Charles Eisenstein says it a lot better than I ever could in his remarkable philosophical book,
The Ascent of Humanity:
Together, the Scientific Program and the Technological Program form a defining myth of our civilization. The two are intimately related: technology, our ability to control the world, arises from science, the means by which we understand and explain the world. Technology in turn provides the means for science to probe even more deeply into the remaining mysteries of the universe. Technology also proves the validity of science—if our scientific understanding of the world were no better than myth and superstition, then the technology based on that science wouldn't work.
Philosophers of science will protest that it is already well-established, even in conventional circles, that perfect knowledge and perfect control of the universe is probably impossible (due to such things as mathematical incompleteness, quantum indeterminacy, and sensitive dependence on initial conditions). Be that as it may, this information has yet to filter down to the level of popular consciousness, even among scientists. What I am talking about is the faith encapsulated in the saying, "Science will surely explain it someday." It is the faith that the answer is there, the answer is accessible to science, and that science itself is well-grounded in its primary principles and methods. The technological corollary to this faith in science is our faith in the technological fix. Whatever the problem, the solution lies in technology—finding a way to solve the problem. Science will find an answer. Technology will find a way.
Underlying the Technological Program is a kind of arrogance, that that we can control, manage, and improve on nature. Many of the dreams of Gee Whiz technology are based on this. Control the weather! Conquer death! Download your consciousness onto a computer! Onward to space! All of these goals involve controlling or transcending nature, being independent of the earth, independent of the body. Nanotechnology will allow us to design new molecules and build them atom by atom. Perhaps someday we will even engineer the laws of physics itself. From an initial status of subordination to nature, the Technological Program aims to give us mastery over it, an ambition with deep cultural foundations. Descartes' aspiration that science would make us the "lords and possessors of nature" merely restated an age-old ambition: "And God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth" (Genesis 1:28).
Yet a contrary thread runs concurrently through the world's religious traditions, a recognition of the hubris of our attempt to improve on nature. Greek mythology has given us the figure of Daedelus, who arrogated to himself the power of flight in violation of ordinary mortal limitations. The power to transcend nature's limitations is for the gods alone, and for his temerity Daedelus was punished when his son, Icarus, soared too high in his desire to attain to the heavens. In the Bible we find a similar warning in the Tower of Babel, a metaphor for the futility of reaching the infinite through finite means. Have we not, through our technology, attempted to rise above nature—sickness, uncertainty, death, and physical limitation—to attain to an immortal estate?
Of course this doesn't mean science is useless by any stretch of the imagination. However, we in the West have a tendency to see science as the
only means of arriving at "valid truth". Unfortunately, as Eisenstein points out, science is necessarily incomplete. Worse, from a philosophical perspective, it defines as valid only those things within its domain, rendering its reasoning circular, or at least guilty of an inherent
selection bias: Its success at proving hypotheses that fit the system (i.e. can be measured by a skeptical observer) prove the validity of the system, while any hypotheses that don't meet that criterion are simply discarded.
In our culture science is assumed to be the only framework of inquiry that can identify truth. However, the twin shibboleths of objectivity and determinism reside unremarked at its core like worms in an apple, regardless of the insistence of quantum physics and chaos theory that both assumptions are delusional. To the extent that any truth is subjective and contextual (as most truths are, to the average human being) science has less place as a tool for interpreting "reality" -- much to the dismay of hard scientists, but to the delight of social scientists who know an opening when they see one.
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