On April 22nd, hordes of physicists, botanists, biologists, mathematicians and other academic, together with masses of lay-people, descended upon the boulevards of major cities around the world to protest against the Trump administration in the name of Science. The boffin brigade was buoyed by the success of other demonstrations, such as the Women's March, and driven to take back the streets by Trump administration moves to deny climate change, slash funds to the EPA and stifle scientific debate. It was a protest in the name of truth, a protest against bullshit.
Now, I consider myself pro-science. I am interested in it. I spent years trying to work out for myself a derivation of the Theory of Relativity from first principles: to look up others' proofs seemed cheating. I have a textbook on physics that I have read and re-read so often that it has fallen to pieces; I have passages from it memorised. When I lie in bed unable to sleep, I think about physics and mathematics. I believe in anthropogenic climate change, that global warming is caused by increased levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, released not only by the burning of fossil fuels but also by bovine methane emissions. Every year of the last three years has set a new record for being on average the overall hottest year in global history: climate change deniers pretend this inconvenient fact does not exist and offer no alternative explanation for why the planet's temperature has increased. It seems incontrovertible that global warming is caused by human actions and I have believed this since the issue became newsworthy in the 'nineties.
However, readers of my blog may suspect me of having an anti-science bias and so I thought I would use this post to clarify my position on a couple of issues.
In the post "On Evolution", I timidly, diffidently, put forward an objection to the Theory of Evolution as it is usually understood. I knew I was taking a risk. I feel I should say that I actually do believe in Evolution – I believe the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, as seems to be the scientific consensus today; I believe that humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor; I believe moreover that humans and walruses share a common ancestor, although we have to go a little further back to find that missing link. Evolution happened and is still happening. What I don't believe is that Natural Selection is by itself a sufficient mechanism to explain evolution. Darwin's original theory is founded on the idea that there is genetic variation among members of a species but does not account for the origin of this variation. Modern Evolutionary Biologists argue that variation results from completely random mutations – this is the argument of Richard Dawkins in The Blind Watchmaker for instance. But I do not believe that an appeal to pure chance is a satisfactory answer to the question of how variation arises.
Religious apologists often employ an argument called by its critics "God of the gaps". Where science fails to account for a natural phenomenon, God is invoked to fill the space. Why is the Earth's orbit stable? Because God is steering the ship. The appeal to pure chance seems more scientific but it is not, in fact, dissimilar from the appeal to God. How did the allele for blue eyes first appear? It was a random mutation. The Christian apologist cites divine intervention; Dawkins cites pure chance. Both strategies foreclose the possibility of further investigation.
Every effect has a cause. This principle can be missed by both sides. To adhere fully to the principle of causality is not, however, to say that every action is deliberate. Sigmund Freud argued that there is no such thing as an accident, but I do not believe this. Walking down the street, I step on a banana skin and slip off my feet. Freud would argue that I subconsciously wanted to step on the banana skin – but this is ridiculous. My pratfall had causes (the placement of the banana skin, my selection of a route, the fact that I was absent-mindedly thinking about Relativity instead of paying attention to where I was going), but I did not choose or desire to step on the banana skin. The network of causality extends beyond individuals to their environment and to rest of the world: the buck never stops. And as Chaos Theory has shown, an effect does not have to be proportionate to its cause.
My position is that events can have supernatural as well as natural causes. Evolution happened yes but, and I step out on limb here I admit, perhaps it was steered by a Higher Power. This view has philosophical antecedents: there was a French Jesuit philosopher who argued that humanity would evolve into God. I forget this philosopher's name although I remember it started with an 'L'.
Another reason why readers may think me anti-science is my opposition to psychiatry. This opposition does not make me anti-science though, because I do not think psychiatry is a science. It is a pseudo-science. Psychiatrists, in my view, are all charlatans and witch-doctors. Up until the 'eighties, I think, it was considered normal practice to subject psychotics to electro-convulsive therapy even though there was no credible theory of schizophrenia to justify this treatment and no real evidence to show that it worked. They even used to believe that they could 'cure' homosexuality by electrocuting people, as happened with Lou Reed. None of them, then and now, know what they're doing. Psychiatrists today flail around incompetently because they stupidly continue to believe mental illness is actually a physical illness – when it is in reality a reaction to social stressors. And all treatments like ECT and Insulin-Shock-Therapy ever did was make people worse.
In the post "The Big Con", I argued that the notion that anti-psychotics work is bullshit, a big lie. The term "anti-psychotic" is a misnomer – medication does nothing to reduce or alleviate psychotic symptoms, all 'anti-psychotics' do is tranquillise. I thought I would adduce another argument to show that the idea that anti-psychotics are helpful is a fallacy, one that I did not include in that post.
Readers with no experience of mental illness or treatment may be unaware that there are many different types of anti-psychotic medication. Ones I can think of off-hand include Olanzapine, Rispiridone, Quitiapine, Apiprizole, Seraquil and Clozapine. It is very rare for a patient to have only ever taken one kind of antipsychotic: I have only ever taken Rispiridone or Olanzapine but my friend Jess has, at different times, literally been on all of them. Patients continually get shunted from one type of medication to another until the doctors find one that seems to work. This is no secret in the Mental Health Service. Workers often talk about trying different medication on people until they find the one that "fits that person". Now, reader, I'm asking you to apply a little fucking logic to this situation. If one anti-psychotic 'works' on one person and a different anti-psychotic 'works' on another, only two conclusions follow. Either there is a different kind of schizophrenia for every different type of medication (so an Olanzapine type Schizophrenia, a Rispiridone type Schizophrenia and so on) or whether a person is well or ill, 'in remission' or 'in relapse', has nothing to do with the medication he or she is taking at all. If a person shows improvement when taking a particular drug, the drug is credited with the improvement – but it perhaps has nothing to do with the drug at all. In fact, I think some drugs, like Rispiridone, actually make people worse, and I base that not only on my own experience but on reports from others and observations of others. Schizophrenics are supposed to try to have 'insight' – how can a patient have insight if he or she is bullied into believing bullshit?
I'll end this post with a point about my life that I should spell out. When I first became a patient of the Mental Health Service in 2007, I was a voluntary patient. I knew very little about schizophrenia and psychiatry then. I took my medication because I had faith that they psychiatrists knew what they were doing. In January 2012, I was discharged from the service proper, although I continued to take a lower dose of medication. In Easter 2013 I started seeing psychiatrists again, again voluntarily. In early 2014, I was put under the Mental Health Act and legally compelled to take medication. You might ask, astute reader, what crime had I committed to be sectioned and coerced into taking medication? My only crime was that I had refused to take medication. Because I no longer believed in the efficacy of anti-psychotics and didn't want to take them anymore, I was legally forced to. Ever since I have been in a Catch 22 situation. If I say I'm sick, this is offered as evidence that I need to take medication; if I say that I'm well, this is offered as evidence that the medication is working and that I should continue to take it. Once the diagnosis is made, there is no escape. My life is hostage to the whims of liars and arseholes.
I suppose I should say something about what I believe to be the causes and remedy of my own 'illness', but I have talked about it enough in previous posts. I should return to my topic – science. Yes, I believe in science but this does not mean I accept everything posing as 'science' today. Modern psychiatry is about as scientific as nineteenth century phrenology. I admit I consider myself something of a mystic but for me mysticism is not an alternative to science but a supplement to it. Quantum physics, as I argued in "Free Will and Supernatural Causation", allows for this possibility. I also recommend the reader have a look at the post called, I think, "Rationality vs. Mysticism" for another discussion of this.
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