The paradox of knowledge and science
From Descartes-level skepticism to self-appointed dogmatic scientism
Scientism is the cult of the new age.
Like any religion, is comes with its holy texts (studies), its scholars with the exclusive gift of absolute inalterable knowledge (scientists), its symbols (institute logos), its ceremonies (conferences), its prayer mantras (“I believe in science”), its unfaithful (skeptics), its heretics and goose-chased witches (anyone labelled “denier”), and its devils (the gods of the past).
The arrogance of mainstream science is its claim to “know” what it thinks it knows, and has no way of actually knowing.
Its low average IQ is its persistent appeal to arbitrary authority, and its inability to comprehend that this fallacy is not a logical argument.
Science is a method of study that aims to yield information that is as close to objective reality as possible. Science is not a dogmatic pool of “knowledge”, the questioning and scrutiny of which is a mortal sin. I’m sure that in 1903 the Wright brothers were ridiculed by the “scientific consensus” (whatever the fuck that means) because heavier-than-air flight was considered impossible, and a laughing matter. I’m sure Galileo was ridiculed by the “experts” who “debunked” his heliocentric paradigm. I’m sure that self-baptised IT “experts” laughed with Apple’s M1 chip architecture, since they relied so heavily upon their appeal to tradition fallacy “argument”.
Can science yield objective knowledge? Maybe. But probably not, because we are not capable of knowing anything, other than the fact that we are incapable of knowing anything. And this limitation in our perception is what we know. This is why Socrates represents the pinnacle of philosophy, with the humility of ignorance required before you study anything.
The great paradox of knowledge and science is that, even if we can "know" everything there is to know, we can't know if that's all there is to know. And we also do not know whether what we think we know is nothing but a surreal and absurd notion, a delusion forced into our consciousness by a demon, as the philosopher Descartes so eloquently put.
The only knowledge is this: objective reality may exist, but the only thing we can “know” is that no human will even have the means to witness it in its entirety and in absolute accuracy.
