Richard Feynman Quote: Why Science Is Not Dogma – The Real Lesson

"Science delusion is the belief that science has already fundamentally understood the nature of our reality and only the details need to be completed. I believe this is a seriously flawed view. Most people's first reaction is one of disbelief and rejection when they first hear this statement. How could there actually be anything more successful than science? It has given us cell phones, computers, airplanes, advanced forms of surgery, and much more. We have huge advantages today through science and through its technical applications. It looks as if there is no more room for error or even delusion there, and yet I maintain that at the innermost core of today's sciences there are fundamental errors of thought and dubious assumptions, and that there is a conflict within the sciences that keeps them from their proper task. I see science as a method of inquiry, a tool for exploring and investigating reality. But there is another side to the sciences, namely science as a worldview or even as a dogmatic belief system. Again, most people are shocked at first when I suggest that science can be a dogmatic belief system. They then say things like, "Hey, science in particular is the only thing that is possible for us and to leave our dogmatic belief patterns. It's the only discipline that produces tangible evidence, full respect, free inquiry, and open thinking." Now, this is the ideal of the sciences, and it is an ideal that I also share. But unfortunately, in practice, this ideal is usually not realized in the way it is preached. Within the sciences there is a strongly defined corset of beliefs that most scientists do not even suspect could be beliefs. They do believe that other people have beliefs-Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, and so on-but they themselves, of course, have no beliefs because they are, after all, concerned with scientific truth. And these beliefs are taken as such settled, established truths that they are usually not even discussed. When you study science, people don't just tell you what beliefs to accept and what things to know. You just absorb these principles like the process of osmosis in biology. These are things that are treated with such a matter of course that you just assume they must be true. Most people outside the scientific world assume that they must be true because science is simply so successful and, as a result, enjoys an enormously high level of prestige today." Rupert Sheldrake

"Perhaps the following current example can best illustrate this point. We do not live in the clerical age, where lay people and clergy fought each other; nor do we live in the state-political age, when state officials and the people fought over democracy. The free growth area in the scientific age lies in a new pair of tensions, namely between research and knowledge. This pair of conflicts is still largely unclear. We scholars all disguise ourselves as researchers, just as the old clergy behaved like saints in order to hold back the division between clergy and people. This does not change the fact that today the danger of the sciences becoming ossified is looming large. Scholars are competent and therefore completely incapable of loving the overthrow of their virtue. They are science officials, and they always oppose amateurs. But since research is as much a part of science as the Holy Spirit is part of the Church, there is a great deal of pseudo-research competing with the progress of free research; and only the former is conscientiously supported by official bodies and foundations, because only this appears worthy of support to the professional officials of science. Such harmful research acts according to the principle: Wash my fur, but don't get me wet. It researches cancer according to Pasteur's outdated ideas, as if it were rabies. It examines religion according to Wellhausen's ideas, but because it bases its research on ancient authority, it is extensively funded. As long as scholars and researchers both remain poor, genuine research has prospects. That was the case until 1900. Today, the prognosis for research is deteriorating because grateful peoples are generously funding “science.” Thus, power is shifting to the side of the knowledgeable, against the researchers. Our doctor factories and Rockefeller fellows are eloquent witnesses to this." Eugen Rosenstock