Since the emergence of the modern
popular science industry in the nineteenth century, one central message
has been promulgated consistently: Magical thinking is the exact opposite
of the scientific spirit and a foolproof litmus test to identify intrinsically
unscientific and dangerously regressive attitudes. The problem with
this pillar of popular science, however, is that on closer inspection
it quickly boils down to assumptions which are themselves based on
little more than variants of magical thinking.
An essential feature of magical thinking
is the belief that effects are inherent in intention: in magic, immaterial
ideas unfold and teleologically realize themselves – we know
not how – to manipulate physical reality. The cardinal error
of magic, popular science tells us, lies in bad post hoc reasoning,
i.e. in unchecked, wishful conjectures regarding the causal relationship
between intent and supposed effect. Did not the birth of science occur
when man (at last!) started to think critically and uncover natural
causes for supposedly supernatural phenomena? And has history not
shown that knowledge has steadily progressed in a linear and accumulative
fashion, on a heroic march from superstition to science?
Systematic historical explorations
of preconditions and wider contexts of scientific practice have fundamentally
challenged such traditional accounts, particularly since historical
scholarship has ceased to be dominated by exercises in promoting and
justifying scientific and medical professionalism. In fact, popular
science magazines and pamphlets co-emerged, and often overlapped content-wise,
with a modern standard historiography of science, which retroactively
transformed past events and actors to fit dominant nineteenth- and
twentieth-century sensibilities. A major problem with present-day
popular science is that it continues outdated history of science narratives
to make the past compatible with contemporary academic mainstream
culture. It insists to be ‘naturalistic’, and yet it adheres
to breathtakingly simplistic and ultimately teleological nineteenth-century
science myths and rhetorical patterns, for the only organizing principles
of scientific and medical practice that appear to exist for popular
science are ‘reason’ and ‘truth’.
Ironically, images of reason and truth in popular
science seem to share certain key properties with transcendental entities
and supernatural principles: Like a secular Holy Ghost, Reason is
supposed to seize those receptive to its influence and inspire intellectual
core virtues without which science would quickly lose its appeal as
an intrinsically progressive enterprise (such as humility in the face
of evidence contradicting previous beliefs, and courage in defending
new discoveries even at personal risk). As if by magic, scientific
research questions – which according to popular science are
guided by nothing but sacred desire for Truth – turn into empirical
data, transfigure (along with unambiguously correct interpretations)
into journal articles, and via the reader’s retina finally materialize
as rational conviction in the human brain. Scientific Truth has pre-dated
human cognition and is merely channelled, bit by bit, through oracles,
i.e. extraordinary people called the ‘Great Scientists’.
Destined to eventually unfold to the benefit of all humankind by breaking
down (we know not how) social and cultural divides, the expected arrival
of absolute scientific Truth is at worst temporarily delayed by human
imperfections – of which, incidentally, ‘superstition’
is the most stubborn and dangerous.
Obviously, I’m being deliberately
provocative. But can it be doubted that many standard claims promulgated
by popular science entirely hinge on naïve glorifications of
scientific practice as something that is organized by transcendental
superhuman principles, and ultimately rest on tacit but unambiguously
teleological historical assumptions? What, for example, is the often-heard
assurance of science’s inbuilt self-correcting capacity but
a manifestation of that stereotypical basic vice of magical thinking
– i.e. faith in a wishful inductive inference based on neglect
to check for refuting instances? But when historians and historically
informed philosophers of science challenge grand myths by critically
analyzing concrete conditions and processes by which theories and
ideas prevailed over others, science popularizers sometimes respond
by crying ‘anti-science!’ or, much more often, simply
ignore the evidence.
By consistently passing over relevant
history of science and medicine scholarship, modern popular science
often reveals that – like its nineteenth-century predecessor
– its professed core mission is not so much the public cultivation
of critical thinking, but rather the supposed liberation of the public
from ‘dangerous ideas’ and ‘superstition’.
Like religious fundamentalism, which popular science routinely targets
to get its message of the intellectual vulgarity of magical thinking
across, it relies on appeals to abstract authority transcending human
nature and experience. Challenge a religious fundamentalist’s
blind faith in Holy Scripture by presenting evidence for the human
element involved in its productions, and he will charge you with blasphemy
or act as if the evidence did not exist. Question tacitly teleological
claims promulgated by certain science popularizers by identifying
the human factor in the genesis of scientific knowledge, and their
response will be remarkably similar.
