Pseudo-relevance: science, scientism and pseudo-science?

Problematic Sexual Paradoxes of Pandemic Response (Part #2)

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In a period of global crisis, with an apparently total dependency of governance on science, it ia appropriate to explore the extent to which this may or may not be justified. This is all the more justified by the preoccupation with the fact that a significant portion of the population does not share that confidence to the degree desired by authorities -- an irony in that science has only a complicated statistical understanding of "confidence", "trust" and "belief".

As a particular cognitive modality, it is therefore questionable whether science has the capacity to explore the following factors in the light of its own methodology principles. The science worthy of admiration is indeed a particular mode of inquiry -- unconstrained by institutional conventions. The dilemma for institutionalisd science is comparable with that of institutionalised religion in the face of spirituality.

It is questionable whether instituitionalised science is capable of engaging appropriately with any other perspective which is not in total agreement with its own methodological perspective -- or respectful thereof. Whilst there is indeed extensive "criticism of science", it is noteworthy that this can be tolerated only to a limited degree when articulated from a philosophical perspective, as with the arguments of Paul Feyerabend (The Tyranny of Science, 2011; Conquest of Abundance: a tale of abstraction versus the richness of being, 1999; For and Against Method, 1999), or with the efforts of metascience to improve science "from within". Other than through its total rejection and condemnation, science has seemingly no methodological capacity to engage with antiscience and what it chooses to frames as pseudoscience. This contrasts curiously with the care with which the misguided insights of scientific precursors are evaluated and appreciated.

It is therefore appropriate to note an initiative from a perspective which would be readily be framed as pseudoscience. This is the report of the Galileo Commission, produced in summary form by Harald Walach on behalf of the Scientific and Medical Network (Beyond a Materialist Worldview: towards an expanded science. 2020):

This, we propose, is only possible in an innovative way if we challenge, make explicit and discuss the background assumptions, and bring the discourse about Science 2 into an open debate. This is the purpose of this report. Our hope is that this might enable a transitional Science 1B to arise, with an enlarged set of background assumptions 2B that also will have impact on how we are doing science and thus will eventually result in a new kind of Science 3. The purpose of this report is to open up this debate by analysing Science 2, presenting arguments and data about why it is too narrow and to lay out a roadmap to an expanded Science 3...

We envisage a new form of science, with a new set of assumptions, forming what we have termed Science 3 or a trans-modern science. We can also call it spiritually informed or spiritually open science, as it will draw not only on traditional modes of experience, but also on inner, subjective experience in a methodologically robust sense. It would support most forms of current scientific practice and would encourage other forms that are either currently not part of the scientific portfolio or are only marginally accepted, often in the face of explicit resistance from mainstream scientific institutions....

Science 3 would intuitively exclude monist models that are reductive, such as a materialist one, but also an idealist monist model. Monist models encounter the difficulty of explaining how a categorically different entity can arise from another one. We do not think that emergentist models that make consciousness contingent on and the result of the complex organisation of the brain really present a viable alternative.

Another approach from a psychoscience perspective is reported by Philip Ball (The Trouble With Scientists, Nautilus, 14 May 2015). This endeavours to clarify the human biases in science. Tragically science could be said to betray Galileo, whilst upholding him as an exemplar of science. This is evident in the systematic promotion of reference to "sunrise" and "sunset" by meteorology and astronomy -- a reversion to the geocentric perspective which Galileo heroically endeavoured to correct. No appropriate expressions have been offered to reinforce a heliocentric perspective in the face of a flat Earth and flatland mentality. This pattern can be understood as equivalent to the logocentric and egocentric perspectives reinforced by many religions -- in contrast with the radical cognitive insights to which mystics endeavour to indicate.

It is not a question of how science is to be criticized from a contextual philosophical perspective, nor a matter of how it is to be criticized internally from a metascientific perspective, Rather there is the question of how one major mode of engagement with reality through inquiry positions itself as uniquely and exclusively beneficial in contrast with all other modes. Why are these then to be deemed in consequence as dangerously misguided -- and to be actively suppressed wherever possible? In this behavioural pattern science follows only too tragically in the path of religion which it prides itself as having superseded.

Understood more generally, as science might be expected to enable, the challenge faced by society is one of engaging effectively with "anti-otherness" (Elaborating a Declaration on Combating Anti-otherness -- including anti-science, anti-spiritual, anti-women, anti-gay, anti-socialism, anti-animal, and anti-negativity, 2018). Is science as perplexed by manifestations of "anti" in society as it is by anti-matter -- and by the dark matter which is purportedly the preponderant form in the universe as claimed by the Standard Model in which physicists are expected to believe?

It is highly embarrassing for science that no hard evidence for dark matter has yet been found, although this in no way prevents the neglect of alternative models (David Merritt, A Non-Standard Model, Aeon, 19 July 2021). In human affairs, is there a "dark matter" which science has yet to recognize -- as Jung has argued -- and for which evidence can be advanced?

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