The phrase \u201cI believe in science\u201d is something I see a lot these days, and I think it’s a pretty remarkable phrase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For one, the historical thrust of the scientific method has pretty much been about circumventing the need for the type of belief expressed in \u201cI believe in ___\u201d statements, so it\u2019s always a bit uncanny to see \u201cscience\u201d invoked in that context. But it\u2019s also so fitting at the same time, because when people say things like \u201cI believe in science,\u201d they are usually conveying a philosophical stance that has very little to do with science<\/em> per se, and a whole lot to do with human belief itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The invocation \u201cscience\u201d attempts to dismantle the need for any traditional hierarchy of thought or belief (science doesn\u2019t care about your thoughts or beliefs, after all), but by invoking \u201cbelieve\u201d the statement still insists on an epistemology. \u201cI believe in science\u201d says there is a \u201cright way to know,\u201d and it\u2019s based on whatever it is I\u2019m calling \u201cscience\u201d in this case, and it\u2019s different from and better than other forms of belief. But again, science makes no claims to belief structures, or at least it shouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So what are we actually referring to when we say \u201cscience\u201d? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, in my opinion at this moment, and I think predictably for us humans, it\u2019s often about some social hierarchy (and also probably about forming a coherent version of reality). A quorum of individuals who are interested in science go around saying “X,” and X becomes an epistemological construct, and then other individuals call X \u201cscience\u201d and get to walk around saying \u201cI believe in science\u201d as if they are saying something other than \u201cI believe those extra special cool people over there.\u201d \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n And sure I can be cynical about it, but I get it. People are cool, and believing what they believe makes me feel good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so say the people who “believe in science.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The phrase \u201cI believe in science\u201d is something I see a lot these days, and I think it’s a pretty remarkable phrase. For one, the historical thrust of the scientific method has pretty much been about circumventing the need for the type of belief expressed in \u201cI believe in ___\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grantswift.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grantswift.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grantswift.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grantswift.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grantswift.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/grantswift.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":415,"href":"https:\/\/grantswift.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions\/415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grantswift.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grantswift.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grantswift.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}