Science,
Belief, and the Cultural Burden of Superstition
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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