FAILED SCIENCE

Illustration: Indian government's Mars orbiter.



 

As I listened to well-intentioned space nerds, extolling the wonders of living on Mars, on BBC this morning, I realized that Science, as a worldwide phenomenon, has failed. Just as Religion has failed to deliver peace, justice and morality, Science has failed to truly deliver a higher quality of planetary health and general human welfare. I include Technology under the greater umbrella of Science in this idea.

 

Science's failure, like Religion's, is based in its inability to unite great minds worldwide in cooperative research and development. It operates on competition, based in monetary compensation. The measure of 'good science' is its applicability to profit-making. I do not wonder that Science congratulates itself as 'advanced' in an age of record corporate profits at the expense of quality of life for the masses.

 

Capitalist scientists would loudly disagree. They would wave statistics in my face which show a decrease in hunger, an increase in lifespan , a decrease in infant mortality. All these anthropocentric statistics would ignore the degradation of the planet's ecosystems. It would ignore the pollution of sea and air. It would ignore overpopulation's inevitable dead end.

 

Science, once the hope of those emerging from the devastating age of religious contention and domination in Europe, has failed to the degree that the human species itself may suffer an irreversible ecological collapse with its cause being misapplied Science. The flight of human beings back into the false security of Religion in many societies is perhaps a species-wide regression, a worldwide human thumb-sucking response to the realization that man's attempt to be free from dark superstition has led to planetary disaster.