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, butrationalization 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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