Thursday, November 10, 2016

Skeptics will not be skeptical about GMO foods

Apparently much of the "Skeptic" community believes that scientists and skeptics should not criticize genetically-modified (GMO) foods for failing to meet their claims, because then leftist crackpots will use that as ammo to ban scientific progress in the field.

Italian-American philosophy professor Massimo Pigliucci explains this, and writes:
In the early part of the 20th century philosophers of science were looking for ways to explain why science is an objective enterprise. Think the logical positivists, or Karl Popper. Then came the so-called “historicist” turn, with Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, and philosophers finally realized that science is not, in fact, intrinsically objective at all. (Many scientists haven’t matured to that point yet.) ...

Of course, all of the above matters much less now that the United States has elected a fascist to the Presidency and given absolute control of power to a bunch of regressive sexists and homophobes.
Once you start going down the path of denying the existence of objective truth, then you usually end up babbling nonsense.

It is very strange to claim that historicism shows that science is not objective. The history of science is primarily a story of man finding objective truths.

Some ppl argue that in physics, relativity and quantum mechanics killed the idea of objective truth. No, they did not. They reinforced the virtues of sticking to objective truths.

3 comments:

  1. Roger,
    Oh Please. I am as open to a romantic sentiment as anyone but seriously, science has been a nail biting back stabbing, money grubbing, slanderous, skirt chasing enterprise from the get go. Read up a tad on the various biographies of our beloved saint of science Isaac Newton. He COULD be incredibly rational...at times. Between nervous breakdowns. Much of the time he was just an ASSHOLE and no trouble at all at burning every one of his predecessor's portraits he could get his little dainty fingers to try an wipe his face from history. Also, his calculus is a fudged.

    Max Planck new the 'factual' truth — 'Science advances one funeral at a time.'

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  2. Yes that is true that history if science began when humans tried to find truth about different happenings in world and about nature.

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  3. Wut? Scientists can be lying, money grubbing skirtchasers. So what? They're imperfect humans. But over time, the right theories win out.

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