III.16         The Science-Culture Disparity Conversions from superstition to science have been and are everyday events. . . By contrast conversions from science back to superstition are virtually unknown. . . The reason for this asymmetry between science and non-science is not—at least not only—that science provides so much better—so much more economical, elegant, beautiful—explanations than non-science. Although there is that. The still stronger reason, I'd suggest, is that science is by its very nature a participatory process and non-science is not.                                                           Nicholas K. Humphrey (b.1943)     Most people say that is it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.                                                              Albert Einstein (1879-1955)   "Unless we employ the spirit of science, which is the pursuit of truth and to limit areas of human tragedy," we shall remain military giants and ethical infants.                                               Sub-quote by J. Bronowski (1908-74)   A. Science as a Force for Social Change B. Science as a Subculture that Unites Humanity C. Science as a Technological Threat A.                 Science as a Force for Social Change. Science argues for the elimination of the division between the single culture of science and the many cultures of societies grounded in pre-scientific assumptions often for social control and to the detriment of those who make up the large majority. As C. P. Snow (1905-1980) observed:   Among Scientists, deep-natured men know, as starkly as any men have known, that the individual human condition is tragic; for all its triumphs and joys, the essence of it is loneliness and the end is death. But what they will not admit is that, because the individual condition is tragic, therefore the social condition must be tragic, too. Because a man must die, that is no excuse for his dying before his time and after a servile life.        The impulse behind the scientists drives them to limit the area of tragedy, to take nothing as tragic that can conceivably lie within men’s will. They have nothing but contempt for those representatives of the traditional culture who use a deep insight into man’s fate to obscure the social truth—or to do something pettier than obscure the truth, just to hang on to a few perks. . . . [It is these representatives of the traditional culture who maintain] "Because man’s condition is tragic, everyone ought to stay in their place, with mine as it happens somewhere near the top" ("The Two Cultures" in The Scientist vs. The Humanist. Edited by George Levine and Owen Thomas. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., © 1963).      And the biologist and philosopher E. O. Wilson (b.1929) observes that the sciences, humanities, and arts have a common objective: to give a purpose to understanding the details, to lend to all inquiring minds "a conviction, far deeper than a mere working proposition, that the world is orderly and can be explained by a small number of natural laws."    B.               Science as a Subculture that Unites Humanity As weapons of mass destruction spread to more unstable governments, there is a real threat of human self-extinction. This scenario is supported by the long history of our species as the only kind that systematically deceives, exploit and kills its own. Besides killing for power, prestige, pleasure, and profit, wars often take place over religious and ideological controversies. however, there is now one great hope, and this is the uniting power of science applied to the worlds powerful political, religious, and educational institutions. Because science is grounded in inter-subjectivity, do you see what I see, there is worldwide only one science, that is, one worldwide community that speaks with one tongue, the language of objectivity and reason. In contrast, "knowledge" that is based on individual subjectivity, private experience, self-serving ideology, non-expert authority and revelatory religion divides humanity. For instance, there are a few ten-thousand distinct and separate religions and ideologies. A survey early in the 21st century found 33,000 Christian denominations alone. If we add other existing religions and ideologies, we probably end up with a figure closer to 50,000. Unable to communicate with each other, members of this multitude of different worldviews are often hostile to one another. It is much like two people with very different languages and cultures, let’s say Japanese and Navajo, trying to communicate without an interpreter. And here is one value of science; because its language is grounded in real-world facts and real-world reasoning that can be common to all, it also provides an effective means for communication. But what are the conditions that made such a universal scientific language possible? Or to put it slightly different: What accounts for the existence and progress of this single, worldwide, and scientific culture? The answer, as it turns out, are the same conditions that would make universal freedom and well-being possible together with a functional democracy governed by a just social contract agreed to by autonomous citizens. "The society of science must be a democracy," as the philosopher of science Jacob Bronowski explains, for "there are, oddly, no technical rules for success in science. Instead, the conditions for the practice of science are found to be of another and unexpected kind. Independence and originality, dissent and freedom and tolerance: such are the first needs of science; and these are the values which, of itself, it demands and forms. . . . Dissent is not itself an end; " The organic values of science are not at odds with the values by which alone mankind can survive. On the contrary, like the other creative activities which grew from the Renaissance, science has humanized our values. Men have asked for freedom, justice and respect precisely as the scientific spirit has spread among them. The dilemma of today is not that the human values cannot control a mechanical science. It is the other way about: the scientific spirit is more human than the machinery of governments. We have not let either the tolerance or the empiricism of science enter the parochial rules by which we still try to prescribe the behavior of nations. Our conduct as states clings to a code of self-interest which science, like humanity, has long left behind" (in Science and Human Values. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, © 1965 by J. Bronowski.). C.                     Science as a Technological Threat This potential peril burdens us because scientific findings are often applied to the machinery of war and the exploitation of workers by industrial entrepreneurs that science appears to be a serious threat to the future of humanity. As one philosopher of science explains: . . .because we are trying to employ the body without the spirit; we are trying to buy the corpse of science [science as a body of knowledge, see above]. We are hag-ridden [tormented] by the power of nature which we should command, because we think its command needs less devotion and understanding than its discovery. And because we know how gunpowder works, we sigh for the days before atomic bombs. But massacre is not prevented by sticking to gunpowder; the Thirty Years’ War is proof of that. Massacre is prevented by the scientist’s ethic, and the poet’s, and every creators: that the end for which work exists and is judged only by the means which we use to reach it. This is the human sum of the values of science. It is the basis of a society which scrupulously seeks knowledge to match and govern its power.                                                                 J. Bronowski (1908-74)     Summary: The Intellectual Realm So far we have seen how The Physical World brought forth The Brain-Mind Event which in turn made possible The Intellectual Realm. Fundamentally, an individual’s ability to cope with life, socially, religiously, and pragmatically, depends substantially on the quantity and quality of abilities he or she acquires from the ones offered in this realm, that is, its subsections, knowing, thinking, reasoning, and sciencing. Moreover, these abilities can now be applied to analyze and evaluate the sections that follow, beginning with The Social World.