Many of us have the feeling that the world is empty and sterile. There are no mysteries anymore, or magic. Many of us have a deep need for mystery and magic as demonstrated by the popularity of such books, TV shows and movies. We retreat into a more exciting and meaningful world of fiction to escape the grey and mechanistic reality which increasingly seems to be sucking our life force out of our bodies. We are told by all the experts and scientists that this is a normal state of affairs. They say we live in an age of reason; in enlightened societies where science has triumphed. We finally understand how the world works they say. When they say “we” they are obviously talking about themselves, not us. We just have to take their word for it.
Many people don’t feel this way at all. They bask in the enlightenment of our culture and seek the truth in the scientific consensus. They feel that we have moved into the light from a barbaric past, populated by stupid and brutish people. They focus on their lives and the self-affirming feedback they get on social media, and leave the thinking to the experts. There are no problems they say, and the world is far from being empty and sterile. There is no need for meaning in an enlightened world.
If you are one of the poor bastards in group one, you are lucky. You may be unhappy and unsatisfied with your life, but at least you are alive. The other group is dead, without realizing it. They are to be pitied.
Perhaps you want even more than just mystery, magic and meaning. Perhaps you also have a passion for the truth and true knowledge and understanding of the world. That’s level 10 weirdness and you better not tell people about it. They might react badly and your social media account might get cancelled. You have gone from being just a malcontent to being a threat.
Now, here is the funny thing: If we were to assume that the human race is on a journey to discover the full nature and meaning of the universe and reality in general, how far have we come? A scientist may tell you that we are at 70% or 80%. An exceptionally delusional scientist might even say 90%. They are wrong. We are perhaps at 5%, or maybe just at 1%. Why do I say that? Well, let’s take a few examples of what we don’t know.
Our entire civilization is based on electricity – but we don’t know what electricity is or how it really works
We don’t know what light is
We don’t know what frequency of light actually is
We don’t know what magnetism is
We don’t know why the Earth has a magnetic field – or why the Moon and Mars have one
We don’t know how memories are stored in the brain
We don’t know what consciousness is
We don’t know how atoms are structured
We don’t know what gravity is
We don’t know how life started
We don’t know how big the universe is
We don’t know why the universe is structured like a central nervous system
I could go on and on. Most people don’t realize that we don’t know this, or how little we understand about even the most basic phenomena. Many scientists will pretend to understand some of these things – because they equate theories with knowledge. We have theories about most of these things – but in reality we don’t understand any of them. The truth is that we understand almost nothing about the nature of the universe and the nature of reality. Perhaps the 1% guess is more realistic than the 5% one. Believing we understand 70% or more is outright delusional. In fact, hiding how little we know seems to be the single most important goal of modern science.
Modern science truly does hide its ignorance. Theories are presented as facts and phenomena we don’t understand are explained by giving them names. Let’s take the standard model of particle physics as an example. It deals with three of the four fundamental forces that hold the universe and everything in it together: electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force and the strong nuclear force. The fourth one is gravity. We don’t understand any of those four forces. We have no idea what they are. They are the modern equivalent of the classical elements: earth, water, air and fire. But it’s progress – at least we now know that atoms and subatomic particles exist.
Why is it so important for modern science to hide its ignorance? To explain that let’s be generous and assume that our knowledge is at 5%. If we accept that as a reasonable approximation, it has a rather spectacular logical consequence: If we think we understand 70% of everything and have theories about it, but we actually only understand 5% - then only about 7% of mainstream theories are correct. If we understand less than 5%, then the percentage of correct theories drops toward zero. This means that most or all mainstream scientific models and theories are logically wrong and the only way of having a chance of being right is to be in disagreement with mainstream science. This is a simplification on my part but you get the point.
Theories to scientists are like honey to bees. They can’t live without them. They get no research money without them, no respect or adulation from their peers or from the plebs, and no (unwarranted) feelings of self-worth. It is a matter of life or death for them to hide how little they understand and how wrong their theories are. It’s not just physicists who do this – every single scientific discipline does this. You simply cannot admit you don’t understand basic things if you want respect and status. You are forced to lie to get them. This is what is fueling the incredible stagnation we see in western science. It is basically dishonesty, hubris, money and social status.
Fake theories and fake concepts are not the only methods mainstream scientists use to hide the real situation. They promote the abolition of curiosity by defining everything outside their control as “fringe science” and unworthy subjects – even though everything should be a potential subject matter of science. They camouflage their theories in extreme complexity and verbosity to prevent the uninitiated from understanding how bad they are. They turn every scientific endeavor into a gray and soulless wasteland, void of passion. They say that we understand almost everything to discourage the rebellious and the curious. They make publishing research papers the end goal of science rather than understanding and knowledge. They make science as uninteresting, uninspiring and boring as they can – the absolute reverse of what science actually is.
The stagnation of basic science is truly incredible. Little has happened in theoretical/basic science in the last 50 years and almost nothing in the last 20 years. Only applied science has made progress – i.e. science based on instruments as well as practical applications of (mostly old) science. The main driver of science in the last 50 years has been the improvement of scientific instruments driven by technological advances. The basic science behind all of it is mostly stuck. Now this stagnation has started to retard technological advancement, particularly in the West. This is obvious to anyone who has taken a close look at the situation.
Now, let’s go back to social status. In the last 20-30 years scientists and the “expert class” have elevated their social status to the level of priests in the ancient world. Scientists and experts are indeed the priesthood of the modern world and their priestly oracle-like status depends on pretending to know and understand things. They suppress and ridicule anyone outside the priesthood and they have turned themselves into Guardians of the Mysteries – much like ancient priests did. No one should even try to muscle in on their turf, or else…
This development has had a knock-on effect. Because the priestly status of scientists and experts depends on lies and subterfuge, they have automatically compromised themselves. Liars can easily be bought to lie some more, and that is exactly what has happened. Instead of only making up theories and concepts as ersatz for true knowledge, they have started to create completely fictional sciences on behalf of businesses and social engineers with deep pockets. Entire scientific fields have been created that are nothing but scientific fraud. There is a lot of money to be made, articles to be published and careers to be made.
This has turned into a symbiotic relationship. The scientists and experts lie for the social engineers and corporations, which in turn protect them and finance them. A well-financed propaganda machine has been set up to protect them by promoting their exclusive rights to science and knowledge, and by creating the concept of “scientific consensus” – the most unscientific thing in the history of science.
So, how can we determine if science is made up and fraudulent? The simplest way is to check the use of “models” in the field in question – although research can be falsified by other methods as well. A model in this context is a simulation which has variables plugged into it which can be selected at will, and “adjusted” (manipulated) at will. Models like that are rarely simulations of reality – their purpose is to create an alternate reality. They are fakes, and usually bought and paid for with some agenda in mind. A simple rule of thumb is that if you see the word “model” in a research paper – then that research is likely a fraud someone paid the researchers to carry out.
There are entire fields that depend almost exclusively on modelling – and are almost entirely divorced from reality. “Climate science” is the most obvious one. It is mostly based on models which, in the rare cases they can be tested, never work. It is completely agenda-driven and run by dishonest bought-and-paid-for hacks and imbeciles.
This model fraud is everywhere now. I recently saw a research paper which demonstrated that the covid virus could hide in the body for years, thus explaining “long covid” – another agenda-driven fraud. When I looked closer I realized that the researchers hadn’t actually found any covid virus in the body. They had found it in a model! What a magnificent discovery!
It can be said that the biggest progress mainstream science has made in the last few decades is its transition from ego-driven subterfuge to hide its shortcomings into a machine for outright making stuff up. Scientists and experts nowadays have moved into the reality-creation business like politicians and spin doctors. They work on narratives rather than knowledge. No wonder they are so cozy with our political elites.
Everything about modern science is an antithesis to real science. Real science is as simple as it can be and never unnecessarily complex. It accepts contributions and critique from anybody, not just from the initiated. It is based on individual genius, never on consensus and mob rule. It is inspiring and exciting to attract the imaginative and curious rather than the unimaginative and boring. It is impulsive and intuitive as much as it is methodological. It deals with mysteries of life, death and the universe and anything else you can think of – not “permitted” subjects only. True science is truly magical. It is not a sterile wasteland managed by a cult.
Now, if you are one of those miserable bastards in group one that I discussed earlier, there is a silver lining in all this for you. Because of how little we really know, there is still magic in this world – and a lot of unsolved mysteries. But if you want to pursue them, you need to steer clear of the scientists and the experts. They will try to stop you.
What you're describing only applies to a subset of the scientific endeavour, specifically western corporate and government financed science, not the entire enterprise.
ergo:
https://practicalpie.com/fallacy-of-composition/
A fallacy of composition is the flawed reasoning that concludes what is true for individual parts must also be true for the entire group or system they belong to.
Furthermore, This is not a new phenomenon as Thomas Kuhn made explicit in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." First year reading.
As for not knowing what a particular thing (such as electricity) "IS" that ground was covered by Kant 200 years ago. A basic feature of all descriptions of the world is that we only know what our senses (extended to include instruments) reveal about an object, not its 'true nature' (if such a thing even exists). In practical terms this means I don't need to know what an electron "is" in order to build a device using Maxwell's equations with confidence that it will work as intended.
The basic problem with science today is that it lacks a solid foundation in Epistemology, and more specifically, General Semantics (see A. Korzybski). If these were more widely taught the fallacy of trying to describe what a thing IS would be much clearer. First realization would be that we can only describe things by analogy to other things using words as our foundation. Try and describe anything without using words, then try to define the words you must use to convey information. Notice how they're defined using other words? No escaping the trap.
What this means is that we have only our senses and extensions of our senses to describe what things DO, not what they ARE. Again, in practical terms, this means that we can build any number of sophisticated devices without the need to know more than their predictable attributes, such as like charges repel, unlike charges attract. We don't need to know what "charge" IS, only what it does. This may seem frustrating to an outside observer, but anyone properly trained in the scientific method knows this. We measure the world in terms of what things DO, not what they ARE. The error arises when we try to equate the two.
This is a wonderful piece and an important one, too.
My only caveat is that the emptiness that comes from destroying mystery and the spirit of enquiry, aka curiosity, is primarily a western illness.
Just my ten cents but what you're describing is the inevitable outcome of a toxic, malign narcissism & hubris that has infected the West, emanating from the United States.
I have noticed that at school, kids aren't taught how to think anymore. They're increasingly taught what to think. It's a subtle shift but a real one, with disastrous outcomes that you have described so well.
There's a terrible emptiness that is created when you rob human beings, in particular young ones, of the awe and power of mystery, of knowing that there is so much we just don't know.
I always say to my kids that almost all of the things they use in their ordinary lives today were not just considered impossible in the past, but weren't even conceived of. I encourage them to see their lives as part of a great human adventure, an odyssey to discover (in their own way) what they thought was impossible and perhaps what is unknown. A journey that they can contribute to.
However that means you have to have the humility to accept not just that what seems impossible is in fact possible, but that we have yet to discover many impossibilities.
That's to say, humans live happier lives when they understand and accept that there are realities beyond what they can see or even think about. It drives them forward.
For example and on an even more philosophical level, just because we experience a 24 hour day, in reality there is no 'beginning' or 'end'. The universe never 'started' and it will never 'end'. There is no 'time' save for that we have invented as humans.
On a deeper level, the universe itself has no end. Our galaxy is one of billions, trillions, more. Like the 'experts' in the middle ages, who believed the world was flat, many like to think that there must be an 'end' to the universe, because they can't accept that there is no end and that as humans, we haven't yet been able to understand and prove such an impossibility.
Once you start understanding the jaw dropping mystery of these revelations, you start to become humble and curious. Humans start asking questions and searching for the truth.
Every single 'impossibility' that has become real in our world has emerged from societies that value a sense of mystery, societies that have the humility to accept that as humans we not only can't know everything about reality, but in fact know very little. From that acceptance comes curiosity, a spirit of enquiry, a 'spark' if you will, that drives a society forward.
Revealing previously unknown truths and 'impossibilities' isn't easy. It takes hard work, using agreed methods developed over millenia, to discern new realities. Often only a very few of us have the mental heft to make genuine breakthroughs (eg Einstein), although even geniuses like him admitted that what they discovered required the hard work of many others before them.
Once a society loses that spark, which comes from a sense of mystery, it starts to decline. Evidence of decline can be found using various
measures, but a good indicator is when junk philosophies become rife, and lies replace truth. A form of intellectual totalitarianism emerges, where a small elite convince themselves that they in essence know everything, and then dictate to the rest what reality is.
In turn, 'the rest' become deprived of purpose and meaning. They are programmed not to question or to think, but simply to accept what they're told as truth. Over time, they develop an inner sense of hopelessness and futility, of spiritual emptiness, that many can't understand or explain. Life is reduced to 'going through the motions', to 24/7 conformism.
It's not hard to see how societies that submit to this sickness start to lose the will to resist lies, and eventually come to believe and promote them. Evil frauds and liars become their leaders and prophets. Truth tellers and those who resist , become societies enemies.
This illness has sadly infected many Western societies. Just my view but it started with French postmodernist philosophy, a fraudulent movement that proposed that there is no such thing as objective reality (there is), and all truth is subjective (it isn't). Lost on the arrogant frauds and hypocrites (Foucault, etc) who started this movement was the contradiction that they themselves were proposing an objective reality, but being the scum they were, they dismissed all opposing voices and moved on to take a stranglehold on western academia.
Sadly their junk philosophy has spawned many others and ihas become pathological in modern America, in particular among the elites who run academia and government. Like a virus, this fundamentally inhumane and toxic philosophy has in turn spread like a virus through western societies, most of them heavily influenced by the United States.
It must be rejected by all humans who value progress and humanity, and by those who want their children to rediscover the mystery that enriches our fleeting existence.
Please forgive my long reply and thank you again for such a thought provoking and important piece.