Criticism of modern science

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In modern capitalist society, obviously wrong, the role and importance of science are perceived ambiguously. Despite the fact that the achievements of scientific and technological progress have firmly entered the life of every man in the street, the legacy of the Middle Ages, on the basis of which modern Western European civilization is built, is hiding nearby. The times when people were burned at the stake for speaking about a multitude of inhabited worlds, it is true, have already passed, but medieval obscurantism is close and makes itself felt.

In the 60s, when the scientific and technological revolution was gaining momentum, the fruits of scientific and technological progress radically changed the life of people, the future of mankind seemed to many, especially to scientists, clear and cloudless. Most of them had no doubt that in twenty years artificial intelligence would be created, and by the beginning of the 21st century, people would begin to create permanent settlements on other planets. However, a simple extrapolation turned out to be a mistake. The scientific and technological revolution was a consequence of the outstanding discoveries of the first half of the 20th century, primarily discoveries in the field of physics. However, fundamental breakthroughs in science of equal magnitude have not been observed in recent decades. If the first televisions, computers, spaceships were perceived primarily as a symbol of progress, as a result of scientific achievements, now they have firmly entered everyday life and the fact of their existence - into the mass consciousness, enthusiasts, geniuses, titans - the very revolutionaries of the scientific and technological revolution gave way to the masses professional performers, for whom their work is just a way of earning a piece of bread. In this regard, apologists of obscurantism creep out of their caves, who, having become like the pigs from Krylov's fable, begin to grunt at the oak of scientific and technological progress and undermine its roots. Behind all the delusional and absurdity of statements like "why do we need space, let's better produce more food" or requirements, along with the version about the origin of man in the process of evolution, to teach at school the theory of the creation of the world in 6 days, described in the Bible, there is a fundamental fact about that the basis of the human value system and worldview in modern society is not the desire for self-realization and reason, but the indulgence of emotional impulses and desires. Intellectually, the development of the overwhelming majority of people is at the level of kindergarten and below, like children, they are attracted by beautiful wrappers, the promise of magical qualities of goods and the persuasions of popular artists in advertising. The cult of consumerism, selfishness, indulgence of primitive desires, etc., is a thing that directly kills in people the ability to understand at least something and the ability to think reasonably.

Along with simple attempts to deny the correctness of scientific ideas, the following statements are heard. "But do not the achievements of scientific and technological progress pose a danger to mankind?" Atomic bombs and environmental problems associated with emissions from enterprises, etc. are cited as examples of such a hazard. Indeed, the achievements of scientific and technological progress can be used not only for good. Indeed, new inventions, in theory, make it possible to do more harm, not just good. Maybe let's stop progress, prohibit any machines and mechanisms, even wristwatches, spend time in meditation and contemplation of nature, etc., etc.? In proving the absurdity of such a formulation of the question, two points should be highlighted. First, scientific and technological progress is just a part of the general and constantly ongoing process of evolution, complication, the process of the development of the world, which we observe in a multitude of diverse manifestations, separated in space and time. You cannot prohibit part of the progress, you can prohibit or the entire progress, or not prohibit anything. Well, if these monkeys, who have not yet fully developed into humans, these obscurantists and fanatics forbid progress, what awaits the obscurantists? The only thing that can expect them is extinction and degradation. Another question - what exactly should be the solution to the problem? Well, in fact, this decision is also known to everyone for a long time, only many do not understand it quite correctly. The solution is in the balance of progress, the usual judgment that is expressed on this matter is as follows: "Technical progress lags behind spiritual progress, we need to pay more attention to spiritual development", etc. This is indeed the correct formulation, but when it comes to a specific explanation, you need to be careful. Firstly, many, following the obscurantists, begin to associate spiritual development with religion, with the traditional values of the previous era, begin to talk nonsense about love for one's neighbor, etc., etc. This spiritual development has ALREADY been passed, this stage of spiritual development is already completed, and, as I have repeatedly pointed out in all my articles, this system of values, this worldview based on traditional religions, on assessing the world with the help of emotions, simply simply turns out to be inadequate and inoperable in new conditions. Spiritual development also has its own levels, and it cannot be understood as an extensive pumping up of long-obsolete dogmas, offering religion and medieval morality, offering love and humility, offering an emotional system of values as a tool for spiritual development - all the same, what is offered for the development of scientific technical potential and high-tech to start production of Stephenson steam locomotives and Pascal adding machines. Now reason, science, aspirations for self-realization, knowledge of the world and creativity have already proved their effectiveness in mastering the laws of the universe, now we must bring the same things into everyday life, make the basis of the value system of each person, make the basis for correcting the defects of the spiritual development of society. Francis Bacon wrote at the beginning of the 17th century: “It would be too long to list the medicines that science provides for the treatment of certain diseases of the spirit, sometimes cleansing it of harmful moisture, sometimes opening blockages, sometimes helping digestion, sometimes causing appetite, and very often healing his wounds and ulcers, etc. Therefore, I want to conclude with the following thought, which, it seems to me, expresses the meaning of the whole reasoning: science tunes and directs the mind so that from now on it never remains at rest and, so to speak, does not freeze in his shortcomings, but, on the contrary, constantly urged himself to action and strived for improvement, because an uneducated person does not know what it means to immerse himself in himself, to evaluate himself, and does not know how joyful life is when you notice that every day it becomes better; if such a person accidentally possesses some kind of dignity, then he brags about it and everywhere flaunts it and uses it, maybe even profitably, but, nevertheless, does not convert It pays attention to developing it and increasing it. On the contrary, if he suffers from some shortcoming, then he will exert all his skill and diligence to hide and hide it, but in no case will he correct it, like a bad reaper who does not stop reaping, but never sharpens his sickle. An educated person, on the contrary, not only uses his mind and all his virtues, but constantly corrects his mistakes and improves in virtue. Moreover, in general, it can be considered firmly established that truth and goodness differ from each other only as a seal and an imprint, for goodness is marked with the seal of truth, and, on the contrary, storms and downpours of vices and unrest fall only from clouds of delusion and falsehood."

It is not atomic bombs and factory emissions that bring evil. Evil is carried by people driven by their inner vices - stupidity, greed, selfishness, the desire for unlimited power. In the modern world, the danger stems not from scientific and technological progress, but from completely different factors - from selfishness, which allows people to put their narrow interests above the interests of others, and use, accordingly, progress to the detriment of others, from the cult of thoughtless consumption, primitive desires, overshadowing the voice of reason, as a result of this, capitalist society, not accustomed to limit its needs, is directly leading humanity to disaster. Moreover, the mad tycoons are fighting against science, against the publication of reliable scientific research data, against increasing the education of the population. And now, in the 21st century, the rulers adhere to the well-known slogan, according to which, in order for the people to be easy to control and manipulate, it is necessary that this people be uneducated, dark, and could not recognize the truth, even if it accidentally leaked out into the open. MEDIA. A typical example of this behavior is an attempt, for example, by the US leadership to prohibit the release of research data on climate change - see "classified climate".

In a rare American film, a scientist does not play the role of a crazy professor seeking to destroy the world, or, at best, the role of a freak out of touch with life. In fact, scientists turn out to be much more responsible people when it comes to applying the results of their scientific discoveries. Many scientists in the USSR and the USA preferred to refuse to participate in the development of atomic weapons, missing out on various advantages and benefits that would have been guaranteed to them for working on secret projects. In the United States, during the Vietnam War, many scientists and programmers refused to take part in work for the military department, although such work was very well financed and was much more profitable than working for any firm. The problem lies in the fact that in modern society, scientists only make discoveries, and the world is ruled by politicians, the military, the heads of corporations - people who are far from both the ability to adequately assess the situation and from moral standards. Real scientists don't make their discoveries for the sake of money or for the sake of power. The very possibility of such discoveries, the very necessary condition for effective work in the field of science, is work in accordance with the inner aspirations for knowledge and creativity inherent in a person, aspirations to understand the truth and, ultimately, the desire for freedom. A real scientist only works because he is interested. Scientific activity presupposes a special mindset, a character, a special worldview, in which the values of the ordinary world, values of benefit, values of power, values associated with popularity and a cheap image, etc. are not. A closer acquaintance with outstanding people of science clearly shows that spirituality, a rich inner world, the ability to create are things that are by no means opposite or complementary to science, but, on the contrary, things accompanying it.

However, the problems associated with the assertion of a worthy position of science in society are only the tip of the iceberg. Modern science is a system formed on a deeper foundation, and that foundation is values and aspirations. Science is a product of our culture, a product of our civilization, science is a product of a certain era. Speaking about the role of science in modern society, we mean, generally speaking, somewhat different than the role of science in the society of the future. It would be more correct to talk about two different definitions of science - the science of today, in the narrow sense that is put into this definition today, and science, which can become the basis of a value, ideological scheme, the basis of a new world order, the basis of the entire social system in the future. As I noted earlier, the value-based emotional foundation leaves a significant imprint on people's ideas, including those ideas that are considered rational, logical, and even flawless in terms of their consistency with common sense. For modern science, built on this foundation, it is a very important task to get rid of contamination with dogmatic ideas, get rid of wrong emotional methods of thinking, from harmful stereotypes and methods developed by representatives of the old type of thinking, the old system of values. And the actual problems of science will be discussed in the second part.

2. Internal problems of science

At present, science, like civilization as a whole, is facing a certain limit of growth. And this limit tells us about the inefficiency of the methods of scientific research, methods of constructing theories, methods of searching for truth, which have already developed by now. Up to the present time, science has developed along the path of ever deeper deeper into the phenomena under study, more and more specialization, more and more subtle arrangement of experiments, etc. Science followed the capabilities of experimenters, and more and more large-scale and expensive experiments were the engine of science. More and more powerful telescopes were created, more and more powerful accelerators were built, capable of accelerating particles to ever higher speeds, devices were invented that made it possible to see and manipulate individual atoms, etc. However, now science is approaching a certain natural barrier in this direction of development. More and more expensive projects have less and less returns, the cost of basic research is reduced in favor of purely applied developments. Slowly but surely, the enthusiasm of scientists and funding organizations for a quick solution to the problems of artificial intelligence or thermonuclear fusion is cooling. Meanwhile, an understanding of the fragility of already established theories is beginning to come to many scientists. Once again, scientists, under the onslaught of contradictions and inconsistencies observed between theories and experimental data, have to revise the usual ideas that were once fixed and recognized as the only correct ones in many respects arbitrarily, under the pressure of the authority of individual celebrities. Recent discoveries in astronomy, for example, have called into question the correctness of the theory of relativity and the picture of the evolution of the universe available in physics. At the same time, as science becomes more and more complex, it becomes more and more difficult to unambiguously make a choice in favor of one theory or another, attempts to explain the existing laws become more and more complicated and confusing, the efficiency of all these theoretical developments is characterized by an ever lower value. All these problems and the inability of science to cope with them clearly show the dead end of the further use of the methods and principles that have developed to date in it.

The new scientific truth paves the way to triumph not by convincing opponents and forcing them to see the world in a new light, but rather because its opponents sooner or later die and a new generation grows up that is used to it Max Planck

The problem of dogmatism is one of the essential problems of modern science. Dogmatism is a characteristic quality of ordinary emotionally-minded people who, adhering to certain interests, desires, preferences, get used to not bothering themselves with argumentation and searching for the correct point of view. In ordinary life, dogmatism manifests itself as a desire to insist on one's point of view, a desire to defend one's personal interests. A dogma-based worldview is an integral attribute of religious systems that have dominated the world for thousands of years and continue to exert their influence to this day. The dogmatic worldview has formed in people a special style of thinking, a style in which there are certain recognized "truths" that are accepted by people without much thought, despite the fact that these "truths" can be very ambiguous and doubtful. Nevertheless, the presence of such "truths", not only in religious systems, but also in life, is a universal phenomenon that reflects the realities of the modern value system. Many people never understand the intricacies of various political, economic, ideological, etc., issues, for them the guideline for accepting a particular point of view is an exclusively emotionally colored judgment. The picture of the world presented to a modern person does not consist of logically constructed schemes, accompanied by explanations, rational argumentation and proofs. It consists of dogmas, accompanied by labels glued to these dogmas, emotional assessments that are designed for personal acceptance or rejection of certain things by a person, are designed to influence his desires, needs, etc. constitutes an essential feature of the thinking of people employed in modern science. In fact, a very small number of scientists, scientific workers, show an interest in understanding the fundamental provisions of modern science, understanding what constitutes its basis. Many teachers in schools consider "coaching" to be the best method for preparing well-performing students. In science itself, as I have already noted, the arbitrariness and authority of one or another scientist plays a very important role. To a large extent, the attitude of their followers to modern scientific theories exactly repeats the attitude of followers of religions to religious dogmas. Naturally, a class of people has developed in modern society who pray for science and education in the same way that adherents of religions pray for the things that these religions proclaim. Unfortunately, the concepts of "progress", "high technologies", "education", etc., have turned into exactly the same labels considered in the "good-bad" rating system. Under the influence of an emotional-dogmatic worldview, the most important concepts of science are perverted, such as truth, reason, understanding, etc. logics. Modern scientists do not understand how a person thinks, and even worse, they do not understand that he often thinks incorrectly. Attempts to create artificial intelligence by cramming into it some kind of scattered heap of data and shamanic manipulations in order to force the computer to adequately produce something from this scattered heap of data as a reaction to a certain situation reflect the abnormal picture that has developed in modern science, when the criterion of truth, the criterion for the adequacy of understanding the situation and, in general, the criterion of the mind is the knowledge of specific, rigidly predetermined dogmas. The only alternative to the emotional-dogmatic approach in science is a truly reasonable systematic approach, when any propositions are based not on authority, not on speculation, not on some vague subjective considerations, but on the actual understanding and comprehension of phenomena.

Those who studied the sciences were either empiricists or dogmatists. Empiricists, like the ant, only collect and are content with the collected. Rationalists, like spiders, make fabric from themselves. The bee, on the other hand, chooses the middle way: it extracts material from garden and wildflowers, but disposes and changes him according to his skill. The true business of philosophy does not differ from this either. For it is not based only or predominantly on the forces of the mind and does not deposit intact material extracted from natural history and mechanical experiments into consciousness, but changes it and processes it in the mind. Francis Bacon

However, the main problem that characterizes modern science is the method of constructing scientific theories, in fact, the method of fortune telling on the coffee grounds. The main method of creating theories in modern science is the method of hypothesis. In fact, we are talking about the fact that the consistent study, understanding of the phenomenon, comparison of various facts, etc. is replaced by a one-time advancement of some kind of theory, which should supposedly explain all the observed phenomena. How similar it is to a person making a decision in everyday life! After all, there, too, everything is decided according to the principle "like - not like", within the framework of the black-and-white logic "good - bad". Moreover, in the twentieth century, after Einstein's theory of relativity, which became a model of confusion and ambiguity, the situation with this problem became even worse. If earlier the criterion by which scientists previously evaluated any theory was the simplicity of its understanding, compliance with common sense, now everything has become almost the other way around - the more crazy the theory is, the better …

Consider the process of creating a scientific theory of a phenomenon or process. The two fundamental methods in the study are analysis and synthesis. If at first we have a fused, undivided, without understanding the complex internal structure of a phenomenon or an object, then we gradually divide it into parts, studying them separately, and then, in order to complete the construction of our theory, we must put these pieces together, into an integral consistent theory, which will be a model of the studied phenomenon, taking into account different deep relationships and processes. True, in fact, the matter is not limited to this, because the created theory, no longer tied to specific examples, is then used for a deeper analysis and study of other similar phenomena that exist in real life. Thus, in science, the synthesis - analysis - synthesis - analysis scheme works. What do we see when we turn to modern science? The methods of analysis have been worked out in it, and the methods of synthesis have not been worked out at all. The situation that takes place is directly analogous to the situation in mathematical analysis, where the operation of differentiation is a craft, and the operation of integration is an art. To replace the stage of synthesis in modern science, precisely the same flawed method of hypothesis is used, when the synthesis must be carried out at once, by a gigantic effort of the intuition of some genius, after which, however, a long test of this very hypothesis by some clever experimental methods is required, and only a long experience of application can be evidence of its relative correctness. Recently, however, this method has stalled. Carried away, like the scholastics of the past, with the creation of gigantic holistic theories based on arbitrary assumptions and dogmas, which they call axioms, scientists have lost all connection of their theories with reality, with common sense and with the truth that was still present in previous scientific theories. Obviously, these grief scientists reasoned that if, using this method, Einstein, Newton, Maxwell and similar great scientists were able to build plausible (and working) theories, then why not do the same to us? However, copying in their ignorance only the external, formal side of the method, these pseudoscientists have completely abandoned that very common sense and that very intuition that, being inherent in the geniuses of the past, gave them grounds for putting forward correct hypotheses. Superstring theory, and other similar theories, where our space is described by the 11th, 14th, etc.dimensions, are typical examples of such absurd activities of modern, pulling theory from themselves, like spiders pulling a cobweb from themselves, dogmatists.

All sciences are divided into natural, unnatural and unnatural. L. Landau

Finally, one should not overlook one more important feature of modern science, from which very important conclusions can be drawn. We are talking about the division of modern sciences into natural, etc. "Humanities". Traditionally, the natural sciences were understood as the sciences that study nature, the humanities - those that are related to the study of man, society, etc. In fact, this division is not a division according to the subject, but according to the method and structure of research. Natural sciences, such as physics and mathematics, are focused on building a clear, unambiguous, grounded and logically verified scheme, the most important thing in natural sciences is experience, which is the criterion for the truth of certain considerations, constructions, theories. A person engaged in natural sciences works directly with facts, tries to get an objective picture, only experience is the thing that he will pay attention to when proving the truth. In t. N. in the humanities, the situation looks completely different. The obvious difference between this field of activity and the natural sciences is that it lacks any at least somewhat adequate and working models, there are no generally understandable criteria for correctness. The field of humanitarian so-called. sciences is an area of pure clash of opinions. The area of the humanities is nothing more than an area in which attempts are made to rationalize (either rationalize, or, most often, justify) any motives, aspirations, interests of people, etc. As I have repeatedly noted, the main the activity of people in modern society, the entire system of relations as a whole is built on the emotional system of values, and based on this, the humanities "science" sort of "study" this very emotional background of relations in society, motives and ideas. How can the humanities "sciences" be evaluated? Well, firstly, the humanities arose by analogy with the natural sciences, and their origin is based on the thesis about the possibility of studying and finding objective laws in various phenomena of social life and human motives, just as in nature. In principle, this thesis is, of course, correct, and we are witnessing the emergence of normal, natural sciences, such as psychology, we are witnessing the discovery of truly objective laws, as was done, for example, in psychoanalysis, however, along with the natural sciences that study man and society, unnatural ones also arose, those whose main function was not to study anything, but, on the contrary, to reverse the translation of interests, personal assessments, motives, etc. into a rational formulation. That is, it was not reason in this case that began to study the emotional sphere, but the products of the emotional sphere began to penetrate into rational reasoning, began to become objectified, began to dogmatize and unreasonably pass themselves off as scientific, reasonable, etc. A typical example, by the way, of such rationalizations is the Marxist theory. It cannot be said, of course, that such theories contain only nonsense. Nevertheless, any such theory is just a personal, subjective opinion of a person, the content of which must be assessed in connection with those motives, those emotional assessments, those desires that guided the person who created this theory and in no case should it be taken for some kind of objective description of reality. Secondly, in comparison with natural sciences, the humanities can be regarded as underdeveloped, naive constructions, and in this regard, we can notice that all, in principle, sciences, including physics, have gone through a similar stage of naive subjective knowledge. In fact, physics was a humanitarian science until methods appeared that brought mathematics into it and made it possible, instead of expressing some subjective arbitrary judgments about this and that, to study and describe natural processes on the basis of uniform approaches and criteria. Today's humanities, in fact, in their naivety and uselessness of their practical application, are similar to "Physics", written by Aristotle in the 4th century BC. In modern physics, physical quantities are the basis for describing the world. Physical quantities, such as volume, mass, energy, etc., etc., correspond to the main characteristics of various objects and processes, they can be measured and a relationship can be found between them. In the humanities, the absence of such a foundation leads to the fact that each "theoretician" at his own discretion defines the range of meaningful concepts, and the concepts themselves, arbitrarily assigning them the most convenient, from his point of view, meaning. Considering that the subjective factor plays an important role in the choice of a conceptual system, etc., in contrast to the natural sciences, in the humanities theorists are forced to deal mainly not with the generalization of objective data of experiments, observations, etc., but with the compilation of opinions. The theorist, who came up with some concepts and innovations, copy, generalize, try to supplement with something of their own, etc. However, all due to the same dependence on motives, desires, interests, subjective ideological, political views, attitudes towards religion and many other factors different authors of various humanitarian theories, naturally, cannot find a common language and create their own different theories that contradict each other and describe the same things in completely different ways. I will summarize the main differences between the humanities and natural sciences in the following table:

indicator	humanitarian sciences	natural Sciences
the main criterion of demand	desire to interpret certain phenomena	predicting correct results in experience
the elements on the basis of which the theory is generalized	other people's opinions	Observations and facts obvious to everyone
descriptive basis of the studied phenomena	theorist's categorical apparatus	obvious, intuitively understood concepts and values that have an objective meaning for each person

tab. Comparison of the humanities and natural sciences

Conclusion: science requires liberation from dogmatism and fortune-telling methods, as well as a transition from the methods of the so-called. "humanitarian" sciences to natural methods.