[0:01]We will restore science to its rightful place and we will technologies wonders.
[1:23]We live in an age of science, technology, progress. Modern science has remade our world, but at what cost?
[1:55]During the first half of the 20th century, three prophetic writers warned above the dark side of scientific and technological progress. G.K. Chesterton, George Orwell, and C.S. Lewis. Best known for his Narnia stories and his books of Christian theology, C.S. Lewis also had an intense interest in the growing power of scientism, the effort to use the methods of science to explain and control every part of human life. Lewis was very much a skeptic and a critic of scientism. He was opposed to an ideology which in his view had been confused with science.
[2:42]It was a particular materialistic approach which wanted to reduce everything that we could learn scientifically to materialistic causes, blind, undirected causes. Lewis thought that science was a perfectly legitimate enterprise, he never denied it, he he in fact studied it quite a bit. He never, as far as I know, attacked science itself, what he attacked was scientism, this idea that the method or the methods really of natural science should be the bar by which every other intellectual discipline must be held. Just like in all human disciplines, Lewis thought that science could be corrupted and that some people could pursue science because they wanted power over the world and power over other people in particular. And I think what he saw was that you had to avoid those extremes in the in the not only in the employment of science but in the popularization of it. You could not afford to ignore the finding of science, the importance of scientific method. You had to see that it's one of the greatest applications and developments of the rational method per se, a subset of the rational method. But that it was very dangerous and then in the 20th century it had had very malignant consequences to defy it. Scientific socialism, credible credibly a scientific version of politics, the Marxists called their system scientific socialism. Well, no one in his right mind in 2012 will say that that Marxism was scientific, no one in his right mind but people did for 150 years, 170 years. Social Darwinist racial science in Nazi Germany, enormous prestige was given to racialist views by their apparent clothing, people such as as as Haeckel and Mulchot and Büscher, popularizing reductive scientific ideas with immense success in many ways more success in in Germany than in than in England. Lewis saw these developments, he saw that that two World Wars, in which one he served and was badly wounded, had roots in barbaric and hysterical scientistic ideas, abuses of the scientific method, abuses of scientific terminology and language, abuses of scientific faith. When warning about the abuse of science, Lewis made an unusual comparison, although most people think of science as something modern, Lewis compared it to something ancient, magic. C.S. Lewis thought that science and magic are twins. Now, if you think about this, this might seem very strange, but you know, I think that Lewis was very perceptive here.
[5:39]The first way science and magic are similar, according to Lewis, is their ability to function as a religion.
[5:49]Certainly, a magical view of the world can give one a sense that there's something more than just our everyday lives, if you walk through a forest and think it's enchanted, it gives you a sense of a grand vision that there is something out there that we don't ordinarily experience, it can give you a sense of meaning. I think there's a real reason why fantasy stories are so beloved, whether it be Lewis's own Chronicles of Narnia, or J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter. It really strikes a deep chord in people whether they're religious or not about a sense of grandeur in the universe, something higher than ourselves. And in fact, for some people who aren't religious, this magical view of the world can actually be even more attractive because it substitutes for that. Well, in the same way, science can be an alternative religion. And during Lewis's own time, there are people like H.G. Wells, who turned, say, Darwin's theory of evolution into this cosmic theory of life developing in this blind struggle in the universe, and then human life develops sort of this heroic character, fighting against nature, and then eventually man evolved and evolves himself through eugenics into a race of demigods.
[7:33]And this sort of epic struggle, this cosmic struggle of evolution was really an alternate religion for H.G. Wells. And, you know, you see that same thing today, whether it be Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins, who says that Darwin helps us become an intellectually fulfilled atheist. Or in 2012, we had 10 to 20,000 people converge on Washington D.C. in the United States for this reason rally where a lot of the people testifying were that they really offer science as a religion.
[8:15]And so today, I think you see a lot of people speaking in the name of science who offer science as a quasi-religion, it's what gives their lives meaning. Another area that we see this today is in the whole celebration of Darwin's birthday. Hundreds of colleges, community organizations, if not thousands around the world, on February 12th, every year, hold Darwin Day celebrations. Sometimes they have birthday cakes, they have special concerts, even with hymns towards Darwin, and it's it really takes on the trappings of a religion.
[10:06]A second way science and magic are similar, according to Lewis, is their encouragement of a lack of skepticism. Now again, this may seem just completely outlandish because science, how does that promote gallibility? Science is supposed to be just the hard facts. Now, of course, magic, you can think of in, you know, the tribes has a witch doctor and they believe whatever the witch doctor says. And so being, you know, magical thinking can promote a type of credulous thinking, you just trust what the authority figure says. But how does science promote that type of credulous or gullible thinking? Lewis pointed out that in the modern world, people will believe almost anything if it's dressed up in the name of science.
[10:55]He's going to be all right. Of course, he's going to be all right. Sure, Mom, the doctor just wants to cut a little of the badness out of me. For Lewis, one of the leading examples of science-fueled gullibility was Freudianism. Lewis had an interest in Sigmund Freud since his days as an Oxford undergraduate. Lewis was intrigued by some of the claims of psychoanalysis, but he ultimately rejected the effort by Freud's followers to explain everything from religion to stealing cars as a result of our subconscious urges.
[11:34]Before the police finally caught up with him, Peter took about 30 cars, a car had meaning to him in a symbolic way. It represented his mother, since he could not get her, he had to have a substitute, and a car was that substitute. Hence his thrill every time he drove a car, hence his continuous stealing. To the average reader, such an explanation may seem far-fetched, yet clinical experience shows that a car often stands for a woman.
[12:16]Well, Lewis pointed out that if you actually take Freud's view to its eventual conclusion, that actually undermines even the belief in Freudianism. Suppose, suppose you you had a Freud, somebody kind of like Freud. And this person who is kind of like Freud said no one ever believes anything for reason because there's always some other explanation for why they why they believe it other than their reason for believing it. Well, that would be true of religious people, but it would also be true of Freud, right? Freud himself. Lewis's point was, where does this end? If you really think that all reasoning fundamentally is based on sub-rational urges and that we can't analyze those urges and there isn't real reason that we can judge on based on evidence, and that we can't be self-critical, then that destroys Freudianism just like it destroys everything else. Shortly after Lewis accepted Christianity, he satirized Freud in his allegory, The Pilgrim's Regress. In Lewis's story, the main character John ends up being thrown in jail by a character named Ziggersmund Enlightenment. Ziggersmund was actually Sigmund Freud's real first name, he ended up shortening it later. And so this was very much a parody of Freud, and but what is this jail that he's thrown into? Well, it's a jail governed by this giant, and this giant has a particular propensity, that anything that he looks at becomes transparent. And so when this pilgrim character is thrown into this dungeon, into this jail, it's a jail of horrors because whenever he looks at someone, he doesn't see them, he sees their insides, their intestines, he sees through them and it's horrible, it's like, it's it's like a, you know, a house of horrors. And that was Lewis's pictures really of where Freudianism leads you, it if you try to deconstruct everything, you're left with nothing. Another example of science-inspired gullibility, according to Lewis, was what he called Evolutionism, the popular idea that matter could magically transform itself into complex and conscious living things through a blind and unguided process. Lewis's doubts about unguided evolution went back to his days as a soldier in World War I. While recovering from shrapnel wounds, a young Lewis read the book Creative Evolution by French natural philosopher Henri Bergson. Bergson questioned the ability of Darwin's theory to account for complex structures like the human eye through a blind process like natural selection. Lewis believed that Evolutionism, like Freudianism, contained a fatal self-contradiction regarding the human mind. According to the Darwinian view, reason was simply the unforeseen and unintended byproduct of a mindless process based on survival of the fittest. Lewis pointed out the key difficulty with the Darwinian account of reason. If my own mind is a product of the irrational, he asked, How shall I trust my mind when it tells me about evolution? In his personal copy of Charles Darwin's autobiography, Lewis underlined passages where Darwin had asked himself the same question. But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of a man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? What this means is that if natural selection and random genetic mutations gave rise to our intellectual capacities, we should assume that our intellectual capacities are consistent with survival-enhancing behavior, but we should have no especially good reason to believe that we actually know truth, or that, you know, our intellectual faculties even have that capacity of connecting with truth is one of its natural outcomes because that's not always designed for.
[16:52]The idea that a blind and purposeless process without a mind can produce things like human beings that have minds, and can produce moral beliefs and things that sometimes go against our need for physical survival, the idea that a mindless process of survival on the fittest could create such things really was an outlandish one, according to Lewis. How could a mindless process produce minds? And to think that it could really was just shows how gullible people can be in the name of science.
[17:54]The third similarity between science and magic, according to Lewis, is the quest for power.
[18:05]Magic was about the quest for power. Magicians want to have power over the world and over the universe. They wanted to harness the powers of nature and the the deeper powers of nature in order to control it. And Lewis said that much of modern science, uh, not all, but much of modern science was actually devoted towards power over the world. For many people in the 20th century, the power of modern science was its greatest virtue. They hoped science would usher in a new age of peace and prosperity, a scientific utopia.
[18:42]All curves and plastic, Monsanto's House of the Future is open to the public at Disneyland. The four-wing plastic shell makes a snug and solid five-room dwelling designed for a family of four, and coincidentally, it's a fairly typical family of four that gets first look. A family food center to store atomically irradiated food, a work surface that includes a combination supersonic dishwasher and storage unit. A look at the future. Looks good, eh? For the scientific utopians of Lewis's era, science was the savior that would allow us to remake our world. What gets under your skin about the search is the attitude of the men in the laboratory. They work on the principle that nothing is impossible. You hear that, Bud? Oh, sure, but I don't believe it. Open your eyes, Bud, the proof is all around you. And of course, that can be good. Modern science brings us good things, uh, many things from the microwave oven to the computers to uh, life-saving treatments of modern medicine, which Lewis certainly appreciated. But on the other hand, that tendency to want to control things can bring us the Orwellian state of, you know, George Orwell's 1984. And so Lewis thought that modern science in fact was far more dangerous than magic because magic failed.
[23:20]In fact, by the end of his life, Lewis was worried about the rise of what he called scientocracy. Uh, government and society that claims to be based on the claims of modern science, but in reality really is based on a scientific clique of a few people who are speaking in the name of science. And maybe they are adopting the majority view of science, but they're claiming the right to rule based on their scientific knowledge and expertise.
[23:55]Lewis's concern about authoritarian science seems eerily prophetic.
[25:22]In a world driven by science and technology, those who question the new order, like C.S. Lewis did, increasingly find themselves labeled anti-science. C.S. Lewis would have rejected the charge.
[25:54]Lewis did not accept the idea that science was a special form of knowledge that was somehow immune to inspection, that was somehow cordoned off from the non-specialist assessing the deliverances of the sciences. Lewis was well aware that, uh, first of all, that there's no such thing as science as such, there are sciences, and each science has its particular methods, uh, and its particular areas of study. Lewis did not accept the idea that science was a special form of knowledge that was somehow immune to inspection, that was somehow cordoned off from the non-specialist assessing the deliverances of the sciences. Lewis did not accept the idea that science was a special form of knowledge that was somehow immune to inspection, that was somehow cordoned off from the non-specialist assessing the deliverances of the sciences. Lewis was well aware that, uh, first of all, that there's no such thing as science as such, there are sciences, and each science has its particular methods, uh, and its particular areas of study.
[26:13]And also that that, uh, the things that the scientists say are subject to review by by everyone who is able to think well, to think critically, to think rationally.
[26:33]Lewis did not deny that scientific expertise might be necessary for good public policy in many areas, but he insisted that science alone was not sufficient. Knowing, say, how things work, knowing how cells work, uh, or knowing, uh, how ecosystems work, doesn't tell you what you ought to do for your society. Because public policy is not just about the technical expertise and how things work. It's about what good is worth having at what price. And as Lewis pointed out, on these questions, a scientific training gives you no added value. Scientists are not moral philosophies, yet political and social judgments involve not just how do things work and how can we make them work better, but how should we act? And what's worth spending money on, and what's worth doing, and what freedoms are worth giving up, or not. And on these sorts of moral and ethical questions, someone's science training doesn't give them the right to dictate to the rest of society.
[28:07]Lewis thought that science was a good thing, but he also thought that it held some really strong dangers. The biggest danger really was the penchant to control. In a scientific view, if you think that is the only way that we have knowledge of the world. And so, uh, if you think that if I have the scientific truth about something, that's, you know, the end of story, I know everything. That really tends to feed a power trip, whether you're a scientist or you're a politician who's trying to latch on to the prestige of science. Uh, you really have people who are going to abuse their power because they think, look, we're the only ones who know what should happen because we know how the universe really works. Therefore, we should be able to dictate, uh, what our cultural beliefs are, we should dictate what, uh, our government should do, how we should design governmental programs. We should dictate, uh, all manner of public policy, and that anyone who doesn't have a scientific training or isn't part of the consensus of your science is basically stupid, or against progress, or against science, and so should be really swept by the wayside, and shouldn't be listened to. And I think Lewis thought that that almost totalitarian impulse was really a dangerous thing.
