Abstract: The scientist, equipped only with an ontological method, is not prepared for the teleological battlefield. To face it he must choose a philosophical method. Example with the paradox of gender equality.
Sommaire
The Monastery of Science
Science is a methodology. Not a policy, not a philosophy, not even a power in itself. Its power only appears with the employment of the method by someone, in the middle of the battlefield of powers.
The common scientist does not want to get involved in it, wants to reduce himself to his methodology, takes care not to make it the power that it is not. With the progress of science however, one side effect has become primary: science, as soon as it enters the realm of powers, can extinguish all others. For the participants of the battlefield, it is the nuclear weapon. All fear it and all are in a hurry to use it.
A thousand promised virgins
Science is thus a source of the most extreme covetousness. The scientist is a monk who is promised a thousand virgins and holds the promise of fame, in addition to unheard-of riches. Can he resist? He holds by the exercise of daily vespers, of these articles and conferences bringing together his brothers in front of the tabernacle of the Method. But impious interpretations lie in wait for him, discrepancies multiply. It is not uncommon for him to be recruited by conspiracy circles.
The monk of science is new to the field of power, easy to pervert. As much, in each field, by the right-thinking camp as by the rebel influencers. There is no truth in interpretation, only powers. They form baronies of thought, religious phalanxes, gangs surging in the streets, each brandishing the standard of its dogma.
The monk at the circus
Never mind that science is more assertive today than it has ever been. It does not federate better. On the contrary, the strength of its method makes it coveted even by those who hated it, spiritualists, poets, anarchists. All seek to seize it in order to subjugate it to their ends. Our little laboratory monks and nuns are seduced by circus acts, bare buttocks and catchy glances. They are all overflowing with interpretations to make, most of the time quite risky.
And we want more! We ourselves survey the field of powers given over to their madness, amazed by the spectacle. In times of democratic peace, the battle is that of fireworks. It is our attention that each party seeks to capture by its outbursts. Then our life. “It is unique,” they say, “why make it like others?” Of course, it is unique. Why waste it listening to nonsense?
Two stories, medical independence and gender recruitment
Easier for the scientist to remain a monk when he practices an inaccessible theology. The physicist is thus less vulnerable than the psychologist, the sociologist or the economist. But complete immunity does not exist. Biologists have been perverted by eugenics, quantum physicists by panpsychism. I will relate two examples, one of resistance in medicine, the other of recruitment in gender psychology.
The first story, very short, is that of my medical newsletter. A few years back, it completely digested the news of rheumatology, to the point that it told me what to think of each study. No need for tedious checking of the numbers, it was enough to jump to the always clear conclusion. Clear for the numbers themselves, or whoever read them?
Today the newsletter is content to produce the numbers. Courageous effort, because the show is arid and does not make you want to. The risks are the statistical figures and no longer qualified as ‘low’, ‘insignificant’ or ‘rare’. You have to decode. What makes the doctor the owner of the code, includes it in scientificity.
The paradox of equality
The second story is a clash in gender studies, called the ‘paradox of equality’. In 2018 Gijsbert Stoet and David Geary show that it is in countries where gender equality is most respected that women do the least scientific studies. Conversely, in the most unequal countries, girls and boys engage in these sectors equally.
These are easy counts to establish and they are verified. Because of course the study raised a wave of criticism. The authors took into account those concerning data collection and maintained their conclusion. The paradox is there. The study confirms others who point in the same direction: the more the country is rich and respects gender equality, the more strongly the preferences of women and men diverge.
Confused battle of the conclusion
Science stops at this data. Their interpretation is no longer part of it. And the battle begins. Which conclusion to choose? The camps are already formed, on the one hand the culturalists of gender, on the other the naturalists. Stoet and Geary are pretty naturalists, but it’s no good being a naturalist these days. Stoet and Geary therefore avoid the term ‘innate’. They believe that women can more freely develop their “intrinsic” interests when social and material constraints fade. In other words, the absence of social discrimination… only reveals more that women and men are different.
The other hypothesis is that our preferences are strongly influenced by social models other than those of gender. What an experiment in 2011 seems to suggest: 600 girls aged 7 to 9 from a disadvantaged background are divided into 2 groups, one witness, the other follows a program called ‘Baloo and you’: these little girls, like Mowgli helped by the bear Baloo, receive help from an older student for a year. The student served as a role model, encouraging them to find new ideas and hobbies. Unsurprisingly, the girls in this program have become more competitive and ambitious than the others.
Euculturalism
We therefore need egalitarianism in the models offered to young people to promote an egalitarian destiny. But did we really learn anything about the influence of gender, which would be useful to culturalists, or only highlighted the role of the social environment, all genders combined?
Where does the idea of role models lead us, if we want to de-gender society? The culture should be careful to offer the same to girls and boys, to harmonize their social positions. Gender culturalism would thus like to reproduce very exactly what it denounces: the cultural programming of personal lives! Our diversity was already threatened by eugenics; here it is watched by euculturalism…
Science fished out by a philosophy
I have taken up the subject of gender not to bore you, after the previous article, but to point out the radical differences between interpretations of scientific data. Behind an interpretation hides a philosophy. Culturalists use idealism: science must confirm the desired ideal —female-male variations are purely cultural. Interpretation should take care of this. Naturalists use empiricism: science must account for observations. I use my own method, UniPhiM, an offshoot of pragmatism: the best interpretation is based on the consequences of our choices. Here culturalism leads to a society potentially worse for individuals than the one it denounces.
Put guards around the scientific arsenal?…
If he is recruited by an idealistic phalanx, which we designate today under the name of ‘wokism’, the scientist becomes dangerous. His science is a disintegrator in the wrong hands. Should he then be brought back to his data and sent back to his monastery, where his prayers to the Real will no longer be disturbed? But the field of powers becomes even more chaotic. All the interpretations frolic without brake. Freedom of expression collapses the possibility of the collective. Society is disintegrated by one of its sacred principles.
…or choose a philosophy?
The modern scientist must leave the monastery and choose a philosophy, in order to evangelize the crowds with the raw data of the divine Reality. Anti-clericals will prefer the term ‘scientific journalism’. Include the people in science. Popular journals are responsible for texts produced by the researchers themselves. But be careful not to get sucked into a popularity prospect, say what the wokist expects you to say. Idealism is a neuron-sucking vampire.
The scientist is not trained in philosophy, but pragmatism, or better UniPhiM, is an easy and universal choice. Thus can he help save the other sacred principle of society, which is dear to him: collectivism. Freedom, an individualist principle in essence, is opposed to the solidarity that builds our living environment, where freedom can be expressed. Conflict of principles that must be brought to life in each of us. Escape the state of capricious child as well as canned on a shelf. We are freer to choose our collective than scientists. But let’s keep it solidary, so as not to expose it to a nuclear conflict…
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The Gender-Equality Paradox in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education, Gijsbert Stoet et David C. Geary, Psychological Science, 2018
Relationship of gender differences in preferences to economic development and gender equality, Armin Falf & Johannes Hermle, Science, 2018