3 Things You Need to Know About Science

I love science and have tremendous respect for scientific inquiry. I have studied science. I know a few scientists, and I generally like them. However, I know a few things about science, and scientists, that more people need to know, especially now. So today, I offer you a few really important things you need to know about science and scientists.

1. Scientists know almost everything about physics, and almost nothing about life. That’s why physicists can build a reliable nuclear weapon but doctors can’t cure the common cold. Objective science works well for calculating the trajectories and velocities of objects in space and time. Organisms, however, are not objects, and so objective science is completely inadequate for studying them.

Most scientists don’t know this, but it is true. Sadly, many scientists, especially in the US continue to study human beings as though we were objects, or piles of objects called atoms. This has led to a medical system that dehumanizes and objectifies us more effectively than it treats disease or promotes health. It also means that there’s a hell of a lot that doctors don’t know. One thing doctors do know, however, is how to talk down to you in such a way that you won’t question their bullshit.

Physicists know how to blow shit up, and they don’t argue about it. Physicians, on the other hand, barely know what they are looking at, and there’s a lot of disagreement among them about practically everything. Doctors don’t like to let on that they really don’t know what they are doing, so they formed the American Medical Association in order to put up a consistent front that makes it look like they have everything figured out and know what to do in every situation. They do this so that people will trust them, and unfortunately, it works entirely too well. The AMA works very hard to quell dissent within its ranks, and banishes doctors who refuse to tow the party line, but renegade doctors persist, and many of them have better success treating patients than doctors who follow AMA guidelines.

2. Almost everything we know about science, we learned from the pursuit of war. We learned physics in the development of ever more lethal weapons, and we learned medicine from patching up the survivors. Today our weapons kill people far more effectively than our doctors cure disease, and much of the advance in modern medicine has been in improving survival rates of people who suffer the kinds of traumatic injury that only technology can inflict.

3. Plebes worship “Science,” while scientists worship money. You can’t do science without money, and finding money to do science isn’t easy. Unless somebody thinks they can make a lot of money on it, or the military thinks they can kill people with it, you are probably going to have a hard time finding money to study it. On the other hand, if you don’t really care what you work on, as long as it pays well, your opportunities as a scientist multiply. Scientists spend a lot on their education, and they expect to be rewarded for that, so many scientists look for the higher paying jobs.

That’s why, when you need a scientist to do something really terrible, like design a nuclear weapon that kills all of the people in a city, but leaves the buildings standing, or turn a minor statistical anomaly into a smoke-screen argument against global warming, or bio-engineer a bat corona-virus so that it infects humans, you can always find a meek and obedient scientist who is happy to do it for you so long as you have the money.

Plebes, on the other hand, have disavowed the creation myth of their Judaeo-Christian heritage in favor of an even bigger pile of bullshit called the Big Bang Theory, and they now embrace “Science” the great spirit from whom all new technology flows, as a religion. They traded the clerical collar for the white lab-coat of scientific authority. Now they believe anything the doctor tells them, just like they used to believe the priest, and of course they take their vaccines as a sacrament to their faith in “Science.” I hope they’ve at least learned not to leave their kids alone with a scientist either.

People have always believed a lot of stupid stuff. As I’ve so eloquently said before, “Stupid and wrong is the natural human condition, and it has never stopped us before.” That said, the human body is smarter than science can comprehend, and its natural tendency to heal, especially when supported by good nutrition, proper exercise and a non-toxic environment, tends to make doctors look good, if they can somehow take credit for it, but the miracle is you, not the medicine, and your body knows more than your doctor.

That’s why you should be very careful about messing with that miracle, or trusting “Science.” Science is not some noble pursuit of the truth. Science is about warfare, money, power and greed, and any scraps of truth that emerge from it are purely coincidental. Science is a tool of exploitation and control. In fact, psychologists are studying you right now, and the people paying those psychologists intend to use the knowledge they gain to control and exploit you. That’s what you need to know about science.

God, Einstein, Kant, Darwin, and Me

I’ve been really busy on a couple of new radio projects. One of these radio shows relates to this blog, and will air this Sunday. I really enjoyed doing it, and I’m excited to share it, so let me tell you a little about it:

Sunday, August 31, at 9:30 AM Pacific Time on KMUD Community Radio,

I will appear (if one can be said to “appear” on radio) as a guest on:
The Living Earth Connection:
A Show That Examines the Root Causes of the Ecological Crisis and Seeks to Change Our Vision of Our Place in the World

On this show I talk about classical music, Einstein, Kant, Darwin, the phenomenology of the organism and the metaphysics of ecology, in that order. You know, just a regular “off the cuff” interview. We prerecorded the interview last week, and finished editing it last night.

I know this material pretty well, but it’s quite heady. I had the rare privilege, as an interviewee, to edit the interview as well. I did my best to eliminate the long pauses and unnecessary digressions to make it as pleasant to listen to, and easy to understand as possible. Some great bits didn’t make the cut. We only have an hour of airtime, after all. This show was entirely Amy Gustin’s idea, but now that we’ve completed it, we’re both happy with how it came out. We may even post some of the outtakes as additional material on the Living Earth Connection blog.

I got invited on the show because of an essay I wrote that first appeared on this blog. Well, that, and the fact that I sleep with the producer, got me invited on the the show to talk about the essay titled: You Don’t Have To Call It God, But Don’t Pretend It Doesn’t Exist. Amy really liked the essay, because it points out that the best available science supports an animist, or indigenous worldview, while it indicts objective science, technology and the dominant culture.

The essay has nothing to do with God. It’s about science, perception and phenomenology. Religion gives God such a bad name, that I hated to use the G word in the title, but “A Short Essay on Phenomenological Metaphysics” has no hook. God is still a celebrity with SEO gravitas, so I went with the stupid title.

This essay elicited the most inspiring comment I have yet received in three-and-a-half years of blogging:

Frank Josef Orange
May 28th, 2014 at 1:22 am | Edit

This in regards to your essay You Don’t Have to Call It God: I’ve been a searcher all my life, read Relatively for the millions at around 11 but I was never able to do the math but I came to understand the principles.
Looked for god in LSD ,weed ..got closer
The strange thing is that recently I’ve been having some health problems, the kind you know will be the end ..ya just know, the odd part is that answers have been just showing up, I happened to watch a documentary DMT the spirit molecule And your essay, and all of it is coming into clarity.
That all of us and everything ever,was and forever well be One.
And it is simplicity and perfection and oneness and ..Self ?

Although there is still the problem how this thing came into existence. Something can’t spontaneously exist from nothing.
Could be we are just one of many beautiful shinning entities.
Oddly I’ve come to not care.

To conclude though, there were many things that lead me to the conclusions I’ve come to, but I have to say your essay just about puts the dot at the end…….

What can you say about a comment like that? Words matter! I write!

Frank read the essay about a week earlier than most of you, because I accidentally hit “Publish” when I meant to hit “Schedule.” The post appeared on the blog early, for about 10 seconds, but because he subscribes, the post went right to his email. When he came back to post a comment, it ended up under the previous week’s post. I’m telling you this, because, hey, sometimes there are bonuses for subscribers.

There are bonuses for listeners too. I always find it easier to understand something when someone explains it to me, than when I read it. On the radio show, I go into much more detail about the science behind the essay, and the implications of this world view. I’ll be the first to admit that a lot of what you read on this blog is just pointless drivel. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do, but this radio show is different. This radio show can change the way you see the world. At the very least it will give you something to think about. I hope you’ll tune in. 

click this link to stream or download Part 1 of the show

click this link to stream or download Part 2 of the show

 

You Don’t Have to Call It God, but Don’t Pretend It Doesn’t Exist

As you may have guessed, I’m not a religious man. I think about religion the way I think about classical music, only more so. That is: I’ve heard it. I’ve played it. I know what it’s all about, but it’s been done to death. I know some people still love it, but to me it seems antiquated and irrelevant.

I don’t worship a God of any sort, but nor would I call myself an Atheist. Atheism is a reaction to religion. Atheists renounce religion, and with good reason, I think, but I’m not about to deny the existence of a force greater than myself in the Universe when science makes it so plainly evident.

Anyone who accepts Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, buys the basic premise of Darwin’s Origin of Species, and can agree on a definition of “organism” would have a hard time arguing against the existence of, if not God, then at least something like God, or something that might have been called God for a very long time, for lack of a better word. I don’t have a better word either, but if you have a moment, and don’t mind stretching your mind a bit, I’ll introduce you, and you can decide for yourself what to call it.

We’ll start with the hardest thing to get your mind around: Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. Everyone recognizes the formula E=MCsquared, and knows that atoms are packed with energy, and that’s why we can build nuclear bombs.

That’s not the really interesting thing about relativity. The really interesting thing about General Relativity is that it demonstrated that space and time only exist in relation to an observer.

Einstein wasn’t the first person to figure this out, by the way, the first physicist, perhaps, but not the first person. Immanuel Kant deduced the same thing, about 200yrs ago, logically, based on the a-priori nature of math and geometry. Einstein did the math and geometry and arrived at the same conclusion.

If you want to check Einstein’s math on this, you are welcome to do so. I know I’m not up to it, but I have read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and it seems like an airtight case to me.

This is a very different way to think about space and time than we are used to. To us, space and time appear unified, inexorable and absolute. We think of ourselves as inhabiting space, and passing through time.

For example:

I live in Ettersburg, East of Shelter Cove, South of Eureka and West of Garberville, I’ve lived here since the turn of the 21st Century. That is how I would ordinarily orient myself in space and time. Abe Lincoln, on the other hand, lived in Washington, DC during the 1860’s. So, it appears as though Abe Lincoln and I are separated by space, some 3,000 miles, give or take, and by time, 150 years or so.

General Relativity tells us that we don’t inhabit space and time so much as space and time inhabit us. In other words, I live in a very special place called “here” at a time called “now”, and in my experience, Abe Lincoln is a character from the distant past. During his life, Abe Lincoln also lived in a place called “here” at a time called “now”, but in his experience, I did not exist at all.

Abe Lincoln and I both perceive space and time, as the central character in our own experience of here and now, but the idea of a larger space and time in which we both exist at different times, and in different places, is just that, an idea. Ideas, like space and time themselves, do not exist outside of our perception of them. That’s what Kant and Einstein told us.

Space and time only exist within observers. That’s not how the world looks to us, and we cannot even imagine what existence outside of space and time is like, but that’s how it is, and that’s where we live. Still don’t believe me, take it up with Einstein or Kant. I recommend Kant’s The Prolegamena to Any Future Metaphysics for a good first step. If you’re still with me, try to stretch your mind around that for a moment.

You can’t really comprehend anything outside of space and time, but that is where you live, weird as it seems. You secrete space and time in order to make sense of your experience, and you build a concept of the world based on what you experience. So, space and time, as well as a concept of the world, in which you, and every other creature on Earth, inhabit space and time, only exist in relation to the observer who experiences them, namely, you.

OK, that’s the hard part. Let’s take the definition of “organism” next:

An organism is a complex system of interdependent parts, such that the structure and function of each part is determined by it’s function within the whole, and the whole of an organism is always greater than the sum of its parts.

That seems pretty straight forward to me. A cell is made of many parts, but they all function together as one organism. Many cells can function together to form a larger organism, like a plant or an animal. Many organisms can function together to form a still larger organism, such as an ecosystem. Organisms are not objects, nor are they machines. Organisms are alive. Organisms live.

And finally, What’s the gist of Darwin’s Origin of Species?

In the tiniest nutshell, I would say that the crux of Darwin’s biscuit is that all of the organisms that have ever existed on Planet Earth, are related to each other. Does that sound right? There’s a lot more to biological evolution than that, but for our purposes, that’s enough.

Now, imagine all of the organisms that exist on Earth now, and have ever existed in all of history. Imagine the 7 Billion+ humans living now, plus every human who has ever lived, all of their pets, all of their livestock, all of their ancestors, all of the wild animals that have ever lived, all of the dinosaurs, every fish, bird, insect, plant, and mushroom, and don’t forget all of the tiny microscopic organisms like yeast, protozoa, and bacterium. Don’t leave anyone out.

All of those organisms, Darwin would expect us to believe, are related, by birth, to every other organism, including those of you now reading this essay. Now go ahead and throw in all of the organisms that will exist in the future, even though we have no idea what they will look like or how many of them to expect. We’re talking about a lot of organisms now.

What separates this collection of individual organisms from each other? The answer is space and time, of course. Some of these organisms come from the past, others from the present, still others from the future. Some come from Africa, others from Asia and still others from Australia, and so on. No two organisms can occupy the same space and time. This you remember from geometry, and it corresponds to your experience of space and time in the real world. So, all of these organisms, though related, remain separated by their positions in space and time.

What were we just saying about space and time? We went over how Einstein demonstrated that Kant was right when he deduced that space and time do not exist outside of the observer who perceives them. What does that mean for all of those organisms? It means that outside of our perceptions, all of those organisms are not separated. Outside of space and time, where perceiving organisms actually exist, all life on Earth remains undivided. In other words, every organism on Earth, past, present and future, are, in some incomprehensible, but very real way, parts of a single organism, that exists outside of space and time.

What did we just say about organisms? “An organism is a complex system of interdependent parts, such that the structure and function of each part is determined by it’s function within the whole, and the whole of an organism is always greater than the sum of its parts.”

So I ask you, “What would you call an organism made up of every single organism on Earth, such that the structure and function of every single organism on Earth was determined by it’s function within the whole, and the whole of that organism was even greater than the sum of its parts?”

Thanks to Kant, Darwin and Einstein, we know this organism exists. Without it, we wouldn’t exist. We know that we are a part of it, but what should we call it? Gaia?, The Big Organism?, God?, Bruce? Does it matter what we call it? You are never going to mistake it for anything else, and you’re never going to be able to talk about it any more coherently than this, so maybe it’s best not to call it anything. Still, I don’t think it makes sense to pretend that it doesn’t exist.

In fact, I don’t understand why we don’t teach this in schools. The Critique of Pure Reason has been around for over 200 years. General Relativity has been around for most of a century. We teach evolution, and we teach relativity, at least to the degree that most teachers understand it, but but they never quite put it together. Instead, they teach that civilization, the economy and the “rule of law” is what unites us …against the rest of nature.

The Limits of Objective Science

The Limits of Objective Science

The show happened a few months ago on KMUD, although it probably never should have happened at all. Really Eric, if you can’t be bothered to prepare a show, let someone else tickle the ether. Eric Kirk showed his respect for all of the grassroots organizers who did the work to put Proposition 37, the label GMOs proposition, on the ballot, not by inviting any of them onto his monthly talk show, not by bothering to research the issue himself, but instead, by asking listeners to call in with, and I quote “…the objective science that proves that genetically modified crops are safe.”

As you can imagine, the entire show was beneath contempt, and a tragic waste of the community’s airwaves, money, and time. Of course the election is long past, and Prop. 37 failed, but that insidious quote deserves closer scrutiny and discussion. Let’s look at it again:

“…the objective science that proves that genetically modified crops are safe.”

As if one phone call from Eric Kirk to Monsanto’s Public Relations Department wouldn’t have yielded a Phd guest for his show, if he could have been bothered, but that’s not my point here. While a PR Phd from Monsanto full of BS about GMOs on KMUD might have made for better radio, even Monsanto’s Phd would be hard pressed to find objective science that proves that GMOs are safe… extremely hard pressed.

I’m sure Monsanto’s PR flack would blather on about this or that study, and about his credentials. He’d have piles of evidence, and a good story to go along with it, but he couldn’t prove that GMOs are safe with objective science. Really, Monsato’s PR guy could hardly have done better than Eric Kirk, who simply insinuated that such a thing existed, but even if GMOs were actually safe, you couldn’t prove it with objective science, because organisms are not objects.

We really like this word “objective”, especially in front of the word “science”. By God “objective science” is the only science we trust, and we trust “objective science” precisely because it is so… objective. I give credit where credit is due. Objective science told us that the Earth revolves around the sun. Objective science gave us the atom bomb, and objective science helped us put a man on the moon. All impressive feats, I completely agree, and I can understand why people might put a lot of stock in “objective science”, but it has limits.

Objective science leaves many important questions unanswered. For instance, objective science told us how much rocket fuel we would need, and when we would have to launch the rocket, in order to put a man on the moon, but objective science could not tell us if space travel was safe for humans. We still don’t know if space travel is safe for humans, and we certainly don’t have objective science that proves it. So far, space travel seems safe enough, for very healthy people, for limited amounts of time, but we really don’t know enough about human physiology to say with certainty that space travel has no long term deleterious effects.

On the other hand, any 12 year old has enough experience with objects that they have a pretty solid working understanding of physics. By the time a child turns twelve, he/she has dropped thing, thrown things, launched water rockets, exploded firecrackers and spun a bucket of water around upside down without spilling it. By age twelve, most children have such a solid understanding of physics that they can play baseball, ride a bicycle, jump rope or play jacks, and they rely on this understanding instinctively for the rest of their lives. Only later, when they go to school, do they learn that there’s math involved.

Even though most people have a pretty good working understanding of physics, all of that math discourages many people from studying theoretical physics, at least past high school. Yet, a statistically significant number of people do pursue their interest in theoretical physics, and these people do a hell of a lot of math.

In fact, theoretical physicists have found applications in real life for damn near every kind of math that mathematicians can dream up. Physics is like that. It’s very mathematical and precise. You do a few experiments, figure out a few equations, and Boom, you can use those equations to predict the motions of objects all over the universe. We can predict how fast an object will fall on any planet anywhere in the universe, how much force it will exert when it hits the ground, and how much force it will take to throw it across the room etc etc.

As a species, we demonstrate an extremely accurate, working understanding of physics, one that allows us to, for instance, throw a spear accurately enough to hit a moving animal, conceive and build a bow and arrow, or atlatl, and to use them effectively. We find this working understanding of physics very satisfying, and even though we no longer hunt wild game for sustenance, in leisure activities like golf, bowling, surfing and in all ball sports, the pleasure of learning to manipulate objects in space and time more accurately, makes these activities fun and enjoyable.

We really like theoretical physics too. It makes us feel powerful to know so much about how objects move in space and time, and we’ve learned to do some pretty impressive tricks. Using theoretical physics, NASA was able to send a rocket-ship all the way to the moon, and back, on the first try. That’s a pretty good stunt, even I admit. Our working understanding of physics, which has since become our theoretical understanding of physics has served us well in so many ways throughout our history.

From helping us develop the tools and skills necessary to hunt mastodons, to helping us develop the tools and skills necessary to launch thermonuclear Armageddon, it’s our understanding of how objects move in space and time that makes us a successful species on this green Earth. As long as we’re talking about objects in space and time, be they baseballs, rocket-ships, or Higgs-Boson particles, we can thank “objective science” for enlightening us, with such astounding accuracy, about how they behave. That’s why we call it “objective” science. Objective science is the science of objects, and objects reside in space and time. Now you know why we call objective science, “objective”.

Fortunately, I think, for all of us, organisms are not objects. Organisms do not behave like objects. Organisms do not function like objects, and organisms do not give up their secrets easily to objective science. That is why, when it comes to medicine, biology, sociology, economics, or psychology, all of the sciences that study organisms, objectively, you’ll find them doing lots, and lots of experiments, and no matter how much math they use, their predictions remain woefully imprecise.

While we may calculate with accuracy the age and origin of the universe in space and time, life remains mostly a mystery. Sure, biologist, biochemists, and doctors now understand, on some level, the mechanics and the chemistry of some biological systems, but they do this by objectifying the organism. In other words, they kill it, and look at it under a microscope.

Organisms become objects to us, when they are dead. For most of our history, that was the whole point of understanding physics. We used physics to kill. We used it to hunt wild animals to feed ourselves. Our understanding of physics fed us, kept us dry and warm, but it didn’t tell us much about ourselves, except the limits of our own strength, and it still doesn’t.

Unfortunately, objective science doesn’t tell us much about ourselves, or any of the other organisms with which we share this planet. While physicists can tell us, with great confidence, about the origins of the universe, and routinely put machines on distant planets that send us pictures at the speed of light, medicine has wiped out what? One, almost two, diseases, mainly on a lucky shot.

If objective science is so great, why aren’t doctors explaining their grand theory of life, explaining its origin, and predicting its future, while they hunt down cures for the last few rare diseases. Really, we spend way, way, way, more money on medical research than we do unlocking the riddles of the cosmos. After all, people’s lives are at stake. Alas, cancer, AIDS, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, schizophrenia, autism and a host of other diseases continue to afflict people around the world. Even the commonest of diseases, the common cold, continues to mock all of our best efforts to tame its virulence.

No, organisms are not objects. Organisms are a different animal all together, and objective science really doesn’t tell us much about them. The organism keeps its secrets and life remains mysterious. Still, we’re so impressed with atom bombs, moonwalks and microcomputers that we’d like to believe that objective science can cure cancer, or open a window into the world of autism, but really, we’re out of luck.

Maybe a genetically modified organism looks like an impressive feat of objective science to you, but it’s not really. At best, a GMO represents a feat of objectified science. Geneticists have isolated a particular mechanism of life, and learned how to manipulate it, to produce modified organisms that lawyers can patent, and capitalists can then legally exploit.

Objective science tells us a lot about objects in space and time, but objectifying organisms does not enlighten us much at all, because organisms do not live in space and time. Space and time only exists within organisms. This is the crux of Einstein’s theory of relativity. It’s also the crux of Emmanuel Kant’s, The Critique of Pure Reason, written about a century and a half before Einstein.

As incomprehensible as it seems, space and time only exist within organisms (or, perhaps more accurately, within an organism). In fact, as incomprehensible as it is, this is the only thing that objective science has ever proven about organisms. Think about this for a while. Objective science helps us survive in this beautiful world, not understand it. Not only are we far, far, far away from unlocking the secrets of life, we’re not even capable of comprehending them. That’s what objective science has proven.

So, when someone in a white lab coat tells you that “objective science has proven its safe”, while they try to sell you some new technology, don’t buy it, figuratively, or literally. Whether it’s GMOs, wireless smart meters, cell phone towers, food additives, flame retardants, vaccines, or TV, objective science can help us develop these things, but it doesn’t tell us much about how or if they effect us, because we are not objects. That is the limit of objective science.

If Eric wanted to do a good show about how “safe” GMOs are, he could have interviewed a corporate attorney who knew something about product liability law. They could have talked about what exactly constitutes a “safe” product, from a legal perspective. I would find it interesting to hear two lawyers explain how corporations can produce inherently dangerous products, like automobiles, motorcycles, firearms, addictive psychoactive drugs, and thousands of other products that kill people directly, sicken and kill others through pollution or contamination, and also contribute to global climate change, ocean acidification, and sea level rise, problems that negatively effect everyone, and yet avoid liability for any of the damage these products cause. I think Eric could do a good job with that topic, because he knows the law. On the other hand, Eric doesn’t know enough about science to fill a gnats navel, and he should shut up about it.