Science sucks...potentially.

[glennantm]

So did anybody see that episode of the Twilight Zone where physicists, heady with power and devoid of humility, created a machine capable of creating a black hole in a "controlled" environment. Suddenly, things go wrong and "pop" the world vanishes, destroying the entirety of our existence in a flash

Comments

E Pur Si Muove.

[strontium90]

Sorry, I honestly wasn't being presumptuous, just illustrating a point. Rereading that, I sure do understand why you'd think that, though. Sorry that came off the way it did; I wasn't trying to draw a conclusion as to why you came to you opinions about science. However, I would like to address them.

First off, at the nut of everything you're saying is the question, "does science run the risk of presuming itself infallible?" Well, alright - I wasn't really gonna go there because, at least on the surface, it seems just so damn persnickety, but it bears mentioning just in terms of the forensics and semantics of the thing: science can't think itself infallible any more than soccer can think itself fun or cake can think itself delicious. Not to be pedantic, but the whole initial premise of this question is kind of based on a flawed personification of a concept.

I point this out for a very specific reason: by proclaiming "science assumes itself infallible," detractors get to lump all scientists in there by implication - an automatic guilt by association, if you will - without having to back up the charge that any of these people have what you referred to as a God Complex. Why go through the messiness of accusing a scientist of having a God Complex (which would be disputable) when one can just charge "science" with it (which is not, since science is an abstract concept, no more capable of disputing the charge than it is of having a God Complex to begin with). So, the entire initial premise of the question is based on some pretty bad logic and some fairly underhanded rhetoric.

Secondly - and this is serious - people who perceive scientists as thinking that either they or science itself are infallible honestly do not understand science.

Science isn't a set of assumptions.

It is not a base of dogma.

It is a method of determining that which isn't true. The first rule of science is that nothing can ever be proven true. Does this sound like the premise of a group of people who think themselves infallible?

Now, are there people out there who really do think that science is infallible? Sure. And they are just as mistaken - and just as unlikely to have had any familiarity with the scientific process - as those who accuse scientists of that sort of arrogance. Typically we call these people politicians or lobbyists.

Similarly, people who perceive the scientific process as being reckless are simply unfamiliar with the process. It is, in fact, the opposite of recklessness. The sole argument of science is that reason, logic, deduction and the scientific method are more rational guides to the acquisition of knowledge than intuition. I consider this a pretty compelling point of view. I also honestly believe that the pursuit of knowledge is nowhere close to the threat to humanity that ignorance is.

(I was going to go into one of the more wild and interesting theories regarding the super-science of the LHC in this response, too, but I think I'll just post that in a separate comment to keep things simpler and more compartmentalized ;)