MagiK

I don't have any fundamental problem with science - rational thought is a great thing.... However, if science is always about facts, how come scientists around the globe disagree almost to the point of coming to blows on any number of major issues? Global warming, for instance. Science would like to be about facts, but the fact is, the world is just too fecking complex to fit into some of the models and theories we hold about it. (A lot of what people accept as objective fact is actually subjective theory which is accepted as fact because it supports the worldview of the person using the so called fact to bolster his/her argument.) Hence the large numbers of disagreements, and hence the doubts about the 'factual' nature of all scientific thought. There is also the question of who is funding scientific research, what use the information gained is going to be put to, and by who, who gains and who loses from discoveries made, and so forth. Another reason for conflict, and another reason to doubt much of what is presented in the guise of 'fact'.

(Those interested in the nature of science might like to read Thomas Kuhn, who argues that science proceeds not primarily through the patient accretion of facts, but by revolutionary interpretative shifts in which one scientific paradigm displaces another. His work raises the question of the rationality of science.)

Like I said, I'm no science debunker. Just an interested observer.[/QUOTE]Well knowing that scientists are as political and egotistical as every other group of humans are, I think that this is more a limitation of humans than of science [img]smile.gif[/img] ....I don't know a whole lot of scientists personally but I do know a few...they in general are an oddd lot