Science is the study of life and the world around us, an exploration of the reality of the universe conducted from different ‘directions’ with the intent of understanding its endless aspects. Today, however, science in seeking to ‘peel back its layers, in attempting to clarify our place in it and improve the conditions within which we live along with our relationship with it, and each other, many have dismissed the effort and our effort to continue ‘doing’ science has become contentious. Knowing and its pursuit, has become a kind of ‘blasphemy’. Science has become politicized along with so much else. Many completely dismiss it as a wasteful effort, an attempt by elites to purposely complicate our lives with distractive and destructive nonsense, the value of expertise dismissed. For them life seems simple and obvious. Science, many claim, is an effort by ‘elites’ to obfuscate and to remove decision making ever further from the ‘people’…in doing this we are replacing curiosity and understanding with a willful ignorance, generalized fear and a ‘trust’ in those who simply, and loudly, claim to hold the answers, who demean all others and promise to return us to some ‘golden age’ fantasy of the past. They ‘reduce’ language, surrender clarity, replacing it with volume and repetition, shrink both what is acceptable for discussion and the lexicon with which we do so, rendering communications more open to confusion and misinterpretation, to manipulation. Language and speech, limited, regulated. Science can’t afford this. (Nor can any vital society.) Doubt and insecurity will overwhelm us, until we reclaim our right to knowledge. Reason, science and critical thinking, offer us a way out, a way to reclaim our agency, without destroying the world. Continue reading →