February 10, 2008
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FRIGHTENING!
Is there not enough war in the world that extremists of the developed world now seek to wage war on rational thought itself? I say rational thought itself because science is the practice of attempting to find out about the world by a set of rules for rational inquiry and discussion. Unlike what its detractors argue, it is not a set of dogmatic beliefs, whether about the structure of the universe, our biological origins, or whatever except for where its proponents fail to properly follow its principles. This progress of rational thought has given us the best beliefs that we can ascertain, that cumulatively tell us that the structure and history of the universe is likely something like what physics, astronomy, and chemistry tell us, and that our Earth is of a certain age that numbers in the billions of years, and the course of our biological origins came from primate species, and before that from shrew-like primitive mammalians, and before that creatures that were the progenitors of both reptile and mammal, and before that fish-like creatures, and so on back - regardless of our personal preferences of where and from what we *want* to have originated. The best practice of science is divorced from our preferences, motives, and emotional reactions to it: its spirit is the purest pursuit of verifiable truth in all its human-independent primary properties.Rational thought and rational inquiry has given us this best idea to date of what came before - a rigorously examined set of beliefs - and admittedly may yet reveal beliefs entirely different in the years to come. Self-scrutiny and the realisation of fallibility is already at the very core of this scientific method, but this cumulative progress is clearly progress by way of the mounting interdisciplinary connections discovered daily.
Extremists, however, seek to propagate the rejection of rational thought simply because it does not agree with their own set of beliefs (which they have elevated to the status of infallibility), and because human epistemic fortitude is weak and easily swayed by irrational - emotional - motivations, these extremists and propagandists alike can always gain a foothold wherever there are great numbers of people. Given the right conditions they can cause great harm to the cumulative toil of good people. By good people, I mean people toiling hard for things they believe in just as passionately as those extremists, only with good and altruistic intentions and without the dogmatic fervour. These good people and the harm done to them include scientists such as Galileo who were condemned for simply trying altruistically to open the eyes of society so that they could see the evidence of an alternative viewpoint with strong justificational support; researchers toiling for years in obscurity to prove subtle theoretical points; people trying to build their lives and families but destroyed by extremists trying to impose their views on the world and contravene rational thought by the use of force or psychological persuasion; the hard work of artists and sculptors of eons ago and the preservers of that art destroyed by extremists who view that art as symbols that contradict their views; and many other such cases. After all those centuries of progress, those multitudes of people working hard to beat back narrow-mindedness, the prospect of regression continues to rear its ugly head.
Frightening and tragic, the weakness of humanity and the frailty of our reason to irrational persuasion.
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