Science the Destroyer

What we call "science" is not neutral. It's loaded with motives and assumptions that came out of, and reinforce, the catastrophe of dissociation, disempowerment, and consuming deadness that we call "civilization."

Science assumes detachment. This is built into the very word "observation." To "observe" something is to perceive it while distancing oneself emotionally and physically, to have a one-way channel of "information" moving from the observed thing to the "self", which is defined as not being part of that thing. This kind of relationship is supposedly not only possible, but good. In fact it's not even possible -- science refutes itself at its most advanced stages, with theoretical physicists discovering that it does not make sense to talk about "what is" independent of perspective. Detached observation is not itself an observation or a fact, but a mental habit that we have learned and can unlearn. As Stan Gooch has noticed, "experience" is a healthier word than "observation" because it does not imply detachment.

Science assumes that matter is more fundamental than mind. This bizarre idea exists only in Western civilization. Not only is it unprovable, it's obviously false. Your own awareness is more fundamental than "matter," which exists only as an idea shaped out of your awareness. Science gets around this by also shaping the idea of "mind" out of your mind, and sticking this idea in a spot dependent on the idea of matter, and simply telling the giant lie that the mindfulness that sees the whole thing is a function of the idea of mind, and not the other way around. What I'm trying to get at here is a deep paradigm shift. I've just explained it intellectually, but it cannot be practiced intellectually, only by directly experiencing your awareness, your perspective, your being, as fundamental.

And what is this "matter"? By definition, it is both objectifiable and dead, just bouncing particles and waves that can be viewed from an absolute detached perspective, but that do not require for their existence any perspective or mindfulness. Matter is mindlessness, and mindlessness is deeper than mind. Again, this is not something we can see, but a basic assumption that tells us how to look.

The view of reality as not dependent on mind became easier to believe with the invention of more sophisticated machines, because these machines could be used as models. Philosophers could point to a clock and say that an atom, or a dog, or the whole universe, is like that clock, just mindlessly going through motions. But machines are not mindless or dead. They are manifestations of the mindfulness and aliveness of their human creators. And if machines are our model for matter, it follows that matter is not dead, but the manifestation of some deeper aliveness. A few contemporary scientists have noticed this, and have had to say that the universe is not like a machine after all, since a machine is based on mind. Now they say that the basis of reality is something special that we cannot prove or even really imagine -- some kind of myth of bottomless deadness.

The death-based or "mechanistic" view is a religion, the dominant religion of our time. It is far stronger than Christianity, which has totally adopted the machine model, but just tacked souls on top and personified the objectively true detached perspective as an omnipotent sky father deity named "God," manipulating the world from a safe distance just like the scientists.

Both mechanistic science and mechanistic Christianity were popularized by the philosopher Rene Descartes, who really believed that the scream of a tortured dog is no different from a bell ringing on a machine. "Putting Descartes before the horse" is deservedly the most common pun in philosophy, because that's exactly what Descartes did. "I think therefore I am" puts existence deeper than awareness, plus it narrows existence and awareness to the detached forms of "I am" and "I think." It is both a reversal of and a flight from the perspective of healthy cultures: All that exists is awareness.

Of course a man doesn't get the urge to intellectually deny the pain of a tortured creature out of nowhere. We were massacring villages and cutting down forests to build insane social monoliths of disempowerment for thousands of years before Descartes. His thinking was not a cause of civilization, but an intensification, an intellectual sanctioning of what was already happening, just as the Nazis made extermination of Jews an official policy after the practice had already begun. It makes it a lot easier to turn everything alive into something dead, to turn forests and people into resources and capital, if you believe everything was dead in the first place.

Science makes everything dead not only by declaration, but by method. Science deals only with the quantitative. It does not admit values or emotions or the way the air smells when it's starting to rain -- or if it deals with these things, it does so by transforming them into numbers, by turning your oneness with the smell of the rain into your abstract preoccupation with the chemical formula for ozone, by turning the way it makes you feel into the intellectual idea that emotions are only an illusion of firing neurons.

Number itself is not truth but a chosen style of thinking. If you see three apples, you are temporarily avoiding the perspective that sees this apple and this apple and this apple. Saying "three" suppresses uniqueness and diversity. Or consider money: Every dollar bill ever made is different. But inside a computerized account, or even in a sum on paper, every dollar is exactly the same, because you're in a fantasy sub-world where it's defined that way.

Defenders of science will say that of course science deals with the quantifiable. If it didn't, it wouldn't be science. And that's precisely my point: We have chosen a habit of mind that focuses our attention down into a world removed from reality, where nothing has quality or awareness or life of its own. We have chosen to transform the living into the dead.

Careful-thinking scientists will admit that what they study is a narrow simulation of the complex real world, but few of them notice that this narrow focus is self-feeding, that it has built contractive technological and economic and political systems that are all working together sucking our reality in on itself. Science denies emotion but it is not itself unemotional. Emotional detachment is an emotion. Denial of subjectivity is an emotional act. Turning wild messy life into cold still numbers is not an intellectual choice but an emotional choice that people make because of how it feels. It feels like hatred of life.

As narrow as the world of numbers is, scientific method does not even permit all numbers -- only those numbers that are reproducible, predictable, and the same for all observers. Of course reality itself is not reproducible or predictable or the same for all observers. But neither are fantasy worlds derived from reality. So science doesn't stop at pulling us into a dream world -- it goes one step further and makes this dream world a nightmare, whose contents are selected for predictability and controllability and uniformity.

Because of science, we can have a factory that predictably makes one million alarm clocks that all look the same and all predictably go off at the time they're set for, so that one million people will predictably get to their jobs just when their employers expect them -- where they're likely to work with machines that, like the alarm clocks, are standardized, so that any laborer can use any machine, and one person is the same as another. Because of science, states of consciousness that cannot be reliably dispensed are classified as insane, or at best "non-ordinary," and excluded. Anomalous experience, anomalous ideas, and anomalous people are cast off or destroyed like imperfectly-shapen machine components.

Does all this necessarily follow from science? Could we have a system of knowledge based on predictability that produced a culture of chaos and surprise? If we did, it would be through resistance to that predictability and not through obedience to it. But our culture has never wanted surprise anyway, and if it had, it wouldn't have chosen science.

Science is only a manifestation and locking in of an urge for control that we've had at least since we started farming fields and fencing animals instead of surfing the less predictable (but more abundant) world of reality, or "nature." And from that time to now, this urge has driven every decision about what counts as "progress." In a little known fork in the road of science, Goethe experimented with optics in a different way than Newton: where Newton shined lights through prisms, producing projected spectra for detached observation, Goethe had people look through prisms, and developed these experiments into a theory that was deeply different from Newton's but equally verifiable and self-consistent. No one knows what strange technological path this theory would have led us to, because of course it was ignored in favor of Newton's theory, which was more compatible with objectification.

If you find it hard to believe that science could have gone onto a radically different path, that the universe has room for divergent experimentally confirmable "truths," then it's because you have been raised inside what William Blake called "single vision and Newton's sleep." In an even less known fork in the road of pre-science, Medieval alchemical literature reports that alchemists actually succeeded in creating gold. Of course we can tell ourselves that they were lying, but maybe in 500 years our descendants will say we were lying about splitting the atom or building flying machines, or they will say it was all metaphor. Maybe it is.

My point is, we can look through any filter we want. Instead of focusing toward what's most predictable, repeatable, quantifiable, detachedly observable, we can focus toward what's most fun, most beautiful, most magical, most alive. And we can turn this focus -- as we did with science -- into a self-reinforcing system of thought and action, a culture, a society, a sustained wonderful reality. The real question is, why did we ever do anything else?

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Criticism and Response

A reader writes:

Have you ever met a scientist? They're pretty normal people you know.

I've met many scientists, including my dad! I mean no criticism of scientists, only science. Scientists are nice people who have been sucked into an unhealthy mind space. Many histories of the Holocaust point out how normal the people were who carried it out. I don't blame people -- I'm trying to get to the bottom of a culture that makes normal people participate in monstrous acts.

They just happen to have unusually practical concerns.

I wouldn't call it practical. Feeding people is practical. What scientists have is an unusually narrow and detached mental focus.

You strike me as a bit ungrateful when you say that science is a deadening influence on the human spirit -- science is what keeps many people alive.

Our ancestors, human and nonhuman, stayed alive for countless millions of years before science, and now scientific technology is about to kill the Earth. It's killed a lot more people than it's saved, and most of the people it saves, it's just saving from other science. Almost all diseases, especially cancer, are caused in the first place by science-based industrial technology.

The scientific method is inherently human, as far as I can tell -- you explain things the best way you can through observation.

The scientific method is much more precise than that. All systems of knowledge begin with experience, make ideas that fit that experience, and follow those ideas to new experience, and so on. But the scientific method, as I explained in my column, follows only that thread of experience that is detached, quantifiable, repeatable, predictable, and uniform.

Also, it is a falsehood that Science is made up of truths and theory. Even mathematics lacks absolute truth -- Kurt Godel proved that proof even in the most mathematical sense is limited. No scientist ever believes a conclusion is a theory, he or she simply treats it like a theory if it acts like one.

This is all great. The problem is people never talk about it. Scientists often do talk as if they have truth and facts, especially when they're talking to the public. When I talk about "science," I'm also talking about normal popular scientific thinking, which is all about stuck truths. If scientists were to stop people from thinking this way, I would stop criticizing it.

Before you go writing long, boring, pseudo-philosophical essays about this sort of thing, why not talk to the people involved? They're really nice people as far as I can tell. They're not the cold removed bastards you make them out to be.

My writing is not pseudo-philosophical, but extra-philosophical, because it gets outside the box of ordinary Western philosophy, which normally presumes detachment, objective truth, and matter as more fundamental than mind.

Again, I did not mean to criticize people, only patterns of thinking. You might be surprised to learn that I have some background in science. I took a year each of college level chemistry and physics and did well. On one test I was the only person in a huge lecture hall to get a perfect score. I quit science largely because I could sense that the whole system was ossified and dying, with no room for anything radical or exciting. (An exception is advanced quantum physics.)

In fact, it is their humanity, their curiousity and desire to help people which inspires and motivates the often thankless work that they do.

I disagree here. Science has room for humanity and curiousity and helping people, but I've also heard scientists complain about "politics," which means pressure to compromise their research. Why don't they just do research independently the way they want to? Because their deeper motivation is that they need money to not starve and freeze.

Some of my heroes are scientists who really do follow humanity and curiosity and get thrown out of the dominant system, researchers like Wilhelm Reich and biologist Louis Kervran and astronomer Halton Arp, and popular authors like Rupert Sheldrake.

They certainly don't need angry, ignorant people insulting their entire way of life.

I think they do need angry people with wider perspectives critiquing their entire way of thinking. We all need it.

They work a hell of a lot harder and a hell of a lot quieter than you seem to. Who do you think is more at peace with the world?

Which world? Scientists are more at peace with this society and I am more at peace with the wider world beyond it.

Indeed, scientists seem to work more quietly than me, but that's because the noise of their work is hidden from them, or from us, by layers of disconnection. Mines and chain saws and factories and atomic bombs and screaming animals in laboratories are much louder than my little writings.

As for working hard, the idea that hard work is morally virtuous is pure religion, specifically Protestant Christianity. It mostly serves to make us easier to enslave.

The fact is, your criticism is inherently scientific in that it forms conclusions based on observation.

As I said before, forming ideas based on experience is much broader than science, which only includes certain types of experience.

I'll admit, though, that my criticism is very rational, and that I'm very rational. What I'm trying to do is turn rationality against itself.

And you wrote the damn thing on a computer -

Oh, I'm not a perfectionist. I'm willing to turn the weapons of the occupation against it.

- so if it weren't for science you wouldn't even be able to whine about it.

If it weren't for science and the cultural sickness that science is based on, I wouldn't have anything to criticize! I'd just be playing all day like almost all recorded other-than-civilized peoples.

What are you so angry about? Who is it that breaks your spirit?? What personal reason do you have to criticise something that has done so much for so many people?

I recommend Derrick Jensen's book The Culture Of Make Believe -- it expresses what I'm angry about much better than I could. Science is part of a larger pattern that has been doing almost nothing but breaking spirits for thousands of years. What it has done for me and everyone I know is make us utterly dependent for our survival on a system in which we have no real autonomy or power.

And as far as the examples that you give, the scientists of old knew less than we know now. For everything horrible theorum they came up with they came up with ten which were utterly hilarious.

If their theories seem hilarious to us, it's a good bet that our theories will seem hilarious to people of the future.

As a painter, I have found Goethe's colour theory to be utter garbage. I loved his plays though.

"Garbage" is imprecise. Have you duplicated his experiments? I haven't either, but I trust him, and the point is not whether one particular divergent theory is helpful to someone. The point is that theories do diverge, that the universe has room for multiple truths. I find this inspiring!

My point here is that science is nothing more than an extension of rationality, and is faulty in just the same way rational thought is faulty. (For instance, it doesn't explain to one's satisfaction why things feel the way they do.) The quantification, repetition and prediction that underline all of science are all methods and practices which make practical sense.

I agree with you there! I'm against rationality too, at least habitual rationality. Like "practicality" and "utilitarianism," it mostly just means withdrawal of empathy.

I think that we can both agree that the plague of science is for the most part not in the idea itself or the people doing it, but the associated corporate culture which pays for it and corrupts it.

I don't quite agree. I think what's bad in the corporate culture comes from something deeper than corporations, and that thing also influenced the development of the ideas that define what we call science. I think we could have other systems of knowledge with different filters, that are not at all compatible with corporate rule.

Of course, science isn't perfectly compatible either! It occurs to me now that if the ruling system needs to politically influence science, that proves that free science has the potential to end that system. Here are some good non-dominant science sites:
Science Frontiers
Borderland Sciences
Gonzo Science

If there is any reason the scope of scientific inquiry is as limited as you seem to think it is, I would guess it is due to the lack of profit possibility in extra-scientific work. Although even this I find hard to believe.

What is profit? Accumulation of money units just doesn't explain all the evil in the world. I think profit is just a manifestation of the desire to control. And this desire has influenced the idea of and history of science -- and still influences it. That's part of why science that could be quite profitable is still suppressed, because it's too emotionally unsettling -- it makes people feel like they're not in control, like everything they knew is in question. Right on!!

There's a lot of pseudoscientific bullshit which sells quite well, so it isn't much of a stretch to believe that legitimate science concerning a broader scope of human experience could also make money.

I'm sure I accept a lot of what you call pseudoscientific bullshit. This is exactly what I meant by science as a filter. There are many ways of following experience and forming ideas, and the ones that cannot be "proven" -- that is, experience that cannot be produced on demand for anyone -- are excluded, and given pejorative labels like "pseudoscience." Call it what you want -- we can still follow it where it leads, and I think it will lead us somewhere much better than this.

The core of my quarrel with science is that I am a reality diversifier and science (in action anyway) is a reality standardizer or centralizer. I want the universe to be full of anomalies and magic, with new realities always unfolding.

Anyway, what struck me the most about your column is that it appeared on Unknown News and was neither unknown or news. I can't forgive you for that interruption -- I don't care how fascinating your column is, I want my U.N. to cut straight to the bone, know what I mean?

I think what I wrote is very much unknown, just unknown ideas instead of unknown facts. If U.N. cuts to the bone, I'm trying to cut to the heart, to get to the deeper causes of Republicans and bad cops and zero tolerance policies. I've traced it as deep as civilization itself, but I still don't know what's beneath that.

Lastly, I think it is worth remembering that the human will is a hell of a force, and that you yourself are evidence that the scientific thought that has been breaking spirits for however many thousands of years (or whatever it is you seem to be responding to) isn't as strong as people's instincts or desires.

Totally! Although I don't think I'm wrong about science or civilization, I think it's quite likely I'm missing the point, that there's some hidden value to this catastrophe, that this is something we have to go through to learn greater strength, like falling before learning to walk. Although I praise "primitive" cultures, I have one big problem with them -- that they're all very conservative. I hope we can create a world that's both in balance and in dizzying flux.