The gentle art of not giving a damn to "Science"

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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[size=200]Fuck Science[/size].

Well, it may sound aggressive, but that could surely be our slogan by now. In fact, what is the reason for us to be proud of Science, when we know that [size=150]it justifies everything[/size]? I think of Huxley’s Brave New World. That is the world many people dream of: a world of pre-programmed robots, a world where promiscuity is not a shame, but a rule, a world where everyone is brainwashed in order to accept all the monstrosities commited in the name of “happiness, science and progress”. “Each of us belongs to all of us”. That’s surely our future if we really think that Science can solve all the problems of this world.

It can’t. In fact it creates a lot of trouble. It is a means of our “governors”, so-called “powerful” men to put in our minds that their anti-natural “authority” is a right thing. It is a means of cruel, insane men to justify war, poverty, lies, hypocrisy. It is a means of justifying why so much money is spent with “spaceships” and other very important things related to “astronomy”, that very, indeed very important science.

There is nothing we can do nowadays to show people that Science is indeed an evil thing. There is nothing we can do to prove the world that “progress” is an illusion. What really matters is not “progress”. I don’t know how can a man talk about “progress” in a world where 90% of the population suffer from a lot of troubles. like depression, hunger, loneliness and poverty. That is surely waht we can wait from it: if some men are rich, they are “better” than the poor ones. They are not miserable, evil exploiters who enrich without working. Science explain us that they are “better” than all the other so they “deserve” to be rich and happy. O yes, happiness. Science can make us happy too. By making us forget the situation of this world with useless amusement and useless technology, Science tells us that we MUST be very happy and proud of its “progress”. And what about the ones who are depressed? O that’s not a problem. There is a lot of artificial things which can help them. And the ones who are not helped by Science? O that’ s surely not hard to understand. Men are not equal. “Inequality is natural”. So, Science brings some benefit to some of us and some harm to others. That is the way it is. We are really to be proud of living in a world where Science can make us so happy. :unamused: :unamused: :unamused:

We have surely given up faith in religion. It is about time for us to give up our “faith” in Science and “progress” too. A world ruled by religion is a world inhabited by slaves to fanaticism and illusions. A world ruled by Science is a world inhabited by pre-programmed machines, a world where love, humanity and dignity have no space. It is a world like that one described by Huxley in Brave New World. There is no reason for us to believe that Science can make happy or good people of us. That is another illusion, because Science justifies everything. It is an evil, rather than a good thing.

Thanks for the attention.

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To indict “science” is to indict our species. You employ the scientific method every second of the day, as a rational animal. Science means rationally attaining data. What we do with that data has more to with our reptilian ancestors than with our lab-coated bespectacled contemporaries.

If you must blame something, blame our choices. Science does not build weapons. Choices do. Science does not dehumanize. Choices do.

Power does NOT corrupt. It is weakness and disproportional ignorance that corrupts powerful people.

I hope we use our science wisely. That is the only discussion.

PS: I’m all for famous quotes. But your Thomas Berhard quote does not resonate with me whatsoever. It merely reveals his own unfortunate situation. Perhaps, by association, yours, too.

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  1. I think this would belong in Rant House or something. It’s not really philosophical.

  2. Fabiano, you need to see a therapist for a diagnostic session. I say this as a person who has experienced and been successfully treated for depression, and seen family members do the same. Psychologists have more than just drugs to fight depression – cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is a clinically proven method and is actually preferred to drugs if one or the other must be chosen.

A test like this one might help confirm my guess and persuade you to see a therapist. Also, you could check out a cognitive therapy site and a cognitive therapy self-help book like “feeling good” by David Burns. That book is almost like a popular bible for cognitive therapy.

  1. Science is merely a useful craft, like carpentry, construction, blacksmithing, or medicine. It is an exceptionally powerful one, but those who think it can solve all problems are wrong. That’s like a carpenter saying that building the perfect drawer chest would solve all our problems. It’s myopic, and ignores the emotional side of day-to-day living.
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Aporia,

I think this topic fits this forum all right. There are a lot of topics here which don’t seem to be related to Philosophy. I think you don’t know my definition of Philosophy. Science (its meaning and its history) can be considered a philosophical subject too, like any other thing.

Please, moderators, don’t move this topic for the Rant House.

Thank you for your advice, Aporia, but you should keep it to you. I don’t need a psychologist or a psychotherapist or things like that. I don’t need nobody to brainwash me (isn’t psychotherapy a form of brainwash). I am very well, thank you. Don’t blame me if I am courageous enough to express my feelings.

Gamer,

“Power does not corrupt”. Of course not. Man is always a corrupted being. How could he be corrupted by anything?

Thomas Bernhard was not talking about himself, but about ourselves. But I respect your opnions. Bye.

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Well said Fabiano, well said.

Its interesting that you say that science justifies everything, the more I ponder this seems to make sense. It seems to me that we have been lured into this assumption, that science will save us. With so many scientific developments in recent years.

rationally attaining data? ok, for a benefit…or otherwise whats the point? a scientist may say because then we know, but it is inevitable that it will be used for something

I think your reference to Huxley’s Brave New World is an apt one. If people were to picture a an ‘ideal’ or (no poverty, unemployment, crime etc.) utopian society, then this would be it. It is purely constructed by scientific methods, making specific classes of people with varying intelligence to do various jobs. If people, after all this careful programming still have trouble in the society, or if their whole spirit is not tamed, then their are drugs to help you have a trip and make everything better.
Just how far are we from this?
It seems that society and our government planners are trying to move towards this idea of conditioning people, but this is far fetched.
In America it seems that there is a real drug culture, not weed or shrooms, but all these other pills which are legal, and help you escape depression, help you concentrate, help you gain “control”.

I dont trust science as far as i can throw it, can a scientist how far that is? didn’t think so.
We now posses the power to destroy our earth a hundred times over. Now I know this cant be blamed on scientists, scientists want to discover things for the glory of science itself, right? but it seems that they have been manipulated by the circumstances and are mere tools. If science didn’t flourish like it did, i really cant see a world worse off than now, but that would be very hard to picture.

And just who made these choices? I sure as hell didn’t, nor did anyone in my stature. Those greedy men did, out of their own necessity, and we agreed out of fear. Who directs the main direction of science? Tyrants.
It seems to me that if the scientists has some more foresight and responsibility, that would have been a great benefit, though I am no great science historian.

I think its hard to put a finger on the cause of the huge world injustice, it seems to lead futher and further back. From what i can see, science helped alot in the exploitation by the west of various other cultures. Japan was forced open because they didn’t have gunpowder, same goes for Africa and all the other underdeveloped places. I think science, because of its nature, and because not everyone has equal access to it, breed inequality.

Please point out, as I’m sure you will, why and how I am wrong and stupid

F
:sunglasses:

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thats right aproria, pump em full of pills and therapy and they will be ok. That proves a good bloody point i think.

You make me sick.

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don’t worry, this topic fits philosophy well…

remember, most science is based on the error of induction…

but “A world ruled by religion is a world inhabited by slaves to fanaticism and illusions. A world ruled by Science is a world inhabited by pre-programmed machines, a world where love, humanity and dignity have no space.”

if you try to limit it to “love, humanity and dignity” that is religious as well…

read your Nietzsche again…

-Imp

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I think you misinterpret Huxley’s novel, which isn’t simply a scientistic utopia, as with all Huxley’s novels he plays off the utopia against an invader, an Other, a stranger which undoes the utopic status of the world being portrayed. But that’s a literary point. I think you are projecting your own, ill conceived understanding of science’s cultural status onto a novel which was designed to do something very different.

Psychology, psychotherapy, isn’t a form of brainwashing. If you constantly think sad, depressive thought and are chronically unhappy then psychologists can help you stop thinking like this. Since the vast majority of depressives are utterly unoriginal in their suffering (i.e. they conform to stereotypes, their depression isn’t particular to them) they aren’t losing anything personal to them when they are helped via therapy.

But if you want to be unhappy for a few more years then kill yourself, go right ahead. I’m not here to stop you.

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So, take away science and presto! Instant utopia? :wink: Wouldn’t that be something to see.

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someoneisatthedoor,
if it is I who you claim misinterpret Brave New World, then I don’t think you are right. Huxley’s novel represents a regime change, totalitarianism, just as Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four does and indeed Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Brave New World tries to project an image of the future using some of the current trends in science and technology and mentality, as well as giving a stark warning against the different forms of totalitarian government. Of course the book does a lot lot more, having the savage and showing how he destabilises the society and how helpless they are towards unconditioned an natural human beings. It also demonstrates how society can be misled and given a contrasting picture of how the world really is (as far as the citizens in Brave New World are concerned, they are all that matter or exist. I think it transmits huge implications and ideas.
I have actually written an essay on this, so if I am wrong please say so.

Phaedus, I don’t remember any1 saying that. But it would make things slightly more straightforward, and I don’t think one could visualise a place without science, since it is now part of our culture. I do think at this rate, the more problems that arise the more science will be there to help, but it just prolongs the problematic trends and science will be a step behind. The quest for knowledge in science will be the end of us, the second we play god, we are screwed.

Why hasn’t anyone had a poke at me, eh??

:slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

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Gladly.

  1. Huxley’s novel isn’t a warning against totalitarianism, it’s just it gets lumped in with 1984 (and of course Animal Farm) and Farenheit 451.

  2. Huxley’s novel doesn’t ‘represent a regime change’ - this is just you projecting contemporary rhetoric onto the text

  3. Most of the science described in Brave New World would be advanced for our society, let alone the one of the 1930s. Huxley wasn’t trying to show how the society he lived in might end up, he was creating an almost entirely fictional one. Again, I think you are lumping Brave New World in with 1984, which was very much rooted in the society in which Orwell lived (1940s socialist Britain).

  4. The savage doesn’t simply destabilise the utopia, it calls into question its utopic status. If you’ve read Island by the same author you’ll see the exact same structure.

  5. The people in the utopia are no more or less natural than the savage. They are more cultured, but that doesn’t make them less natural. This is of course a deconstructive reading.

  6. ‘how society can be misled’ - by whom? By… other… members… of… that… society…

That makes no sense.

  1. ‘how the world really is’ - there’s little or no ontological work in the book, nor does Huxley clearly favour one ‘reality’ over another. He leaves that to us, and again you’ve projected your own desires onto the text.

If you’ve written an essay on the book based on the above ideas then you’ll probably get a good mark. Most people interpret 1984 and Brave New World as similar texts, which is true inasmuch as they both depict future worlds. But so does Starship Troopers by Heinlein, or Herland or any number of other texts. Generally you find this has more to do with the political affiliations of the reader than any earnest reading of the texts. Orwell was a democratic socialist, but you can’t tell that from 1984.

But yes, I do believe you’ve misinterpreted some things, or at least interpreted things of the text which aren’t particularly substantiated by the text. You’ve interpreted Brave New World as meaning roughly the same thing as 1984. Sure, the texts have points of similarity, but I’m not convinced you’ve found them yet.

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Well, i dunno, the government is totalitarian in the most acute sense of the word, with government controlling what brain capacity the citizens have, what jobs they will do, who they will obey and when how what they eat. I will take it as a warning, others may not. This is what our control will lead to.

Perhaps. I suppose I meant from what we may be in the future, as u mentioned we are far from the scientific knowledge that they have in the book, but its very imaginable that soon we will have this knowledge, mapping the human genome and cloning and test tube babies are possible. I meant that from that what needs and expectations we in the “developed” world will most likely have in the future, peace prosperity and equality, that this kind of society is conceivable. Now if Aldous Huxley meant it in this way I do not know.

I know very well the extremely different climate in which both books written, and im not intentionally lumping them together. I’m sure Huxley was aware of the future interpretations of his book, and wrote it in such a way that it could be relevant. Is gaining views from a book written by an author who did not necessarily transmit those views directly, wrong?

I havent read The Island, but I soon will now that you have mentioned it :slight_smile:

“Calls into question its utopic status” by questioning the socities legitimacy does it not destabalise it? I suppose it doesn’t, because its all too far gone and they have not a rebellious spirit inside them, this I think proves another point, there is a place where our mind cannot come back to its origional state, if there ever was one

Sorry, I don’t understand. The savage was born from a woman while the other citizens came from hatcheries?? I guess we must define natural, which will take forever. Cultured? I dont see much culture, enlighten me

By propaganda brainwashing, by enforcing instinctual reactions from birth which shield them from certain things. By putting restraints on thinking, mental capacity and other things, I must re read the book to remember exactly how they do it. False truths, mental restraints, fear of change. Misled is too weak a word.
We can see these kind of trends today,
Watch BBC World then switch over to CNN, its rather amusing to see what they report on, of course I favour BBC World because they actually report, and wont shy away from reporting negatively about their country, even their organisation. This does bear some relevance, it shows what filters our

There is an accurate view of the world, or at least some which are more accurate than others. One must come to a realisation of the real world, one must open ones mind. I’m sure unconsciously I have projected my own desires into the text, but they do seem to coincide with the mainstream stuff.

If you’ve written an essay on the book based on the above ideas then you’ll probably get a good mark.

I did get a bloody good mark J

A soviet communist cannot read 1984 and get something good to use from it. Unless he will argue that truth is subjective and relevant to the history books and wouldn’t it be niced to have a infallible society, but he may also get punched. I think I have missed your point.

This could be very true, indeed the essay was on the 3 books so I was maybe looking too hard for everything to fit nicely, but that does not mean that what I think is unsubstantiated.

I really dont want this to become a thread about brave new world, i think the orgional topic was a great one, perhaps we shoudl steer urselfves more towards it. Thanks for your input someoneisatthedoor,.

peace, have a grea weekend

F :stuck_out_tongue:

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When you are willing to have abdominal surgery without an anesthetic, or willing to watch a child die of bacterial meningitis because there are no anti-biotics, let me hear from you. By the way, where do you think your computer came from; I mean the one on which you post this diatribe against science. Think it just grew wild in some untended garden?

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So, it seems there is one thing that we can all agree on—that science, like anything else, can be manipulated, not immnune to bad choices made by those in position to make choices that can affect us all; and that as a means to an end, is indifferent to the consequences. I mean ultimately, it us who would have to weigh the result, how better off, or worse off, we are than before. And Fabiano makes a good point in bringing this out–the limitation of science–(since dogmatism in belief in science is nothing new). Nothing that science reveals can make us not want to do harm, or seen the other way, nothing that science provides can make us stop from doing good to humanity—since, ultimately, it us our choice, our desire, our determination.

Fabiano’s and Kennethamy’s points actually speak of the dichotomous nature of this thing called “power” (or in this case, science). Foucault’s observation that reason becomes vacuous when the “the relationship between rationalization and excesses of political power is evident” is dead on target. There are numerous examples when science has been used to further evil deeds, as Fabiano points out, and there have been numerous examples when science has done great wonders for the entire world.

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Have you read Huxley’s introduction? That is surely an anti-utopia, there couldn’t be a book more realistic about the stage to which humankind is moving. In fact, there is a great difference between ours and that world, but there are also very similarities. People are obliged to be happy. They have no option. When things aren’t well, there is always a drug (nothing to do with alcohol, cocaine, heroin and cigarettes, of course) which can make people “forget” everything during hours. Nothing to do with our beautiful world, right? You don’t know people who use many kinds of vices to forget reality, do you? Of course no. Perhaps I am excessively negative. Maybe I need a drug like that, who knows…

Yes, they are a form of brainwashing. They are indeed. If a man goes to a psychotherapist and says that he is very unhappy and that he doesn’t see any reason to go on living, and the psychotherapist tells him to start to use some form of drug to “escape from depression”, this man is not being honest with himself, he is lying to himself. He’s receiding, he’s running away. When the effect of the drugs cease, he will need them again. He will be “happy” only when he’ll use that drug. That is what happens with the absolute majority of us. If I see that I live in a sick world, neither a drug nor a “therapy” will change reality. I will keep on living in a sick world, but now I’ll be deceiveng myself and pretending that I live in a happy world. That is an illusion. So I call any form of psychotherapy brainwashing.

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Enlighten,

Thank you for you words guy. I think you have understand the meaning of this post well. Great comments.

Hello, Kennethamy,

I have read my post again after I see your comment and I think I must say that I don’t regret a single word of it. In fact, I’ve written that with a computer who wasn’t found in an untended garden. Of course I know that this computer is a product of science. But that does not matter. My point is different. There is no doubt that science could bring us some relative benefit. But it does a lot of harm, because it is almost always controlled by mediocre beings. That is the point.

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Carl is rolling in his grave. He’s more qualified than any of us, and he balances out the argument quite well.

Carl Sagan…

“We are prodding, challenging, seeking contradictions or small, persistent residual errors, proposing alternative explanations, encouraging heresy. We give our highest rewards to those who convincingly disprove established beliefs.”

“Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.”

And to Fabiano’s point…

“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.”

This is a problem. Badmouthing the entire concept of science only makes it worse.

“We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”

To this I imagine myself shoulder to shoulder with Fabiano, speechless.

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Maybe so. Or maybe no.

I can hardly understand that. Why “shoulder to shoulder”?

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“i really cant see a world worse off than now, but that would be very hard to picture.”

Look back in time, look at the history of the human species, and you will see a world much more worse off than now…

Fabiano,

“If I see that I live in a sick world, neither a drug nor a “therapy” will change reality. I will keep on living in a sick world, but now I’ll be deceiveng myself and pretending that I live in a happy world. That is an illusion.”

If you admit that you can be decieved, than how can you know that you are not already being decieved. How do you now that you seeing yourself living in a sick world is not the illusion, and that psycotherapy will not right your perception.

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Fabiano…bad-mouthing science without properly defining it is a big problem. It’s precisely what makes people believe in healing crystals and shit. And people who already have a propensity to believe in fairies will see diatribes like yours as fuel for their fool’s paradise.

You start off saying FUCK SCIENCE. I think you missed an opportunity to say something more pointed. Because as many have pointed out, science yields good and bad. I am not a big fan of religion, but I admit it too yields good and bad. Ten years ago I might have started a post with FUCK RELIGION. But I wouldn’t today. It’s just too general, and thus, too vague, for my tastes.

By shoulder to shoulder I meant standing on the same side, facing the same direction. You should try it some time. It can be sorta fun.