Science As
Rationalization And Ultimate Religion
The main
observation here is that rationalization on the social level is rationalization on the personal level performed by
macro-systems (social systems from our point of view). Scientism is the
ultimate religion. Calling this a dangerous anti-science position is natural
and expected at this point in evolution.
Every adaptive system has what can be called a
perception apparatus and information processing structures and so forth.
Science is part of the perception/thinking of social systems. All perception
has its “blind spot”. Perception is ignorant of everything except for a tiny
slice that it evolved to select and focus attention on. Thinking is there to
interpret in a certain evolved way. Humans, being parts as well as environment
of social systems, cannot grasp the perceived world of social systems, let
alone map out their blind spots. Scientists are especially suspect when it
comes to judging the blind spots of science.
We witness science evolving. Evolution is not
development toward something better, somehow improved, but the mere fact of
systems and their environment coevolving in a “red-queen race” that moves
nowhere (except if there are entirely novel ingredients to the general theory
of evolution, especially Global Suicide).
Complexity is produced, but there is no monotone development of any other
parameter.
So Science evolves. What can we expect?
Science in its beginnings can fruitfully compare
with primate perception and thinking in its beginnings. Starting to be able to
think systematically is helpful to single animals as well as groups. So is
communication of threats, language helping to organize foraging and all that.
What developed out of these beginnings is far removed from what one could have
naively expected: A rational agent knowing itself. Such has an evolutionary disadvantage; it does not procreate
efficiently.
Instead, language culminated soon in “holy books”.
Human thinking is almost entirely rationalization of irrational and largely
unconscious processes. Many scientists believe that science is the very means
around this problem, but evolution does not stop to act on the biological
level. Science itself is part of the perception and “thinking” of social
systems, and absent any fundamentally new ingredient against usual development,
these beginnings of social rationality must be expected to develop into the rationalization of
irrationality of
those systems.
Science is highly biased by establishment dogma,
confirmation bias, publishing bias, and other specific forms of biases. The
scientific method is already on the level of the human scientists mainly
rationalization of scientists’ belief systems. The history of science shows
that the established consensus at any time is based on fundamentally false beliefs. Not
news any of this, but what is news: This will likely become progressively worse rather than better, plainly because evolution
generally works like this! You would not even exist if evolution were not
evolution, and that means that perception/thinking turns into rationalization
of the irrational quite generally.
Naïve scientism subscribes to the expectation that
this vaguely defined thing called science is somewhat above all else and
inherently good as long as it is good science, which is circular of course,
like all good rationalization. Especially, the almost dogmatic belief inside
science is that it throughout improves. It supposedly asymptotically closes in
on the truth and also in ethical dimensions becomes better all the time. And
this it will simply via science, like any proper religion, defining “good” and
“truth” itself, namely scientifically. All this is consistent, circular,
tautological, like all fundamental theory must be, so science should be
expected to deliver exactly this, even by its most enthusiastic supporters.
Science today is shaped mainly by selection pressures
that emerge on the social level. Scientists do not do science anymore, science
does them. Science is now shaped by adaptation inside macro evolution and it
has in this sense decoupled from human influence, while of course still be
emergent inside the human substrate. Scientists, once a tiny number of the
brightest individual humans, are now an army of ants that are selected by
proper mechanisms, and the bias is not against left or right, male or female,
religion or secularism. The bias is whatever it happens to be; think peacock
feathers and spastic mating dances.
This is Religion?
Belief systems with totalitarian ambitions are
often compared or identified with religions. All these start in well meaning
beginnings, with Jesus and Buddha and Pythagoras and suchlike. After becoming a
threat to whatever went before, they are persecuted, fed to wild animals in
Rome or silenced like Galileo. When they become successful and share power, the
persecution is still remembered, and so the Jesuits, like the skeptics
movement, come to defend, never tired to point out how persecuted they are, how
very important it is that others agree and support their efforts lest we want
to be all burned alive again. Criticism is heresy. The dark ages thereby
arrive. The religion starts to make us suffer and at the same time blinds us
away from that truth, but even as you have your doubts, you fear: What if this is the best
there is because all alternatives are worse? And what can I do? I will be
alone, an outcast.
We escape into irrational hope: The catholic
church will reform under the next pope, science and technology will turn us
from stressed out cog-wheels chained to computers into modern bonobos roaming
enlightened through bonobo paradise in just about a few years time. None of
this can possibly ever happen, because such systems emerged via coevolution.
They would die trying.
- Cults may not allow you to call them cults.
Primitively oppressive countries may not allow you to talk about freedom.
- Usual religions allow you to call them
religions, though they all push you to give them special status among other
religions. Countries that are relatively free allow you to discuss the internal
power structures and oppression.
- But there is another, more sinister level. Only
those countries that are advanced and that have effectively removed most
freedom work like this: You must explicitly call them "free", perhaps
even “the land of the free” or even the defender of freedom in the whole world.
If you do not, you are quietly removed from the discourse, labeled as an enemy
of freedom.
Science is the most advanced and in a sense most
dangerous religion of all. It has successfully done what no other religion
achieved: You must pledge allegiance to science as the very opposite of religion or you will be removed
from the discourse.
The true dark ages are upon us humans. These dark
ages are the ones that will turn whatever remains of us into mere functioning
parts of monsters. The old dark ages were primitive and a few could light their
secret candles and thus discern some shadows. The new dark ages you cannot
enlighten, because these dark ages are brightly lit. Blinded by lasers glued to
our retinas, there is nothing you can hope to see but the light of science.
Outlook
I put the victory of science into scientific terms
rather than jubilant enthusiasm. Such is lamented as neo-luddism, which
serves to prove the main point: not rationality, but rationalization of irrationality is our main role, not just inside our own heads.
This must be kept in mind while entertaining future scenarios.
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Rationalization (or rationalisation)
is a term used in sociology to refer to a process in which an increasing
number of social actions become based on considerations of teleological
efficiency or calculation rather than on motivations derived from morality,
emotion, custom, or tradition. Many sociologists regard it as a central aspect
of modernity, manifested especially in Western society; as a behaviour of the
capitalist market; of rational administration in the state and bureaucracy; of
the extension of modern science; and of the expansion of modern technology.
Many sociologists, critical theorists and contemporary philosophers have argued
that rationalization, as falsely assumed progress, has a negative and
dehumanizing effect on society, moving modernity away from the central tenets
of enlightenment.The founders of sociology were acting as a critical reaction
to rationalization:
In psychology and logic, rationalization (also known as making excuses)
is an unconscious defense mechanism in which perceived controversial behaviors
or feelings are logically justified and explained in a rational or logical
manner in order to avoid any true explanation, and are made consciously
tolerable-- or even admirable and superior-- by plausible means.
Rationalization encourages irrational or unacceptable behavior, motives, or
feelings and often involves ad hoc hypothesizing. This process ranges from
fully conscious (e.g. to present an external defense against ridicule from
others) to mostly subconscious (e.g. to create a block against internal
feelings of guilt). People rationalize for various reasons. Rationalization may
differentiate the original deterministic explanation of the behavior or feeling
in question. Sometimes rationalization occurs when we think we know ourselves
better than we do. It is also an informal fallacy of reasoning.
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