Knowledge Processes Neglected by Science

Insights from the crisis of science and belief

Annex to

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Introduction

The main paper (of which this is an annex) is a reflection on engagement with the quantity of information, the challenge of quality and selectivity, and the consequences of ignorance and confusion as time goes by. The situation becomes ever more evident through the increasing accessibility of information, the lack of time to consider most of it, and the need to focus on what appears to be of immediate concern. The situation is aggravated by the range and complexity of the tools by which it is possible to engage with available knowledge and insight -- and diminishing motivation to acquire the skills to use them, or the capacity to do so.

The situation is notably characterized by the multiplicity of purveyors of information and insight -- from the wisdom of the past to the creativity of the present, radically reframed by imaginative speculations on the future. Engagement is further challenged by the claims and disregard with respect to any insight -- and the questionable efforts towards integrative reformulations to facilitate comprehension and memorability, such as to nourish the quality of life. The potential of global sensemaking has as yet to be realized.

The issues are of significance on the occasion of the publication by the widely-read journal Scientific American of a special issue focusing on the State of the World's Science (October 2012). In an exercise in comprehensible triumphalism, of particular interest is the range of issues with which it does not deal and how these impact on knowledge processes in a global society -- one increasingly defining itself as knowledge-based. It could easily be concluded from that survey that "science" is significantly characterized by the knowledge whose relevance it denies -- or of which it chooses to be unaware. In that sense, science could well be understood as being in a curious form of profound denial which merits attention in its own right -- especially by science.

Dogmas of science: In an accessible summary of the argument of his recent book (Science Set Free: 10 paths to new discovery, 2012), Rupert Sheldrake indicates the The Ten Dogmas of Modern Science (2012)[see also 10 Dogmas Debunked, 2012; 10 Dogmas of Modern Science, 2012]. These are the ten core beliefs he considers that most scientists take for granted, effectively constituting the scientific creed -- which Sheldrake discusses in chapters framed as questions:

• Everything is essentially mechanical (Ch.1: Is Nature Mechanical?)
• All matter is unconscious. It has no inner life or subjectivity or point of view (Ch. 3: Is Matter Unconscious?)
• The total amount of matter and energy is always the same (Ch. 2: Is the Total Amount of Matter and Energy Always the Same?)
• The laws of nature are fixed (Ch. 3: Are the Laws of Nature Fixed?)
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• Nature is purposeless, and evolution has no goal or direction (Ch. 5: Is Nature Purposeless?)
• All biological inheritance is material, carried in the genetic material, DNA, and in other material structures (Ch. 6: Is All Biological Inheritance Material?)
• Minds are inside heads and are nothing but the activities of brains (Ch. 8: Are Minds Confined to Brains?).
• Memories are stored as material traces in brains and are wiped out at death (Ch. 7: Are Memories Stored as Material Traces?)
• Unexplained phenomena like telepathy are illusory (Ch. 9: Are Psychic Phenomena Illusory?)
• Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works (Ch. 10: Is Mechanistic Medicine the Only Kind that Really Works?)

As Sheldrake carefully argues, with many illustrative examples, together these beliefs make up the philosophy or ideology of materialism, whose central assumption is that everything is essentially material or physical, even minds (see Louis Makiello, The Science Delusion, The Epoch Times, 31 August 2012). It is however appropriate to take his critical argument further to explore processes which inform that mindset and are indicative of modalities which might indeed "set science free" -- thereby increasing its credibility and relevance to people and governance.

There is an appropriate degree of irony and ambiguity between the original title of Sheldrake's book and that required by his publishers for the American market, namely The Science Delusion: freeing the spirit of enquiry in contrast with Science Set Free: 10 paths to new discovery. Many would consider that "science" is too free with the truths it chooses to cultivate, and quite deluded regarding those it deprecates -- as favoured by other modes of knowing.

Also of relevance to the points discussed below, and presumably an inspiration to those of Sheldrake, are David Bohm's controversial "challenges to some generally prevailing views" as outlined in the Wikipedia entry describing his innovative work on Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980). In proposing this new notion of order, he explicitly challenged a number of tenets that he believed are fundamental to much scientific work, namely:

1. Phenomena are reducible to fundamental particles and laws describing the behaviour of particles, or more generally to any static (i.e., unchanging) entities, whether separate events in space-time, quantum states, or static entities of some other nature;
2. Human knowledge is most fundamentally concerned with mathematical prediction of statistical aggregates of particles;
3. Analysis or description of any aspect of reality (e.g., quantum theory, the speed of light) can be unlimited in its domain of relevance;
4. The Cartesian coordinate system, or its extension to a curvilinear system, is the deepest conception of underlying order as a basis for analysis and description of the world;
5. There is ultimately a sustainable distinction between reality and thought, and that there is a corresponding distinction between the observer and observed in an experiment or any other situation (other than a distinction between relatively separate entities valid in the sense of explicate order); and
6. It is, in principle, possible to formulate a final notion concerning the nature of reality, i.e., a Theory of Everything.

Systemic knowledge processes neglected by science: What are the dimensions of knowledge and information of which science is itself uncritical or unconscious? Although presented as a checklist below (minimally ordered), the following are variously interrelated from a systemic perspective which could merit clarification (cf. Map of Systemic Interdependencies None Dares Name: 12-fold challenge of global life and death, 2011). A significant proportion of these additional factors would seem to be partially or completely ignored in Sheldrake's remarkable critique:

• Unquestioning preoccupation with explanation
• Undue preoccupation with validation
• Selective appreciation of creative imagination
• Unexamined preoccupation with professional reputation and recognition
• Deprecation of alternatives and anomalies challenging conventional models
• Methodological dependence on questionable engagement with society
• Uncritical belief of science in the appropriateness of its own process
• Institutionalized incoherence and disagreement
• Ill-considered recognition of constraints and opportunities of an information-based society
• Self-referential inadequacy of "metascience"

Questionable ability of science to communicat

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