As a young officer in Starfleet, I used to venerate science. Back then, I used to view the pursuit of knowledge as the most important thing an individual or a society could do. I no longer believe that science should be the top priority that anyone pursues especially if they were interested in the nature of reality and how we should best spend our limited time in this place.
There’s a lot of things to like about science. The refinement of information has helped humanity immensely. Generally speaking, humans are no longer reliant on superstition or religious dogma in order to navigate their daily lives.
The philosophy of materialism has provided a conceptual framework that allows anyone to test observations in order to determine cause and effect. Its hard not venerate a philosophy that allows for skepticism, testing theories and results in technological advancements. However, science isnt without its shortcomings.
While science has undeniably propelled my understanding of the world, its methodologies and academic structures come with significant limitations. The vast complexities of subjects like physics and biology hint at an ever-present uncertainty.
Even as we humans try unravel the mechanisms of the universe, the subjective qualia—the “feel” of experiences—remain elusive. Science has provided insight into the “how” of things but has difficulty with existential questions of purpose, meaning, and morality. Furthermore, the reliance on inductive reasoning, a cornerstone of scientific inquiry, is grounded in the understanding that past events don’t always predict future occurrences.
There’s also the confounding realm of quantum mechanics, which defies traditional predictability, suggesting that certain realities might be inherently unobservable and beyond our empirical reach.
Amidst these broader challenges, academia itself grapples with its own issues. Publication bias, the preference for studies showcasing significant or sensational results, has led to a skewed scientific narrative. As a consequence, vital research confirming the null hypothesis often remains obscured, causing wasted time as scientists inadvertently revisit previously tackled questions.
This bias is further intensified by the replicability crisis, particularly in domains like psychology and medicine. Groundbreaking studies frequently face replication challenges, raising concerns over their legitimacy. Practices such as ‘p-hacking’—modifying analyses to unearth significance—and an overdependence on p-values, often without considering the broader context, undermine the trust in published findings.
In essence, while science offers a valuable lens to perceive the material universe, to truly comprehend our multi-dimensional reality, it’s important to look beyond empirical measures and media narratives about scientific findings.
For me personally, I try to evaluate things through various lenses; from the scientific to the religious to the philosophical, to the historical to considering how an average person views things and I blend that in with own my subjective experience and judgement.
I think my tentative conclusions about reality have me dumbfounded. As such, I don’t have conclusive answers as to what we should do here. I could toss out a bunch of cliches about love and growing but there’s so much more to this realm….just on the very periphery of reality are possibilities that would rival the most fantastical fictions..places where the objective turns subjective and the subjective can become objective. Look around you and then in your heart and you’ll know its the one True thing about this reality.
Read more about some ongoing issues with scientific journals