Modern Science = The Church in New Clothes?
The one or other scandal or inconsistency in the modern scientific landscape may shake the world view of the unbiased observer a little nowadays, but by no means question the foundations of today’s science as such.
For the achievements and advances that surround us every day are undoubtedly attributable to it and have become established and proven in the practice of life.
Thus, in the general perception, modern science is understandably regarded as the safe harbor or anchor that gives one’s own world view the necessary support.
In the vast majority of cases, it is not one’s own insight into a matter that plays a role, but only one’s trust in an institution or authority that adorns itself with the title of scientificity and thus exercises authority in a field.
The actual adherence to comprehensive scientific principles and procedures is completely secondary.
First and foremost, only names and titles count, as well as the appeal to “science”, to which everyone has to submit as a seemingly inviolable authority and which can only be questioned by “enemies of the state”, “backwoodsmen” or “esoterics”.
Inevitably, all critics are lumped together and defamed accordingly.
However, it is by no means the intention of perceptive, critical voices to deny the achievements and fruits of modern science in its justified field of activity, but the focus is solely on pointing out its one-sidedness and inconsistent procedures and ways of thinking — in short: dogmatism.
Heretical voices like to say in this context that modern science corresponds to a new form of church or religion or is its continuation in a new guise.
For to the extent that in earlier times all knowledge was considered “correct” only if it was imparted and approved by the church, this principle lives on in today’s scientific institutes, which are entangled with financial interests and thus exercise total authority over all knowledge.
The world-famous sociologist Eugene Rosenstock (1888–1973) summed up this ever-worsening problem as early as 1956:
“The free growth position in the Scientific Age lies in a new pair of tensions, namely between research and knowledge. This fighting pair is still largely unexplored. […]
Alexander Humboldt said of the real history of free discoveries: ‘It passes through three phases. A new research is first held against: It is not true. Then it is said: Someone else has discovered this. And at the end it is said: We knew that long ago.’
Scholars are just capable and therefore quite incapable of loving the overthrow of their virtue. They are scientific officials, and they always stand against the amateur. Since, of course, research belongs to science officially, as the Holy Spirit belongs to the church, there is mass pseudo-research, which competes with the progress of free research, and the former alone is conscientiously supported by the official bodies and foundations, because this alone seems worthy of support to the professional official of science.
Such bogus research acts according to the principle: Wash my fur, but don’t get me wet. It investigates cancer according to the outdated ideas of Pasteur, as if it were rabies. She investigates religion according to Wellhausen’s ideas, but because she refers to old authorities in her research, so she is extensively financed. As long as scholars and researchers both remain poor, genuine research has prospects. This was the case until 1900. Today, the prognosis for research is worsening because grateful peoples are extensively funding ‘The Science’ [note: nationalization of science]. Thus power shifts to the side of the knower, against the researcher. Our doctoral factories and Rockefeller fellows are eloquent witnesses to this.“¹
This timeless observation or critique of the modern scientific enterprise by Rosenstock hits the nail on the head, but it illuminates the problem only on a first level.
For the real, deeper problem of modern science goes beyond the incompetence and lack of moral integrity of the Drostens, Lauterbachs and Faucis of this world and the academic and political institutions that cover them.
By this is meant that today, even if a scientist has the best of intentions, goes his way within and relies on academic institutions, he will inevitably lose himself in a multitude of dead ends, pure model ideas, auxiliary hypotheses, and so on.
And inevitably remains in a naive state concerning the approach or the methodology, insofar as until today unjustified and prejudiced epistemological foundations are assumed, which make a critical acting, i.e. a seeing through of one’s own approach or its laws, impossible.
By the fact that on the one hand essential epistemological questions are simply suppressed or dismissed as outdated and on the other hand completely reality-remote, i.e. free of empiricism and with prejudices afflicted world-descriptive constructs are predominant.
These essentially amount to denying the individual human being any objective cognitive ability or, because of his own subjective limitations, to denying him any access to any truthful knowledge at all.
Man lives only in his (subjective) world of imagination and all perceptions are accordingly fabricated by him and thus without objective value.
Accordingly, as a way out — or as a justification for the pursuit of science — only the “striving for objectivity” remains, even if its final goal is regarded as unattainable from the outset.
Thus, the fundamental questions of epistemological inquiry had become superfluous to modern science, or no longer relevant to the scientific enterprise, and therefore no longer needed to be considered in order to move from a naive action to a critical one.
This bad news has far-reaching consequences for the individual insofar as he is thrown back into the ecclesiastical age and is forced — without having risen in the ranks of the temples of science — to rely solely on authorities or dogmas in order not to be rejected from the outset, let alone to receive recognition.
For in the absence of an objective access to the world, the individual can anyway only maximally approach an objective knowledge, but never reach it, and therefore — if at all — only the “proven”, “high-ranking” academic institutions or their professors, experts etc. can say something about it.
Naturally, the authorities in their field are elevated to a “sacred” status, for example by Nobel Prizes, whereby their theses may only be questioned behind closed doors, if the exclusion from the ranks of the officially recognized temples of science is not accepted at the same time.
Once a dogma has been established — as described succinctly in Rosenstock’s quotation — it is generally no longer allowed to ask “why”, but must be accepted as a given in a religious manner.
In this way, intentionally or unintentionally, the same status is attained as in the past under the influence of the ecclesiastical institutions.
Thus, today’s scientific age, which has the justified and important task of creating the contemporary foundations for the liberation of the world from religious and other dogmatism through conscious, critical thinking according to the best scientific criteria, is lapsing back into the same dogmatism to the same extent.
A way out of this situation is consequently only possible if the contemporary epistemological assumptions prove to be wrong or one-sided on the basis of empirical investigations which are comprehensible for everyone according to the strictest scientific method.
Or better said: If it is possible to find the starting point of epistemological considerations — without prejudices — in order to build on it the foundation of all scientific endeavors.
So that the certainty and the self-confidence to gain objective knowledge about the world return to the individual’s own hands or responsibility and he no longer has to submit to any authority in this respect.
And thus, in spite of his subjective conditionality, receives a safe anchor for objective examination, in order to escape from the naive state and to no longer set artificial limits for himself.
The aim of this writing is to question the foundations of modern science, but not to deny its achievements and fruits within its justified field of expertise, but only to show its one-sidedness and inconsistent ways of proceeding and thinking.
For example, even a tool like the hammer is excellent for the activities in its task area, but completely useless up to destructive for other areas, if it is nevertheless used.
According to this analogy, especially for fields of science which go beyond purely physical-mechanical phenomena, i.e. whose subject matter is no longer only inanimate matter, one auxiliary hypothesis after the other is put forward in order to be able to explain the empirically demonstrable phenomena on the basis of the materialistic-reductionist world view prevailing today.
Therefore, the main aim is to show this one-sidedness and the serious unscientificness connected with it and to dissolve the existing dogmas which are connected with it until today.
A well-known critic of the modern scientific worldview, the biochemist Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, has compiled some dogmas that, in his opinion, should be questioned in a now censored TED-Talk:
Nature is mechanical, machine-like.
Matter has no consciousness.
Nature is governed by unchangeable (not self-evolving) laws and constants.
The total amount of energy and matter is always the same.
Nature is meaningless or without purpose.
The biological heritage is exclusively of material nature.
Memories exist only in the head as material traces.
The spirit is in the head and is “no more” than brain activity.
Extra-sensory phenomena such as telepathy are an illusion because they are scientifically impossible.
Mechanistic medicine is the only one that works.
And brought his criticism to the point with the following statement:
“Science delusion: The belief that science already understands the nature of reality, leaving only the details to be filled in.“²
Similarly, historian and one of the most influential intellectuals in the United States, Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004), put it in the Washington Post (1984):
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of being knowledgeable.”
Thus, one can observe again and again the arrogance, narrow-mindedness, and prejudiced, historically wayward scientists who have strongly shaped society’s worldview today.
Perhaps the most vivid example comes from physiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818–1896), when he postulated in 1842:
“Brücke [his colleague at work], for his part, writes a dissertation in which the attempt is first made […] to explain all the vegetative processes of organic bodies by physical means. […] Brücke and I have conspired to assert the truth that in the organism no other forces are active than the common chemical-physical ones; that, where these are not sufficient for explanation so far, by means of the physical-mathematical method either their way of effectiveness in the concrete case must be searched for, or that new forces must be assumed, which, of equal dignity with the physical-chemical ones, inherent in matter, are always to be attributed to only repulsive or attractive components.“³
This statement, which is obviously not based on any scientific, empirical foundations, clearly shows the hubris and dogmatic way of thinking that still persists today.
And the prejudiced world view recognizable with it for everybody inevitably leads to one-sided conclusions, which thus automatically move into more and more reality-distant realms, which are often based only on purely abstract and logically constructed parallel worlds.
The best example for this is the nowadays prevailing reductionism, which as is well known has led to the atomic and quantum theories.
Thus the reductionistic world view gets lost in the attempt to trace back all phenomena to their smallest material unit and to derive all explanations from it.
Through this one-sided scientific view, which focuses only on the material level, the human part of man and also the living part of all other beings are almost completely lost from sight.
Because on the molecular level the difference between humans, animals and other living beings becomes blurred and the elements of these molecules are what living beings have in common with the inanimate material world.
The living and especially the specifically human part is thus inevitably lost in the world of substances.
This prompted John Martin, Professor of Cardiovascular Sciences at University College London, to make the following statement in 2000:
“Perhaps the great problem of the next 100 years in biology will be to understand what makes a human being a human being.“⁴
In summary, reductionism consequently denies any meaning to all sensually perceptible qualities (purely subjective) and shifts everything “real” into a sphere purely accessible to abstract thinking.
Interestingly, however, just as a consequence of the modern atomic and quantum theory it is shown that in the end only the mathematical form (no matter particle any more) remains, which makes clear that the underlying reality is only accessible on an intelligible, i.e. no longer on a sensual level and thus has no material basis any more.
Matter is ultimately “information”, thus spirit.
The quantum physicist and winner of the Alternative Nobel Prize (1987), Hans-Peter Dürr (1929–2014), put this quite succinctly in an interview a few years ago:
“In the more difficult to comprehend depth, in the world of the smallest, ‘things’ are not things at all — that is why the revolution does not want to enter minds: there are no things, there is only form and gestalt change: matter is not composed of matter, but of pure gestalt beings and potentialities. This is like the spirit. Basically there is only spirit, but it calcifies, and we perceive only the calcification, as matter.“⁵
Walter Heitler (1904–1981), Professor of Theoretical Physics at ETH Zurich, also described a similar view in 1972:
“A mathematically formulated law is something spiritual. We can call it so because it is human spirit that recognizes it. So nature follows this non-material element, the law. Consequently, spiritual elements are also embodied in nature itself.“⁶
As well as Max Planck (1858–1947), founder of quantum physics:
“Gentlemen as a physicist who devoted his whole life to the sober science of the investigation of matter, I am certainly free from the suspicion of being taken for a swarm spirit. And so I say after my explorations of the atom this: There is no matter in itself. All matter originates and exists only by a force which brings the atomic particles in oscillation and holds them together to the tiniest solar system of the universe. However, since there is neither an intelligent force nor an eternal force in the whole universe, we must assume a conscious intelligent spirit behind this force. This spirit is the original reason of all matter, not the visible but transient matter is the real, true, actual. Because the matter would not exist at all without the spirit, but the invisible, immortal spirit is the real. But since there can be spirit in itself likewise not, but every spirit belongs to a being. We must necessarily assume spirit beings. But since also spirit beings cannot be from themselves, but must be created, so I do not hesitate to name this mysterious creator just as in all cultural peoples of the earth earlier millennia have called ‘God’. With this the physicist, who has to deal with matter, comes from the realm of matter into the realm of spirit and with this our task is over and we have to pass on our investigation into the hands of philosophy [Note: And one could add: and a science of the spirit like anthroposophy].”⁷
These statements are diametrically opposed to the common contemporary view and shall therefore serve at this point as an introduction and stimulus to take a deeper look at the basic principles of modern natural science.
[1]: Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Soziologie, Die Übermacht der Räume, Stuttgart 1956, S. 1151
[2]: https://www.sheldrake.org/2
[3]: Brief Emil Heinrich du Bois-Reymonds an Eduard Hallmann von 1842, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macht_oder_Ohnmacht_der_Subjektivit%C3%A4t%3F
[4]: John Martin, 2000. The idea is more important than the experiment. Lancet 356: 934–937
[5]: Interview mit Hans-Peter Dürr in DER STANDARD, 12. November 1998, Materie ist Kruste des Geistes
[6]: Walter Heitler: Naturwissenschaft ist Geisteswissenschaft, S. 14f., 1972
[7]: Archiv zur Geschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797
Info: This text was originally written in German and translated into English using Deepl, because I am a native German speaker.
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