Prove It

Science is, as I've said, good, but it's much more limited than often thought. Not all truth is scientific.

Stealing, for example, is wrong. I think we can all agree on that. But does science demonstrate to us that it is? 

Well, show me the experiments which science has set up which proves it and we'll talk. Tell me about the hypothesis that theft is wrong and how you've tested for that, trying to both prove and disprove that hypothesis, and I might concede that all knowledge is scientific. Otherwise, you've got nothing. You're in out of your depth.

Science can't prove abstractions, yet abstractions are very often good and true. Indeed, they're really what we live off of. We prove abstractions through reason and logic, not science. That's really all there is to it.

The Science Thing

I like science. Science is good. We could not heat our homes, drive our cars, or cure diseases without it. So, yay science.

Yet science is also very rote, very basic. It's a shallow type of knowing. Science tells me that it is cold and windy in Detroit this morning. Well, duh. 

What's my point? Simply that while science can be useful all it really does is give facts which are by themselves rather banal. It does not and cannot make any value judgments. It merely is. Why or whether we should heat our homes, drive our cars, and cure diseases, what we should do with our scientific knowledge, are questions behind science. 

This is where issues of good and bad come in. Those issues are not scientific. Even the judgments that science is useful and good are non scientific. They're not empirical but rational. They are above and beyond science.

Basically, don't tell me that science is the end all be all. It isn't, even on its own terms.

Cafeteria Scientism

Follow the science, insist our liberal friends. I might be more amenable to that if they were. 

What grates me as much as anything else is the rank hypocrisy involved. We're expected to follow the science when they like it on things such as COVID protocols and climate change. Yet in areas where the science is far greater settled, such as gender identity and human sexual relations, they are noticeably reluctant to follow its conclusions. This is really nothing more than a cafeteria approach to science, accepting it when you like what it teaches (or might be trying to teach, arguably) and ignoring it when you don't.

That simply won't wash. If you expect me to follow the science no matter where it leads or what it says then I have the right to expect that of you. Otherwise, you have virtually a zero chance of convincing me you're right about the questions you deem critical. It is nothing less than selfishly polemical to insist on devotion to a principle which you yourself will not respect.

If I must follow the science on climate issues and COVID then you certainly must follow it on the questions of gender identity and human sexuality. Anything less is intellectual dishonesty. On that ground alone I see no obligation to listen to your arguments on what amount to pop scientism rather than honest fact.