches they represent the true god, science. Falling prone at the feet of the “experts” because they are science’s priests. The experts have become the servants of Shiva, Quetzalcoatl and Moloch… and we have the abortion clinics to prove it.
Worshiping a ruler is not nor has it ever been a good idea. Paying homage to a tape measure is as absurd as it sounds. Rather, the wise man uses the tape measure, to measure, a hammer to pound nails and a saw to cut wood. The tape measure may be the best there is, but it is worthless at sawing wood, hammering nails or replacing blue prints. Perhaps it would be better to put science back in the tool pouch, and use religion to determine morality, civics to keep government limited and common sense to keep them in their own lanes. Science is useful but it is not a god. To place it upon such a pedestal, is not only pointless, but makes science a caricature of itself. Especially when it is a tool subject to change at the next discovery. Because science is never right, it is always evolving to be… right-er.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
