Science, Belief, and the Cultural Burden of Superstition (eBook, ePUB)
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In this idiosyncratic study I imagine the scientific enterprise to be an edifice of reasoning and experimentation that we share with every animal all the way back to the protozoa. Only recently, in geological terms, did we choose to indulge in fantasies and stories, and although they served to entertain us through the dark nights, and could be used as memetic tools, they sometimes confounded us when confronting real threats. The river is not coming after us to demand prayer, the water is not rising to wet the expectant frogs, there has been rain in the mountains and we should move to higher gr...
In this idiosyncratic study I imagine the scientific enterprise to be an edifice of reasoning and experimentation that we share with every animal all the way back to the protozoa. Only recently, in geological terms, did we choose to indulge in fantasies and stories, and although they served to entertain us through the dark nights, and could be used as memetic tools, they sometimes confounded us when confronting real threats. The river is not coming after us to demand prayer, the water is not rising to wet the expectant frogs, there has been rain in the mountains and we should move to higher ground. In order to examine what conspiracy theories, Santa Claus, fairies, luck, ghosts, and gods might have to offer the post-Neolithic mind I trace the logical implications of those superstitions through anecdote and history. The science section begins as a kind of hymn to the experimentation and reasoning of those whose efforts made our lives better. I include more recent scientists, as well as those Indigenous cultures which retained information over ten thousand years so that the landforms and taxa around them might make sense to their descendants. Such systems, regardless of how robust, are also subject to the superstitions from the age of fantasy, however. A closer look at prejudice in the scientific system, a discussion of cultural inertia and an unfounded and denigrating way of thinking about our ancestors, show how those intellectual shortcomings continue to trouble our understanding. A profound ignorance of how our world works has mixed fantasy and science, is eager to shift blame to another, and culminates in our own lack of self-knowledge. This takes the form of the ego's effect on our reasoning, our susceptibility to the blinding of self-undermining media, and our tendency to think emotionally rather than rationally. This study is meant to be more than a list of problems, however. In both the scientific and fantastical world, this more than ten-thousand-year-old story is about our striving, our recent missteps, and our greatest accomplishments. Returning to an older way of looking at the world, we are climbing out of the hole of self-imposed superstition and emerging into the light. We might blink at first, but the real world is more beautiful and fantastic than the one we invented, and phenomenological magic waits around every corner.
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