I have been studying, teaching, and thinking about SCIENCE for over 25 years, and I have come to some conclusions.

Science is dull. Dull as dishwater.
Science is ugly.

I thank God every day I did not pursue chemistry or physics, both of which I majored it. I stopped when I realized they were what they are.

Physics is no road to truth, much less chemistry.

I was at the top of my class in each. I could have excelled in either.

Why did I drop physics? If I had become a physicist

1 I would have spent my life surrounded by physicists. UGH.
2 I would have spent my life DOING physics. UGH.
3 I have better things to do than physics.

One of the first things you learn in physics is, if you are looking for a true account of reality, even just physical reality, you are in the WRONG PLACE.

It is not unlike the speech first day law school students often get about the study of LAW: if you are deeply passionate about JUSTICE—you are in the WRONG PLACE.

It most of the serious problems in 20th century physics onwards, doing physics involves translation of something into mathematics, to a point where literally no one understands what is happening, and after a series of mathematical transformations, a useful answer results.

NATURE is beautiful.

But SCIENCE is not.

Picture a beautiful woman. Then picturing a large man roughly seizing her.

The large man is SCIENCE.

The fact he does violence to a BEAUTIFUL WOMAN, even if he holds her up for us to see, doesn’t make HIM beautiful.

Heidegger used the term “setting upon” for the relation of science to its object. It is a kind of ATTACK or SEIZURE of its object. It is, among other things, an effort to dominate and control.

This isn’t a secret. The first scientists were clear enough about it.

Bacon says that the purpose of the scientific method is “to put nature on the rack” and torture answers out of her.

Descartes says the goal of the scientific method is make man the “possessors and masters of nature.”

Science has ALWAYS been inherently violent.

Science does not, again in Heidegger’s terms, let beings be.

Again, to take a human analogy, if you seized a human being and forced them through a serious of experiments, you surely WOULD learn much about them.

One time, my professor and I were walking by a pond, when we saw a number of the marine biologists dragging the pond with a net. My professor remarked, “That’s science for you. When they are done, the pond will be dead, but they’ll know everything that WAS in it.”

Science generates a particularly narrow kind of mind. A scientific education is opposed to a liberal education, i.e. the kind of education befitting free men and women.

Science narrows firstly by its method, which is a severe constraint on how nature is “allowed” to manifest itself.

Secondly, in more modern times, the ramification of science into hyperspecialization has generated a deeper kind of narrowness of mind.

The scientist is a very narrow kind of man—he implements a method in a tiny area of study. He is not much better than a craftsman, who knows his one trade. Neither sort of man can LEAD, so we have nothing to fear from scientists, timid creatures that they are.

Of course that also means that science will be at the beck and call of all tyrants and totalitarians when they need—since the scientists will be.

There is nothing whatever in science that sets the slightest barrier to its becoming an instrument of evil.

Science is ugly the way violent interrogations are ugly.

Are such things necessary sometimes? Probably. Controlled violence is a way to get to knowledge we sometimes need. But that doesn’t make it a lovely thing.

Science is also colossally irresponsible. It is playing games with the future of humanity.

It takes itself to be a good and pushes itself as such, without actually knowing itself to be such—much like any other pestilent political agenda.

There is something grubby about science’s empirical side.

It lacks the purity and formal beauty of mathematics or logic. These are dry sorts of beauty, but science doesn’t even have THAT.

I can already hear the science idolators threatening me with “withdrawing my science.”

Idle threat! Scientists are timid creatures, as I said. They WILL keep producing useful technologies—OR ELSE.

For scientists to think that THEY are in control of the technological spirit of the age is as laughable is it is pitiful.

“I’m strong! I joined the winning team!”

And at the end of the day, ALL science really studies is NATURE.

Nature is beautiful. Nature is our home. But beyond a certain point, WHO CARES?

Nature is better to APPRECIATE than brutalize.

Nature just isn’t that INTERESTING. It’s not as interesting as humanity—which why we like STORIES far better than nature documentaries. It isn’t a compelling as ART, for we love beauty—and its beauty is one of the best reasons to LOVE nature—but that is a part SCIENCE LEAVES OUT.

I have a friend who makes and paints little models of Star Trek space ships. Hundreds of them. If you get him going, he’ll go on and on about his hobby, burying you in minutiae about different Star Fleet ships.

In other words he will bore you TO TEARS.

Scientists are like that.

If you interrupt a scientist and say “What about the profound beauty of nature? What about nature as theophany?” he has nothing to say.

All that is MOST MEANINGFUL AND INTERESTING IN NATURE—is PURPOSELY EXCLUDED BY THE UGLY SCIENTIFIC METHOD.

So, while useful, science

1 does a kind of violence to nature
2 brutalizes and narrows those who practice it
3 covers over those aspects of nature which most meaningful and important

The postmodernists are wrong to regard science as just one kind of discourse among many.

The modernists are wrong to regard science as the WORD OF GOD, and THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE.

Science is a severely limited METHOD which studies PHYSICAL NATURE IN THE ASPECT OF QUANTITY. Beyond that restricted domain, it is virtually useless.

Within that domain, it is extremely useful, although not without a price. It has costs and benefits. It is NOT pure benefit.

Science cannot even ADDRESS the proposition “Science is good.”

Anyway, to quote the great Critical Drinker: “That’s all I’ve got. Go away now!”