Scientific therefore neutral Does science = neutrality ?

This is an assumption we take for granted in the modern era(by modern I refer to the era during and post enlightenment). We have come to believe that science unlike religion is more informed and is rational. The term rational is quite problematic as it assumes there is something irrational. It creates a dichotomy between ancient and medieval and modern. Modern being a better state. The realm of the other 2 eras is relegated to being romanticised or being seen through biased eyes. Our idea that science is rational when compared religion or belief is misleading, science is never neutral. The assumption that cutting something of from its natural environment and studying it will give us a neutral response. Psychology is one such discipline that desperately tries to use scientificity as a means to justify its end. At it heart lies the assumption that it can acquire the same status as the natural science if its methods are mimic those used in the natural sciences. Statics come to the rescuehere; breaking something down into numbers will apparently make it more scientific. This fallacy has often lead to disastrousresults by scientists conducting scientific research. One of my favourite examples is intelligence and intelligence testing. Intelligence is a badly defined concept and one that most psychologists do not agree upon. On this shaky foundation intelligence tests were constructed using scientific means. The Nazis picked up on these ideas of inferiority and superiority as a

basis for killing people. this of course is well documented history and an extreme example. There are a lot more horror stories but I will skip them. Today intelligence tests help separate students with difficulties from well functioning children. We set up special schools for such children. All of this can hide behind the guise of being helpful and science. We have come to believe in science as something that will give us the right answers. I use the term believe deliberately because we don t question its authority and believe in its benign presence. We assume that if an idea has some scientific backing it is good and correct and neutral. Science however is never neutral, and it can never be. By writing a certain way or by following certain methods and idea does not become neutral. Natural science isn t neutral. It takes a certain amount of conjecture and intuition to prove something in the natural sciences. The natural sciences are learning to live with uncertainty. Psychology however needs to prove the existence of things that are merely constructed by it. By hiding behind the guise of pseudo neutrality psychology subtly pushes its own agenda. Most scientific ideas are based in not so neutral ideas. Take for example eugenics, which sorted out good healthy people from the ones that were useless to society. This idea has taken the form of cultural differences or gender differences. Women are not unclean creatures (not a medieval idea as we like to assume) but they are trapped by their biology. PMS

syndrome is presented as evidence for a woman s weakness and her inability to be as competent as a man. The people behind such research are not consciously trying to suppress women nor are a part of a grand conspiracy; they are products of their environment in which women internalise passive roles. Good science if there is such a thing isn t about proving something it is more profound than that, it is about accepting that a problem may not have an answer or the answer isn t what one hoped for or that the answer isn t dependent on the method. Science has come to take the place of religion. Lets not say but religion was false and look at how it oppressed people. This is a weak argument that goes nowhere. Lets not assume religion was universally bad and science is universally good and is helping us become rational beings. We can t discard either. We need to question both. Lets not assume that a sterile lab can give us all the answers we are looking for and we can do things better. The egocentricism that modernity has assumed towards other forms of thought are repressive.

I am attaching 2 links one to a program which is aired on BBC Horizon which starts with the question how long is a piece of string. This program challenges the idea of observation and measurement as an absolute. The second link if for a documentary by Adam CurtisAll Watched By Machines Of Loving Grace. This

documentary looks at how we have come to believe that technology will set us free and how ideas of order and balance have been oppressive. The documentary a lot of interpretations these are just two of them that I thought complimented the paper.