Regressing

After Drak recommended God in the Dock in response to yesterday’s post, I picked it up. It’s been a while since I read CS Lewis, and I knew I hadn’t read that collection of essays. I’m delighted I impulse bought this book. The essays are a broad collection, apologetics, yes, but it’s Lewis. He had a way of putting his finger on the heart of it, and summing up human nature. 

So of course I was sharing quotes and bits. And I’ll wander off on a rabbit trail here. Anyone interested in joining a Discord channel for that kind of thing? I’d call it the Book Club with Spikes. Let me know in comments. 

Back on track, because I was going somewhere, one of the things that caught my attention, as you would imagine it might, was Lewis’s take on science. His view on it, much like my own, is not that you cannot have faith and be a scientist. Quite the contrary. He also insists that science be allowed, even encouraged, to ask the difficult questions and seek answers, but only if it is given the freedom to do so with proper scientific methodology. 

And here is where I think you will all start to see the same thing I did. It’s been almost a hundred years since he penned these words, and they resonate now more strongly than ever. Humanity is nothing if not predictable, yes? 

We are seeing in science a regressing, rather than a progress. The injection of political correctness, whether it relates to the socio-economically driven critical race theory, or to the current state of the pandemic where it has been decided that political alignments outweigh reality and data, has the effect of tossing a smothering blanket over the fires of curiosity and inquiry. Science is, in effect, suppressing parts that it does not care to explore fully, in fear of finding inconvenient reality waiting for them at the end of a path of data. This is not a sudden move, sadly. It has been coming for some time now. 

Scientists earned the trust of the people because they used the scientific method to ask questions, and then pursued the answers until they could replicate and prove the answers were accurate. That trust was a valuable commodity. Those who wanted power over the people covet that level of trust. It seems obvious, then, that the edifice of science would be a prize for those who wanted to reach people in the guise of science, for their own ends. The trouble is, they couldn’t stand up to the rigor of true scientific methods of inquiry, so first, that had to go. 

One of the troubling signs is the insistence that the premise put forth cannot be questioned. This is in opposition to true scientific method. Progress in science requires inquisitiveness, and probing queries. True results will hold up under this, and further cement the theory. Untruths cannot be questioned, lest they crumble and reveal what they are: not a foundation, but a pit trap for the unwary. Poke at it with a stick safely from a distance, and all will pass in safety. Stride out with confidence and get caught up in the very thing they most wanted. 

Being a contrarian, whenever I see the signs saying ‘do not go here.’ I am more likely to wonder what lies up that path with the barricade across it. Why am I being kept to this broad well-trodden path? Warn me ‘don’t go there or all will turn their backs on you!’ isn’t exactly reassuring, either. Are there stupid questions? Of course. But who says you can’t ask those? Aren’t even allowed to entertain them? That’s where you must be wary. Those are the ones who are suppressing science, for their own ends. 

Lewis, in the essay these quotes were pulled from, was arguing not necessarily against State suppression of science (although he undoubtedly saw that in his lifetime) but against the Church. His uncompromising belief was that twisting what we know, via science, to try and prove or disprove a point, was only going to backfire. The truth will come out. When it does, any trust you may have engendered through your arguments based on false science is going to evaporate instantly. Even if something else you have said is true, the lie mixed in with it has corrupted the whole. Clinging to what you want to be true is no excuse. 

Here’s the thing. Humans have the capacity to doubt, and question, and so do animals. Anyone who has ever tried to coax a horse to do anything knows this, when those big eyes roll at you, they are definitely doubting you. What we have, that separates us from the dumb beast (and that word does not mean stupid, for my younger readers who only know it from the drifted connotation, it means unable to speak. Probably just as well your cat can’t talk, yes?) is the capacity to think abstractly. We can, and do, believe impossible things. Science is a tool to, sometimes, prove that they are not impossible, merely improbable. 

Like Kipling’s Elephant Child, the average man is not full of insatiable curiosity. This is why the Child was spanked so thoroughly and so often. And the Child paid a price in pain – not only the brief swats of annoyed adults he pestered, but the grave struggle for his life on the bank of the Great Gray-Green Greasy Limpopo River, where Crocodile would have eaten him, and instead gave him the alteration of his life. Science is like that. It’s not easy, and should not be easy. We want to know and that is annoying to those who don’t also want to know. Or who don’t want that knowledge brought out into the common marketplace of ideas. Still, we seek out the troublesome, and we poke at it, with sticks, usually a safe distance away, until we determine what matter of thing this is. 

I wouldn’t have it any other way. I shall never give up learning, no matter how many would like me to sit down and shut up. If I am wrong? That’s a discovery. Back up, try a different tack. Don’t turn and run away if your poking awakens the tiger at the bottom of that pit. When we stop being curious, we lose what makes us scientists. We regress to something less than fully human. 

Related posts:

Gel Electrophoresis The Elephant’s Child Ask Questions On Women and Writing, and Science