On the ride home today, I got into a conversation with an acquaintance that I have had with other people many times. I mentioned to her that I felt that scientists had a responsibility to see that their science is understood and used properly by both scientists and the general public, while also refusing to engage in social agenda-driven ‘science’ or allow their science to be used for any group wishing to drive its social agenda. While I was trying to emphasize the difference between collective and personal responsibility, she was more focused on the point of science (then), and curious about how I reasonably expect scientists to enact this.
I tried to explain—via examples—why agenda-driven science, or science used to push forward a particular social agenda, is undesirable. I mentioned that—in the recent past—people attempted to prove all sorts of truths about how minorities did not have similar mental capacities as Caucasians; other people also endeavored to show that women were not as good as men at sciences and academics. My point I was trying to make is that using science to prove “collective truths” is a waste of time and a misapplication. An example of a collective truth is whether it is right or wrong to kill someone who is endangering your family. An example of an empirical truth is the attractive force between two objects (with physical masses) that attempts to draw them together: between a planet and objects on it, we call that force gravity. While the former collective truth can be argued (logically) from both sides and there are multiple logically-valid conclusions. The empirical truth cannot be logically argued from both sides; to accept reality means either gravity exists, or something that causes the identical reactions that the theory of gravity predicts exists.
The topic was broached because I had mentioned how I felt that members that make up the psychological sciences have failed in their collective responsibility to avoid sociological agenda-driven science and abrogated their responsibility in preventing their science from being used to push social agendas by third parties. I spoke of how proponents and antagonists of gay rights misuse psychological science to justify their social position (and how politics then subsequently uses those groups to manipulate society one way or another). I spoke of how psychologists themselves utilize the agenda-driven science of biologists to come up with complex and erroneous statements about genetics-driven behaviors.
In short, life scientists (primarily biologists or those in closely-related fields) have propagated assumption-based predictions, masquerading as hypotheses and theories, that genes drive behavior of living organisms. When pressed to explain, I endeavored to separate out chemical reactions (and their byproducts) from actual behavior. I said that chemical reactions are a just a special sub-level of physics (the physics of small numbers of atoms and molecules, not planetary bodies and galaxies). It doesn’t make sense to say that the sun behaves by nuclear fusion or fission, rather nuclear fusion or fission is a reaction that occurs inside stars. There is no inherent behavior to it. I suggested that a behavior has to be put into a system, for a behavior to be gotten out of that system.
In other words, if 10 atoms don’t have any inherent behavior, why should 10,000, or 10 million? To ascribe motive or will to genetic code is simply ridiculous. A gene has no idea if it is replicated or not; in fact a sequence of DNA has no conception of whether or not it is gibberish or the formula for a protein. So while the chemical reactions inside a living cell can be predicted, the chemical reactions take place is not behavior per se, to have a behavior you really must put one into the system.
The point of the behavior explanation was to show that saying your genes make you who you (in terms of mind and behaviors) are is complete scientific nonsense. Not only is this conclusion based on unprovable and unscientific foundational assumptions, there is no viewpoint-independent way to verify the claim. Viewpoint-independence is critical to forming scientific theories. Why? Look at it this way, it doesn’t matter whether or not you or I are around to see it, if you have two objects with physical mass, the force each object’s mass exerts on the other is gravity. The simplest way to disprove that theory would be if we could find two objects where one object’s mass did not exert any attractive force on the other object’s mass. Behaviors—by definition—are not viewpoint independent. If I take you apart and just look at your DNA, I can’t find out whether you like pickles on your icecream or chocolate chips. Any scientist who says otherwise is either lying or mistaken. How can I say that? It is quite simple, to get the answer to the question I have to put a behavior into the system. I need to ask you (verbally or otherwise) to make a choice. And here is one fundamental truth of science—discounting single-cell or smaller lifeforms (of whom many scientists are debating the classification of them as living or non-living), to qualify some system as capable of behavior requires a Qualifier (i.e. some being capable of behavior making the decision), and that there is no progression from being incapable of behavior to being capable of it: either the system is or isn’t.
I’m running up around 900 words here so I’ll conclude with a thought puzzle. Computers are essentially a web of complex, interconnected chains of dominoes (also acknowledging that chains of—or individual—dominoes can be added or subtracted). The atoms that make up computers have no will, purpose, or goals. In fact—unless power is added—the computer will never do anything (other than eventually decompose). It is not until some behavior-agent begins to add power to the system and poke/tip/pull particular dominoes that the system begins to tumble, turn, or act. If ‘higher’ life-forms are simply complex biological computing/decision-making systems, would it not be prudent to extrapolate that we also need some behavior-agent to add power to our system and poke/tip/pull us until we begin to tumble, turn, or act?
