Can any rational argument be made against science?

Science is not as infallibly objective as we may think. It’s developed by scientists who, as humans, are also complicated and subjective. Science, therefore, is a product of consciousness. Any fact is seen through a prism of belief, whether we’re aware of that prism or not.

British philosopher Mary Midgely argued that it’s possible to be thankful for science and what it has given us, but we don’t need science to take over areas that involve human judgements and values, such as ethics, history, or language.

Stephen Hawking once claimed that “philosophy is dead” because it does not rest on science. Taken in this context, ‘science’ becomes an ideology which says that the scientific way is the only way to explain everything, just as religion once appeared to explain everything.

Art, religion, history, and nature can’t simply be declared ‘dead’ by smart thinkers. All these things are fundamental structures used for perceiving and shaping our lives. They provide us with meaning that’s on equal footing with the scientific way of understanding the universe.

Science can’t give us everything. It doesn’t provide good laws, or effective administrators. It doesn’t inspire love, or effective new customs in place of the old. And it surely does not provide us with the insights that history, anthropology, and other humanities do.

Science can certainly make our world better, but it doesn’t replace values and judgments. We expect technology to bring us a whole new world. Yet when that doesn’t happen, we then have to use science to bring such a world into being – not take it uncritically as an absolute.

Science and religion can only be seen as adversaries when they’re held up as the answer to everything. They’re not. Both have a part to play, but neither are the whole. While science is considered separate from our imagination and emotions, it’s all part of a “single web.”

Ever since science rose in estimation above religion and mythology, any idea can take on extra prestige just by using scientific terms and imagery. Sounding technical became an easy way for mechanistic terms (e.g. ‘the building blocks of life’) to sound like objective truth.

Science doesn’t need to provide a total system of thought. Objectivity is one direction in which thought can move; subjectivity is another. Both can have equal validity. Besides, ever-greater objectivity is not always a good thing. (Imagine a dentist ignoring a patient’s pain).

Be wary of any single reductionist theory, says Mary Midgely. Believing only what’s visible under a microscope risks missing the bigger picture. We were wrong about the universe running like clockwork, so it’s safe to assume we could be wrong about many other things we hold true.