Is giving authority to science almost as bad as giving authority to a religion?

Since science is done by humans, who are naturally biased and have different interpretations to things, it is as fallible as any other belief system.
People who 'worship' science and claim intellectual superiority over the religious are effectively doing the same thing as zealots.

I kinda think humanity is still in its infancy in terms of how much we know, as some theoretical physicists think that an objective reality may not even exist at all

I'd lump the scientific view as a sub part of the critical/sceptical viewpoint. You have to be criticist (is that a thing?) and a skeptic to be scientist but you don't have to be a scientist to be a skeptic etc. If you get what I mean.

The further we get from idealised simplified systems the harder it is to be rigorously scientific and it gets more squishy. We can predict motion of planets but we can not predict how human societies will develop to anywhere near the same degree of accuracy (Marxism is an example of false sense of scientific understanding leading to untold misery). But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to apply scientific analysis and understanding to these areas. We can do studies to test the hypothesis that say Trump is the result of an increase in authoritarian tendencies in the American population. That's never going to be as rigorousse as physics but we can learn something from it. Physicist like Friedman thought things like social sciences, or even parts of biology like nutrition, shouldn't be called sciences since we just don't have the understanding.

Hmm... I'm not so sure. I can only talk about history though.

Is good history based on evidence? Yes. Is it based on critical evaluation..? Yes. Is it scientific? No. You can't apply the scientific method to history. It's not a scientific discipline. Sometimes scientific evidence is used in writing history, but the "history" part is never scientific. It just... can't be.

So you should apply scientific analysis to the extent that scientific analysis overlaps with critical analysis.

In place of people being for their religious beliefs, online I've noticed an increasing trend for the polar opposite, which I consider almost as bad.

When people think science should give your life purpose usw. usf.

Such as the other day when someone said that "we have a duty to science to know & understand more." Like wtf? (I'm not explaining my disagreement 'cos I want to see your thoughts.)

What are your thoughts on giving authority to science?

scientists are the new secular priesthood. with their obscure jargon and hermetic societies they inspire awe and fear.
they cling fanatically to their belief systems; any scientist who dares to challenge the status quo is anathema; heresy is not tolerated.

Sometimes scientific evidence is used in writing history, but the "history" part is never scientific. It just... can't be.

What does usw. usf mean?

Anyway, science is actually the opposite of authority. Authority says "believe me because I am in charge". Science says "believe me because of evidence". That is why so many established ideas have been overthrown by science and will continue to be. And why incorrect scientific ideas will continue to be overthrown.



What nonsense. Scientists spend their careers challenging the status quo and other scientists' beliefs.

nothing* is as stupid as giving authority to a religion

scientists are the new secular priesthood. with their obscure jargon and hermetic societies they inspire awe and fear.
they cling fanatically to their belief systems; any scientist who dares to challenge the status quo is anathema; heresy is not tolerated.

For the German "Und so weiter und so fort". That means "and so on and so forth". I love the abbreviation.

How can you say that, and make that distinction?

And it's more like "believe me because of more evidence", despite many basing it on faulty premises. Many people who go in the name of science don't even have a lot of depth into it. Many people lack sufficient depth (though that "sufficient" is spoken arbitrarily at the moment.)

My issue is the am the amount of command people give to science for their lives.

I'm not saying that.

I'm asking whether you think it is almost as stupid to give it to 'science'.

Trust me, I am in no way in favour of religion.

Archaeology, paleontology, cosmology, and evolution are all historical sciences, and geology and climatology can be too.

Read Guns Germs and Steel for a very nice argument that human history should be much more scientific than it is.

That's why I mentioned the historical sciences. They also study things that no longer exist and cannot be observed directly. But their effects today can be observed, and hypotheses made and tested as per normal.

Human history may not be quite so amenable, but I think more historians should try. And archaeologists try to do it all the time.

Yes but a key difference is they're studying physical things which obey physical laws, no? Also - with cosmology as an example but it might also be true of others - you're studying things that exist in the present and using that make conclusions about what happened in past aren't you...? That's why it's "historical sciences" not "scientific history" right...? Might just be getting in to semantics though....

What if we are slaves to forces we don;t understand

they cling fanatically to their belief systems