Science and Value

Science is fascinating, ian't it? And there are so many fields of endeavor within it that it isn't likely our appetite will ever be sated. One would think so, anyway.

After all the flap about the expanding universe which we raised the other day we now find ourselves enthralled with questions empirical. Today our subject is, we think, biochemistry. At the least, what we are considering are the notions of whether our physical makeup controls us.

Must we think what we think and if we must, how honestly responsible are we for our actions? There are those out there who believe, to paraphrase Mr. C. S. Lewis, that human thought is nothing more than cerebral biochemistry. If that's all it is, how can we argue for personal responsibility, indeed of any real ownership of our lives and ourselves?

Can we usefully speak of freedom and liberty if we cannot help who we are? Why bother with discussions of any sort if all we are is whatever nature drives us to be? What actually is the value of even such noble callings as scientific inquiry under such circumstance? Such a scientist after all must really only be thinking what he must think. If science were ever to prove that thought is only physical, wouldn't that include the value of science along with whatever morals or values we may deem to be true?

And that's our issue with so much of modern science. It attempts to argue that all is empirical when not everything is. Or, if it is, then everything is meaningless. For value is not empirical, and there is no value whatsoever to thinking what we cannot help but think and believing what we cannot help but believe.

In short, if science is correct and empiricism is king, then all human action is pointless. Even science itself.