Søren in Norwegen

Neulich hat LeSpocky mich nochmal extra auf „Science Biggest Fail“ hingewiesen. Ich find das immer toll, durch solche Sachen den Eindruck zu bekommen, dass „die Leute“ mir doch zuhøren und das von mir Gesagte sogar halbwegs richtig einsortiert bekommen. Selbst wenn die e-Mail mit dem Link unverschluesselt war.

Aber darum geht es mir hier gerade gar nicht. Auf das im Artikel Gesagte werde ich an anderer Stelle nochmal Gesondert eingehen.

Mir geht es vielmehr um einen Text, den ich vor ueber 3 Jahren schrieb. Dies im Zuge der Gespraeche mit meinem damaligen Psychologen (deswegen ist der auch auf englisch).
Ich hatte den damals auch so geschrieben, dass der hier verøffentlicht werden sollte. Aber irgendwie hab ich mich fuer so viel „Inneres heraus kehren“ geschaemt. Und dann war es irgendwie nicht mehr aktuell.

In den letzten Monaten hab ich immer mal wieder dran gedacht diesen Text doch noch zu verøffentlichen. Aber es mangelte der Anlass und mir mangelte es nicht an anderem Material.

Wie immer bei vor laengerer Zeit geschriebenen Texten gilt, dass ich mich heute nicht mehr immer so ausdruecken wuerde. Dies hauptsaechlich, weil ich in der Zwischenzeit noch mehr gelesen und dazugelernt habe und mittlerweile einige Dinge ganz anders „einsortiere“ oder unter anderen Blickwinkeln betrachte.

Wie bereits an anderer Stelle, bereitet mir die inhaltliche Ueberarbeitung geschichtlicher Dokumente allerdings irgendwie Bauchschmerzen. Deswegen ist der folgende Text nur bzgl. der grøbsten Rechtschreibfehler korrigiert worden. Auszerdem fuegte ich Links ein (und løschte entsprechende Quellverweise), ordnete die Absatzstruktur, so dass der ganze Text lesbarer ist und hob ein paar wenige Textstellen hervor.

Nach dieser kurzen Einfuehrung nun der vergessene Artikel:

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Science

First I’d like to start why science in the original meaning was and is so important to me.
In the original meaning science „is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe“ and it has (had) a close connection to philosophy.
As the famous physicist Sommerfeld stated once: each physics student must have the chance going directly from a physics lecture to a philosophy seminar – (successfully) opposing the move of the physics seminar rooms to new buildings of the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich early in the 20th century.
I strongly agree with him but would also include other important sciences like sociology, politics, history, literature etc.

Nowadays „science is a term which […] is often treated as synonymous with ‘natural and physical science’“ [Anm: Urspruenglich aus der wikipedia, dort aber nicht mehr zu finden.] – strongly directed towards Karl Popper’s understanding of science (as far as I’m able to understand Popper).

Anyway, I strongly disagree with this limited meaning of science. Maybe my early understanding of science explains best why: I think science is everything that helps to understand the universe (and humans and their behaviour are a part of the universe) and to propel humanity. Of course reproduceable methods and logic must to be used to attain this understanding. These methods can be applied to and within rather „strange“ topics as long as the results are not claimed as valid in the real world (which doesn’t necessarily mean that the results don’t have any implications in the real world – e.g. theology and the whole „christian frame of faith“).

So far to what I mean when I say „science“ in the first and second part of this „essay“ (if not stated otherwise). This is a rather difficult topic and I just
read about a tiny bit of it and understood even less. Much more intelligent people than I am wrote extensively about it. Later I will come back to this
topic.

In retrospective science meant so much for me because it was the only object/matter/thing which was kind to me without conditions (beside my mother).
I have to admit that this is a rather heavy statement. I never had somebody who could be labeled as „friend“ before I was 19/20 years old. Actually I’ve never been very interested in direct social relations (which is still the case but to a lesser extend) even though I was and am very interested in sociology.
During my childhood this is easy to explain I guess: I was bullied (fortunately not very much), the other kids usually were kind of „slow“ in understanding me and they couldn’t explain the things I wanted to know. I wanted to know how the world functions – why is wood swimming (which it doesn’t do in space by the way), why is a mirror mirroring, why is the sky blue, what is the world made of etc. – the reason why I studied physics and why I would do it again.
Now that I know this stuff (or am able to understand explanations in this direction) my interest shifted more towards understanding society, humanity and the behaviour of humans and human constructions (e.g. religion, states, companies etc.).

However, this explains quite good I guess why I say „science was kind to me“ because the deeper I „digged into“ a topic the more I learned, the easier I understood other things. The more I gave (timewise) to science the more I got back. When I was 14 years old I read a whole encyclopedia. My intention is not to boast with this but this were one of the most happy two weeks during my youth – each new page meant more knowledge, more understanding and peace of mind ([figuratively] since I was on the „hunt“ for more knowledge and literally too since other people left me alone).

So I started studying physics. At this time I already was an acolyte of the „religion of science“ (new meaning) and deeply entangled in the new meaning of science (without knowing it).
Fortunately mostly my subconsciousness, and to a lesser degree also my active thinking, was aware of the original meaning of science.
Thus hearing professors (until to this point I always consideres them as the „spearhead of intelligence“) speaking in a mean way about the humanities and socials sciences, not considering them as „real“ science at all, lead to the first disappointments early during my studies. Over the years hearing from most of the students that they study physics because of the good jobb opportunities lead to more disappointments.

Since I was a devoted acolyte I must not go in detail why I became successful within this „reference frame“ named as science/physics. I’ve been, and to a lesser degree this is still the case, a rolemodel for all these neo-liberal politicians. Coming from a poor family, studying something that is „important“ and becoming successful through „hard and devoted work“.
I was totally aware of that and did not held back with my belief that this is true. Now I know that I’ve been very cruel to all the people who haven’t been that fortunate as I was (especially with respect to the topic they studied). At this time everything seemed OK with my behaviour.

However, in 2004 my world broke apart – totally. But the foundation still was intact – my belief in science. Everything else I had to build up from scratch.
The catalyst for this event was the break-up with my then girlfriend. Since my mind was already shattered because of this it was kind of „silent“ enough to make me realize that everything in my life just does not „add up“. So I started to talk. About my feelings, about social topics, human relationships, economic topics, other (scientific) topics beside physics or technology etc.
And I started to accumulate knowledge within these new (to me) topics. This was the time when I started visiting seminars in politics and sociology.

And again science helped me – getting my world together again. A new world, a world in which I became a different, maybe better, person with totally changed views on quite a lot of important topics with respect to social interaction. This was a long process which still (and never will be) finished.

This was also the time when my subconsciousness became aware of the religion of science, slowly and just in small pieces making it tangible for my
consciousness.
And this was the time when my consciousness became very well aware of the business around science. Even more so during the time I worked for my
dissertation.
Both of these I strongly reject because these are unscientific.

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The Business of Science

I tried to explain why science is so important to me in the first section.

Naturally this first section already had to go a little bit into other the topics I will eventually describe/discuss in detail below.

This section now shall cover what I mean with „the business of science“.
It will be a rather short section and will not have any further meaning for the later topics but it is important to point out the differences between the business OF science and the business AROUND science. Still the original meaning of science applies of not said otherwise.

The most important business of science is of course what I said above: helping to understand the universe and to propel humanity. This includes research but is not limited to it. It includes also the presentation of research results (in a reasonable way) and teaching of the scientific methods and the necessary knowledge to students.
The first of this is kind of obvious since „secret-science“ doesn’t help humanity. Additionally, research at a university usually is done with taxpayer money and the public should be informed about what has been done with it’s money. The latter is important to continue with science in the future.

Presenting research results is for some scientific fields more important than for others since some sciences extend more into the „everyday life“ (e.g.
medicine, didactics etc.).

The „taxpayer money argument“ leads to another important business of science. To give advice for general decisions which will influence society. This includes political decisions but is not limited to it. On the other hand, if Herbert Read’s opinion about the „politics of the unpolitical“ is reasonably extended to the „topic of science“ all major decisions in this area are political.
This is something I would agree in.

I think I have to extend this a little bit because one big issue in the next section is also covered within this „giving advice“. In my opinion public research/science should be covered in general by some kind of „money for science/research“ without conditions. It shouldn’t be the case that a researcher/student has to beg even for tweezers because the lab he or she is working in get’s not enough funding.
Nowadays each tiny project must apply for funding and compete with others. This is a tremendous waste of ressources (but this will be covered in the next section) and in the end the taxpayer will cover the costs anyway!

However, not all (resonable) big projects can get money. Therefore such projects must be evaluated and the best project should get the money. Usually just scientists are able to evaluate other scientific projects, therefore they should do it. What „best“ means is of course debatable and can be both a political or a scientific discussion.

All these businesses (beside research and teaching) should be kept to a reasonable minimum that the scientists can do science.

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The Business around Science

Above I tried to describe what „science“ means to me and that scientists have to do some things due to something which maybe could be charactereized as „their duty to society“. As a famous german physicist stated it shortly after the catastrophy of the 2nd World War: It’s not an option that physicists become political we MUST be political.
This was also said with respect to the atomic age which just begun with all it implications of total annihilation of mankind.
That is in the sense of the above mentioned position of Read.

Whatsoever, as said above the original meaning of „science“ shifted in the past decades more and more to a meaning that just natural and physical sciences are consideres as „real“ sciene. This angers me and will be discussed more in detail in the next section.

Together with this shift in the meaning the business around science developed. To me it seems to be as if science nowadays must lead to immediate results. Even better if it leads to commercialisation of the idea in the not to long run.
Everything else is considered useless and not worth of funding (public and private).

Since I didn’t researched this with the proper methods I want to give some examples what I mean with the business around science. These are mostly my own observations. From here on the word „science“ is meant in it’s new meaning.

For most science students the main motivation to study their topic is not curiosity but „to get a good jobb“. I think this is a terrible motivator because
you can’t be really good in something if you are not passionate about it. Of course this again is the expression of some others dogmata of the modern western society which shall not be discussed here.

Especially physics students (but this applies at least to most of these students according to my observations) are also quite arrogant towards everything which is not „real“ science.

Since professors have to „fight“ for there money most of them are almost always very occupied with applications for funding. This gives them much less time for good research. I know TWO professors who spend at least some time in the lab.

This might be less the case for more theoretical research areas, but these usually don’t need so much funding. On the other hand all of the professors I
know are working often until late at night just to get these applications in order. Since a day just has so many hours the professors can’t spend enough time with there students.
To me it seems to be as if some professors even see the students as too much of a burden. Hence the „outsourcing“ of these tasks (like teaching or supervising) to postdocs and PhD-students.

According to a friend who is a associate professor „being in a committee“ is much better for the scientific career than teaching.

Everything must be good looking in statistics. This leads to more seminars (even though the existing ones are quite often not good visited or the students just go there because they have to).

Also the flood of really bad publications (both papers and conference contributions) fit into this.
Around the topic of „publications/papers“ the bad business of Elsevier and other companies which distribute scientific papers should be mentioned.
The details of this are described elsewhere. A good starting point might be the article „The price of information„.

Since the tasks of a professor are nowadays more kind of bureaucratic quite a lot of them shouldn’t be considered anymore as the „spearhead of intelligence“.
This includes their research.

Three question (instead of direct examples) to finish this.

All this fuss around patents is another business around science. How can it be that the „fruits“ of public funded research is NOT for the benefit of the whole society?

How can it be that teaching in the laboratory (incl. own experiments) – the best (and I would even say the most efficient) way to teach science students – is more and more slashed because it is expensive and doesn’t contribute much to the statistics?
Even the students moan about it but not because it is very time consuming or hard but it doesn’t give many credit points according to the invested time.

And last but definitely not least: how can it be that applications for money for expensive equipment need several years to be written? And not because of the „hard science“ involved but because of „political issues“.
And how can it be that such applications need the constant attention of the scientists but in the end just a very short section of the application is actually relevant with respect to the research intended with the instrument in question?

I could go on quite a while with more examples but I will stop it here. I hope the examples itself are obvious enough not to be in the original meaning of
science.

In close connection to these businesses around science is that science became a religion (which is also just another business around science). This will be
discussed in the next section.

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Science as Religion

In this sction the word „science“ is meant again with the new meaning (except stated otherwise).

Why science is a religion has been discussed by Mary Midgley (and maybe others I’m not aware of) and this is not the place to repeat her very good arguments. But for the sake of clarity I have to repeat at least some of the things she wrote.

It is important to distinguish between „faith in something“ and „religion“.
Midgley presents the key points how to distinguish a religion from faith. Faith is something which she argues is something very important even in science.
I agree with her. We all believe in something. For the people I keep company with it is usually not a being with supreme powers, but almost all believe e.g. in democracy or in mankind. We don’t have any proof that this faith is justified, actually we have a lot of examples that this faith is quite unjustified, but still we believe in it. Otherwise I guess we wouldn’t function in this society.

When it comes to science (new meaning!) I hope I could describe that I’ve been a devoted worshipper in the past. This was certainly not for the better of me but I didn’t realise this at that time. Especially was this attitude totally contrary to what I strongly believe about religion (with all the evidence one actually could say „what I know“ instead of „what I believe“).

I think EACH kind of religion is bad – if it is christianity, science, the cult of leadership etc. Beside the obvious facts the most important reason to me is,
that religion always is accompanied by unquestioned dogmatism.

Dogmata per se must not necessarily be something bad. Actually they can be something good. For example do I have the dogma that spanking a child for disobedience is an unappropriate response by the parents and not at all included in my repertoire how the upbringing of my child should be.
This sounds logic and moraly totally ok, doesn’t it. But just look two generations back and it was logic and morally totally ok to spank the child. Actually in germany the law that parents have the right to spank their child was not abandoned before the year 2000. Despite the fact that each human has the right not to be harmed (except extremely extraordinary circumstances) was established many decades before. And even this was just done after almost 30 years of lobbying of the child protection agency (Kinderschutzbund).

Another examples is my dogma not to have any sympathy or understanding regarding nazis and their ideas whatsoever. I’ve really tried it, but I couldn’t. I became physically sick and was disgusted of myself just by trying. Sounds logic, doesn’t it? (The dogma, not that I become sick of trying to understand nazis.)

Nonetheless I have another dogma which lead to that I always fought, and will do so in the future, for the civil right (of the nazis) of freedom of thought and speech (which doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t dispute it). Just like Voltaire.
Sounds also logic, doesn’t it? But I have the feeling that it is kind of contrary to the first dogma. Why protecting humans and ideas that want to destroy me and my ideas?

In addition comes that both of these [dgomata] can’t be understood in different kind of social habitats. Whereas the social habitat for not understanding the last dogma is much bigger than for the first – and alarmingly big under the so called „intelligentsia“.

I apologize (even though I’m not sorry – another dogma: don’t be sorry for the things you believe in) that I got carried away a little bit with these two
examples. These shall serve for dogmata which usually are not consider as such by most people.

In the last couple of months I tried to figure out my dogmata and I questioned all of the ones I found. Some I found as not abandonable (e.g. spanking my son), some I don’t desire to abandon (the nazi thing), and some dogmata which have been central for me and my lifestyle I could figure out as useless, even harmful to me, and I abandoned them (or I’m on my way abandoning them).

The key point is: dogmata MUST ALWAYS be questioned. Just as Bertrand Russell already told us half a century ago. Because something which morally is considered as good might actually be bad. Usually history goes this path, but it takes a while, often it is in the „reverse-mode“ (as for the time being unfortunately) and I don’t live that long.

I hope that one can extract from the few sentences i wrote my point of view that UNQUESTIONED dogmatism is something bad (which is by the way just another dogma). Beside the things I said above it (very effectively) prevents people from learning and exploring (the universe). And Religion (in contrast to faith) does not function without dogmatism.

And here we have the connection between the first and the last section. Science (in the original meaning) and Religion are two things which do absolutely not go together.

In contrast to science and faith which I consider as complementary.

In addition comes that I strongly believe in individuality (while I still stress out how important social/societal duties are).
And religion is everything BUT individuality. In contrast to faith again which can be very individual.

And all this is the reason why I’m so mad about science and the scienists. It became a religion and the scientists are very happy about this (without knowing it) because it gives them power. As all religions does to the altar boys and priests – and power is something almost everybody likes.
This power „thing“ is something I’ve been aware of all the time – I guess it even was a motivator for me going into science. Something I’m not very proud of (now).

This is one reason why I can’t stay in such close connection with science (new meaning) as I have been in the past and as I’m now. Together with other reasons all this contradiction ate me up and made me sick to the point that I stopped functioning in this context.

 

To finish all of this I like to state, that it is very hard to question myself.
But some years ago – 2004/2005 – I realized in a different, more narrow context that not doing so means deadlock. Something to avoid under all circumstances because it means death.
Advance – as the opposite of deadlock – on the other hand means to enjoy life and myself. The reson why I’m so eager to learn and to improve myself; the reason why science in the original meaning is so important to me.