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by tehchromic 1853 days ago
I think science is in a crisis today for the same reason society is: the underlying ethics is a scientific realism have yet to be established. That's to say science, or the advancement of organized knowledge and the corresponding cultural realities are still oriented around anthropomorphic biases that were formed during the advent of global culture and embodied by the mystery religions. This made sense when the planet was a conquest, but not so much as a management strategy. Instead the ethics of science and culture need to be organized around ecological ethics: the reality of planetary stewardship is the challenge of the Anthropocene. This is a problem for scientific culture, because it's easy to build complexity on existing paradigms, it's harder to reorganize ones fundamental belief system. Example is being able to describe the surface of a black hole while people starve in the street. The problem of modern scientific progress is a problem of ethical reorganization, and once that is done (if it succeeds) then again we will be able to build systems of thought that appear new and foundational like the classical ones.
2 comments

That is a really excellent and concise analysis of the situation.
"This made sense when the planet was a conquest, but not so much as a management strategy" is such a powerful phrase! Thank you