Science vs. Truth

Eh, too late to start a new post, too early to just give up.

Two posts back I ended with an aphorism by Dávila that not only deftly twists the knife into goofball popularizers such as Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson, but into scientism in general.

You ask yourself: Bob, how are you able to so rapidly find an Aphorism to fit the O-->(k)sion?

Well, a few years ago I transcribed every single aphorism from a blog that published them, and then organized them into categories beginning with Art and Atheism, and ending with Wisdom and Writing.

"Scientism" is one of the categories, and assimilating the relevant aphorisms would be the equivalent of a PhD in the philosophy of science, or maybe even avoiding graduate school altogether.

Dávila tells us all we need to know about the subject -- often all we can know -- with a minimum of words and maximum of verve. Nor does he ever throw a straight fastball. Rather, like Mariano Rivera, every pitch has late movement.

Example.

Okay, "Whoever has understood a notion from the natural sciences has understood all that can be understood; whoever has understood a notion from the humanities has understood only what he can understand."

BAM!

That's a direct hit not only on scientific pseudo-intellectuals but on the typical postmodern humanities professor whose skill consists in projecting his own victimhood into any work of art -- or converting his personal unhappiness into a problem of politics.

Which goes to the next aphorism: "Where he is easy to refute, as in the natural sciences, the imbecile can be useful without being dangerous. Where he is difficult to refute, as in the humanities, the imbecile is dangerous without being useful."

Which is to say, unemployable.

Nevertheless, we should be forced to pay for the university indoctrination that has made him a dangerous, useless, and unemployable parasite.

Thankfully, the most devout atheist nourishes implicit religious sentiments that prevent him from being intellectually consistent and acting on his beliefs. In other words,

"What still protects man in our time is his natural incoherence. That is to say: his spontaneous horror before consequences implicit in principles he admires." Show me a metaphysical Darwinian with the courage of his convictions and I'll show you a Darwin Award winner.

"Nothing is more alarming than science in the hands of an ignoramus."

Global Warming in the hands of Obama.

You can only pretend to avoid faith:

"There are arguments of increasing validity, but, in short, no argument in any field spares us the final leap."

If you truly understand that last one, you will realize what a willful fantasy world you've been living in.

Because in reality,

"Intelligence should battle without respite the sclerosis of its findings."

That last one is true because human intelligence is ordered to the tOtality, such that nothing short of this totality will satisfy it. Vulgar scientism just stops asking Why at an arbitrary point, and calls it a metaphysic (or pretends it is no metaphysic at all).

Truth courses through the descending arteries and ascending veins of the cosmos, and God is its beating heart. Unless you have suffered a metaphysical stroke or pneumocardial infarction.