The following is designed to reflect a promising change in the public face of science which has occurred in many media since the 1970s and 80s. I aims to trace the recent trends in percptions of science by the public, the media and by scientists themselves. Science is in exponential growth and a very considerable outreach and development has taken place in many of the sciences in the past few decades, especially due to the ubiquity of virtually unlimited computing power and its related technologies.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, the prevailing attitude of many intellectuals in the official media often showed an almost unquestioning belief in the efficacy of science. The sciences and those referred to collectively as 'scientists' were often regarded too simply as a final court on most important questions facing humanity. The near-deification of the sciences, at least in Europe and the US during the second half of the 20th century, made it the chief measure human progress in many of the world's most influential minds. This attitude was encouraged by the nature of claims made by some very prominent figures, especially in the physical sciences, claims which developments have sometimes confounded, sometimes made redundant. Together with powerful commercial interests and governments, a distorted and rather dangerously overstated view of the capabilities of the sciences to solve most vital human problems was promoted, particularly in the popular media. The need to reexamine the limitations of science in the understanding of ourselves and the cosmos seemed long overdue. So what has caused this quite noticeable improvement in perception and promotion of the sciences?

Two issues which have been a great challenge to the scientific community, both for better and worse, have made known the relative uncertainty and inaccuracy of scientific methods and models in dealing with major issues. The first was the debate over the safety of nuclear power, in which a hard core of scientists gave excessive assurances, only to be confronted by the disasters of Three Mile Island and, above all, Chernobyl. The second and knowledge-wise more far reaching challenge was the scientific community's promotion of doom scenarios and its increasingly transparent failures to deal decisively with such an embracing and complex issue as global warming. This made the general public aware of the difficulties of scientific prediction on global and other matters which cannot be confined to or solved within the laboratory. Though opponents of the hypothesis of global warming caused by human activity were often unadvisedly antiscientific - and not least often religiously inspired -, the intricacies of this major issue and the struggle of scientists to handle it became widely appreciated. This appears to have stimulated a considerably greater public awareness of - and healthy moderate skepticism about - the practical limits and theoretical uncertainties of much scientific research. Also, and somewhat paradoxically, the global warming controversy had also helped to publicize the ever-increasing expansion of research efforts - and the consequent increasing successes - of many scientific endeavours. The attack mounted on scientific theory of evolution in the form of religious creationism also came to the fore in the now famous court case in the USA against teaching 'creationism' in schools, with the result that the attack was defeated both scientifically and legally in a most decisive manner.

A.N. Whitehead observed acutely, "A clash of doctrines is not a disaster, it is an opportunity". The critique of science originally made here takes that opportunity, both to project the many unfolding achievements and subsequent benefits for the human race of science, while also questioning certain worrying aspects of the scientific culture. While not rejecting the value of science and the spirit that informs its best enterprises, the need for some distorted views and necessary modifications of attitude, theory and practice. To show what science yet lacks is necessary as a counterweight to certain inflated notions about its overall neutrality among some of its promulgators. Limits had to be set to misguided scientific pretensions. Back in 1925, Whitehead famously wrote:"There persists [a] fixed scientific cosmology which presupposes the ultimate fact of an irreducible brute matter, or material, spread through space in a flux of configurations. In itself such a material is senseless, valueless, purposeless. It just does what it does do, following a fixed routine imposed by external relations which do not spring from the nature of its being. It is this assumption that I call 'scientific materialism."¹ Though much has changed in regard to this limitation, it is still a theme to be examined further.

The presentation of science should of course concentrate on its considerable achievements - both from the viewpoint of the vastly increased knowledge and answer to questions that have always mystified humankind and the immense practical benefits it has brought. Yet this should not be at the expense of warning against its various remaining weaknesses - the frequent but often unproclaimed gaps in it - the directions it takes (at the expense of other aims) and where the limitations to its explanation lie. In the latter C20 its power, virtual certainties and superiority over other kinds of understanding were often trumpeted loudly without requisite reservation of judgement, especially through educative media, though this tendency has since fortunately been on the decline. The huge advances made in our knowledge of the natural world should not have been be allowed to obscure shortcomings in scientific theory and culture, of which there were plenty. A range of shortsighted and truncated dogmas were upheld by the inertia of 'average' scientific opinion, and some still linger on. The social inertia of out-dated theory of science and attitudes is doubtless operative to some extent in all countries, especially those with backward and traditional educational systems or unreformed academic universities.

In the human and social sciences, the very frequent misapplication of natural scientific methods to its problems was often alienating and destructive of persons and culture, and this lives on in various respects, except in the most advanced research communities. From early on, the social sciences were infected with the comfortable but fateful positivist illusion that the development of society could be controlled and steered technically, much as if it were an objectifiable natural process such as the physical science study. Meanwhile, the political and academic undervaluation of genuinely human studies, together with the consequent serious underfunding of human researches relative to natural science budgeting, is out of gear with demonstrable needs and failures in society. One still gives huge priority to technological development at the cost of growth and of understanding the role of the individual and personal transformation towards a better world.

In showing some cardinal weaknesses, both in the natural and social sciences, my intention is to stimulate towards scientific self-reflection and more truly human studies using inclusive ecological and holistic methods of research. If trends to runaway competition, all-pervasive economism and unforeseen unwanted or destructive changes are to be countered effectively, a keen awareness of human needs and concerns must be developed and sustained to counter any blind technification of life. Though there are some noticeable changes underway in public awareness of these problems, the decline in the quality and quantity of teaching in the humanities and value-oriented studies from school to university level remains a big concern. This technification of life is, of course, especially seen in the phenomenal development of interactive technologies in place of traditional forms of social activity and contact.

The ascendancy of the natural scientific community in controlling much educated opinion, such as through education and the media is surely preferable to the alternatives of obscurantism found in many other types of human culture. Yet through its predominance as an industrial and economical growth factor - with the consequent lobbying of its interests - it also may contributes to a deleterious effect on culture. By the nature of scientific applications, it has long supported the dangerous but almost universal doctrine of unlimited economic growth without limits. Since the recognition of the pending crises of climate change, increasing exhaustion of natural resources, ecological breakdowns and apparently unstoppable world population growth, the applied sciences have increasingly turned their efforts in the direction of counteractive technologies, the so-called 'green revolution'. Unfortunately the pressure on governments to maintain and also improve achieved living standards does not encourage critical developments in social, economic and political sciences to concentrate on the revolution in thinking necessary if the world-wide conflicts that an eventual spreading breakdown of the world social order may be averted.

Positivism and materialistically-oriented empiricism were no doubt a necessary reaction to the discredited metaphysical systems that had originated mostly from theological thought and religious assumptions. The former success of scientific objectivists in steam-rolling intellectual debate with the belief in the absolute neutrality of 'objective theory' and confidence in scientific expertise is probably declining, yet this legacy of attitude from positivism and objectivism is not yet sufficiently eliminated. Logical empiricism became the pragmatic and more liberal methodological norm. Having rejected metaphysics from scientific debate there followed a phase in which many would exclude any kind of extra-scientific or meta-scientific theories as unfruitful and misguided. Radical dissent to the hegemony of hard core scientific thinking in a range of issues became little appreciated. This naturally affects most kinds of religion or 'spirituality', which - though these are still be largely controversial, divided and divisive, and most often revanchist - do still represent a committed majority of the global population which must be reckoned with and engaged in open debate. Philosophy has largely fallen from budgetary grace and any effective defining role in the world of knowledge and of society, possibly because it has not been sufficiently oriented towards the creative correction of predominant illusions. The French philosopher, Michel Foucault wrote: "the themes of philosophy have come to agree with these delimiting and excluding games, have perhaps even reinforced them."² Even academic philosophy is affected by intellectual and social fashions,

The many influences of the sciences on society - both of the range of physical sciences and all the social sciences - are only studied on a minimal scale as yet, and then without the depth and breadth or vision that is desirable if this crucial aspect and effect of science is to be understood. Both observation and reason insist that many uses of scientific knowledge are unplanned to say the least, but are also unseen and more unfortunate in many more areas of life than many supporters of scientific progress realise. This is partly due to the fund-consuming theoretical physical sciences and applied technological science whose vast budgets and research policies have momentous consequences for the world. Yet they are relatively free of all but peripheral democratic controls and they proceed to further the various interests they represent largely unexamined behind closed doors, both factual and figurative, doors upon which even the media have seldom brought themselves to knock. Since human cloning and associated genetic bio-technologies became a real possibility, however, public interest causes a resurgence in the scientific ethical debate on medicine, genetic manipulation and eugenics.

The disproportionately large investments from governments, major corporations and multinationals, in most cases with profit still as their overriding consideration, has also been much driven by the military and weapons industries. This has only contributed to an intellectual-ethical malaise. Critics point out how the profit motives of the pharmaceutical industry also has too much influence over what is researched (or not) in medicine and the 'health industry' - and promoted and prescribed. However, since global warming and all its possible consequences has finally placed itself firmly on the world agenda, there is undoubtedly a shift in values towards 'green thinking' taking place in many large concerns, due to the realization that profit margins cannot survive without major adjustments and a change of course in many technologies. Nonetheless, those scientific projects which can advance technology or provide hard data of kinds useful to planners and policy makers still hold the confidence of those who rules the corridors of power. Investments fall off greatly in sciences that contain notable critical, reformative and humanistic elements.

Setbacks to human knowledge occur and have had many causes: major wars, totalitarian regimes, colonial and missionary destruction and suppression, famines, plagues and various natural disasters. War being 'the mother of invention', advances in science have often been greater as a result of such disturbances than the relatively minor and temporary setbacks. Perhaps the major hindrances to any system of knowledge (other than practical limits) come about when the assumptions on which it is based are successfully challenged and cause a Kuhnian paradigm shift. This has been seen regularly since Copernicus,in Einstein's relativity, in math's and in logic where axioms were challenged and substituted for more inclusive concepts and so forth. In the case of current science the greatest internal problems seem to be connected to those traditional methodological, philosophical and social assumptions often still held and challenged by the holistic thinking behind the ecological revolution. The important developing study of complexity (holarchy) and work against interdisciplinary boundaries are hindered by university bureaucracies and interest groups in universities and scientific institutions.

SCIENCE, SOCIAL CHANGE AND THE COMMON GOOD

The regeneration of an intellectuality informed by genuine insight into human values is increasingly seen by many people as a necessity for the future. Much improvement cannot take place, however, without clearing the ground through a proper critical analysis of the causes of misplaced materialism and consumerism in modern society. In the coming chapters I hope to identify some of the main internal causes of a loss of much quality in intellectual culture - specifically in English-speaking countries and their various international branches - and to suggest one part of the solution.

That 'knowledge is power' is an observable - though highly complex - fact, not least because it is a social, political and economical commodity sought after by interest groups with many different agendas. 'Control of knowledge gives power' almost qualifies as an axiom these days, perhaps along with 'knowledge is money', as shown by the purposes of the competing financiers of the worldwide science-based industry, not least the science patent and intellectual rights business. Further, the scientific establishment has such a high degree of control that power can sometimes indirectly determine what is scientific fact. The control of research investments by a relative handful of scientists - or on their relatively unquestioned 'expert advice' to policy makers - is a threat to democratic decision-making.

It is my conviction that, whatever the material conditions of a society, intelligent thought is a necessary factor in any social and moral renewal, even the predominant one, for thought gives rise to attitudes, which give rise to acts. This point of view is itself rather out of fashion nowadays, often depicted as some kind wishful idealism, the reason being that the dominant trend-setters are rather consumerism, economism and popular culture. Add to this the tendency of current sciences hardly ever to examine a course of events as the consequence - or even as partial product - of human thought and ideas, but almost always vice-versa. The historical swing of the pendulum towards materialism and sense observation in recent centuries, though extremely profitable for understanding of the physical universe, has taken us too far to the opposite extreme. It is fine to be rid of all the superstitious nonsense of theological and speculative metaphysics, which took centuries to overcome, but the pendulum has swung too far to the opposite side. To move closer to a more balanced - less pendulous - view of everything, the greatest need today is surely a strong counterweight to the blanket physicalism of scientism and the runaway materialism in thought and action which tends to accompany it. Meta-scientific and holarchic approaches are essential to any regeneration of a culture in which enlightened action is the norm; without it one implicitly assumes positions which are most likely to be untenable, shortsighted or back-to-front. An overly technical, pragmatic and supposedly 'value-free' approach to the world - especially towards human beings and societies - distorts and smothers attempts at well-prepared positive change and development free from repressive social forces and other unintended or mystification processes.

The confidence of the general public in the ethics of researchers and the attitudes of many scientists towards nonscientific knowledge and insight has weakened. Secular education, which adopted the scientific mentality to such a degree that it was regarded as the substitute for any kind of spiritual values, is being challenged nowadays, such as in the spread of so-called 'faith schools'. Further, science has been perceived as being in the pay of business corporations, untrustworthy governmental agencies and even the war industries. Despite it's many positive aims in developmental countries and threatened environments, science was correctly seen to be functioning largely in opposition to the aims of the ecological or green movement. This has changed at last, but not appreciably before the present decade. Ten percent of young people in the U.K., for example, belonged to some ecological organisation during the mid-1990s, while less than three per cent belong to political party organisations. A reaction against many trends fostered by science grew stronger and more evident, as exemplified by the anti-gene modification movement, the formerly almost unlimited experimentation with animals not merely for crucial medical purposes. The predominant view among natural scientists in the 1980s was widely perceived as less eco-friendly than the reverse, and rightly so. It was a long struggle taking decades (from The Silent Spring revelations of the early 1960s) to instate eco-thinking and 'green' policy against the pundits within the biological, health and related sciences. The sciences tend to remain instruments of blinkered, profit-seeking economic forces as long as they do not address the concerns of holistic ecology, which ultimately must imply fostering holarchic thinking and social philosophies which go well beyond naive objectivistic ontology of too narrow physicalism. I hold that the science community must become much more self-reflective as to its social motivations and aims, and must examine its own limitations more thoroughly. Science must intensify the redefinition of its agendas and practices more openly than hitherto, distancing itself from partisan governmental and business interests, listening carefully for the voice of humanity at large, practicing self-examination and reflecting this in the public attitude of its various spokespeople.

The common good requires science to have an overwhelmingly humanitarian role, it's professionals must not only firmly and repeatedly dissociate themselves from the global war industry, profit-fixated multinational corporations and bad governments but work at all levels to ensure the fullest feasible level of intellectual independence. Real communal and individual needs must have at least an equal priority in scientific research as do the self-perceived interests of rich and powerful conglomerates. Moreover, science can easily slip into representing a new kind of repressive colonialism, imposing its mentality and aims through developmental aid on its own models on defenseless cultures and poor peoples who are not consulted and who lack the information and means to make choices which do not undermining their livelihoods and cultural values through the world market.

The holistic and holarchic approaches to overall science development is as whole-oriented form of understanding which takes account of the complexity of many interacting systems and levels, thus to counteract the narrowness of lab science, over-restrictive assumptions, compartmentalised specialisation and analytical technicality. Genuine human understanding always aims to overcome the provinciality of any culture or subculture and extends its horizons to include a wide spectrum of viewpoints and values. For example, the list of problems which the social sciences record but fail effectively to deal with is long, not seldom because of the narrowing and distorting influence of an alienated scientist ic view of human nature and society. This will be examined in the forthcoming chapters.

Science has long failed to give enough positive recognition to many human factors and little-understood phenomena and testimony. The one-sided vision of a mundane world of facts without intrinsic values, nature without vital meaning and the human as a mere organism must be reinterpreted to make its appeal to people around the world who hold insights into extraordinary dimensions of mind and consciousness. Science needs more humanly-positive hypotheses based on experience from diverse human cultures, a more caring universalism aiming consciously to discover and fulfil real human needs and articulate common values as part of its understanding of the world.

In a follow-up to this book ('Beyond Science'), I show how the true scientific spirit should be extended to include a broader view of methods leading to a more responsible and universal human outlook with broader concern for the common good. It is through an improved and more universal humanistic understanding and a more many-sided perception of truth that this may be achieved.

PHYSICALISM IN EDUCATION

Empirical study of the realm of matter and the natural laws that apply to it began in Greece. Since then the sciences have detached themselves from philosophy and became extremely compartmentalised by the mid-C20th. As a consequence of this, the scientific view of reality has gradually narrowed in some important respects, excluding out-of-hand any hypotheses which do not take their start from a physicalistic assumption. This means that subjective phenomena are not generally recognised as data, especially those which are of an unique or once-off character and therefore are unrepeatable in observation or experiment. The major shift was the gradual shift to absolute of materialism as its philosophy, thereby denying the existence of anything like the individual personality (not to say 'soul') and of many unexplained reports or facts that we may call paranormal and possibly supra-physical - at least, beyond observation though instruments at the current level of their development. In the decade around the millennium shift, however, a new range of phenomena which have remained largely undetected have come within the pale of science due to magnetic resonance technology and yet other developments in the detection of micro-magnetism.

Nineteenth century science imposed a mechanistic dogma on all processes, inorganic or living... a heritage still not shaken off fully today. Though a vision of the cosmos based on clockwork seems laughable today, many remnants of this cracked vision have still not been swept out in today's science and education. In 1979, Gregory Bateson ⁴ deplored that such oversimplified ideas prevail and seem to prosper, even displacing the sophisticated and wise with the vulgar's.

Education on the general European model of recent centuries has put natural science and its assumptions very much to the fore and mostly at the expense of the social sciences or humanities and philosophy. Interestingly, and despite this, opinion polls surprisingly show from a half to two-thirds of Western populations still holding some sort of belief in God, while atheism or agnosticism are clearly dominant among scientists, the 'intelligentsia', planners and policy makers. This fact, combined with the problems of immigration of large numbers of people of different religions and cultures, began in the run up to the millennium to cause a backlash against the predominance of science, notable in the field of education. Faith schools became a popular demand.

In multiracial society, the various different and often opposing faiths and cultures are basically divisive. Therefore, it seems that consensus is moving towards some form of utilitarian humanism as the educational ideal... due to the need for a framework to enable cross-cultural and inter-religious dialogue and thus guide and regulate behaviour to remain lawful within any given State. There are problems in not having a hard and fast authoritarian type set of commandments and social norms. The resultant education becomes of a relativistic type which tends to lack the overall and definitive moral prerogatives which, when believed in and striven after by individuals, lead to a more harmonious and peaceful society. High behavioural and social ideals were part and parcel of much world literature, which of course (and advisedly) find no place within the sciences. Since the works of many of the greatest thinkers known to world civilisation were pre-scientific and even paid homage to many a false idea and even superstitious beliefs, the baby has been thrown out with the bath water of unempirical and fallacious content. The pragmatic and physicalistic mentality that yet prevails in most important educational centres today therefore largely ignores - or is unaware of - many sublime ideas, sentiments, values and life philosophies.

Some of the biggest best-selling books that have created markets for non-fictional subjects serve to illustrate the mentality that is . Though I do see this work - broadly regarded as at the cutting edge of intellectuality today - as a breakthrough in physical science, I still have reservations about making world-views too dependent upon such matters. The thinking in Stephen Hawking's super best sellers, such as A Brief History of Time ⁵ helps makes the origin of the physical universe - and how this has been researched - much more understandable than before. Despite this, much astrophysics and cosmology is quite speculative. The thinking is entirely physicalistic and its quantum speculations are as far removed as that of any Middle Age theologians both from observable reality and experimental control, as well as from the concerns of humanity. The public interest it has awakened surely derives from the hope that it may help make the meaning of life and the universe clear, or clearer. Yet its speculations on the mysteries of creation are sometimes even less well founded in experience than those of rationalist metaphysics or theological excesses of ages past which science once fortunately helped to curb. Scientific cosmologists tend too often to operate close to science fiction, with conjecture about parallel universes, unseen and unknown dimensions, even time travel.

Physicalistic scientists are well aware in many (if not all) respects that appearance is not reality, which was the first lesson of ancient Greek natural philosophy. It is recognised that even matter is an appearance based on energy forms, and that forms of energy are themselves most often convertible into other forms, and therefore do not represent a permanent reality. So the detectable physical realm (matter and/or electromagnetic energy) is not everything - there may well be more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in that philosophy (to misquote creatively). On the other hand, if the natural sciences were to give up the need to base its hypotheses and theories on observables - at however many theoretical removes - there could be no further science or technology. The ever-developing conceptions of the most advanced theories, such as in physical-mathematical string theory or in cosmological astronomy and astrophysics operate mostly at a very considerable distance from sense observation. It is notable therefore that similar theoretical developments have hardly been stimulated or even allowed to take place in the serious study of the human mind's unexplained and extremely widely documented 'paranormal' functions (telepathy, distant viewing and much besides).

Though reductionist science purposely avoids the subjectivity of lived or living experience, and precludes the holistic perspectives of human understanding, it has nevertheless established a massive bedrock of consistent theory which continues to prove efficient both intellectually and practically. Aspects of Einstein's theories are still being tested and found to be in accordance with his very extended predictions (recently and most impressively in the experimental creation of the Einstein-Bohr condensate at near Absolute zero temperature). In biology , the work of Darwin remains predominant and has not been seriously or successfully challenged by any creationist theories, while the groundbreaking work of Richard Dawkins in genetics is impressive, his 20-year old work 'The Selfish Gene' having stood the test of time and criticism to become a virtual handbook for would-be geneticists. This exemplifies bio-genetics at its best, despite its reductionist connections, which already provides most of the answers about the origin of life and its continuance through billions of years.

Meanwhile, the province of academic philosophy has largely more or less had to relegate itself to the sidelines in questions of cosmology, human origins, the nature of the human mind and confine itself more and more to social philosophy, ethics and education - aiming to develop useful mental abilities like conceptual agility, analytical finesse in argument, and ever more subtle linguistic analysis and logical systems. This is especially so if these have potential scientific applications and payoffs. It indeed seems that, whether by design or default, philosophy has in fact resigned itself to the role projected for it by Russell and Ayer a mere helping 'handmaiden to science'. Such facts add further sense to Wittgenstein's early critiques of philosophy as being the 'synopsis of trivialities' and as having to remain silent about whatever it could not express with complete clarity and factuality. However, Wittgenstein spoke - and with difficulty wrote - philosophy himself, much of it against scientistic ideology and, almost despite himself, he also struggled with most of the vital human questions that are traditionally at the heart of the 'love of wisdom'. [Perhaps the sanest and clearest appreciation of Wittgenstein and the best understanding a nonprofessional philosopher can get of his thought in the extensive Wittgenstein literature, is by Ray Monk.³]

The great thinkers of philosophy, literature and spirituality went into the primary and broad questions of life as they present themselves to people rather than to the specialist sciences. Questions that underlie the various forms of fact-collecting systems of science and the usual doctrines supporting them, are almost invariably excluded from the pale of 'serious research'. This has long since created a schism between two intellectual cultures, two fundamentally different starting points in approaching the understanding of life, society and the cosmos. The works of great figures are only studied in so far as they accord with the modern mentality and current scientific doctrine. For example, the entire ethical and spiritual thrust of the philosophy of Socrates and Plato is systematically overlooked in academic studies and all the early Greeks are viewed almost exclusively from the viewpoint of subsequent developments the formations of empirical hypotheses, logic and proto-scientific ideas. That almost all of them were against the philosophy of materialism is put down to their lack of scientific sophistication. As will be seen, such judgements are themselves but a travesty of any philosophy that rises above technicalities and dogma.

Modern academic institutions increasingly exclude study of writings which deal with our really basic existential questions about humanity, what we are here for and for what we should be preparing and working towards. Major thinkers past and present are ignored by most established universities for failing to fit the cut of scientific method with its insistence on empirical data and physicalistic models of validating it. While science tries to make no judgements as to the common good or ill, such value judgements necessarily also underlie its efforts at some deeper level. Indeed, scientists ought explicitly clearly to recognise and consider their implicit values and anti-values, and consciously discriminate between them, if we are not to become the victims of unintended and blind social processes in future.

The rise of naturalistic scientism was accompanied by a decline in the kind of understanding arising from a broad education in the history and disciplines of human culture worldwide. In the United States, classic literature and philosophy was once much studied by the educated elite, but no longer. A rearguard action against extreme cultural deprivation of the society through an educational system robbed of intellectual sublimity was been taken up in 1987 by Allan Bloom, who stimulated a national debate by writing of the The Closing of the American Mind, Bloom saw the crisis of intellectuality in the pervasive lifelessness of students and their cultural ignorance, which he puts down to the negation of values and truth other than bland tolerance by the almost tyrannical twin forces of liberalism and science. The multicultural melting pot that is U.S. society has brought with it very deep-rooted clashes of research values, especially in the historical and social sciences, which have widely undermined the myth of 'scientific objectivity' due to existing bias relating to race, class, gender and political ideology.³

In the U.S., one of the most telling critics of physical science from within is Joseph Schwartz. ⁶ His very deeply researched philosophical history of the physical sciences reveals with biting clarity the betrayals and estrangement which show 'how science made itself alien to modern culture', though he naturally stops short of abandoning physicalism. Nevertheless, he pungently observes: "Ironically, in a reversal of historical roles, science, the nineteenth-century antithesis to religion and magic, has today become magical and religious. Particle accelerators are cathedrals, men in white coats are priests, the scientific literature is the gospel, and television is the pulpit where scientists promise miracles in one breath and doom in the next."⁶ This may cloud the issue rather, but there is a perceived danger here.

So-called "instantaneous communications" implied by Bell's Theorem in quantum physics has withdrawn one support from its structure, as do sound experiments with paranormal abilities that make us rethink as to the nature of material energies, time and space. However, the chief deconstructionists of materialism will probably always be those who record experiences of the kind which are at the basis of far-reaching metaphysical questions, traditionally known as mystical o 'transcendental' experiences and now undoubtedly on the rise and which was stimulated greatly by the widespread development of psychotropic or psychedelic agents.

In Britain, among the few convincing critics in the 1990s were Bryan Appleyard ⁷ and Richard Milton ⁸. Appleyard convincingly announced and demonstrated at a deep level the terminal phase of the scientific Enlightenment and its accompanying liberalism, the decadence of which he sees as a result of "the failure to transmit any other value than bland tolerance. The present book happens to pursue some themes also explored by Appleyard, going rather further on these both in criticism and constructive solutions.

Richard Milton provides a valuable corrective to the tendency towards scientific hubris. He makes an in-depth analysis of many taboos of the scientific establishment and the means by which they are rigorously enforced, such as by peer pressure to exclude and cynically discredit as 'unscientific' important discoveries and discussions on a wide range of scientific subjects and phenomena that seriously challenge scientific assumptions. Milton's work incisively penetrates the mentality of the scientific hierarchy, showing how science has become a virtually impregnable self-defensive social order beyond public control or most intellectual scrutiny and often led by authoritarian personalities. The accuracy of his work, combined with his complete, holistic view of the sciences as many-sided human activities must eventually make this work as important to the philosophy of science as that of Thomas Kuhn's well-known theory of paradigm shift. In this book, I level similar criticisms, but would look deeper into some of science's philosophical assumptions. I have suggested an expanded or alternative model of human understanding to show relations between this, science and what can be called meta-science (i.e. not metaphysics but structures of general theory).

No one can disagree that the usual PhD of today requires a notably lesser scope of learning and less time to attain than doctorates of previous eras. The PhD of today is vastly more specialised, and invariably therefore less broadly informed, than in former decades. Though most science in the 100 years prior to the 2nd World War was, of course, much less voluminous and advanced in factual and theoretical knowledge, the high classical, literary and philosophical standards that were the mark of academic and cultural excellence among the narrow elites who received the best education, often produced many persons of great scholarship and excellence, both in understanding and character. Those standards seem to be rather too much a thing of the past, even in the best universities. Lowering educational standards was one consequence of specialisation and increasing the spectrum and number both of students and curricula greatly since mid-century. How low the common denominator of educational excellence has sunk in general is almost impossible to determine with any accurate measurement, but the considerable extent is probably only clearly noticeable to persons above a certain age and breadth of experienced interest in such matters.

The idealistic spirit and optimistic belief in modern education and research as the most important means of improving the human lot and heading the world towards universal peace and understanding wears thinner as the student progresses in the present climate of university thought where ideals do not easily survive much contact with the world. The failure of education to move us towards more peaceful, crime-free and unified societies I see as due in large part to the contorted world-view arising from education in the interests of making a living rather than for a good and value-oriented life.

The advent of mass higher education has created a large class of persons in most Western and many other countries that has been called the 'meritocracy'. The current standards to which people are educated are often high as to technical achievement within specialised fields, but the overall intellectually orientation that is given lacks breadth and holistic quality, which is to say broader understanding of oneself and the world. The virtual elimination of philosophical thinking and cultural background studies, together with premature specialisation in the sciences or related disciplines, has created a near vacuum in the understanding of vital, broad intellectual issues and the role of human values.

Some of what is lacking - and waste ground that has to be cleared - I hope to show in the following by both criticism and constructive thinking. A follow-up to this book deals with the nature of human understanding in itself as a dynamic, holistic process and of principles and methods required to control and guide it towards truth, good and beauty. This means less the multiplication of information or specialised analytic work than a broadening reorientation of the intellect, once regarded as the highest source of moral, philosophical and personal insight. The refinement of human understanding is a task that must include the potential of holarchic and holistic vision in benefiting from the various sciences and other rational disciplines.

THE MEANS TO ADVANCE UNJUSTIFIED ENDS?

The scientific method is practical as a means to ends, but the ends are not self-given - i.e. the social goals and policies or the values involved. These require to be more clearly defined in science policy. The image problem faced by science in the face of growing public dissatisfaction from growing religious movements and fundamentalists of all varieties, now having easy access to the public sphere through the Internet, will probably remain as long as scientists do not strive to accord with the widest possible consensus as to its course.

As with most forms of knowledge, scientific know-how is a two-edged sword that can work for good, but also easily cuts the other way. Like many others who get caught up in ethical dilemmas, scientists then come in a position where they may tend to adopt a Janus face by looking away from the negative aspects and highly unpleasant consequences of their work and directly present only its possible benefits. This occurs where the nature of their work requires, for example, regarding the 'miracle' of inorganic matter as 'dead matter' or that of living matter as expendable in the service of science, medicine and industry. Meanwhile, only a science which fully respects nonviolence towards creation in all its forms and exercises due care for all living beings can be viable for a secure future.

Let no one forget or minimize the entirely crucial role of science - or, if you prefer, of scientists - in the 20th century in making possible modern warfare and extending research into what ought to be taboo areas. Participating in warfare, providing the technical development of all military technology has fueled the growth of the weapons industry everywhere, not least by scientists supporting horrific military experiments with nuclear weapons, gas and chemical warfare (not forgetting the relatively innocuous but horrific napalm and defoliants like Agent Orange) and ever more terrifying bio-weapons. The mentality that made all this possible was and is an inextricable quotient in the equation of warfare. News reports show that militarily-oriented 'scientific research' continues to advance in many powerful nations even in the post-Cold War period, and without any officially sanctioned critical reservations or notable public declarations by bodies of scientists.

Probably a yet greater threat is science's continuing role in the industrial and consumerist destruction of environments - animal, insect, plant - potentially up to an including the very atmosphere! Through genetic and other biological researches, scientists have been deeply involved in forwarding - without any cogent projection of the possible consequences to environments, health and the diversity of plant and animal species - the profitable interests of big business in monopolising patent rights for almost any living thing under the sun. These developments are still taking place, particularly in trying to foist the genetically modified crops on cultures where important bio-diversity has been culturally preserved hitherto and may soon be lost through GM seeding.

Fortunately, in recent years there appears to have been increased wariness - not least now also in the world scientific community - about scientific technologies that pollute and destroy eco-systems and alter climates. Still, the technical means of manipulation and control of persons and societies, are still part and parcel of international agendas of readiness for war and other kinds of industrial and ecological conflict. The history of the last century shows clearly that scientists can be contributing - unwittingly or otherwise - to this through countless small and apparently harmless contributions which lead to unforeseen consequences. Power brokers operating within social systems that exploit the developing world far more thoroughly than they provide meaningful aid to the truly needy often fund science projects and employ scientists to effect their policies. Scientists are of course becoming increasingly aware of disruptions caused by scientifically-designed technology, not only on natural environments but also on traditional culture and human communities of all kinds. The scale of this runaway 'development' and its negative effects ought to be given a much greater focus through new initiatives in research, education and public discussion, for it to be steered beneficially and slowed down by those involved in science policy.

Intellectual prejudices are not constants, but rise and fall here and there. Some of the most ubiquitous prejudices of Western man set a virtual stopper to real scientific advances in many subjects. We are currently seeing very substantial challenges, on several fronts and largely from outside the scientific community, to long-dominant views in a range of sciences. When this is not simply revanchist and destructive of genuine knowledge, it can be healthy in that it can lead to the regular reevaluation of deep assumptions. This has occurred occasionally in the supposedly 'exact' natural sciences at various levels, including that of the most general theories. For example, the breakneck rate of innovation in the astro sciences in the last decades of the C20th (especially since the Hubble telescope and other highly computerised advances in instrumentation) is probably only matched by the rate at which one new conception after another had to be trashed to make room for yet newer visions.

Though empirical science must appeal wherever relevant and possible to demonstrable facts, it cannot do so without the aid of speculative reasoning, nor without adopting attitudes and assumptions that cannot be backed fully either by facts or even sound or sufficient reason. Assumptions are like guesses, though guesses informed partly by the paradigm to which they adhere, partly to intellectual fashion and partly to imagination. Therefore, for any beneficial advance in scientific culture, its practitioners must continually be willing and able to broaden their outlook to include what has been overlooked or excluded as 'extra-scientific'. To deepen understanding of science as a part of society, life and the human quest for enlightenment from a philosophical and human viewpoint, rather than only from specialised technical explanations, must surely be made a more central intellectual concern.

'UNNATURAL SELECTION' BY HUMAN INTERVENTION?

The current explosion in genetic research and bio-technologies doubtless brings many benefits to humanity, but also dangers of unforced and unwanted consequences. The many millions suffering hunger or malnutrition may be helped by improved plant and animal food products, greater production and less loss of crops and livestock due to environmental factors. While geneticists employed by multinational corporations have insisted that there can be no danger from foodstuffs produced by aid of gene technology, this view is strongly debated by independent researchers and not least by the eco-conscious public. Advances in chemistry - including the development of thousands of new compounds unknown in nature - have become an enormous threat to the environment despite the assurances of scientists all along the line during their development. No one with any unbiassed judgement can say, as for example . The very statement is highly unscientific prophesy and flies in the face of all experience of the introduction of new drugs and other chemical products. Moreover, the use of genetics in new kinds of biological conflict - even warfare - and in subtle social control will be an ever-present possibility.

Evolutionary theory continues its march of triumph in explaining natural processes and is constantly being reinforced and extended in genetic research. The main benefits expected from all this to survival of human populations is through genetic engineering. This is an extremely controversial issue, of course, and not least, of course, where the question of human cloning and eugenics are involved.   The human species no longer appears to develop 'naturally', for the human organism has not 'deselected' its many kinds of age-old weaknesses. Instead, mankind can and does manipulate the environment to adjust it to the organism's needs, through almost all human productive activity, including of course medicine, laborsaving technologies and social policies.

In short, natural selection does not appear always eventually to improve the adjustment of a species to its environment. These include extremely common and often chronic back problems (originating with the human shift from all fours to upright posture), many genetic defects at birth, killer diseases in general like malaria, cancer etc, and also for that matter simpler chronic ailments from hemorrhoids and hernia to allergies and rheumatic ailments. Genes are claimed to control the reproduction of pathogens and antibodies. It has long been recognised that natural selection does not secure the survival of a species as such, but only the reproduction of members of it. Pathogens, for example, evolve genetically in response to antibodies in blood (human and animal etc.) and to new environments (such as biochemical drugs and other technological methods of combating pathogens), thus ensuring their own continued reproduction. The same applies to insects, perhaps most importantly to disease-carriers that evolve new genes to survive insecticides etc.

That natural selection has not brought about human adjustment to the environment through the gradual disappearance or 'deselection' of these ailments shows that many questions about human intervention in natural processes are beyond the scope of Darwinian ideas and need therefore to be dealt with in the context of human values, ethics and critical examination of the role of science and its policy for world changes. Technological innovation as an 'extension of human limbs' - or computers as extensions of the human brain - cannot reasonably be attributed to natural selection. Human innovation does not come about by natural processes but through 'artificial' manipulation. The difference between nature and artifice should be obvious, also that it involves a crucial, fundamental shift from naturally-determined development to moral decision.

Human industry and organisation has opened up enormously many alternatives of activity to choose between - for or against. Such choices now open to mankind as the manipulation of genes - even in pathogens - are not 'natural selections' but human 'artificial' choices. Evolutionism remains a natural scientific theory, not a value system capable of accounting for the purposes, or motives and goals, which are the chief distinguishing feature of civilised human life with its policy choices and moral concerns. It has therefore at best of limited relevance to the understanding of individual psychology or the study of human society and culture besides.

The biotech industry has begun to intervene in the incredibly intricate interplay of chemicals to behave organically, attracting and repelling, bonding or destroying, initiating division or impeding it, defending and attacking... subtle and largely unknown processes and so forth. It is known that every cell and enzyme is infinitely more subtle than bio-science still can adequately explain, let alone emulate. There are plans to extend this micro-intervention of a truly massive scale. To readjust the very building blocks of life in ways that doubtless have tremendous unthought-of consequences for eco-systems around the planet and for human life and social developments due to the new covert eugenics that human gene implants, cloning and other almost inconceivable possibilities of changing the human body and our relationships seems like playing with fire.

The underdeveloped and undernourished world may benefit from scientific technologies, but there is no guarantee whatever of this. Many of the advances of technology even from the mid C20th have not yet become available to a large fraction of the earth's population even yet. The admitted motive of the bio-tech companies that invest in this research is profit because, as leading researchers admit (eg. at University College, London), without the right of patent to plants, animals and other genetic material, no companies would invest. Only the politically rigid and economically naive person can assert that it is the quality of the plants or animals that cause starvation and malnutrition in the poor countries! Genetic improvements may help - but also may harm in reducing natural diversities. They will more likely benefit the rich and make them yet fatter (less healthy), the owners and shareholders in the monopolistic patent rights. The quality of food depends on many things and it is surely most satisfactory in terms of chemical purity and taste where no artificial chemicals are used at all, in so-called 'ecological' foodstuffs.

Recent researches indicate that the introduction of improved strains of grain since the 2nd World War did not have the effect on hunger and malnutrition claimed for it. Other factors can largely be thanked for what rises in production there were, such as in India. These include a period of better growing conditions, a politically regenerated society and work force. At the same time, where laboratory developed super strains of wheat and rice have been introduced, the all-important bio-diversity of grain subspecies has been seriously weakened. The same kind of problems must surely be expected of gene technology, where supposed 'improvements' must be viewed as to their various influences on the whole environment.

Bio-scientists modifying plants and animals genetically for foodstuffs or whatever else have a moral obligation to see that truly adequate, lengthy research is done into the likely or possible risks involved. A massive shift from basal research to study of effects 'in the field', so to speak, is called for, but hardly anything is being done by comparison, doubtless because there is no mid-term corporation profit in ensuring security of the environment. The willingness of some companies like Monsanto to review and modify their programmes for gene-modification in agricultural plants has literally been dictated by consumers, primarily in Britain and Europe, who simply refused to buy GM foodstuffs. This is one singular case of the public having had a direct influence on the policy of a leading scientific technological firm through conscious consumer pressure causing a collapse in the market's profitability at an international level.

Positive as the effect of this public reaction is, blind economic and social forces which are involved in influencing the direction of much science and technology continue to operate. There is still a lack of convincing evidence and reasonable arguments that the further development of genetic modification technology will prove to be for the good of all mankind. The big companies are most likely to continue shifting boundaries by quantum leaps and bounds, faster than is at all safe. Therefore it is essential that critical awareness within the entire scientific culture should be increased and that the educated public should increasingly act as a watchdog.

1. Science and the Modern World (1925, p. 22)
2. L'ordre du Discours, (1970)
3 Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius,, Ray Monk (London 1990 - Vintage 1991).
4. Mind and Nature., Gregory Bateson (Fontana 1980, p.14). This decline is also charted and examined constructively in Telling the Truth about History by J. Appelby, L. Hunt and M. Jacob. (U.S. 1994)
5. A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking Bantam Books 1988)
6. The Creative Moment - How Science made itself Alien to Modern Culture, Joseph Schwartz. (N.Y. 1992)
7. Understanding the Present, Bryan Appleyard. (London, 1992)
8. Forbidden Science - Suppressed research that could change our lives. Richard Milton. London, 1994)

Continue to Ch. 2: Science and the Progress of Humanity? The above material is the copyright of Robert Priddy, Oslo 1999

Return to Home Page