Briefly Noted: Settled Science

Naturally, I'm like everyone else--I find myself obsessively reading about all the ins and outs of the election challenges, the legal developments, the fraud investigations, etc. At the same time, it's impossible to for one person to keep up with it all in written summary form--the attempt, moreover, would detract from what I see as bigger picture issues that we need to keep before us. After all, the election played out--and the election challenge is playing out--in the bigger picture context of the Left's attempted implementation of their Great Reset. That context, of course, includes the disruptive presidency of Donald Trump, who upset the applecart of Leftist designs. The Left's resistance to Trump has featured determined efforts at thought control and attempts to mold public perception through a succession of hoaxes. 

The Global Warming/Climate Change Hoax was a preview of what to expect from the Left--the subversion of science to transform science into a loyal supporter of the Great Reset--trading off the social prestige of science and technology in this new Digital Age. By contrast, the Russia Hoax was almost purely reactive--a political hoax engendered by the existential shock to the Left posed by Trump's election on a revisionist platform: MAGA being the antithesis of the Globalist vision of the Great Reset. Of course, the Russia Hoax also attempted to trade on public perceptions of the Russian Red Menace, but Leftists found--to their dismay--that Conservatives (despite media attempts at reeducation) still retained a more sophisticated understanding of history than Leftist hubris credited them with. With the collapse of the Russia Hoax (and its subsidiary hoaxes, such as the Ukraine Hoax) in the Fake Impeachment (itself a legal and constitutional hoax), the Left fortuitously found itself presented with a possibility of returning to a scientific hoax that they could weaponize against Trump--the Covid Hoax.

A few days ago we were discussing a side effect of the Covid Hoax's lockdown of higher education--the decimation of liberal arts faculties at many universities. In that context we also got involved in a discussion of the ideologization of the STEM departments at universities. So, this morning, while catching up on accounts of growing public unrest over the latest permutations of the Covid Hoax--its patent implementation for social control, its devastation of small businesses and personal freedom, its spreading of blatantly unscientific hoax 'news'--I came across an article at American Thinker (Santelli vs. Sorkin: A perfect microcosm of Left vs. Right) that contained a reference to the concept of "settled science".

As many of you know, my undergraduate major was philosophy. In those long ago days I had a particular interest in epistemology, including the philosophy of science. With such interests, you can imagine how nonplussed I am to hear, even from family, about "settled science"--a distinctly unscientific concept--and the use this bogus concept is put to in suppressing dissent from Left approved views (including much to do with the Covid Hoax). Since the previous post attracted a fair amount of reader interest, I'm including below some excerpts from the article I was linked to this morning. The article focuses on the uses to which the notion of "settled science"--the far from harmless ideological motives behind its widespread use in our current age of hoaxes. 

The author uses the interesting concept of "the collectivization of consciousness," which we see widely employed by the Big Media companies. This has been especially apparent during the past election season. The coordination of narratives and the coordinated efforts to suppress all dissenting voices has been unmistakable, and fits readily into the author's conceptual framework.

How Socialist Dogma Replaces Real Science with "Settled Science"

11/30/2020

Allen Gindler

Over the past hundred years, evolutionary socialism has slowly but steadily taken root in the fabric of American society. This is especially noticeable in the economic sphere, because evolutionary socialism uses the mandatory redistribution of wealth as one of the methods to achieve its ultimate goal. ...

However, one should not forget that evolutionary socialism simultaneously uses the collectivization of consciousness and the redistribution of wealth. Moreover, an analysis of the existing flavors of socialist movements, especially those that have been able to materialize in practice, shows that the subjugation of individualism by collective thinking is an even more effective path to building a socialist society than the redistribution of wealth. Totalitarianism is the end result of the collectivization of consciousness, characterized by the complete suppression of free will and thoughts, the subordination of everything and everyone to the volition of the state apparatus, and the rule of one ideology under the leadership of one party. Politics, culture, art, morality, ethics, and aesthetics have to be unquestioningly obeyed across the ideological line, and dissent is severely punished.

One of the consequences of the collectivization of consciousness is that science is restructured from an institution of free thought ... into a servant to the ideological dogmas of the ruling regime. Socialism is very concerned with ideological purity and like-mindedness; therefore, science is used as a means of collectivizing consciousness, and is itself subjected to oppression by the coercive state apparatus. The exceptional features of science under socialism are the emergence of openly pseudoscientific trends and the accusation of dissenting thoughts as unscientific and harmful to society. The most striking examples of the transformation of science into an ideologically dependent and suppressed institution were provided by the Communist regimes of the Soviet Union and National Socialist Germany.

[Discussion of science in the USSR and Nazi Germany.]

What about science in the United States, mainly promoted by left-leaning academia? If one looks closely, it's evident that evolutionary socialism has penetrated deeply into the educational and scientific fields. Only the lazy would not write about the American academy’s predominantly leftist orientation and the fact that the education system has turned into a machine of compulsory indoctrination in leftist ideas. However, I want to draw attention to another aspect of American science that clearly points to its socialization. As with the previously described totalitarian socialist regimes, American science has begun to be divided into what is ideologically correct and what requires public censure. For example, modern leftist political doctrine holds global warming to be one of the main threats to the existence of human civilization. Climatology and ecology have turned from objective sciences into undersigners of party science. Instead of scientific debate, doomsday advocates hysterically accuse political opponents of denying scientific facts and general ignorance.

These dogmatic beliefs were refuted not only from a theoretical point of view but also after the gloomy predictions did not come true: the ocean did not flood the cities, and polar bears did not die out. But the emerging facts of manipulation in temperature measurements, data processing, and data interpretation have only led to a change in the Left's terminology. Instead of global warming, now we are dealing with climate change due to human activity. Scholars who question harmful carbon dioxide’s effect on the climate get ridiculed and silenced. Luckily, the Left still falls short of prosecuting dissident scientists. Nevertheless, leftists clearly understand that peddling climate change and recruiting more believers will bring them long-lasting political success. The Green New Deal, which is presented as a means to save humanity from the consequences of climate change and is based on the false premises of socialist climatology, is as stupid as the fight against sparrows in China during the Cultural Revolution. It is a political declaration of the pseudoscience and an attempt to implement its provisions on par with Lysenko’s Michurin method.

... the subordination of the individual to the collective is accompanied by the depletion of the intellectual potential of society and leads to decadence in science, education, culture, and morality.