On Science and Philosophy

[Paje]

Got this from Wired Magazine [February 2008 issue]
Although I don't fully agree with the article, I thought some of the
things the author pointed out might help since we've mentioned science
from time to time in our discussions.

Morality, spirituality, the meaning of life – science doesn’t handle
those issues well at all. But that’s cool. We have art and religion
for that stuff. Science also assumes predictable cause and effect in a
world that’s a chaotic, bubbling stew of randomness. But that’s OK,
too. Our approximations are usually good enough. No, the real reason
science sucks is that is makes us look bad. It makes us bit players in
the Big Story of the universe, and it exposes some key limitations of
the human brain. Look at it this way: Before science, we humans had
dominion over the Earth, the center of the universe. Now we’re just a
bunch of hairless apes on a wet rock orbiting a minor star in a
marginal galaxy. Even worse, those same cortexes that invented science
can’t really embrace it. Science describes the world with numbers
(ratio of circumference to diameter: pi) and abstractions (particles!
waves! particles!). But our intractable brains evolved on a diet of
campfire tales. Fantastic explanations (angry gods hurling lightning
bolts) and rare events with dramatic outcomes (saber-toothed tiger
attacks) make more of an impact on us than statistical norms.
Evolution gave us brains that crave certainty, with irrational fears
of crashing in an airplane and a built-in weakness for just-so stories
about intelligent design. Meanwhile, the true wonders revealed by the
scientific method – species that change into new species over time,
continents that float around the planet, a quantum-mechanical world
where nothing is for sure – are worse than counterintuitive. To a
depressingly large number of us, they’re downright threatening. In
other words, thanks to evolution, half of all Americans don’t believe
in evolution. That’s the universe for you: impersonal, uncaring and
ironic. –THOMAS HAYDEN

Some thoughts:
(1) "No, the real reason science sucks is that is makes us look bad.
It makes us bit players in the Big Story of the universe, and it
exposes some key limitations of the human brain." >> Yes, as
Shakespeare writes, "...and all the men and women are merely players."
But this doesn't make us look bad at all. It is in this awareness of
human capacity [or the lack of it], that we are able to acknowledge
the superabundance of the reality we face. As in the "Insight" article
by Fr. Ferriols, "the stance of a human being has always to be a
tension between a sense of knowledge and a sense of ignorance." So
while science helps us answer questions about the world around us [and
thus add to the body of knowledge, "lights" things up], it is also
man's unending thirst for knowledge [eg human nature: we are never
content with what we have] that keeps him in the "dark." I guess this
also holds true for the revealing-concealing nature of Being [?]
(2) "Even worse, those same cortexes that invented science can’t
really embrace it." >> While this might seem bad to the author, it is
true. Again, we see how man can never fully grasp the reality that
lies before him. I think we can also relate this to astonishment as
the pathos of a philosopher. Scientists, like the great thinkers, have
this attitude of constant astonishment. As was mentioned in class,
scientists study whatever there is available just as the great
thinkers accepted what was thrown to them by Being, and they always
knew that they did not know everything.

[will...@gmail.com]

I believe the main problem is actually with the perspective of the
author. That is, he seems to want the universe to be like the world of
Teletubbies where everything is warm, fuzzy and the center of the
universe is a cute baby. Basically he craves simplicity: he wants
everything to be understandable (which isn't) which is why he
immediately dismisses science as something... imbeciliating.