The Fallacy of Scientific Truth – Part One

As has been pointed out in earlier posts, the world that appears to exist outside of ourselves is an illusion. What seems to us to be a solid, physical and objective reality, is in fact an outward projection of images that exist subjectively in consciousness.

What this means is that the universe that appears to surround us is actually a projection of our minds. And because there is nothing physical outside of ourselves, there obviously cannot be any such thing as a Creator of the cosmos, or any “law” that governs the workings of the universe.

However, over the course of the last four centuries, our lives have become so dominated by the technological marvels bestowed upon us by science, that science has now become the accepted yardstick for determining what is real, as well as the final authority on what is true.

So if we want to understand how scientists have allowed themselves to be misled, and how the fallacy of a real, physical universe obeying various fundamental laws of nature has come to be accepted as scientific truth, we need to take a closer look at the way in which the history of science has actually unfolded.

The Quest for Knowledge

Science stands today as a monument to mankind’s insatiable curiosity for knowledge and understanding. The word science itself is derived from the Latin root Scire, meaning “to know”. In the words of the American physicist Henry Margenau, the aim of science is “to organize, to make rational and meaningful, all cognitive human experience.”  1

The success of science, and the reason why it has proved to be the dominant description of reality on the planet today, is due to its success in doing just what Margenau has described.

Science has enabled us to explain our experiences in this mysterious universe in terms which, if not clearly understandable to all, are at least meaningful to those who have devoted themselves to a study of those terms. No man or woman today is capable of grasping every aspect of physical science. It is an edifice that has grown too large to be encompassed by a single mind.

However, the various rooms of this edifice are not isolated from one another. They are connected by common pathways of thought which are rational and consistent in themselves. The vast complex that is modern science therefore presents itself as a coherent and uniform whole.

The history of Western science began some two and a half thousand years ago with the philosophical theories of the early Greeks, and the first scientists are considered to have been men like Aristotle, Archimedes, Hippocrates, Galen, Ptolemy and Euclid.

There is however, one way in which modern science differs markedly from that practised by the early Greeks. The early progenitors of science were content to derive an intuitive understanding of the universe based on philosophical reflection. Their laws of nature were invariably intuitively deduced.

The Greeks did not feel the need to prove their deductive laws by means of physical experiments, to see whether what they had theorised actually was a true reflection of the outer world.

It took almost another two millennia for the scientific method as we have come to know it today to reach full maturity.  It did so primarily in the person of Sir Isaac Newton, who stressed the necessity for linking observation and experiment into a unified system of rational investigation.

The Need for Observation

For Newton, the basis of all science was observation. In order for anything to be explained, it had first to be observed. If something could not be observed it was pointless to discuss it, and science could contribute nothing to an understanding of its nature. Whatever was observed could be reduced to various mathematical expressions.

These mathematical formulae, however, meant nothing unless they could subsequently be confirmed by objective experiment. For Newton, it was not enough to arrive at various conclusions by means of mathematical analysis alone. These conclusions had to be tested by means of physical experiments, to ensure that they were valid representations of reality.

It was only through this winnowing process of trial and error that the kernel of truth could be found and separated from its surrounding husk of ignorance. Only in this way could science become a truly independent and self-enclosed system, which no longer rested upon superstition and blind belief.

Only those things in life were true which could be validated by the scientific method. It was because of the success whereby the inner secrets of nature were revealed by this scientific method that science increasingly came to don the mantle of authority in determining what was ultimately true and real.

While religion and the Church had previously dominated the outlook of mankind, they came in time to play an increasingly minor role, until ultimately, the Church was considered to have no authority at all in matters of physical reality. The final authority for all matters relating to the nature of the universe came to rest with physical scientists.

In their quest for an understanding of the physical universe, the first task which scientists undertook was to identify the observables. In this evaluation it was clear that the experiences of life fell into two broad categories.

The first of these groups was that of objective experience, characterised by physical objects and events involving these physical objects. The second category of experience was subjective, and was characterised by inward states of mind.

As every person knows, life unfolds as a series of encounters with physical objects located in space, that take the form of sequential events in time. However, these encounters also involve a category of experience that is clearly subjective and independent of outward form.

These experiences include various thoughts, values, ideas and judgements, as well as differing states of emotion. This inner world was seen to be personal, subjective and separate from the objects and circumstances that made up the physical universe.

The Cartesian Split

It was only natural, therefore, that scientists should have decided at the outset of their investigation to divide all observables into two separate categories. One of these categories was called “matter”, and the other was called “mind”.

The realm of matter was seen to be the proper preserve of science, while the realm of mind was considered to be something that should best be left to philosophy.

It was this fundamental division of the experience of life into two opposing categories that was formalised by the French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes, in a split that has come to be known as Cartesian dualism.

By the early eighteenth century, physical science had come to concern itself solely with those aspects of the world which could be identified and measured in a quantitative way.

It was the art of measurement that was used to decide into which realm any particular observable should be allocated. If something could be measured, it fell within the theatre of physical science. If not, then it lay within the realm of philosophy and religion.

The evaluation of the observations within these different realms was, however, subject to entirely separate methods of analysis. Science operated under the searching light of reason, while religion was considered to be a function of faith, operating within a specific climate of belief.

It was this resolute resort to reason which prompted scientists to exclude all subjective factors from the pursuit of science. All emotions, hopes, desires and fears were seen to be subjective states of mind which had no place in the scientific protocol.

This attitude of scientific dispassion, or reducing science to an exercise devoid of all emotion, has become a cardinal feature of the scientific method. In retrospect, however, it was a natural and predictable result of the Cartesian split between matter and mind.

It was only in the latter half of the 20th century that this primary fracture of the universe into two opposing camps of “matter” and of “mind” came to be re-evaluated, and cause a growing body of scientists to realise that this initial division was both arbitrary and artificial, and a barrier to deeper understanding.

While this separation had been useful at first in enabling scientists to gain an insight into the nature and interrelationships of physical objects, it did nothing to assist them in the ultimate purpose of the entire enterprise, which was to understand the true nature of “all cognitive human experience.”

The Growth of Specialisation

It was not long after the initial separation between physical objects and subjective states that science began to be further subdivided for reasons of convenience, and to allow scientists to specialise in areas of their choice.

Physical science was divided into different categories such as physics, chemistry, medicine, biology and others. Physics, in turn, was later compartmentalised into such specialised categories as electromagnetism, mechanics, thermodynamics, geology, geography, astronomy and astrophysics.

It was also inevitable that as these specialised pursuits developed, scientists would find the need to develop certain words to identify those specific islands which dotted their various streams of investigation. These descriptive terms became in time the technical jargon which today characterises all categories of modern science.

While the use of clearly defined terms to describe specific objects or conditions has proved to be useful in the communication of ideas within each specific avenue of science, it has served equally effectively in creating barriers between one subdivision and another.

In order to participate in any field of science today, it is necessary to understand the specific language which characterises that field. Membership of a specific scientific group is conferred by education and training and tends to be exclusive.

Members who have passed the necessary initiation are not only bound together by virtue of their common interests and language, but have tended, perhaps understandably, to be insular and to resist interference by specialists trained in other fields.

So while science as a whole has grown into a vast building comprising numerous different levels and a host of different rooms, the unity of the entire structure is almost never grasped. Instead, specialists tend to operate largely independently of others and to resent intrusion by practitioners of other disciplines.

Again it is only in recent years that the artificiality of these divisions has come to be recognised, and scientists have begun to share their insights via multi-disciplinary conferences and projects.

The Search for Scientific Laws

Each category of scientific investigation has proceeded according to an etiquette which has now become the crux of the scientific method.

The first requirement of any science is, as we have seen, to determine the observables. In any category of science there needs to be agreement as to what it is that needs to be explained. While there has been an inevitable blurring between categories at times, on the whole each division of science has been successful in staking out for itself a region of observables.

Linked with this question of observables is the intrinsic question of measurement. For any observable to be valid it has to be capable of being measured. If something cannot be measured in a certain way, it is not regarded as a legitimate scientific observable.

Once measurements have been successfully undertaken, scientists then investigate how these various measurements can be linked together. On the basis of their initial investigations, a theoretical hypothesis is formed. This hypothesis suggests a way in which the various observables may be bound together.

A hypothesis is seldom based upon any single measurement, but rests upon a number of observations. A scientific hypothesis, therefore, is at first mere speculation, based upon a sequence of observations. It is initially a thought construct, and is unverified.

For a hypothesis to become a legitimate scientific theory, it is necessary to verify it in practice. It is for this reason that various tests are made to see whether the hypothesis is supported by factual or empirical evidence.

This evidence is gained by undertaking specific physical experiments, which are conducted according to strict protocols of control. Whenever the results of such experimentation confirm the original hypothesis, this hypothesis is upgraded to the level of a scientific theory.

When a scientific theory has been proven to be in accord with physical reality, it then becomes possible to make certain predictions about the future behaviour of known observables. These predictions are then tested by means of further controlled experiments.

If the results of these predictions successfully uphold the scientific theory, and there are no results which effectively undermine its validity, then the theory is elevated to the status of scientific “law”.

(Continued in Part Two)

References

1  Henry Margenau and Lawrence LeShan, “Einstein’s Space and Van Goch’s Sky“, Macmillan, New York, 1982, p. 51.

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