We know that science can proceed along a false or misleading path for a long time when the cultural biases of the scientists lead research.Science is a bitch discipline. Nothing is taken for granted. Assumptions are the most deadly opponents. Beliefs too often masquerade as facts. Facts that all us monkeys agree make reality. Before you know it fiction is truth.
--ml
tags: Dum Luks Stockpot, John Hawks, science
Sounds like you are talking about politics. Except that, as with science, eventually everything founders upon the shoals of objective reality, something which us monkeys have little experience with.
ReplyDelete"Objective reality"?
ReplyDeleteObjective reality?
Objective reality?
Not familiar with that.
Oh, wait...
Isn't that where the Holy Grail is kept? Yeah and only the purest of the pure can get there if they are God's fool to boot.
I don't qualify. I'm a plain fool, none of god's.
Seems to me that everything we experience in the world must pass through our senses to be filtered by our conscious mind. That's a kind of reducing valve that discards anything it deems irrelevant. Hence our experiences of the same event differ. "Reality" is what the majority agree is the most plausible likelihood. If "politics" is the power relationships among individuals, then I know of no human interaction that is not subject to politics.
My point in this is not to denigrate science, but to remind all of us just how tentative scientific statements must be. All it takes is one of us monkeys saying "Hey! Look't this!" and we turn topsy-turvy from a 'common sense' Earth centric universe to a helio-centric one. And we must hold ourselves open to the notion that new observations may alter that consensus.
--ml