SCIENCE LIMITED - a critical study
CURRENTLY UNDERGOING RADICAL RE-WRITING

SCIENCE LIMITED
(a 13-chapter book critical of the role of the sciences today)

by Robert C. Priddy
Formerly University of Oslo (ret'd)

UPDATE: RECONSIDERED AND MODIFIED VERSION OF THE ORIGINAL TEXT OF THESE PAGES

This revised text is designed to reflect a promising change in the public face of science which has occurred in many media, but - more importantly - better to represent the very considerable outreach and developments which have taken place in many of the sciences since the ubiquity of virtually unlimited computing power and its related technologies.

 
CONTENTS IN BRIEF

(A more detailed summary/abstract of chapters is also provided)

Ch, 1: THE MODERN INTELLECTUAL CRISIS On some causes of a decline in intellectual culture, including the underlying pseudo-philosophy of scientism/physicalism. The late C20th facile presentation of scientific objectivity and near-infallibility challenged by events, and promising trends to reform of its public face in the media. Scientific culture - on public confidence in scientific ethics and internally in poor self-reflection and self-regulation. Counterbalancing the pendulum swing towards physicalism & materialism since the enlightenment by holistic, holarchic and philosophical counterweights. Science for social change and the common good or as a means to advance unjustified ends? Genetic 'meddling'? 'Natural' selection or supra-evolutionism - to what ends, whose profit and whose loss?

Ch. 2: SCIENCE AND THE PROGRESS OF HUMANITY? From & superstition to 'scientific prejudices', from alchemic gold to chemical payoffs, from scientific advance to declining social values, from ignorance of nature to fallacies about infallibility and human error? Destruction and 'creation' in science and the ill effects of the cultural schizm on understanding of the human being.

Ch. 3: THE PUBLIC FACE OF SCIENCE

Ch. 4: SCIENCE, THE CRITICAL MIND AND DISSENT The science community and radical dissent, social criticism and underestimation of the human error factor in science applications. A pressing need for fresh, unbiassed and more broadly educated minds to develop science within a more universal and inclusive level of understanding. Five varied examples of dissent against conventional wisdom: 1. Carnivorous bias in medicine. 2. Odontology & toxic fillings. 3. Unintelligent views on intelligence: 4. Distortion of the distant past and prehistory. 5. Para-normal phenomena denied.

Ch. 5: SCIENTIFIC OBJECTIVITY IN QUESTION On what is scientific, what not. Prestige and spurious claims of 'objective neutrality' and expert consensus. The assumption of physicalist meaninglessness vs. inherent purpose and meaning. Inertia in science: the roles of academic conventions, fashionable opinion, distortions due to pressures for originality, individualism, competition, self-marketing and prestige.

Ch. 6: SCIENTIFIC FREEDOM & GROUP INTERESTS 'Freedom' to research in the best interests of the public. Is science still only a collective, non-ideological and non-exploitative enterprise? Ethical responsibility towards 'society'. The conflict of values in science: truth or care? Wastefulness and wasted opportunity. Social control through science?

Ch. 7: SCIENCE AND THE DEMISE OF PHILOSOPHY The original spirit of philosophy and science diverted away from broad critical thinking. Human experience hypostatised in pseudo-philosophical concepts. The meta-crisis of the seperate sciences. Preconceptions, unreserved judgements and intellectual intolerance.

Ch. 8: SCIENTIFIC CONFUSION ABOUT CAUSES Science only describes & can't explain. Meaning or purpose. Multiple causes occur, which scientific method rejects. Explanation by causation limited, due to past orientation and denial of teleology, also since chance events & free will occur. Chaos theory and causality; random selection and probability; statistical theory and causation: Knowledge and a cosmic order.

Ch. 9: WHERE SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION FALLS SHORT On Procrustean criteria for strictly scientific explanation: repeatable observation, demonstrability, sense organ reductionism. Consciousness' subjective transcendence systematically 'overlooked' & 'objectivised' by vulgar scientism. Scientific predictions, the unknown and unknowable. The protean cumulation of ideas and multiplication of scientific information without holarchic understanding.

Ch. 10: SCIENCE AND HUMAN SUBJECTS The dilemma of most social science, that empirical methods distort the nature of the psycho-physical & social-spiritual human being. The uniqueness of historically-situated human actions aborts exact laws and prediction in social science. Analytical fragmentation of the human as a person and compartmentalisation of studies all due to the analytical fallacy, misplaced concreteness & confused attempts to quantify human qualities as objective data. Wider, 'softer' observational methods in human science essential for understanding.

Ch. 11: VALUES AND UNDERSTANDING IN HUMAN STUDIES On values mistakenly seen as 'non-scientific', including the value of science itself and its in-build social and cultural values. Human sciences' only justification is if they improve life. Need for self-legitimisation, moral discrimination, meaningful purpose and universal human values: eg: Human Values.

Ch. 12: SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALITY The problem of science for spirituality: Scientific knowledge of the cosmos or religious spiritual belief? Subjectivity, consciousness and temporality. Science, God & alleged 'miracles'.

(A yet more detailed summary/abstract of contents . is also provided)



Follow-up web book:"BEYOND SCIENCE" deals with the nature of human understanding and values and the regeneration of these.

This second work is a constructive follow-up to the mainly critical texts of 'Science Limited'. This presents an overview of human understanding in general, drawing together upon many diverse perspectives from philosophy and culture both East and West . It investigates the nature of our faculty of understanding, its main structures, functions and likely limits. It ranges from practical, inter-personal, communicational, scientific and philosophical understanding to ethical, metaphysical and spiritual insight. It forwards a metascientific, holistic view of understanding and the philosophical guiding principles involved, also viewing understanding as finding the unity in diverse cultures and world-views. is also provided)

© The book 'Beyond Science' on this web site is the copyright o f Robert Priddy, Oslo 1999. All brief quotes must be identified by stating the title & date of this book plus the author's name and this website address - as follows: http://home.no.net/rrpriddy. Contact the author by e-mail for permission to publish any extracts that exceed one sentence from this and any linked websites. (e-mail address robreiNOSPAM@start.no -please replace NOSPAM with @)

Robert Priddy is British, born U.K. 1936, researched and taught philosophy and sociology at the University of Oslo 1968-1984 until pensioned).Bibliography of R.P.

For an overview of the sources quoted in this book, go to Selected Source Bibliography
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