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Originally Posted by peter12
Science's reliance upon progressivism, is in my view, one of its greatest and most destructive weaknesses.
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Science doesn't "rely on progressivism", unless you relax the definition of the $10 word so much that it can apply to any time someone asks the question "how does this happen". So when my kid asks me why do the planets orbit the sun I'll be sure to yell "progressivism" and hide the science books!
A bit of hyperbole yes, but really where's the line?
I think you conflate science and technology, and I think you blame science when it isn't science to be blamed. After all the question of if science should even be done isn't even a scientific question, it's a philosophical one. Science is a tool, a method, you don't blame the method when it gives the results it was created to give.
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Originally Posted by peter12
Truth be told, the price we pay for progress is far too high. We split the atom, we get the atom bomb, we unravel the genome, we get transhumanism.
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See, here you are mixing science and technology. Splitting the atom is science, an atomic bomb is technology. Splitting the atom does not insist the bomb be created and used. It doesn't insist that nuclear reactors to be built to provide safe and cleaner energy either.
By this line of reasoning, the first human to lift a rock and use it as a tool is to blame, since lift the rock, we get a weapon.
If there's something else in your argument that differentiates lifting the rock or understanding gravity and splitting the atom then I don't see it yet (which is why I wanted a specific example).
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Originally Posted by peter12
What is worse, all of this is done without an understanding of humanity's history of ideas, that is, the best moral arguments kept alive by our history of philosophy and literature. It's science's naivete and blindness to the impact it causes becauses of its neutrality that is the real problem.
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So after all that you call science neutral?
That's a point that at least makes sense to me (agree or disagree); science is a tool and it's not the tool's fault if the tool user doesn't learn to use it better.
So what are you suggesting then? That there be some kind of body that directs and limits scientific research across the globe? Or that somehow scientists be held to a high standard of philosophical thought so that they don't pursue questions that they don't think are beneficial?
The problem with that is one cannot know in advance what benefits or results will come about from a specific line of inquiry. Maxwell didn't envision an era of global communication when working out the properties of electromagnetic radiation. Einstein can't create special relativity without Maxwell, and without special relativity we don't have general relativity, we don't understand our universe...
With special relativity you can create GPS, which can be used either to guide ships more safely or to guide bombs, neither of which Einstein envisioned or even COULD have envisioned.
So really other than in a limited subset of cases it's impossible to somehow decide if a specific line of scientific inquiry is worth pursuing, because unless one is omniscient one cannot know the results and consequences of a line of inquiry with certainty.. so many of the discoveries of science are serendipitous.
