Last week, I got back a graded essay, which happened to be worth a significant portion of my grade. I got a C and was immediately upset because I had been somewhat proud of my work when I was writing it.
I soon perused the plethora of red marks throughout the paper and began to notice generally why I did poorly.
The principle reason I got a C was because I didn’t have enough “evidence,” as this particular paper required a certain amount of references to sources read throughout the semester.
Despite arguing adequately in the realms of reason and philosophy relative to the subject, I hadn’t met the designed requirements that would eventually determine my grade. While I’m sure we’ve all experienced this conflict in one way or another, I think it resonated with me because of its potentially analogous meaning.
The academic world our generation has grown up in gives an enormous amount of credit to empirical, tangible and scientific evidence.
I mean, what else is there, right? It is as if the whole spectrum of truth is reliant purely on what is observable or scientifically provable.
I think we have been accustomed to perceive intelligence as a product of one’s ability to present concrete evidence, especially scientifically. Not to say this is completely wrong or ineffective, but I think we must consider the possibility of metaphysical realities. And maybe, just maybe, we live in world that can’t always be explained rationally.
This week, another one of my teachers was explaining the importance of ensuring that public policy should not be affected by bad science, or when science is used in order to bend policy to support a certain idea.
He mentioned incidents in the past in which science may have been biased and then used inaccurately in correlation with that bias. For example, when intelligence was seen as fixed or an inheritable entity, IQ tests were given to immigrants and army recruits in order to screen out the “dumb” ones.
So if you don’t want to be screened out, continue to pursue only what you see, explore only what is observable, and know only what is knowable.
According to my opening analogy, scientists, scholars and institutions will continue to be the teachers and we will continue to be the student subject to their will, rendering us slaves to empirical evidence and in submission to an unacknowledged god, of sorts — science.
So when the Intelligent Design theory is inevitably banned from discussion in all public schools, let us remember that science has led us to believe at one time that the earth was flat or that eugenics was a necessary study.
Paul Davies, a cosmologist and ASU professor, wrote a 2007 New York Times op-ed that was later summarized in another Times article. “Dr. Davies asserted in the article that science, not unlike religion, rested on faith, not in God but in the idea of an orderly universe. Without that presumption a scientist would not function,” wrote the Times.
Either way, there seem to always be assumptions and unanswerable questions because not everything is observable. Albert Einstein may have said it best: “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible,” implying that while there are laws of nature, the universe will never be fully understood.
All of you upset because I have no scientific evidence here for you, I guess I encourage you to show me proof for proof.
Reach Houston at hfriend1@asu.edu.
