SCIENCE, FAITH AND MORALISM

“Knowledge for the sake of knowledge” – this is the last trap set for us by morality: it’s how we get completely entangled in it once again.

Friedrich Nietzsche, in this aphorism from Beyond Good and Evil, was speaking in a "high" sense—a sense that runs through the philosopher's work.

Si parva licet componere magnis, nowadays, the same aphorism could be paraphrased in the more mundane context of mass and social media:

The popularization of scientific knowledge – this is the last trap laid by moralism.

Borrowing an old saying, if the difference between morality and moralism is like the difference between a sigh and a burp, what should we think about the current popularization of science and its faith in "scientific truths"?

I don’t believe in science.

My job requires a deep knowledge of a scientific discipline - I know exactly how it works - and to me, saying “I have faith in science” is like saying “I paint linguistics”: it’s nonsensical. At this point, one of those meme-worthy quotes often attributed to Richard Feynman would fit nicely, but instead I’ll use this:

You investigate for curiosity, because it is unknown, not because you know the answer. And as you develop more information in the sciences, it is not that you are finding out the truth, but that you are finding out that this or that is more or less likely.
(So much for the “scientific truth”, NdCS)
(The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman, 1999)

Feynman lived through a scientific revolution, so perhaps, by experience, he was not familiar with “normal science” in the Kuhnian sense  - since the very social function of normal science in Kuhn is the confirmation of established principles, the confirmation of the paradigm. But aside from that, his point still holds. However, any moralism needs a truth, a dogma - hence the “holy scientific truth.”

And at this point it's pretty clear that the science Feynman was talking about and the public discourse that speaks of scientific truth are not the same damned thing.

Scientific truth today is what politics claims as its mandate—and it is not democratic in the sense that, when power is derived from a higher and external principle (God, the EU, NATO, scientific truth), elections become rituals incapable of meaningfully influencing a country’s political direction. And political action becomes unassailable by those it affects. Anyone who raises objections to such action is not expressing a legitimate political opinion: they are heretics to be publicly shamed, blasphemers of the truth.

Thus, faith in science, with its innate, coarse moralism, is no different from those theocracies deeply entrenched in worldly affairs—powers that the very devotees of science often point to as primitive or irrational.

Certain phenomena that thrive on the web have nothing to do with the nature of some scientific discipline. On youtube and social medias it's about preaching the scientific truth and shame the heretics. You can google "Professor Dave vs Sabine Hossenfelder" and check this out: a bachelor in chemistry with a Master in Scientific Education (so 0 hours of real world scientific/academic activity) vs a physicist involved in academic research for years. Enough said.

Anyway, I’m no one to judge...