Unscientific Society
Society’s Attitudes help or hinder Science.
Science does not exist in a vacuum. It is affected by the beliefs and views of the society in which it lives. There is no accident that Christian Western Europe produced the setting for the significant scientific era from the mid-sixteenth to the late nineteenth century.
Other societies had experienced similar flowerings. One example was the Arab world. Hillel Ofek discusses what once was:
To anyone familiar with this Golden Age, roughly spanning the eighth through the thirteenth centuries a.d., the disparity between the intellectual achievements of the Middle East then and now — particularly relative to the rest of the world — is staggering indeed. In his 2002 book What Went Wrong?, historian Bernard Lewis notes that “for many centuries the world of Islam was in the forefront of human civilization and achievement.” “Nothing in Europe,” notes Jamil Ragep, a professor of the history of science at the University of Oklahoma, “could hold a candle to what was going on in the Islamic world until about 1600.” Algebra, algorithm, alchemy, alcohol, alkali, nadir, zenith, coffee, and lemon: these words all derive from Arabic, reflecting Islam’s contribution to the West.
But Ofek goes on to explain what happened in that culture, why their Golden Age ended, and the almost complete lack of publishing and research in that society today. He then explains the rise of European science. His explanation is fair. James Hannam does a better job in The Genesis of Science.
The Arab world, at its peak, and Western Europe had freedom of communication, a common language (Arabic or Latin), and a worldview that allowed them to seek facts and reality. In the Christian view, God was a rational being who created an ordered universe that followed His rules. Some philosophers used the term “watchmaker god” to describe the precision of that creation. The scientist was to understand the “Mind of God” by determining those parameters.
It is important to understand that we received the Protestant version of the propaganda war going on between Northern European Protestants and Southern European Roman Catholics. We therefore have a one-sided view of the Catholic Church at that time.
One example is the story of Galileo. A general rule applies whenever someone is funding your work. Don’t be an ass. The church was funding Galileo’s work. Today, the federal government funds a good deal of research. If you want more funding, don’t irritate Senators and Presidents. Galileo continuously annoyed the Pope. He wrote a piece where he put the Pope’s argument in the mouth of a character named Simplicio. If you’re a jerk and you annoy the person with significant control over your life, you can expect trouble. He was, indeed, sentenced to life in prison. He served it in his own house with his daughter, a nun, close enough to care for him.
Two things are essential for science to continue to prosper. Facts and truth must continue to matter, and participants should be selected on merit, not favoritism.
Sometimes it is difficult to displace old ideas. Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions describes the human nature involved in organizations when new results or theories threaten long-held ideas.
Totalitarian societies hurt themselves, crippling their research by insisting that “truth” supports their goals. A classic case was the issue of genetics in Stalin’s Soviet Union. Gregor Mendel argued that acquired characteristics were not inherited. The Soviets wanted to encourage comrades to work hard and “pass” their improved traits to their offspring. Trofim Lysenko argued that acquired characteristics were inherited. This became true “Socialist Science.”
Hitler’s Germany also set its own rules for science and may well have lost the war as a result. First, it expelled all Jewish scientists and deemed their work unworthy and “non-Aryan.” They devoted considerable effort to their science, which aimed to prove the excellence of the Aryans. Through the 1920s, Germany had been a worldwide leader in science. “Aryan science” was not praiseworthy. Some of the scientists expelled from Germany helped the Allies win the war.
Now it is time to discuss our society. Ofek wrote about the Arab world in the Winter of 2011.
[I]t is important to keep in mind that the decline of scientific activity is the rule, not the exception, of civilizations. While it is commonplace to assume that the scientific revolution and the progress of technology were inevitable, in fact the West is the single sustained success story out of many civilizations with periods of scientific flourishing.
But are we going to sustain it? We no longer live in a world of truth and facts. There are more critical things than actual scientific reality. Given that, Western science is in serious trouble.
James B. Meigs described the problem in an article entitled Unscientific American in the Spring 2024 issue of City Journal. Michael Shermer had been writing for the Scientific American (SciAm) for 18 years when he started to have his columns rejected. Meigs noted that:
In the twenty-first century, however, American scientific media, including Scientific American, began to slip into lockstep with progressive beliefs. Suddenly, certain orthodoxies—especially concerning race, gender, or climate—couldn’t be questioned.
Shermer noticed he was being “nudged away from certain topics.” SciAm discovered racism in Mathematics based on a low percentage of Black people and women with Doctorates.
We no longer have clean, neutral science. Our science is in serious trouble because its “truths” are subject to the whims of fashion and those who control our “reality.” Ofek is right. Most scientific societies end. Ours is not an exception.
[P]rogressive activists today begin with their preferred policy outcomes or ideological conclusions and then try to force scientists and journalists to fall in line. Their worldview insists that, rather than challenging the progressive orthodoxy, science must serve as its handmaiden.