A Rant: Politics & Science

Politics and the natural sciences have nothing in common in their purpose and processes; politics is all about who gets to be in power and what policies they enact – it’s thinking works often on the basis of motive and vested interest; science is about the facts of the world and how it works – its thinking involves a search for the objective truth which those facts bear out, with the facts winning out in the end.

This is why people whose only real critiques of science are based on motive and vested interest show rather plainly that they really don’t understand science. You cannot carry over the thinking process of one domain of human activity to one where it does not apply – the result is nonsense, and shows your ignorance of both by confusing the thinking of one for that of the other.

This is why scientists are scientists for their day-jobs; if they did politics, they’d be politicians, and a lot wealthier for it, not scientists working in a lab or in the field on measly 5-figure grants.

About these ads