I never took science seriously in school growing up. I liked math, but the biology, chemistry, and physics, and all those other classes I was required to take just never meshed with me. That being said, scientific evidence was the authority on almost everything around me. When I was sick, I would go to the doctor and medical science would take care of my ailment. Books about animals and other real-world phenomena, all explained in scientific terms filled my household. I suppose my point here is that throughout my life, science, and rational proven explanations have always been the authority in things I believe. I wasn’t raised religious so I didn’t really have a firm base of belief in anything. Science was just the explanation that made the most sense. However, over the past 4 years, basically since I entered college, my ideas about science have fluctuated and changed more than I even thought they could.
As a kid, I thought science was this unchallengeable, concrete, complete truth. Now I can see that it is just another way of framing the world, but it doesn’t explain everything. It is constantly in a state of flux, with shifting conceptions about facts and proofs of different theories. I never thought about the way science is done, the discourse surrounding it, or even the basic fact its done by people like me, imperfect and completely human. I still believe that science has a lot to tell us about the world, but like any other area of human activity, it has its flaws and its strengths. Science is not perfect. I feel like sometimes it can give a very narrow, reductionist view of life and the world. But science can also help to explain wonders of the natural world around us, and on an even larger scale the universe. I still look to science as an authority in my life, but that authority has been greatly weakened over the past few years.
Being raised in America, and in broader terms the West, I think we are taught that science is really the only thing a logical, rational person would believe in. I am talking about the constant debate of religion vs. science, and any number of ways science influences politics and social matters. I think the idea of science as the ultimate authority was really drilled into my head, but maybe it felt that way since I didn’t have any religious or other belief system in place.
I found your blog post really interesting and thought provoking. Even though I was raised in an extremely religious household, I can see where you are coming from about how sometimes it comes across that science is a sort of absolute truth. I went to a public high school, and that was certainly what I was taught there. That being said, I was also raised in the church, where science and its meaning is often kicked aside. Whatever you believe (or don't believe),its important to question life and its meaning.
ReplyDeleteAs a kid, I believed that science was concrete truth as well. In grade school, science is presented to us neatly bundled up into a set of rules and conclusions. It wasn’t until I had gotten involved in research myself that science is actually never conclusive and is always questionable and refutable. However the shifting nature of science and its theories has only further fueled my interest in this subject. You are correct; science is never perfect. In fact, the people in active research doing experiments will never assert a 100% confidence in their answers. Sadly, the general population is led to believe that it is black and white, by media and other bridging mediums between the lab and the people. Science does not give a reductionist view of the world; it is the science textbook authors, big news corporations, and other popular deliverers of new discoveries that remove the infinite variants of greys of science between the two extremes.
ReplyDeleteI liked the idea of 'science-in-the-air'; just sort of 'there' making a certain kind of sense out of everything--even in a group on non-scientists. Latour is going to call this 'science's public.'
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