Science and Intuition (the story continues…)
Regular readers of this blog may have noted that I seem to have a certain ‘attitude’ towards science. By that, I don’t mean I am against science (that would be like being ‘against’ blood because it makes me nauseous, not because I want to ban blood from the universe).
In the light of this apparent antipathy towards science, I would like to offer this article (in the UK Guardian) as an antidote. For a change, it is well-written and examines an aspect of science which is valuable to study…peoples’ attitudes towards it.
The article revolves around the publication of a book
The reasons for this, however, are not clear-cut. There has always been a divide between science and humanities, labeled as the Two Cultures, by writer and physicist C. P. Snow. However, many people think it is getting worse. Partly it may be because
“…science is something for kids - still pervades much of our thinking
But there’s also the political aspect, as Angier notes:
“‘Here in the US we have had the last seven years of this administration which has made everything about the two-cultures divide seem worse.’ But it is not just that. ‘Newspapers are getting rid of all their science pages; they are jettisoning all their science staff. The feeling is people don’t want to read it.’
The implications of this, and the resultant general scientific illiteracy, she believes, are possibly catastrophic. Forty-two per cent of Americans in a recent survey said they believed that humans had been on Earth since the beginning of time. ‘A geophysicist friend suggests we are at a critical crossroads just like the start of the Renaissance,’ Angier says, ‘where you couldn’t just leave reading and writing to the kings and priests anymore. Ordinary people have to keep up. In the world we live in, the new economy, you have to become scientifically literate or you will fall quickly from view.’”
Maybe the last part is a little too apocalyptic, but is to be expected from people desperately trying to defend their corner with little hope of success.
Apathy towards science comes, she believes from a lack of interest in what the future might hold. The climate changes with their front page pictures might, she hopes, bring back a renewed interest. In part it also comes from the stultifying way of teaching it which results in fewer and fewer students choosing to study it.
An alternative view is offered by John Brockman who has created The Edge as place where there is, “a marriage of physics and philosophy, astronomy and art.” His view is contrary to Angier’s in that he believes that the mass of people don’t think anyway. There has always been a select few who do the thinking of the mass. He also says that science is making the news (again contra Angier). But even he admits that he has so far not attracted any novelists to his meetings.
So the problem remains. Science is not seen as hot and sexy. (At least to the unthinking masses.) To many this seems to suggest an apocalyptic moment in cultural history.
Yet, the purpose of writing this now is to suggest that, science as a way of thinking, a way of being, can only accept part of the world. If it was able to embrace ESP, telekinesis, bi-location, auras, dowsing and so on, perhaps that would be attractive to many more people, but it wouldn’t be what scientists now would call science any more.
The underlying assumption in all these arguments over the validity of science and its place in society is that science not only has a right to be there, but it is the only discipline which has the right to study the world as it is (or is thought to be) and that in turn presupposes that the world that science presupposes to exist is the one and only one, and that it is the only one worth studying.
It is this attitude to which I have an antipathy. It is the attitude that science holds the master key, and if it could only find the door it could unlock the universe with it. Science has been and continues to be a remarkable testament to human achievement. Yet to assume that this upstart (culturally speaking) is the most complete and all-embracing view of the world is to fly in the face of human experience.
If it were a little more humble, if science were to admit that there were really exciting areas to investigate and that those areas would require a looser-fitting description of science, I would have far less irritation with it.
If our culture is turning its back on science, it makes sense to examine why that is happening rather than bemoan it. The mass of people may want a few to do their thinking for them in certain areas. But the mass of people is also responsible for bringing about change. And the few thinkers that Brockman espouses really would be well-advised to look at the mass and what it wants, where it’s going, and try to find out why and not stand in front of it waving their arms telling it it’s wrong.
As for me? I’m happy knowing
Intuition is the stronger, in my view, because it allows science it’s arena. Science is the weaker because it denies there are other arenas.
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