SCIENCE'S SELF-ENHANCMENT OF ITS IMAGE

Those scientists whose ideas pervade much of what has been said and written about science all too often seem to be fundamentalistic scientific believers, the less self-reflective representatives of the profession. They are not averse to forwarding professional ideologies about the benevolence and near-infallibility of science and making optimistic predictions of future applications of current research. This is the visible face of science, or a mask that sometimes hides a quite different reality.

The great majority of scientists use the various outlets to present their work in an almost exclusively positive light, not so surprising perhaps, considering human nature. The proverbial scientific reservation of judgement and caution in interpreting results often seem thrown to the winds as soon as the broader public is encountered. Where reservations and possible weaknesses are mentioned, these are mostly confined to very technical points. Any possible future dangers of one's work are soft-pedalled and serious evaluation of physical, social or environmental side-effects of discoveries are mostly side-stepped in favour of speculation on usefulness and benefits, or else on the ignorance or irrationality of critics and protesters. This has clearly been seen, for example, in the case of scientists' offensive to spread the use of experimental and commercial gene-technology in many of its variants for plants, animals and human beings. Well-know scientists nowadays often predict when interviewed, as if they were not merely guessing at the future (eg: "We can say that there will most likely be a cure for this illness within about x years").

Many geneticists and their proponents in industry and the media claim of the gene-manipulated foodstuffs already on the market that "none have caused any ill effects". John Newall of the BBC science unit claimed this during the major national debate on GM foodstuffs.² An unbiassed approach would have required him to qualify that there was no scientific proof to that effect, not so far perhaps, and that scientific opinion world-wide as to whether it might turn out so also differs considerably. The reason the proof is lacking is not least because no medical trials comparable to those required of any new medicines or chemicals have been carried out on GM foodstuffs. This issue has become well-known in recent years, and the questions about effects on health and the environment are not closed and are far from being answered.

When scientists themselves set about organising the presentation of their profession, the outcome is often far from reassuring. Take, for example, the 1991 Bournemouth Conference of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, where luminaries of science broadcasting, like Sir David Attenborough, spoke of the ignorance of politicians and the public generally about science, its benefits and its warnings. Nothing came out of that conference, however, about the errors and deficiencies of the sciences as sources of knowledge and as social institutions, of the many dangers that arise from it's various uncontrolled voyages of chance and discovery. We were rather told that we ought to rate science higher than art and sport because it "puts the food in out mouths and keeps us alive". This illustrates a lack of self-criticism, for how, one may ask, did people eat or stay alive at all in the thousands or even millions of years preceeding the 20'th century? Such sweeping and imprecise generalisations are unworthy of educated people... almost as if we should say grace to science before meals and that the thanksgiving of millions around the world to another source of life and sustenance are nothing else but ignorant superstition. Meanwhile nutritional and dietary science has demonstrated itself to be one of the most fluky, repeatedly altering its views radically on healthy foodstuffs, mostly supporting the use of many chemical additives and food processes originally promoted as scientifically safe that have long-term ill-effects on health and especially on the human immune system.

Though science surely contributes to keeping the increasing population alive, such as through improvements in agriculture, medicine and so on, one more redaily forgets or fails to mention that it has made very solid contributions to death! Whether the balance is credit or debit not certain! Many die as a result of scientific advances, both military and civil. There have been wars, especially high-tech wars! There is pollution from hundreds of thousands of artificially-compounded chemicals which get into the bodies of plant, insect, animal and human and through 'the food put into our mouths'. Mortal illnesses are caused by various types of radiation that result from advances in electronic and nuclear technology; rapidly growing world problems. The vast consumption of medicinal products devised by science, due to massive marketing efforts, especially drugs with many unmarketed side-effects, cause dependencies and mortalities on a large scale so far well beyond accurate measurement, quite apart from a shortage of depth studies and measurements of these ill-effects. The absurd tragedy is that majority of the problems they are prescribed for doubtless result from wrong or excessive diet or other obvious forms of wrong living.

Public pronouncements of scientists who will not countenance any radically critical ideas that challenge current science at its roots are not at all uncommon. Spokesmen of science use the media to give the impression that the only new discoveries that can ever be made must always build upon approved wisdom, being the very ideas they themselves propose. The farcical drama of established pride and its inevitable fall, however, has been played over and over again in science and it continues unabated. Major and long-established scientific schools are at present fighting for their livelihoods against impossible long-term odds in fields like medicine, geology, archaeology and ancient history, just as major battles have been fought and won after tremendous effort in this century in paleontology and physics, to name only two great ideological upheavals.

Scientists should obviously refrain from making authoritative judgements about matters of likely moral consequence as if they were scientific questions. However, one prominent feature of the face presented to the public by some leading scientists is that no scientific work is in itself either moral or immoral. It is as if the scientist is above moral questions: responsibility for their scientific practices lies not with themselves, but with 'society' which uses or misuses scientific knowledge. That is like an author of a novel claiming that he could not be responsible for libel because all depends on what the public make out of his book, not at all on was the book contained.

The information society is itself mainly a product of, and forum for, persons having education. Much has been written about the dangers of vast quantities of indiscriminate data beings available while the intellectual means to handle this flood are becoming scarcer. Original thought, serious investigations by scientists, writers, journalists and creative thinkers is still only available in published books and journals, not on the Internet, not least for reasons of copyright protection. Of course, printed texts are still the chief source of accurate, controllable and up-to-date knowledge and still form the basic reference of the most important institutions of society. Today, however, the popularisation of scientific information has become a massive industry. In the mass media, spokesmen of science are engaged in a publicity campaign that often reminds of the struggle for higher ratings through lowering standards. Over-optimistic and simplified positive representations of science to the public have become all too common, and will clearly tend to undermine what is best about science.

The BBC World Service radio programme is a global disseminator of scientific results, theories and ideology which helps 'set the tone' of science publicity. It can serve as a fairly representative kind of case study of general science promulgation. It presents a rather wide and up-to-date spectrum of current or expected scientific developments and presenters often interview on the air many key persons involved. Over a period of 15 years it has succeeded in keeping up with cutting edge science throughout the English-speaking world at least and it has very largely been interestingly done with mostly first-hand interviews of researchers, precise technical questioning and concise summaries. The wider role of science in society has increasingly been on the agenda. However, the general attitude has been rather too heavily in favour of science as the intellectual panacea and an alternative to other kinds of experience. As one might expect, interviewers' angling exhibits strong biasses in favour of unrestrained advance in almost all basal and applied science. The implicit philosophy and sociology of science which comes to frequent indirect expression is mostly orthodox and naive, which subject is presently under review in this book.

To judge by the wide selection of leading world scientists being interviewed on the BBC World Service's two long-standing science programmes, "Science in Action" and "Discovery", the mentality of interviewees all too often sounds presumptuous. One can often perceive unwillingness not to countenance a possible change of attitude or relinquish the conventional thought pattern (except in respect of one's own original but usually minor contribution), yet this should be part of the basic attitude of a genuine scientist. Since many a true word is said in jest, what of the flippant BBC comment after yet another tour of black holes or anti-matter, "and if there's anything left to explain in the universe, we'll have a go at it next week."² Unfortunately, one too often gets the impression that the joke arises from the same kind of conceit in scientific besserwissen that comes through many a comment made on science programmes.

There is something wrong with the promulgation of science now that programmes of a kind exemplified by the BBC's 'Pop Science' programme are designed to awaken a positive interest among young people of general intelligence. More and more, one talks down to the audience by projecting an entirely one-dimensional, dogmatic and uncritical simplification of scientific ideas, now interspersed with music to make it more palatable and help people to swallow it. Broadcast media are becoming more deeply involved in one-sided pro-science propaganda. It is hardly surprising that the BBC World Service is now involved commercially with major 'science conglomerates' as sponsors, such as the drug company Merck and the Bell communications corporation (in the international 24-hour radio channel 'World'), which daily advertises Merck and Bell scientific inventions as beneficial to mankind. All this makes one thinks that, if science is to gain acceptance and increase rationality so as to combat the undoubted ills of wild superstition, ignorance and obscurantism effectively in the modern global society, such simplistic approaches must surely be self-defeating in the long run?

We hear far too much of the beguiling phrases 'Science proves that' and 'Scientists say'. Perhaps this is partly due to the fact of conformity among many scientists, but it is misleading in any case. All kinds of person call themselves scientists and, even among the fully-employed sort, there are no guarantees that many of them are above average. Scientists are not a race apart, neither morally nor as regards common sense, understanding of others or most other human characteristics. The most intelligent and capable people in society enter many other professions than science. Scientific braininess is not all, nor is it the only kind.

What scientists do not say or fail to say can often be more interesting than what they do, especially in evaluating science and its effects. The reason why scientists hardly ever say much about the reverse side of the coin of their realm is because they hardly ever examine it as a whole from a critical angle, and certainly do not bite the bullet of investigating science itself and its claims scientifically.

One noteworthy exception to the above is the largely unknown but very admirable minority of nuclear physicists who, even before the bad conscience of Oppenheimer and Einstein for such events as Hiroshima, have examined the nuclear weapons industry critically... also the nuclear power industry. Yet the number of independent and critical nuclear scientists remains far too small. The media seem only to allow such important voices of dissent sporadic coverage, such as when one receives a Nobel Prize (eg. Joseph Rotblat) or is needed to comment on some major unforseen disaster. The general attempt to peripheralise free-thinking dissenters, even to conspire to silence 'dangerous' critics of scientific orthodoxy, has been investigated to some extent very authoritatively by Richard Milton³.

The prevailing climate of opinion in the intellectual and academic establishment has long made it highly unpopular to criticise science radically as to some of its claims or to point out the one-sidedness of the values that it proclaims and embodies. It is still very difficult to get a proper and serious hearing for such views. It is well-known how the scientific establishment tends to regard as philistine what is not in accordance with accepted opinion. Independent researchers who shake the assumptions of dominant theories or paradigms of the day without being part of an official research establishment can expect to be ignored as a dilettante or worse, often without due consideration of the case.

There are many history of science textbooks which say, with considerable justice, much against the ecclesiastics of the Middle Ages and yet little - more often nothing - of the huge errors, dogmatisms and even frauds and hoaxes that have plagued practically every branch of science and continue to do so. Classic cases of narrow-mindedness or deceit by famous scientists are mainly presented separately from scientific history, more as a comment on the peculiarity of human nature, while they more likely represent a common state of affairs. Even in a very high profile test case between religion and science, there is strong evidence fraud took place during in carbon-dating the famous Turin shroud.⁴

The situation is more pressing than ever today, with many scientists who popularise their subjects behaving as though their knowledge were the be-all-and-end-all of life, when it is incomplete and often faulty, extending at best only to the limits of the sensory world. This is intellectual fraud, though often practised unwittingly. The perceptions of reality of a great deal of contemporary scholarship shows a failure to appreciate that the greater vision becomes, the more one realises that the domain of the unknown and unknowable is truly vast and hidden from science. From such an understanding, the one scientific theory after another is seen to have many questionable sides, theoretical and practical and many revered theories in science appear superficial and fundamentally flawed.

It was perhaps somewhat short-sighted of Schopenhauer to have limited materialism to being merely the "philosophy of barber's men and druggist's apprentices", for it has long since become the general philosophy of the so-called intellectual... 'so-called' here because their ubiquitously-assumed philosophical materialism is actually logically quite at odds with accepting the existence of any form of higher incorporeal entity as 'intellect', 'conscience' or 'vitiating life principle'. Schopenhauer's edict on "those who know more and more about less and less" applies to today's scientists with equal or even greater force. Now science has also discovered almost infinite universes, both macro- and micro-universes - and perhaps even several of each - to get lost in. The further one looks, the more one sees; the more abstrusely one theorises, the more infinitely complex the universe subjectively appears to us.

When physical scientists sometimes speculate in mere science fiction, it is used to project an ever-more alienated popular conception of science as of mind-breaking and world-making importance. The obvious questions of whether, all in all, science has been more of a benefit to mankind than a destroyer, or whether it really advances the human struggle to goodness, beauty, justice and love of one's fellow creatures - let alone divine truth - is very seldom posed. It is true that the odd cleric is now and again invited to raise some doubts on the media, but they mostly do this impersonally on the basis of doctrine without much personal authority arising from actual spiritual experience and articulated insights.

Because of the myopia of so many scientists who see their own activities through glasses tinted with the belief that science is the sole way of knowledge (i.e. scientism), it often takes an observant literary author to state clearly what is wrong with science. Such was the case when Swift ridiculed the pompous self-certainties of the scientists of his day in Gulliver's Travels. One is reminded of this when maths professor of London University recently asserted that there is no chance of the meaning of human life ever being found⁵. People are entitled to hold such a pathetic life-view, one can but sympathize with the confusion of the age, but why insist on spreading such doom and gloom? .

The various media today, whatever their many shortcomings, both reflect current concerns and generate new interests. In either case, many signs of contemporary intellectual low pressure are evident. Science programmes invariably project a nearly unquestioning presumption of belief in 'the latest' theories, whether tested or not, particularly those of medical researchers, bio-chemists, astronomers and their professional kith. Popularisations of the ideas of astrophysical speculators have dominated the media's view of the universe for years. Within the physical sciences, this underlying physicalistic metaphysic is unquestioned. Viewed from outside those assumptions, however, this provides an infinitely depressing prospect to those who happens fully to believe in such 'visions' of the cosmos. One can hardly turn around in a bookshop without seeing titles about black holes, worm holes, the big bang, quarks, anti-matter... very largely a new form of speculative science escapist literature that confers virtually nothing more of practical or human value to struggling mankind than does sheer science fiction fantasy. As a reviewer of one of those tedious big-bang-black-hole books once concluded, 'somehow one would wish for something more'. Wish, but not expect, while many scientists today hold a schoolboy philosophy that could well be derived from the satirical science fiction series 'Red Dwarf'... without the self-irony, that is!

As scientists examine nature and the universe more and more deeply, the nature of the examiner is both largely overlooked and largely unknown. As we shall see, the 'cosmos within' is seen as superstition and physicists meanwhile skate on very thin ice in trying to bring the 'God-concept' into their reckoning, along with near preposterous materialistic ideas about consciousness.

In both micro- and macro-physics the public are repeatedly wooed with any number bizarre and even absurd ideas on the nature of time or on the existence and possible nature of parallel and 'negative' physical universes. A sound training in strict philosophical analysis would help to avert such nonsense. Self-contradictory ideas are adopted in all seriousness, like time travel. Stephen Hawking asserts such ideas⁶, which are based on intellectual confusions about the concept of time of the sort demolished long since by Ludwig Wittgenstein, but are only partly supported by speculative mathematical acrobatics. That it could ever be technologically possible for matter of any appreciable mass to move faster than light (which Einstein saw as an ultimate velocity) is preposterous, yet anti-experiential ideas about this are regularly bandied about by persons apparently deranged by abstruse mathematics... or, for all we know, by subconscious teenage fantasies about fleeing this awful world to the stars. All this serves to keep the sciences of astro-physics and cosmology in the forefront of the public eye, where they have the flagship role among sciences. Yet these sciences are largely useless both as regards arriving at ideas or knowledge that will help solve the real problems of humanity. It is successful mainly only for the publishing business, which publishes anything that sells. And that it sells says nothing of its truth or relevance, as the history of publishing proves beyond all possible doubt. Nor can they be propounding the truth about the universe, not least because the theoretical claims and counter-claims change almost monthly and major radical reevaluations are not uncommon. This may well demonstrate the critical spirit of competition of radical hypotheses so seldom seen in other more crytallised or ossified sciences.

The belief in the potential of science is expressed by the oft-quoted pseudo-axiom of the sci-fi thinker Arthur C. Clarke: "If an elderly scientist says that something possible he is likely to be right, if he says that something is impossible he is likely to be wrong."

There are certainly quite a few elderly scientists who think possible what almost certainly will always remain mere science fiction. Misled by too much abstruse maths and/or speculative theories about the distribution, nature and creations of matter and energy in the universe (or universes?), we have in the past few decades heard a range of ideas about the nature of the universe put forward by astronomers and astrophysicists which have been invalidated and superceeded by new theories about the same by a new generation of astrophysicists. Hardly a month goes by without some new fantasia about what is inside black holes, how many universes there might or might not be, or whether one may literally or only theoretically be able to 'walk backwards to Christmas' etc. Is all this kind of useless nicely-calculated confusion - quite seriously presented as having relevance - really supposed to represent scientific, intellectual and moral progress?

The fact is that the ultimate questions are never seriously faced by any of the physical sciences, whether due to philosophical and methodological assumptions or to ingrained scepticism about the meaning of life and spirituality. Yet they unashamedly present themselves as getting closer and closer to solving the enigma of creation... presuming that the solution depends on nothing more or less than their original creative thought! Yet all will realise, on second thoughts, that the only possible end result of that thought all will be more information, better summarising theories but certainly not penetration of the mysteries of creation and being! Belief, when strongly held, can be quite tragic as the for atheist physicalists who believe that human life ends in a black hole - not literally, of course, but symbolically in nothing. However, this is not the place to consider the substantial evidence to the contrary.

In August 1995The Sunday Times etc.) informed us that 'scientists' are now 'seriously' asserting that one may be able to travel faster than the speed of light. This fantasy speculation is being propagated by none less than the Royal Astronomical Society, thus contravening Einstein's relativity theory. A boffin paper-writer at the 'scientific' British-American 'Interstellar Propulsion Society' writes that we may even enter black holes and emerge unharmed from them in some quite other spot in space many light years away... at last a scientific proof of so-called 'wormholes'? He is taken as seriously by the science media. One cannot but laugh! But I charge that this is not based on the flimsiest conceivable form of 'evidence'... just a bit of very obscure maths, plus too much your average teenage T.V. S.F. fantasy and more than likely also a strong taste for publicity. Mary Midgley⁷ has taken the trouble of critically examining in detail some of these 'quasi-scientific future fantasies', such as what she aptly calls the 'Just So Story' of Peter Atkins' 1987 speculations in The Creation.

Just think how dreadfully undesirable life would be under such continual artificial conditions as in a spaceship! A lifetime in space must be a nightmare far worse than normal imprisonment (not least since it was revealed in the early '90s by Soviet authorities that astronauts usually grow to hate one another after 8 or 9 months in space together). Obsessed with external reality and the idea of discovery, would-be Dan Dare's contemplate in all 'seriousness' the idea of hyper-driving into a wormhole to see if and where one comes out, and - because of Stephen Hawkins' prediction that one would emerge like spaghetti - whether one is more or less wormlike at the other end than when one went in! Were this a hoax it would be less pitiful a spaced-out idea, and who could really care about it (other than someone like the fictional Red Dwarf crew)?

The fault in this foible lies at the heart of a very deeply in-built conception of traditional European science, namely that there is nothing else in existence other than the observable physical universe. This conception has largely been abandoned by some scientists at the cutting edge of micro-physics, not least of course by string theorists. Belief in the existence of the external world has blinded our average modern intellectuals to the internal world, which remains unrecognised or relatively unknown to most of them, apart from the fact that it interwoven in their own daily reality. Thus, man examines nature and the universe more and more deeply, yet overlooks the nature of the examiner (except on speech days etc.) and therefore actually see less and less of the whole picture. The 'cosmos within' is regarded as a religious superstition, as are thereby also the reasonings of most of the world's greatest philosophers through all the ages and cultures on this reality beyond physical existence (i.e. the metaphysical or transcendental realms).

Though I am a sceptic, there are statistical reasons for faith in the existence of extraterrestrial beings similar to mankind - even more advanced - somewhere in the universe. According to most scientists who comment on this, however, there is not a shred of reliable observational evidence. Yet it is difficult to explain why scientists who are often heard of in the news working on sending out messages to alien intelligences are not at all interested in UFO's, for which reported sightings do at least exist in the many thousands. Strange? Well, UFO'ism is regarded in the scientific community as being worse than religious superstition, while life amid the stars is acceptable because it is based on an accepted but logically questionable theory, that of probability. This contrast partly expresses inherent contradictions in the physicalistic scientific approach as a whole.

The truth is that the claims of the existence of UFOs - whatever they actually are - obviously has a much broader observational basis than do those of extraterrestrial life. That many or most observations are unsound does still not affect the world-wide incidence of reports by sane, reliable persons and even trained observers. To give any credence to UFO'ism is still to risk one's name and the goods that follow from a comfortable career. Even to investigate seriously is to be suspect. This may be eminently sensible, even though the apparent existence of UFO's not explainable as earthly products or whatever the alleged world-wide phenomena might be, is not satisfactorily explained. A broad opinion survey showed that well over 50% of Americans in 1996 gave credence to the existence of extra-terrestrials.

We see here how little the scientific community is able to organise itself to stand up and deal with conventional group pressures? It is not for such reasons, however, that I choose here to disregard speculative theories and claims that UFO's carry extra-terrestrials or that people actually are abducted. The UFO question highlights unresolved aspects of the public face of science and presents a difficult challenge, if only because of the disaffection and scepticism it has created towards science among the general public. All in all, there is much less evidence of various kinds for intelligent extra-terrestrial life than there is for the existence of a creative, miracle-making God. This, however, is quite another subject, considered further in Ch.12

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