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In our age I think it would be fair to say that the ease with which a scientific theory assumes the dignity and rigidity of fact varies inversely with the individual’s scientific education. In discussion with wholly uneducated audiences I have sometimes found matter which real scientists would regard as highly speculative more firmly believed than many things within our real knowledge; the popular imago of the Cave Man ranked as hard fact, and the life of Caeser or Napoleon as doubtful rumour. We must not, however, hastily assume that the situation was quite the same in the Middle Ages. The mass media which have in our time created a popular scientism, a caricature of the true sciences, did not exist. The ignorant were more aware of their ignorance then that now.  The Discarded Image  Página 17  C. S. Lewis  1964 dC  Editora: Cambridge University Press

Last year, I spearheaded a survey and interview research project on the experiences of scientists at field sites. Over sixty percent of the respondents had been sexually harassed, and twenty percent had been sexually assaulted. Sexual predation was only the beginning of what I and my colleagues uncovered: study respondents reported psychological and physical abuses, like being forced to work late into the day without being told when they could head back to camp, not being allowed to urinate, verbal threats and bullying, and being denied food. The majority of perpetrators are fellow scientists senior to the target of abuse, the target themselves usually a female graduate student. Since we started analyzing these data, I haven’t been able to read a single empirical science paper without wondering on whose backs, via whose exploitation, that research was conducted. When the payoff is millions of dollars of research money, New York Times coverage, Nobel Prizes or even just tenure, we ofte...

A case in point: the popular Facebook page “I f*cking love science” posts quick-take variations on the “science of x” theme, mostly images and short descriptions of unfamiliar creatures like the pink fairy armadillo, or illustrated birthday wishes to famous scientists like Stephen Hawking. But as the science fiction writer John Skylar rightly insisted in a fiery takedown of the practice last year, most people don’t f*cking love science, they f*cking love photography—pretty images of fairy armadillos and renowned physicists. The pleasure derived from these pictures obviates the public’s need to understand how science actually gets done—slowly and methodically, with little acknowledgement and modest pay in unseen laboratories and research facilities.  The rhetoric of science has consequences. Things that have no particular relation to scientific practice must increasingly frame their work in scientific terms to earn any attention or support. The sociology of Internet use suddenly tr...

There are many strange coincidences in our world. The mass of the electron is 2000 times smaller than the mass of the proton. Why? The only known reason is that if it would change few times, life as we know it would be impossible. The masses of the proton and neutron almost coincide. Why? If one of their masses would change just a little, life as we know it would be impossible. The energy of empty space in our part of the universe is not zero, but a tiny number, more than a hundred orders of magnitude below the naive theoretical expectations. Why? The only known explanation is that we would be unable to live in the world with a much larger energy of vacuum. The relation between our properties and the properties of the world is called the anthropic principle. But if the universe were given to us in one copy, this relation would not help. We would need to speculate about the divine cause making the universe custom built for humans. Meanwhile, in the multiverse consisting of many differe...

O esfacelamento da ciência modificou o objectivo da pesquisa. Os estudiosos já não mais legitimam a sua obra participando da procura do conhecimento científico. Sua meta agora é o "grau de desempenho", e não a "verdade". O patrocínio financeiro que ampara a pesquisa não tem por objectivo promover a emancipação da humanidade ou a ampliação do conhecimento; seu propósito é o crescimento do seu poder. A pergunta deixou de ser "será verdade?" e passou a ser "para que serve?" A questão da utilidade equivale à pergunta "dá para vender?" ou, em contextos de ênfase no poder, "é eficiente?"

Se a teoria estiver incompleta, significará que pensávamos que sabíamos tudo e chegámos à conclusão de que há qualquer coisa que ainda não sabemos.

O príncipe é amador e seria um pouco artista, se estivesse menos engodado pelo palavreado científico. Às vezes ranjo os dentes com impaciência e cólera quando me entusiasmo a fazer-lhe sentir a natureza e elevá-lo à arte, e que ele crê fazer-se sábio espetando sem nenhum propósito na conversa um termo bem científico.

Since the late 20th century, scientists no longer quite have that quality that we used to speak of as scientists being disinterested. They are now very interested (...)” "Various developments such as the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act in the United States, and the rise of the spin-out companies from universities, mean that research has become more intrinsically bound up with the commercial world. "Many biotech companies are now led by financial directors rather than scientific directors, (...)" " "The past decade has seen a rise in the number of financial experts appointed to influential positions in biotech companies, for instance. And since the end of the Cold War, he says, the central role of science has become less about security and more about economy, with science and technology becoming central to many nations’ economic strategy." “We tend often to really have rather too much overconfidence. We may exaggerate, simply because [stem cell research, for example...

Our science and our technology are based on the belief that an understanding of nature implies domination of nature by man. I use the word man here because I am talking about a very important connection between the mechanistic worldview in science and the patriarchal value system, the male tendency of wanting to control everything. In the history of Western science and philosophy this connection is personified by Francis Bacon who, in the seventeenth century, advocated the new empirical method of science in passionate and often outright vicious terms. Nature has to be ‘hounded in her wanderings,’ wrote Bacon, ‘bound into service’ and made a ‘slave’. She is to be ‘put in constraint,’ and the aim of the scientists is to ‘torture nature’s secrets from her’.

A ciência pode, se o quiser, tornar possível aos nossos netos uma vida equilibrada, dando-lhes o saber, o auto-domínio e os elementos que engendram a harmonia e não a luta. De momento, ela ensina os nossos filhos a destruírem-se mutuamente, porque muitos homens de ciência sacrificam o futuro da humanidade à sua prosperidade imediata. Mas essa fase será ultrapassada mal os homens saibam dominar as suas paixões como conseguem dominar as forças do mundo exterior. Então, teremos finalmente conquistado a nossa liberdade.

Mas, ainda assim, tendes toda a certeza de que o homem se habituará infalivelmente quando desaparecerem por completo alguns hábitos velhos e maus e quando o senso comum e a ciência reeducarem por completo e orientarem por norma a natureza humana. Tendes a certeza de que, então, o homem também deixará de enganar-se voluntariamente e, por assim dizer, não desejará naturalmente desunir a sua vontade dos seus interesses normais. Mais ainda: então, dizem os senhores, a própria ciência ensinará ao homem (embora, a meu ver, isso seja um luxo) que, na realidade, ele não tem vontade nem capricho, nem os teve nunca, e mais não é do que uma espécie de tecla de piano ou pistão do órgão; e que além disso, há no mundo leis da natureza, logo, tudo o que o homem faz não é feito por sua vontade, mas espontaneamente, pelas leis da natureza. Por conseguinte, basta descobrir essas leis da natureza, e o homem nem responsável será pelos seus procedimentos, e ser-lhe-á muito mais fácil sobreviver.