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| From Bryan Hyde |
First, a little ad to pay the bills-- I really need an infusion of money for some unexpected expenses (on top of the expected ones). PayPal and Venmo are faster, so that would be preferable.
Thank you, and onward to the content.
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I absolutely love science. I always have. I had a reputation as a mad scientist when I was in school-- I'm not sure if it was deserved, but I did love experimenting (and I don't mean with drugs).
But, this thing being called "science" today isn't science.
Science isn't written on stone tablets. It doesn't get handed down from On High. It isn't based on a person, or even on a particular result. It isn't consensus and it doesn't discourage inquiry. Questioning the current theory is how it advances. Science is never settled, even if some ideas have been so thoroughly falsified it's probably a waste of time to keep trying to make them fit the facts. Or force the facts to fit your wishes. That doesn't mean you can't tweak the ideas that are left after you discard what definitely isn't true if it keeps getting you closer to fitting your good observations.
Science isn't imposed on anyone and no one gets punished (by anything other than reality) if they don't "believe in" science. You don't have to believe in gravity for it to work on you and cause you to suffer the consequences if you ignore it. No "Bureau of Gravitation" is necessary to punish non-believers.
Science is the process. It is the exploration; the experiments. It is designed to get you closer to understanding reality. It doesn't dictate reality.
Carl Sagan warned us of this type of thing before he died. I suspect he was sure the threat would come from the Right-statists, but it didn't. Not this time. But, again, once you mix in politics of any variety, science is destroyed. His biases prevented even him from thinking clearly about politics.
Just like everything else, once you mix politics with science you no longer have science. You only have politics at that point.
Sometimes if I'm in the library I'll pick up a science magazine; the quality of which has suffered greatly in the past several years. Now politics infuses nearly every article. To the detriment of science.
"Everything is political" only if you foolishly make everything political.
Please don't confuse politics for science. That's how science dies. And that wouldn't be good for any of us in the long run.