How many times in the past three years have I heard that magical incantation, that preemptive “appeal to authority fallacy”—“the Science changed”—in some lame attempt to “justify” the arbitrary Brownian motion of some politician’s idiotic policies regarding COVID?
Other than wanting to toss my cookies when another drone spouts the Approved Phrase of the Day, I can only shake my head at the abysmal ignorance and evasion evinced by anyone regurgitating those words.
I doubt even the great cartoonist Sidney Harris could have anticipated and parodied the inanity and the insanity that has clawed at us over the course of this non-pandemic. Over and over, the Received Wisdom announced that yet another “miracle occurs” when you adhere to their fantasy ideas of how viruses, immunity, vaccines, and society functions.
“Masks are more effective than vaccines.”
“These vaccines will stop the virus in its tracks”
“Staying home will save lives.”
“Masks work.”
“Social distancing works.”
“My mask protects you. Your mask protects me.”
“Just 100 days of wearing a mask, and we’ll be done with this.”
“Two weeks to flatten the curve, and we can all return to normal.”
“I am the Science”…
Lies, Damn Lies, and the Media have a lot to answer for.
The promulgators of these egregious and innumerable transgressions, of course, feel no shame, no remorse, no responsibility for the destructive consequences they have foisted upon a too-trusting and scientifically-illiterate people. Self-contradictions don’t concern these fools. They are unfazed by the dizzying course alterations they have implemented time-and-again. It they are called on their bullshit, these trolls and mental robots respond as they are programmed: “The Science changed.”
But science—as opposed to Science…—does not change. Not in any fundamental way, that is.
As many others have pointed out, “science” is a process, a way of approaching the world, a series of actions designed to discover what is real and what is not, what is true and what is false. It is not really a “thing.”
Indeed, the word comes to us via Latin—“scientia” from “sciens”—and essentially equates to “knowledge” or awareness of what exists.
Before the warping silliness of the recent pass made a mockery of language, addressing such misconceptions would not have been particularly urgent. But, pace H. L. Mencken, never underestimate the intelligence of the American masses. Very few folks ever bothered to do even a few minutes research or attempt actually to understand what “science” is or how it functions as one of humanity’s most valuable and well-used tools.
In a world in which astounding cluelessness is married with hardened and arrogant “certainty” based on nothing more substantial than the forked-tongued words of non-expert “experts,” we might all be better off if we avoided the word “science” and—in most occasions—substituted the phrase “scientific method.”
Imagine if our enemies had to say that “the scientific method changed” rather than seeking to mislead ordinary folks with their favorite catch-phrase. Harder to pull off that con game…
Announcing with fierce condescension that “the science changed”—for example, regarding the almost overnight shift on the (non)efficacy of masks against respiratory viruses—is as nonsensical and blithely revealing of one’s stupidity as would be the case if one declared that “the math has changed!”
Well. No. It has not. Not in any literal sense.
Arithmetic—addition, subtraction, multiplication, division—doesn’t change.
Algebra doesn’t change.
Geometry doesn’t change.
Trigonometry doesn’t change.
Calculus doesn’t change.
The basic concepts and formulae of mathematics don’t “change” willy-nilly and certainly not at the behest of political expediency.
The Pythagorean Theorem in geometry works the same, is just as true, and is just as useful now as it was 2500 years ago when Pythagoras discovered it.
WHAT CHANGES ARE THE INPUTS, THE EVIDENCE.
Put in the correct numbers, and you get a result that reflects reality. Cram in numbers determined by some fruity political “necessity,” and you get self-serving crap on a stick.
GIGO is as true in science as it is in math as it is in economics as it is in politics as it is in morality as it is in philosophy: garbage in, garbage out.
If I have a bank account with a healthy balance one month but that sinks into the red the next, that swift alteration is not due to “the Math” changing. That sorry state can be laid fully at the doorstep at me spending more than I earned.
Of course, if I were the feds, I’d just alter the definition of “debt” and enjoy a “surplus” because of yet another “miracle” that doesn’t bear too close a scrutiny…
If you fuck with what “science”—the “scientific method”—really means, what it really is and how it works, the only person you’re fooling is yourself…and the millions or billions of fellow travelers too blind to recognize that their stubborn obliviousness will eventually hurt or destroy themselves.
Reality certainly doesn’t give a fuck.
Reality will do whatever it is going to do.
People can claim that the Emperor wears resplendent robes. Weak-minded sycophants can applaud as he marches grandly down the street. Fearful souls can dutifully smile rather than face criticism from the royal guards or their enthralled neighbors.
But reality knows that the flabby bastard is strutting through the mud in his dirty skivvies…
“Science” doesn’t change. The “scientific method”—a way of gaining knowledge about the world—hasn’t changed.
The Scientific Method™ can be thought of as a circular—or maybe more precisely, an ascending spiral—tool of epistemology:
Observations
General Conclusion
Predictions
More observations
Modified (if necessary) general conclusion
More predictions
And so on, until you are satisfied that you have reached the truth or something close to it.
(And for those epistemologically ignorant writers who announce without a hint of self-awareness or irony that “we humans are, and will forever be, denied access to certain knowledge” or that “nothing is ever certain,” well, they can take a long walk off a short pier…and tell if they can “never” be certain that they are all wet after they fall into the lake… Sheesh…)
To consolidate this process, this method of gaining knowledge, we can combine “observations of things in the world”—“evidence”—with “reaching a general conclusion deriving from those observations” into “induction” or “inductive logic.”
And it is imperative to realize that ALL KNOWLEDGE BEGINS WITH OBSERVATIONS.
Making “predictions”—teasing out the implications of our general conclusion and what we might expect when encountering similar things in the future—is a task of “deduction” or “deductive logic.”
If you have correct/true premises (derived from your inductive general conclusions) and use them properly (in a “valid syllogism”), then your conclusion is both true and certain.
The Scientific Method, then, can be thought of as alternating between induction and deduction, of deciding what similarities and differences exist among entities and using our informed “guesses” to prepare ourselves for our next encounter with those existents and how we might use that tentative knowledge to our advantage.
We do not have to continue this process forever for all things, as the skeptics of the world would have us believe as they make their absolute statements, certain that there is no certainty…
At this point in human existence, the fact that “distilled water in an open container at sea level on earth boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit” is not a fact we need to keep observing and questioning for eternity…
Sure, we have to keep an active mind regarding many or most of our induction conclusions—since we cannot observe everything in the universe—and be prepared to deal with the odd “black swan,” but simply because our “observations” or the “evidence” may change does not in any way, shape, or form imply or mean that “the Science has changed.”
It has not.
The uncaring authoritarian ticks that have infested us in especially disgusting ways of late wouldn’t recognize or know “science,” i.e., the “scientific method,” if it bit them in the ass. They refuse to “be more explicit…in step two.” To do so would expose their intellectual nakedness. There is no there there. They wave their hands in unconvincing legerdemain and skip to the false conclusion they foist upon us while hoping the people they seek to fool never bother to point out that there is no new evidence, no new inputs, nothing that changes our understanding of reality.
Whether the issue is how to deal with a purported pandemic or an economic downturn or self-defense or the million-and-one issues reality places before us, the last thing the statists and collectivists and mystics want or are willing to do is to adhere to the principles of logic, reason, or critical thinking and “be more explicit…in step two.”
Easier—and apparently more effective, at least in the short term—simply to push the nonviable notion, the snake oil of “the Science changed” in order to get people to comply with self-destructive gobbledegook that ruins their own lives and creates victims who praise their oppressors in some warped version of Stockholm Syndrome.
I have said for decades that the vast majority of people do not want (real) freedom. Indeed, when confronted with the actual consequences resulting from instituting true liberty, the masses would run screaming away in horror and disbelief.
*sigh*
Sadly—or thankfully…—we can’t live other people’s lives for them. All we can do is attempt—usually unsuccessfully as far as changing minds goes…—to present the facts, the principles, the truth of reality and to present ourselves as exemplars of that lifestyle.
And sometimes—rarely, but…sometimes—some intellectually homeless person on the margin, someone who already doubts, someone who is prepared to open his eyes and see the unclothed emperor for the buffoon that he is will hear our words or watch our actions and see clearly for the first time and decide to live a life that is shorn of pretense or self-delusion and commit himself to living in reality and escape into freedom.
And I will welcome him with open arms…
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I’ve continually reminded people that science is ALWAS fallible. One can always prove out an idea and someone down the road could prove otherwise.
Man is never perfect. Ever!