Last week I wrote about the Will to Power and mentioned in doing so, scientists and their Will to Power. No sooner was the blog
published than up pops a case in point with a scientist spouting nonsense by
questioning the appropriateness of a Member of Parliament to serve on the House
of Common’s Science Select Committee, simply because the MP in question is not
caught-up in scientific ideology and dogma, unlike that is, the scientist in
question, perhaps better described as ‘Mr It’s so Wondrous” who the BBC should
retire from our screens on the grounds that its high standards have in the past
led to broadcasting legends (like David Attenborough), not broadcasting
liabilities.
More journalists with integrity and less of these scientists
claiming to be unbiased and having no particular axe to grind, are what are needed, please, BBC, for the latter show
how far Western intellect has fallen! From the days of greater thinkers such as
Spinoza and Kant, we are now treated to vainglorious scientists passing condescending
remarks about an elected Member of Parliament who believes in astrology,
calling him a person who is “an outlier on the spectrum of reason”. The discussion
on social networks highlighted what one suspects, that the remark was made based
on ignorance rather than a well researched and learned understanding of astrology.
But the comments were made by a scientist, who is also a European, and also a
man. Quite a disability!
And yet Newton ,
not a scientist, but a natural philosopher, was an alchemistic, and Kepler, who
radically altered our view of the solar system, used the Christian concept of
the Holy Trinity and with its forces acting on humanity to come to the
understanding of the forces acting on planets and the effect of this on their orbits.
Both were “outliers on the spectrum of reason”, which is probably why they were
so creative. Evidently also, both Newton
and Kepler would not be fit to serve on the House of Common’s Science Select
Committee!
Scientists may well want to vet people who serve on such
committees but my the message to all such people is – get back to your
monasteries, for you may well police the boundaries of science with the fervour
of a religious fanatic, but you are not going to gain the power that you seek,
for the time has come to put the tiger back in its cage. We have had enough of
your reductionist thinking, your machine-centric worldview, your simplistic
views, your delusions about the nature of reality, your sole truths, your one
best way, your binary minds, your … very European and masculine perspectives.
Men’s intellects recede. Perhaps therefore it is time for
women to take the lead, provided they are prepared to do away with the
masculine nature of modern science and embrace their feminity, rather than
betraying it as the former chief scientific advisor and many other female
scientists have done. I know it is a man’s world, but you should not be joining
their club on their terms. Mastery, dominance and control, which lie at the
heart of Western science, are what men bring to science. And the consequences
of this are now clear for all to see as dear Rachel Carson made clear in her
landmark book, Silent Spring. Yet the
matter is not one of binary choice, as you might think from the above, but one
of unity of opposites. Europeans will
struggle with this! They will also struggle with the notion that gender is not
binary. Hard luck, for the future belongs to those who can embrace the unity of opposites (goodbye Europe,
hello India and China ).
There was a time when university professors appeared on
television because they were university professors. Now it seems that the
position of professor is given to people because they appear on television, and
the university money making machines swing into action. Western science is
about men’s kudos, men’s desire for power, and men’s lust for money. And also women’s
too, as the former chief scientific advisor well illustrates, if they join this
club on the terms and conditions determined by men.
It is time for change. Everything is connected …
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