Saturday, February 16, 2019

The Value Of Scientific Awareness

Whether the subject is quantum physics, the development of artificial intelligence, neuroscience, cosmology, or some other category or subcategory of science, science is ultimately useful for convenience, not the pursuit of verifiable truths.  There are certainly advantages to staying up to date with contemporary scientific pursuits, but knowledge of reality beyond the fact that one has specific sensory perceptions is not among them.

Convenience, not knowledge, is the primary benefit of science.  Whether the convenience pertains to health, entertainment, or leisure, there is no other ultimate point to investing time into use of the scientific method due to its numerous and inherent epistemic flaws.  Some people may certainly find themselves attracted to science by a subjective sense of curiosity, but anyone who thinks science is capable of proving anything except that specific phenomena in the external world are occurring during the present moment is thoroughly mistaken.  The value of science is in its pragmatic benefits, and nothing else.

A love of science that is rooted in nothing but personal preference drives many to overlook, deny, or trivialize the intrinsic epistemological flaws of looking to the scientific method for verification of anything more than the aforementioned material phenomena of the present moment.  It is one thing to appreciate science; there is nothing irrational about enjoying the process of making repeat observations and formulating estimations based upon them.  However, the belief that science even remotely resembles an epistemic savior is utterly unintelligent.

Science is not a pathway to ultimate knowledge about anything more than activities in the natural world detected by immediate sensory perceptions.  It cannot be used to demonstrate anything about the past, the future, or even whether or not one's immediate sensory perceptions correspond to the actual appearance of the external world.  The scientific method is incapable of verifying even a single fact about reality beyond one's perceptions, much less a multitude of them.  Reason alone, immutable and omnipresent, possesses this ability, and what is immutable cannot be dethroned.

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