Many are those who, to muddy science, remember some whims of Nazi scientists, or the immoral experiments of mad doctors, either even the prejudices and biases of countless researchers.
However, criticizing scientists is very different from criticizing science. In fact, questioning scientists is precisely what makes science great. Because science was born for that: as a tool that is distrusted by human beings, in general, and scientists, in particular.
A Spock brain or the power of experiment
There is too much information in the world. Our brain cannot process it all, so it takes shortcuts based largely on emotions: that is why our decisions are made based on rational calculation but, above all, emotional bias.
Therefore, what we call common sense is actually very non-rational. All the thinkers in history, then, could be very competent given the brains at their disposal, and the complexity of the natural world they were trying to address, but they lacked an adequate set of intellectual tools.
That toolkit is a kind of more rational, more methodical brain: modern science. A procedure for designing tests that confirm (or rather falsify) theoretical claims. They lacked this toolkit because basically every thinker in history considered it unnecessary.
For thinkers of a pre-scientific era, personal intuitions, shared beliefs, subjective perceptions were important. They thought that nothing could go wrong if they argued from uncontested premises. to the conclusions that necessarily followed from them.
With the birth of modern science, however, a more objective way of accessing knowledge was guaranteed, one that did not depend so much on the arbitrariness of personal intuitions or prejudices, even that of the scientists themselves. Science was an external judge. A procedure. An experiment. A referee.
This is how a set of intertwined values was born that can be summarized in the English acronym CUDOS:
- Communism: knowledge is shared.
- Universalism: knowledge must be impersonal and impartial.
- Disinterest: Scientists have to help each other.
- Organized skepticism: Ideas have to be tested over and over again.
In some way, then, To live we have to do it without thinking too much. But science is a separate brain that does think for us all the time and gives us patterns that we can use in our daily lives to solve problems that would require too much individual reflection, as you can see summarized in the following video:
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The news
Those who criticize scientists are only strengthening the power of science
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.