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I don't understand why the story of science is to be preferred over other stories, such as overt fiction. I understand that we live in a science-driven society, where even religion must now try to prove its factuality through appeals to history and logic and even quantum mechanics. For this reason, Professor Grobstein's lecture struck many of us as completely revolutionary/ thoroughly countercultural. But based on his observations, which I have taken to be accurate through the process of my philosophical training, a few questions arise for me.

If a narrative such as Darwin's evolutionary one is indeed somewhat close to being "true" which is to say it nearly matches the state of affairs in nature (a representationalist definition), what does this fact accomplish for our species? Can Darwin's story inspire lives of dedication, service, and altruism such as those inspired by the various religious narratives worldwide? Or are Darwin's and other scientific narratives tricking themselves into believing they have found 'truth,' which is to say a less-than inspiring story about human life and natural affairs that tends to promote smug, self-satisfied beings who think they have conquered mystery and can engineer their own destiny and the destiny of life writ large at the helm of the world? My objections stem from Nietzsche's idea of "the last men" who find themselves living in such a society, where they believe they found truth and mystery is dead. Such complacent people think there is nothing left to be done and live mundane, pleasurable but empty lives that Nietzsche derides and uses as a metaphor for the trajectory of our own society. In Nietzsche's view, we need to leave the goddess of wisdom (i.e. mystery, the unknown, truth) cloaked rather than try to uncover her knowledge for ourselves. We should appreciate and honor art, guise, appearance, as ends in themselves, rather than seek the "essence" behind/ beyond material life. "It is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are justified."

This is not to say that science cannot promote positive goods in the world as well. However, I think it would be beneficial to take into account the fact that science is a human creation like any other and to appreciate it in that context, rather than burrow our noses blindly in pursuit of truth and think that we can uncover something literally true about the nature of reality, objectively. As I said in the first class, we are by default subjective beings in the way we are embodied, so anything we perceive will not only be through our subjective "crack" of culture, worldview, etc, but also through the human lens and resulting organs, senses, cognitive processes and so forth. We physically cannot perceive some things that are "objectively" there, for example high pitched frequencies that only dogs and other animals can detect. Who is to say that our human senses are capable of discerning everything that is? Moreover, constructing experiments as if there is an object that can be known is biased from the outset. Heisenberg showed that the very presence of the observer affects the outcome of an experiment, so the very framing of the experiment in the above sentence creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.

That's enough ranting for now. I'd also like to add on the point of science-philes vs. science-phobes that I used to tell people I wanted to be a physics major, only I wasn't smart enough so I had to settle for philosophy. I now realize that physics along with the other sciences only have their own interpretations of the world as well; it doesn't mean that scientists have some special mystical knowledge that the rest of us aren't privy to. In fact, I think it's kind of cute how scientists think they know things for sure. Taking science classes after my philosophical training has shown me that scientists take many more things on faith than they would like to admit.

As a final thought, if we are a science-driven society with a belief in science, why aren't we listening to the scientists?

"Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course . . . No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished."

-1600 Senior Scientists from 71 countries, including half of all Nobel Prize winners, November 18, 1992; "World Scientists Warning to Humanity"