“Follow the Science”

The mathematical elaboration of a physical theory can be tied to observable facts only through translation. In order to introduce experimental conditions into a calculation, one must make a version that replaces the language or concrete observation [with] the language of numbers; in order to [turn] the results which the theory predicts into something observable, one needs a theme to transform a numerical value into an indication formulated in the language of experiment. (Duhem in Cassin, Dictionary of Untranslatables: p1,151.)

The history of instruments shows that a general approach to improve the reliability of an instrument is to narrow its application scope, that is, to make it special for a limited range of subjects ... The proliferation of instruments provides a material base for the specialization of science. (Chen, Thomas Kuhn’s latest notion of incommensurability: p271)

The very idea is an abuse, a perversion of reality designed to contort hearts and minds away from a truth so obvious, only the most convoluted casuistry could possibly conceal it. It is as if much of humanity has been bewitched by an illusionist’s cold and practiced sleight of hand.

Science generates data as guided by theories it always strives to disprove. 

The closest science comes to settled facts are those findings it has yet to disprove. Hence, science is necessarily guided by theory, not fact; there are no facts in an absolute sense. Theories are conceived on the basis of other theories that together constitute a framework, without which science simply cannot be. For example, science in the abstract is by definition the theory of falsificationism. Is falsificationism falsifiable? Or: Is science itself an unfalsifiable theory? 

Theories are the soil of meaning that nourishes the body of science, without which science is impossible, unthinkable. And it cannot be truly neutral – neutrality is itself a value – though it is right science makes the attempt to be neutral, albeit in humility, and in particular by maintaining a dispassionate distance from the claims made in its name.

And perhaps above all this, the languages of science’s many disciplines must be continually renewed to effectively translate the data generated within the context of the theories that birth the initiating impulse to seek out that very data, but to an audience that must then interpret those translations from its almost endlessly varied perspectives. 

Where in this maelstrom of interpretation are the immutable facts we should obey? And when you believe you’ve found one, what do you think it means? What a fact means to us determines how we act on it, how we form policy around it, how we let it influence our lives. If it means nothing to us, it is nothing to us. 

Thus, it is meaning that matters in the end, not fact. Claims to the contrary are necessarily appeals to meaning.

The core corruption responsible for the controversial mantra that is the title of this article is materialism. Science – here I mean Science, or Scientism rather than science per se – has been made its slave, though certainly not in the sense of humble service. It should be clear by now that materialism cannot account for reality’s observable starting point: consciousness. Consciousness is life itself, nature, God, All That Is. There is only consciousness. 

Whence so brazen a claim? 

Well, if we assert both consciousness and matter, we choose the impossibility of dualism. That, or we confront the impossibility of materialism; there is only matter. And, because no one can find matter anywhere, we are left with consciousness, proven real by the inescapable observation that we experience our realities. 

The deeper we look into what our senses tell us is the fabric of reality, the more we find ‘mere’ information, rather than discreet matter. Information (a.k.a. meaning) is to consciousness as matter is to materialism. How can there be meaning without consciousness? Ergo, information requires consciousness to be possible. By way of supporting example, the foundation of modern science – physics – is at a loss as to what objects (“things”) are. If there are no objects, what is objectivity? (Isn’t objectivity the stuff of science?)

Spacetime is doomed. There is no such thing as spacetime fundamentally in the actual underlying description of the laws of physics. That’s very startling, because what physics is supposed to be about is describing things as they happen in space and time. So if there’s no spacetime, it’s not clear what physics is about.
 (Nima Arkhani-Hamed)

You understand my words. You follow my meaning. And yet materialism cannot accommodate this most self-evident and fundamental of truths. Its logic compels it to assert that understanding – which is an experience – is illusory. Somehow (materialism is compelled to argue) the complex biochemical interactions, the bioelectrical activity of the neural networks that are your brain in action … somehow such activities deceive ‘you’ into believing, mistakenly, that ‘you’ are conscious. This dead (a.k.a. mechanical) activity supposedly generates the illusion of understanding, of meaning, the illusion of experience itself.

How can experience be an illusion? 

Seriously: How on earth can experience be an illusion? It’s about as far-fetched a claim as it is possible to make.

Ask yourself this: What is the illusory experiencer of the illusion of conscious awareness made of? What dead matter could be so convincingly deceived? Your biochemistry? Microtubules? Neural networks? How can something essentially dead – bioelectrical activity – be fooled into experiencing itself as alive? 

How in the name of logic can matter be deceived into the experience of selfhood?

To recap, the choice we face is: idealism (consciousness is all there is), dualism (the impossible interaction of matter and mind), and materialism (there is only matter). Seeing as we do not find matter when we look deeply for it, and seeing as we undeniably experience our realities, it is eminently reasonable to assert idealism, that there is only consciousness. The details of what that implies are beyond the scope of this article, as of my humble faculties.

Hence, the real deception at play here is, in fact, materialism’s implied claim that life is death. Many of us have fallen for it. I suspect, at root, out of fear.

Fearfully craving certainty, we create human approximations of reality as proxies for All That Is those approximations can only sketch. Then, still fearfully craving certainty, we wilfully confuse our clumsy sketches for The Truth.

Because humans are riddled with repressed and unexamined fears, and fragile with pride because of said repression and self-ignorance, science can and has been bought. This pride-trap is currently constructed from materialism (of course it can be made of other paradigms; fear and pride are almost endlessly manipulatable). Consequently, humanity is suffering most horribly under the auspices of Corporate Science (Scientism’s manifestation in thought and deed), which proliferates in an acidic atmosphere of fragile egos battling for ‘success’ and faux immortality. This situation is, by ways fair and foul, the offspring of materialism. By now, Science (not science) is a whoring hiss of white noise rushing nowhere in pursuit of ‘profit’. Science, purblind with human pride, refuses to see the nose on its face. It has become a coven of posturing priests who deride anyone who deviates even slightly from Scientism’s asserted consensus, termed Settled Science.

Because materialism is Scientism’s foundational dogma, there is a huge blindspot regarding how consciousness guides reality, up to and including the psychological failings of scientists, professors, politicians, think tanks, media proprietors, and other institutional manifestations of authority. This blindspot aids and abets the process by which we are forced to uncritically “Follow the Science”.

This is what governments claim to follow. They mean, in truth, that they “follow” the Science they are instructed to appoint, which then pronounces those ‘truths’ prepaid by Science’s various corporate paymasters. This behemoth is what We, the Uninitiated, the Unordained, are commanded to trust. Blindly. Well, we must! Lacking sufficient training, we simply cannot understand what the experts – of ever narrowing fields of expertise – are saying. 

All that remains for us is to obey … in unison … as one mechanical totality … what they command.

Isn’t it institutional authority we are commanded to follow? 

Do we understand, intimately, what authority really is? Do you know what authority is? Could any science answer such a question for us? Would we be allowed to question its answer?

Though denied by materialism, free will is sacred and a property of consciousness. Meekly permitting its metastasising abuse, we submit inexorably to the tightening illusion of death.

It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.  (Dr. Marcia Angell, NY Review of Books, January 15, 2009, Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption)

The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness…
  […] Journal editors deserve their fair share of criticism too. We aid and abet the worst behaviours. Our acquiescence to the impact factor fuels an unhealthy competition to win a place in a select few journals. Our love of ‘significance’ pollutes the literature with many a statistical fairy-tale…Journals are not the only miscreants. Universities are in a perpetual struggle for money and talent… (Dr. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief, The Lancet, in The Lancet, 11 April, 2015, Vol 385, Offline: What is medicine’s 5 sigma?)