Science Is Dead

So it goes... That’s what Kurt Vonnegut would say, if he were still with us... Another “deity” bites the dust. Another worldview, that of materialistic science, which by the end of 18^th Century was poised to set the rules for everything, danced briefly in the limelight during the 19^th and early 20^th Centuries, and then was gone, virtually in its prime. What’s 200 years in the life of a godling? An abortion or a crib death... what else could it be?

During the centuries in which it thrived modern science was a mighty colossus, a virtual leviathan astride the world of thought, and even of Philosophy, usurping this latter Art, and proclaiming itself its “father” and supreme arbiter. Talk about an Oedipal complex! Lest we forget, Science killed God himself – and then blinded the rest of us! – to atone for its crime.

Its subsequent attempts to become the next deity, to be the sole and unequivocal “authority” about everything – to dogmatize the Maya of the material world – only wreaked havoc in the world, making the last two centuries the bloodiest in all of human History (and the wanton destruction isn’t slowing down in this millennium either!).

With the term “Science” or “modern science,” I mean its trunk and all its branches, and disciplines (or lack thereof), including its root (i.e., Mathematics). The field of Mathematics is by far the more robust part of its cadaver, and it’s the most “alive” by virtue of its Art being the result of “pure thought,” and requiring great gobs of “imaginative thinking” in order to be understood and used as a tool.

What is to be mourned about the end of modern science? Almost nothing. Its only saving grace was the “scientific method” – its only worthy discipline or legacy. The scientific method (Observe, Question, Experiment, Analyze, Repeat) was the backbone of our scientific knowledge. One could say, without being too romantic, that in it lay the wisdom, beauty, and eventually the “truth” of questioning everything.

Now questioning is done with, and not just in the temporal world of politics, economics, and the rest of the pseudo-sciences! I’m only saddened, or is it being nostalgic, that along with its “authority” over the masses, the demise of modern science has also dealt a deathblow to a very human activity – thinking! The rational and the logical, like thinking itself, went down the drain with the bath water...

I’m not shedding any tears, mind you. Although with every passing, even that of a lowly, material god, something is lost. What’s lost is faith, the handmaiden of dogma. And, I say good riddance to them both!

Death By Dogma

When I say “science is dead,” what do I really mean? What has actually “died”? After all, like Religion itself, modern science was nothing but an abstraction – a way of thinking about the world (an extremely materialistic way at that). Science was nothing more than yet another Weltanschauung, albeit one based on Rationality, the only scion of the Enlightenment.

But what you see in the world is always what you want to see in it... Everything else is nonexistent as far as that goes. And dogma is the tool that helps you “crystalize” that belief, that point-of-view, as a leitmotif for all your subsequent thoughts and beliefs about the world you live in.

Dogma wants everything frozen, narrowed down and tidied up in little rows and columns... it wants everything living to be dead. It wants a snapshot of life only, the pin through the insect for its specimen collection, a digital “on or off” signal, not a spark of imagination or a trace of feeling to be kindled from it all. Dogma requires that everything remain exactly as it is forever, preserved for posterity, if you will, in an immutable state – in other words, it wants everything good and dead, and under a display window.

It’s our animal nature, our lowest desire(s). Dogma is what gives the powers-that-be “authority.” What is Authority? In ancient times the power of authority was unquestioned and unreasoned, since Authority came directly from God or the gods (i.e., divine authority). Later, that is, closer to our own historical times, this Divine Authority was usurped by men, mostly kings, who claimed they were the “sons of God,” or other such malarkey and that their right to rule came from God (the gods were already gone by then, so no one could ask them if this was in fact their will or not).

Today, and since the Renaissance, authority is the façade, the means through which the “ruling class” exercises their “will to rule” (or what’s left of it); i.e., their dogmas, which are their laws, their profits, their class/race/gender privileges, etc. Through dogma, all of these ephemeral abstractions receive a patina of “divine order” – the very same bright sheen the physical/materialistic sciences acquired after the death of God. If you’re going to compare yourself, compare yourself to the best...

Dogma generally has to do with the preservation of a “system of values.” Dogma is the “mummification” of a set of rules to live by – ecclesiastic laws were the first to be codified; i.e., mummified (think of the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. and how it established Christian dogma throughout the Roman Empire, etc.). That’s still going on, albeit, with less force behind it.

Of course, you can’t have anything mummified before it’s dead, now can you? Belief in Christ by the Romans in the 4^th Century was pretty thin indeed. One could have well assumed it was long “dead” (actually, thanks to the Gnostics, and the many other cults which sprung up around the Christ-event, it was quite alive, especially in Rome, since the ancient Romans were nothing if not tolerant of other religions). “Heresies,” such as they were, were only in the eyes of the Roman Church, the arch-reactionaries of their time. The early Church being the last remains of the Roman Empire, and was made up of those who wished to maintain power through the authority of what was left of the fallen empire.

In reality, the greatest heresy yet perpetrated on humanity is that which the Roman Church achieved through the suppression of freedom of religion and through the massacre of millions in Europe from the 4^th to the 14^th Century (e.g., the Cathars of Southern Europe, or the Jews and Moors of Spain, who suffered the last of the many holocausts the Church perpetrated after the Council of Nicaea). Few people know that before and especially after the Crusades in the Middle East against Islam, the Church had its bloodier Crusades in Europe, where the most pernicious heresies thrived (i.e., wherever in Europe free thinking and religious freedom brought peace and prosperity). Thus the mummified values of Ancient Rome (e.g., its laws, its castes, its blood, its institutions, and its form of government, etc.) are still with us, thanks to the Roman Church.

Dogma, is not just an official system of principles or tenets concerning faith, morals, behavior, beliefs, etc., as in the Church. Dogmas can also encompass the rules and regulations of any institution, and as we can see, these give the Authority de jour something sacrosanct – a “bigger than you” feeling to it (well, they also have the lawyers, guns, and money to press the issue when necessary).

So what has also died with the death of materialistic science? Why “Authority” itself – the very divine order of the Cosmos. After all, what system of values can be maintained without a divine order?

She Blinded Me With Science...

Speaking of “scientific endeavor,” I thought it’d be apropos to announce modern science’s death on the heels of this month’s reports in the Corporate Press about some scientific activity being carried out somewhere... I was awe struck. Someone’s actually doing science somewhere on this planet? I was made giddy by the news, my knees rattling with the excitement of it (I’d been waiting such a long time for any signs of life... well... what can I say?).

There were two of these reports, which raised my misplaced hopes, because of their unusual nature. It’s not every day that “the cure for cancer” is announced without the least bit of hoopla or euphoria (self-aggrandizement yes, jubilation no). Outside of the words “dramatic remission rates” in the headline, one would think nothing really special happened...

“Twenty-seven out of 29 patients with an advanced blood cancer who received an experimental, “living” immunotherapy as part of a clinical trial experienced sustained remissions, according to preliminary results of the ongoing study at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.” Feb 16, 2016

If medical research “scientists” had perfected a “cure” for leukemia (blood cancer, one of the gnarliest of all) with “sustained” remission rates, I asked myself why this wasn’t front page news. Maybe because the press release came from marketing folks in the Bio-tech industry? Or perhaps because the sample pool was less than 30 cases? A bit shy of credible evidence, wouldn’t you say? And maybe because the 27 who have survived, did so for the testing period only? Who knows? Seriously folks, my Biology professor would have flunked me if I’d presented proof for my hypothesis with a sampling of only thirty... If this is today’s “scientific method” in action, I’m Napoleon Bonaparte!

Science’s motto today is self-fulfilling prophecy first; proof and good evidence, be damned. And, this is the state-of-the-art in modern cancer research, mind you. Who cares, right? I’m so relieved we can go on with our usual debauchery unabated, without the fear of having to suffer for it. I know that no matter what I do, modern science will save me on my death bed.

The miracle of engineered T-cells has no limit we are told. The seductive half-truths and outright lies from the “geniuses” in Bio-tech and Big Farma knows no bounds. We can deal with any cancer that comes along through the manipulation and modelling of T-cells. Genetically engineered immunology is the new rave. What cancer can stand up to our clever manipulation of “living” matter? Leukemia? Hepatocellular carcinoma? You name it, we can cure it!

Even being generous by calling this claptrap “science” (it’s not – it’s merely another application of “science” done generations ago) what is one to conclude? Well, at least, let’s admit to being more than lax about our “scientific standards” these days... and let’s allow for the benefit of the doubt concerning these claims for the “cure for cancer.”

So what does this mean in a practical sense? Because they never say WHEN these “cures” will be available to the public, and for WHOM they’re being designed. A cocktail of “engineered” immunotherapy drugs (which may or may not include “living” T-cells) can cost up to USD $14,000 per dose... Sticker shock? Let us say one is a septuagenarian and wishes to live another decade, what would one’s net worth have to be to continue with the therapy for that length of time? Be sure to check with your fund manager and upgrade your pension portfolio before submitting your name...

I guess that answers the question emphatically, doesn’t it? Isn’t that modern, Corporate Medicine working for you? Yeah right, and at the price of one shot of that potion, you’ll die of a heart-attack! (Like the common cold, they haven’t found a cure for that one yet.)

Pollyannaish reports aside, this brave new world of forever dodging Death through chemical and radiation therapy, T-cell cocktails, and immunotherapy drugs of all sorts (except for the ones that get you high... natch!), doesn’t pass the nose test. This kind of “triumphalism” is just the kind of foul-smelling odor you’d expect to be oozing out of a rotten corpse.

Where No Man Has Gone Before...

The other curious announcement from the “scientific community” was a little closer to “real science” (i.e., less Corporate Marketing), although it’s still kind of “far out” there. It has to do with the announced “proof” of gravitational waves in space from LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) at MIT.

“Scientists made the 'the scientific breakthrough of the century' with the detection of gravitational waves. When the waves were detected, they knew they had been caused by two black holes 30 times the size of the sun colliding. The discovery was the first time anyone had detected the warping of space-time caused by a collision of two massive black holes. These gravitational waves, created 1.3 billion light-years from Earth, help confirm our universe was created by the Big Bang, and will give an unprecedented glimpse into its beginning.” 17 February, 2016

It’s been a busy February in the scientific world! Isn’t the announcement of this “historic” proof of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity not science at its best? It certainly is! One good apple doesn’t spoil the bunch (it’s the other way around!). And, it is indeed science that’s being practiced when proofs for basic theories are put forth. This particular “proof” in support of Einstein’s original Theory of General Relativity, first expounded in 1915, while millions of Europeans were killing each other for no good reason... is laudable. Chapeau!

What are we to make of these gravitational waves? They rule, that’s what! How will our values reflect this new found “light” at the end of the telescope? O.K., the LIGO gadget is an “observatory” and not a telescope... yet what’s “new” about it? Nothing – it’s another application. The “thinking,” the “imagination,” and the “inspiration” came from one school dropout 111 years ago!! It took Einstein ten years to accommodate “accelerating objects” to his Theory of General Relativity – from 1905 to 1915. But essentially, it was one spark of creative thinking that gave birth to his theory (i.e., he imagined the Cosmos in his mind’s eye and then formulated the theory).

I mean, when has modern science delivered, or coughed up, its last miracle? Was its last hurrah Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity? Was its swan song Quantum mechanics? Proving that there are gravitational waves out in space-time is certainly not going to alleviate world hunger, now is it? Quantum physics won’t either! So what does Science leave us as an inheritance? A 50-year-old warning that we’re warming up the planet? We only need to see the rate of species extinction in the plant and animal kingdoms to have any doubts in that regard...

What has Science done since Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity? Precious little, I’m afraid... The “golden age” of science vis-à-vis Relativity was in the 1960s and 1970s, but that was due to a series of “observational” discoveries that led us to understand black holes and quasars better (more application through the slight improvements in technology) so that the Big Bang Theory came into sharper detail. Yet there was nothing new in this short-lived period of glorious science. Proving an existing theory is once merely “method,” and not the “imaginative thinking” that Einstein used to develop something new. What real science requires in order to produce a new hypothesis about the Cosmos, or any other physical aspect of Maya, and then to prove the theory developed through the scientific method, is precisely this initial imaginative thinking (i.e., the living spark which Einstein kindled in order to come up with his Theory of Relativity!).  

To be fair, Bohr and Planck, and a couple of others, have taken “imaginative thinking” in the other direction – into the microcosmic – into quantum physics. Nevertheless, Physics has not taken a step forward since Einstein, Bohr, Planck (et al). That’s more than a hundred years ago! And this can be said about any other field of modern science – I suppose the word “modern” ought to be jettisoned along with its non-thinking bits. Conclusion: No new thinking has taken place since before World War I!

And herein lies my point – we’re flying on fumes! Nothing new has emerged in Science since the dawn of the 20^th Century – not a single innovation! Yet all Corporations talk about is “innovation” (yeah, it’s just marketing shill), but the corpse is still as cold as it was yesterday, and the year before, and the century before that... No new knowledge, no new theories, zilch, nada... To be gracious, not “one step forward” in over a hundred years is not the sign of life one would expect to perceive in anything living... Seriously folks, we’ve got a real stiff on our hands.

Despite these unprecedented “announcement” of “historic scientific work” being done this month, the assessment is not good. Discoveries, new proofs, and advancement in real scientific research are not just scant, but non-existent. No new ground is being broken. Frankly, if this is all the “pure science” we’re doing as an “advanced” civilization – and it is – then science has no future even if it weren’t dead. Although a hundred years late in coming, one is still bound to state the obvious: Science, as such, is indeed as dead as a doornail...

Science Was A “One-trick Pony”

Let’s agree on a definition, otherwise, we won’t know what the heck we’re talking about. Science is: “Systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.”

Under that rubric, and being as kind and naïve as possible, the announcement from LIGO is only the first half of the deal – only the ‘kit’ of the ‘caboodle.’ Observation is essential to the “scientific method,” naturally, as is Experimentation. But both Observation and Experimentation are at their lowest levels in centuries! If you were to use a rough measure, such as the amounts of money funding scientific research (pure science) in areas unrelated to the MIC and war-making (this includes Information Technology and all its subordinate industries), and compare that to research aimed at education and well-being (just to use a coarse value), the amount going into scientific research on the latter is not only negligible – it’s risible!

The question asks itself: How much “systematic knowledge of the material world” is sufficient knowledge? How much “wiser” will we become if we were to gain more “systematic knowledge of the material world” than what we already possess? Isn’t something systemic and dogmatic already dead? How much more “death” will make us a scintilla smarter?

We already know all there is to know about the material world – down to the “string” level. In quantum physics we’re already scratched a tear through the “fabric” of pure Maya. Don’t we know everything that can be known through our crude instruments about sub-atomic particles (quarks, etc.)? The fact is, we know “too much” already, otherwise we couldn’t “use” this so-called knowledge to the nefarious ends to which they are actually put (i.e., turning everything into yet another weapons system).

The ‘Day After’ Of The Gods

Why has no one yet taken notice that the “corpus scientificum” is way past rigor mortis?

They say that everything that dies lives again... or to paraphrase that saying of ancient wisdom: “from death new life comes.” Maybe from science’s passing something better will come... Naahh... that’ll never happen.

So what can be said about “materialistic science”? Especially today? It’s “magic” has run out and the smoke-and-mirrors trick is getting tedious indeed! Maybe it’s not the fault of science per se, but rather the fault of our own mentality (or greed, to put it more bluntly).

In our time, Science was driven by a certain mentality. A closed one – a dead one. Dead, materialistic thinking can’t produce anything new. What’s living can’t emerge from a corpse, unless you believe in Bugonia – the spontaneous generation of bees from the carcass of an ox or cow. I know we live in the most superstitious times in the History of humanity, but having faith in Bugonia is pushing it a little far.

It’s simply not possible for modern thinking to understand much of anything that’s not purely materialistic. Our thinking lacks imagination, it has no nuance to speak of. Science is driven according to a mentality that has become so vain and self-glorious that it’s downright infantile. To begin with, anything that’s not visible doesn’t exist, and if anything is incomprehensible then it’s damnable. If things that cannot be explained by the academic mind don’t exist, we live in a very poor world indeed!

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” -William Shakespeare- “Hamlet” (1.5.167-8)

Whatever happened to “scientific” imagination and curiosity? It must have died with the rest of the corpse, I suppose. In a way, the “scientific method” has been turned on its head – to become a means of denying rather than affirming. For every affirmation, such as LIGO’s gravitational waves “proof,” there are millions of “denials” of every sort.

Likewise, the simple fact that scientific endeavors such as LIGO’s to determine the “fabric of the universe” is news, ought to tell us a lot. It tells us, unconditionally, that such work is extremely rare – so rare that it merits coverage in all major mainstream media (in the back pages, of course!).

People must not be disturbed by thinking, or rational thought. People must not question Authority. People should not be distracted from their entertainment and their vain desire to live like “celebrities” allegedly live. Just keep your nose to that little hand-held device and pay no mind to what’s going on around you. We control the vertical, we control the horizontal, and you just never mind about any of it.

An alarm should be ringing somewhere, except that there is no “there-there” to speak of...

May I be the first to sign Science’s death certificate? Others may have been tolling the death knell already, but by now there is no doubt about it. And judging from what little Science has to report to our daily life – anything of the mildest practical benefit – why even bother? (Not to say that all knowledge has to be “useful” or “utilitarian” – there should be some knowledge for knowledge’s sake, just as there should be some art for art’s sake).

Alas, Science’s brief reign of terror was more toxic and far more deadly than the Old Testament God (Yahweh or Jehovah, et al), piling up dead bodies at an astounding rate (soon to overcome the rate of reproduction itself!). Yet few, if any, have stopped worshiping at the altar of modern science, and its obvious successor, namely, Money.

Given the prevailing global economic conditions, we’ll see how long that paper godling lasts...