Among the great assets of the West, one of the most important is what we call "western science". It is that form of knowledge that made the Industrial Revolution possible. But before Western science, then parallel to it, there was and is knowledge in all human societies. Observing regularities in natural phenomena (and society) it is a characteristic of the human mind. All human groups have a material culture (and spiritual), în care se reflectă această cunoaștere. And what is called culture, adică tezaurul cunoștințelor, to be the basis of some artifacts or some processes of obtaining food, of means of defense etc. also exist in animals. As a parenthesis, există și ceea ce s-ar numi proto-limbaj, that is, a system of sound or postural signs that convey messages. And like any form of culture, this knowledge is transmitted...culturally.
Discovering a way to fish for termites, made by a female chimpanzee (contrary to common prejudices, which also penetrated into the songs of bands such asTaxi, females, especially the young ones, they usually make discoveries or inventions in primates in general, not just chimpanzees), it is appropriated by the whole group, who learns technology, and if its exploitation remains ecologically possible, that is, the group stays in that place or one with similar conditions, I also pass it on to the kids. There is that famous example of the Japanese macaques who had learned to wash sweet potatoes before eating them, then, to be tastier, to wash them in the sea.
But what makes so-called Western science special? Among other authors, Sandra Harding inIs Science Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminism, and Epistemologies, advances the universality of scientific knowledge. From her book emerges the idea that the specificity of Western science would be what would translate into the greed for knowledge, acquisition of all forms of knowledge, especially the colonized ones. Zoos and botanical gardens were established to discover and exploit new species of animals and plants. Ironically one might wonder if there was a need for human zoos as well. The people of the colonized areas were taken by force, resistance to certain climatic factors, but also… with their information on sugar cane cultivation, for example. slave, now as in Antiquity, it wasn't just manual labor, but also a qualified individual for the work he was to perform. Sometimes highly skilled…
But exploitation from the point of view of knowledge of the colonies was not limited to that. Any knowledge that could be used was acquired. And how many inventions and discoveries were brought from the East and beyond! To mention only medical discoveries, like vaccines, the antibiotics (!), tratamentul malariei… Multe lucruri banale, that we learn at school or college, they come from distant cultures. In classical India there was a famous grammarian, Panini (între secolele VI și IV î.e.n.). what was he saying? It is as mundane to linguists as the decimal system with its associated symbols, which also come from India, albeit through the Islamic stream, before the European colonial empires.
When it came to science, Europeans were not racist at all, "inferior" races and cultures, which otherwise required the rational guidance of a superior culture, they were still good enough to solve problems without a solution in the West. Western science is hoarding, unprejudiced and her conquests are carried out on an industrial scale. Why? Perhaps because much of it was mediated by people who were not scholars, but travel, merchants, administrators, diplomats, military, adventurous and motivated people, desperate for riches and fame.
For the development of science there was a motivation, the economic one. Knowledge was making money through her apps. Knowledge had material significance, not spiritual. In fact, this might be its most important aspect. Știința a devenit occidentală după ce a suferit o mutație importantă: emancipated from religion, of spiritual, even from the world of Plato's ideas. The first biology treatise considered modern brings impersonal descriptions of animals, without the usual fable-type moral lessons of previous works. Animals had morphology and physiology, not character traits.
Modern science is considered to begin with Galileo. We might speculate that the Church was so affected by his ideas not only because they contradicted official Church science, but Galileo and other scientists of the time were actually coming up with a different kind of science, emancipated by faith, not just Christianity, but of any kind of faith.
It was something new, not only in Europe. Galileo's inclined plane was just an inclined plane, without any other meaning. Nothing transcendent in those laws! If the chain of sacredness were to break, and here it is not only about the narrow perceptions of the Christian religion, knowledge could explode, to give countless possibilities, like a game. Knowledge, precisely because it is valuable, in most cultures, it is related to the supernatural, which gives it a cultural coherence beyond what we call natural laws. The Eskimos have a perfectly functional technology for building an igloo, but the spirits play an important role in the building instructions. In a culture where knowledge is linked to the sacred, you can't do every experience, you can't explore everything, even if there is no authority of the Church with its inquisition. Although science has always been linked to philosophy, too much connection with metaphysics equally limited it. Let's not forget the concealment of the dodecahedron as a perfect shape, which should not have existed, according to the ancient Greeks!
It was a happy coincidence that modern science began in earnest with mechanics, which created a model for the other sciences as well. The world was a mechanism that had to be deciphered. The decline of the Church helped. Church, temples had a monopoly on important knowledge, such as those related to astronomy. From the Babylonians, Chinese people, to the Aztecs, the movement of the stars in the sky was the job of initiated priests.
But in recent centuries, the liberation of the sacred sciences was not uniform. Biology, dominated by priests (including Charles Darwin had theological training), he emancipated himself from religion with great difficulty. Although there were many atheists in society, and evolutionary ideas appeared decades before Darwin's book "On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Existence" (including his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, he admitted evolution), the fear related to the possible attacks of the promoters of creationism, official doctrine at that time, caused Darwin to delay publication of the book. It seems strange that biology should remain so tributary to the supernatural.
It can be argued that there was little knowledge, that it was hard to find a paradigm. But there were popular ideas more intuitive and with a more naturalistic allure. For example, ideea generației spontane, although fake, referred to the emergence of life under certain natural conditions. This life had to evolve, also according to a popular idea, systematized by Lamarck. And yet, I am now extremely knowledgeable about biology, but creationism has not gone away, on the contrary. Why is this happening?? People are unhappy with the theory of evolution by selection? We can admit, as happened at the end of the 19th century, that some reject evolution by selection, but evolution as such is something most educated people accepted then. And now it seems even weirder not to accept.
Dar cum „evoluează” știința în general? Thomas Kuhn in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" shows how scientific paradigms change. Accumulation of data, results of experiments and observations, leads to the creation of a paradigm. New experiments are made based on her predictions, some of which confound the old paradigm. Then a crisis occurs, and after a while, another paradigm, able to explain the new data, it replaces the old one. Kuhn established this model based on historical studies of some scientific ideas.
But does it happen like this every time?? The history of inventions shows that their implementation depends on access to resources, i.e. of capital. James Watt's engine had a more powerful competitor, but which did not benefit from the necessary funding. A close look at scientific discoveries, of imposing some ideas, leads us to a similar conclusion. Social support, not just material, it is crucial. Consider the same discovery made independently in different countries or by different researchers. Would we have known about Alfred Wallace today?, who independently arrived at the idea of natural selection in evolution, if Darwin had not been a gentleman? Mendel's laws, the father of genetics, they lay published through the libraries, including Darwin's, for decades. Their independent rediscovery, by several researchers, au dus la redescoperirea lui… Mendel.
Science is a social phenomenon. The scientific world is not what it seems from the outside, but a human group. And economic and social laws seem to explain the success of some ideas, discoveries, theories etc. Although precisely economics and sociology are not considered sciences in the sense of the criteria established by Karl Popper. When a truth is not obvious, easy for everyone to check, those economic factors intervene, social and especially political.
However, beyond politicization, science has other problems. We can rest assured that the truth will prevail in the end? We can be sure that at least some saving ideas will not be buried forever?
In the following episodes we will present facts from the history of science that seem to prove just the opposite.
