The Scientific Enlightenment

Science is a process of objectively discovering and explaining reality. It is the best tool our species has ever created to establish an objective understanding of ourselves and the natural universe.

A few centuries ago humans began to realize that each society kept passing down knowledge and stories to the next generation which were not accurate. Each culture had a different set of inherited beliefs and each set of beliefs had contradictory information to all the others. So people started asking; how can we create a universally applicable belief system? How can we as a species create a set of knowledge which is true for me, true for you, and true for every other person on Earth for all of time? How can we understand things collectively to form an objective understanding of reality instead of just biased viewpoints? Eventually, questions like that gave birth to the Scientific Enlightenment during the European Renaissance.

Science is the unrelenting search for the most accurate understanding of the natural universe and all aspects of reality contained within it. A scientific theory is true insofar as it accurately depicts and explains an underlying reality in nature. Truth is the ultimate aim of science. Nature is the arbiter of truth and science contains standards of thought meant to guide humankind toward forming objective beliefs about nature. We all exist in a shared universe which exists independent of our own personal experience, existed before we were born, and will continue to exist after we die. Reality is the way that it is and science is a tool used to form justified, true beliefs about that external reality. Much of what you think entering into a science-based worldview will fail to pass the threshold of being a justified, true belief.

It's the truth I'm after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance.

-Marcus Aurelius

Science began as the realization that the universe is the way that it is and our responsibility is to objectively discover, understand, and explain how that happens to be. Truth is truth and our job is to form beliefs which reflect truth no matter what it turns out to be or how it aligns with our current beliefs, traditions, or cultures. Francis Bacon, one of the most influential originators of science, wrote his book the Novum Organum in the early 1600s. In it he advocated for dropping all preconceived notions and biases when forming beliefs to start our investigation of nature in ignorance. He argued that we should systematically and meticulously study reality through observation and experimentation. Those observations and experiments are intended to provide the brute facts of reality. Those absolute brute facts provide repeatable, provable data which all people in all places should be able to replicate; then our beliefs must be logically reasoned from that empirical data. Empiricism is crucial to the scientific process; all knowledge must be based on the observable from which we derive foundational facts. From those facts only the most reasonable and most logical claims and assumptions can be drawn to inform our conclusions. His approach gave rise to the scientific principle that all true knowledge must be based on observable and repeatable data while making the fewest and most reasonable assumptions possible.

“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.”
― Francis Bacon

The Baconian Method was designed as a process of forming the most objective beliefs about nature as is possible using the available evidence. Scientific theories are perceptually self-correcting to update themselves when presented with new data or valid criticism. No theory is infallible, all facts, assumptions, and conclusions can be challenged, transparency of data is necessary, widespread education is vital, and questions from informed skeptics are encouraged. The scientific process is and always will be susceptible to political, financial, or other types of corruption, so it is an individual’s responsibility to become scientifically literate and scrutinize incoming information to filter their own beliefs. If the underlying data are accurate and our assumptions are sound, then we have good reason to be confident in our conclusions. Bacon argued that humankind falls into 4 types of mental traps which lead us to forming incorrect beliefs;

1. Humans have collectively evolved flawed methods of forming beliefs.

   1. Since his time, we’ve discovered numerous Cognitive Biases and Logical Fallacies which are commonly used in the formation of false beliefs. To arrive at truth, we must work to eliminate our own use of those flawed methods of thinking,

2. We each focus on small aspects of reality and miss the rest. That personally developed perspective bias continues in a positive feedback loop until we create a personalized intellectual bubble for ourselves which we use to reinforce beliefs developed early in life while ignoring challenges to them.

3. The language we use to convey ideas to each other is not perfectly representative of the ideas themselves so our words struggle to convey our thoughts, leading to rampant miscommunications in society.

4. We learn from our teachers and our society, but many times the knowledge we learn is built on a false foundation. The information does not reflect an underlying reality but only continues to be taught because its student learn and repeat it without ever challenging the data and assumptions the belief is based on. False knowledge is passed generation to generation through that process so we should even question our most cherished beliefs.

Instead of an unchallengeable dogma or a doctrine of faith, science is a method of thinking based on empiricism, logic, critical thinking, skepticism, curiosity, and varying degrees of certainty while being aware of our ignorance. It is a bottom-up method of forming beliefs which starts with the empirical data then works up to an explanation of a natural phenomenon.

“Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?”

-Carl Sagan

The Scientific Enlightenment began with radical skepticism of all inherited knowledge in an initial shedding of false beliefs. The Baconian Method, rooted in empiricism, conflicted with most religious ideologies which were based on religious texts supposedly depicting a deity’s specified rules for humankind. The Baconian Method was considered blasphemy because sacrosanct religious texts like the Bible, Quran, and Torah were relegated to just words and stories free to be questioned like all other knowledge. The existence of a god would not be considered proven unless the existence of that god was able to be proven empirically. In that age in that society, Bacon’s thoughts were toxic and many times political and spiritual autocrats cracked down on freedom of thought in retaliation. It sounds insane to think about today, but in the 1600’s scientists were sentenced to life imprisonment for saying the Earth revolves around the sun, as explained in this History.com article;

“Galileo was ordered to turn himself in to the Holy Office to begin trial for holding the belief that the Earth revolves around the sun, which was deemed heretical by the Catholic Church…This was the second time that Galileo was in the hot seat for refusing to accept Church orthodoxy that the Earth was the immovable center of the universe…The Church had decided the idea that the sun moved around the Earth was an absolute fact of scripture that could not be disputed...”

There has been a long struggle of politically protecting and expanding the liberty to engage in a free scientific process. Western Civilization eventually developed strong political protections for Freedom of Thought and the rapid advancement of science soon followed. The freedom to question inherited cultural knowledge resulted in a transitional secularization period in Western Civilization out of the religiously dominated Dark Ages. That’s what Nietzsche meant when he said,

“God is dead.

God remains dead. And we have killed him.”

-Friedrich Nietzsche

Science is not in conflict with religion, instead it makes religious explanations obsolete. The better science got at explaining nature, the less we needed to invoked a miraculous deity to explain things. As Stephen Hawking put it, “One can't prove that God doesn't exist. But science makes God unnecessary.”

“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”

-Carl Sagan

Science is the best tool our species has created to establish an objective understanding of reality. We now inherit centuries of scientific progress and live in a world of abundance created by scientific advancements. It is becoming more and more important for our societies to start practicing scientific standards of thought in our political, economic, and spiritual discussions. Our political discourse should start with the actual facts of a situation rather than cherry-picked talking-points and deceptive framing. We should use the capabilities science has bestowed unto us to improve the quality of life for all people rather than to inflate the net worth’s of the 1% and give autocrats more control over their citizens. We should protect Freedom of Thought like the right of each individual to decide their own religious faith or lack thereof for themselves instead of having any state-sponsored religions anywhere. Humanity does not need religion, but we do need organizations to facilitate the community bonds organized religion has facilitated. We are centuries into the scientific enlightenment, but that’s still just the beginning. As long as we continue protecting Freedom of Thought, the future of human civilization will transition to secular, scientifically-based societies.

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day."

-Albert Einstein

“The idea that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods, which most experience refutes. History is teeming with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not put down forever, it may be set back for centuries.”

“No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead.”

“The only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner.”

-John Stuart Mill

Check out these 2 chapters from my 1st book here;

Faith Begins with Skepticism: Challenge your own Beliefs

Some common mistakes in forming beliefs and media tactics to avoid are:

·       Ad Hominem- Attacks the arguer instead of the claim or position

·       Appeals to Fear or Force- Attempts to scare the audience into believing a claim

·       Appeal to Pity or Flattery- Attempts to gain sympathy for a claim to justify acceptance

·       Appeal to Popularity, People, or Bandwagon- Uses the human desire to conform to social norms for justification

·       Sunk Cost- continuing an incorrect course of action because of prior efforts

·       Straw Man- Providing a corrupted, weak version of an opposing viewpoint so it is easier to refute

·       Red Herring- A topic used to change the focus from the real issue; a distraction

·       Appeal to Ignorance- Relies on a lack of evidence to justify a position

·       Hasty Generalization- Makes a generalization based on an inadequate amount of evidence

·       False cause- Uses a coincidental occurrence to explain an event

·       False Equivalence- When a well justified position is compared to an unjustified position

·       Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc- After, therefore, because of

·       Slippery Slope- Invokes a possible chain of events with numerous unrelated causes for justification

·       Moving the Goalposts- Differing standards of criticism are applied to separate groups

·       Naturalistic fallacy- The idea that if something is natural, then it must be good

·       Begging the Question- The evidence for a claim relies on the claim being true; infinite regression

·       False Compromise- Assumes truth is equally in the middle of differing viewpoints

·       False Dichotomy- Reduces an issue with numerable possibilities into just two options

·       Suppressed Evidence- Overlooking key evidence or diminishing its worth in a judgement

·       Loaded words- Euphemisms, Innuendos, Hyperboles, and Stigmas