I was thinking this morning about a comment on one of my blog posts that the older the person got, the less they believed in science. That's a fair call when science can be used to justify agendas, or that seemingly verified truths are debunked, that data can be manipulated and results skewed. I like science. It's discovered some pretty awesome stuff. I'm a science fiction fan. I'm married to a guy with a degree in astrophysics just because he was stoned and wanted to know how the world works, so went to uni to do some maths and shit.

I mean we always have to circle the question whether the science is the ulimate authority, or whether it's just the best tool for testing reality and truth. They're not even the same thing, even if we treat them as if they are.

Things get messy when you start tugging on that thread, because I start getting into that realm of 'oh not everything is verifiable by science' as an excuse to defend absolute bollocks. Jamie'll say that about star signs, and I like astrology and still can't shake it as just a pattern we've made up about ourselves to understand ourselves. It feels true for me, really deeply true, and I'm unwilling to discount it as a knowledge system.

So yeah. Things can feel really right and still be wrong according to 'science'. It's a subject Jamie and I often disagree on.

But going the other way — pretending that only what’s been measured and verified counts as real — doesn’t quite sit properly with me either. We have to know that science is super powerful but it's also pretty human - it follows trends and government priorities and funding. I believe in plant medicine and the knowledge that's come down through grandmothers about herbs, for example, and just because they haven't funded tests into how comfrey can knit bone, as it's folk name suggests, doesn't mean it's not truth. It just hasn't had that focus on it yet. Science is always correcting itself, which is awesome, but that means what we 'know' according to science is always, always shifting. It's fucking mercurial.

Even Jamie will totally agree that there's a layer that doesn't come from studies or data - some things we just feel things are true. But then he'd turn around and say firstly, there's a heap of universal truths you can't argue with, and that perhaps we just haven't found the right tools yet.

I keep thinking about how I've always had this utter belief, this undeniable faith, that the natural world isn't inert - that animals and plants and even places carry a lot more than their physical parts. Kids will start there even before they are taught, giving rocks names or picking up on 'energy' in trees and forests even if we're looking at it as something separate to us.

So on the way into work, I was thinking about how there's this innate, pre science instinct to attribute awareness to the world, like a default setting, and that what we call the scientific worldview is just the learned behaviour over the top of it all. Because how often does science 'prove' or circle back to stuff we 'knew' all along? Not in a hippie 'the forest has a spirit' kinda way, but how they've only recently 'proved' that trees communicate through fungal networks, that plants respond to stress, that systems in nature are way more interconneccted and responsive than science used to believe. They don't call it 'animism' - it's just different language to describe what we always knew, whether on some deep tribal, cultural level, or just a suspicion or a feeling.

It's like the problem of consciousness - we dont' really have a solid, scientific explanation for subjective experience, not just about how we process, but how we feel it. If we can't answer that precisely, how can we say where it stops - animals? insects? rocks? Just because we confidently assert something - 'souls are bollocks' - does not make that truth either. We don't as much as we like to think, even though modern science is always correcting and finding new truths.

Science doesnt know everything, but that's not the same thing as saying the thing you believe in, the pattern you have found, is true. We're pretty good at seeing patterns - some brains are harder wired for it than others - and they can be complex, and almost indisputable, to a point - but at some point we have to verify them somehow, or they could be dangerous.

But some things are crazily, inherently true - for examples, animist traditions and indigenous relationships to land. They weren't random. They were ways of living that were totally grounded, sustainable, attentive, and based on the idea that the natural world was responsive and not inert. So whatever you call it, whether it's spirit or fungal networks or animal consciousness or oneness in all things, it's a belief that leads to a different behaviour and one that we probably should go back to instead of fucking up the entire world so we have no natural world to support life at all.

I mean, we can't build up a whole belief system based on vibes alone - like God will heal my child and fuck modern medicine, or will stop me being run over by a car if I walk into the middle of the road or if I swallow bleach I can rid myself of COVID. Or that Israel is chosen by God and has the right to kill everyone else to spread the kingdom. Some things are morally fucked up and need to be questioned if not outright quashed.

To me science is the best tool we have for testing claims we make about reality - I don't believe science in itself is evil or in fact a God, but stops us believing just in feelings, just in case those feelings can be dangerous. It's a good way of making sense of the world, which is all any of us are trying to do. We can't get rid of these older instincts that can be messy and unreliable, because they're pretty good at pointing at something undeniably true and real and tangible, but just uses different language in a pre science kinda way. Like I know love is the greatest bond we have, and we should default to compassion and kindess, before I know that it's actually a biological imperative and helps with social cohesion.

Look, I'm a Libran. I'm about balance. I believe in science, but I also don't think it's the final word. When it works to challenge, revise, question, discover - without the vested interest - it's pretty bloody cool. I'm happy to put my faith in it and question it and I sure as hell love it when it 'proves' something I've known all along.

With Love,

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