SCIENCE in ruins ?

[ But it is even worse than that: even assuming that all scientists were competent and honest, what is science for, exactly? Tom Murphy describes the situation in these terms: "Our society approves of these institutions and rewards its practitioners, in part based on the misguided notion that this is where solutions to our problems will originate. Instead, science/technology is far more likely to produce the seed corn for another generation of ecological destruction." And he is basically correct: science doesn't have a "soul." Without a soul, it is little more than a zombie that walks clumsily onward in search of brains to devour. Mostly, it is the brains of students and young researchers, but we all risk being devoured by the reckless attitude of scientists. Most of them seem to stop at nothing while trying to gain prestige and money from whatever they can sell to the public as a solution to the problems that they themselves created not long before.

I still think that, eventually, the zombies will not prevail and that the entity we call "science" will find its purpose again by returning to its origins, when it was called philosophy. It means "love for knowledge," and we could still recover this view. But it will take a long time and probably science will have to go through collapse before it can rebound and return in a new form. It is typical of complex systems. It is the way the universe renovates itself. And if the entire universe does that, it must be because it works well! ]

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