Aprehendite disciplinam

But, is it science? This question needs to be asked loudly and often by those of us in hac lacrimarum valle. Loudly, becuase in the din of billions of voices it becomes only one splash in the roar of a waterfall, often because humanity, fallen and darkened of intellect due to the inborn defect of Adam, fail to retain well the concepts of reason and lack the eye of Faith.

Several things about science. First science speaks to the observable. Those who seek to address supernatural matters using science to either prove or disprove them make an initial fallacy, they use the natural to address that which is beyond nature.

Science, in its observations attempts to explain using hypothesis testing. Untested hypotheses are speculation and unproven. Darwinian evolution, properly understood cannot be considered science because it cannot be tested and validated using proper testing instruments. It is and remains purely theoretical and thus speculative.

Science as a method requires the observer to account and minimize any contributions of randomness and bias from the experiment. Psychology, sociology and anthropology fail to do this largely because the phenomena observed are subject to the definition and bias of the observer. Unlike measuring a change in mass or temperature, changes in behavior, activity, or association may or may not be rigorously defined as such.

Thus properly understood, much of what Joe Six Pack American takes as “scientific” is really little more than belief. It is belief because a “scientist” with a degreed credential has pronounced authoritatively that certain things like darwinian evolution are to be believed as science.

The trouble is that there is little vetting at the upper echelons of the scientific community and great economic incentive in the form of grants to promote some theories, albeit unproven, in the face of contrary evidence or no evidence at all.

Is creationism science? No. But then it does have explanatory power and epistemological consistency whereas Darwinism lacks these things.

Thus, when a headline blurts that “The Vatican” has declared prehumans were made human we must consider carefully the epistemology and metaphysical constructs underlying these statements. One cannot blindly assume this as a validation of Darwinian evolution, or conversely and endorsement of creationism. But then again, can we truly know if either is valid using the scientific method? No. No. No we cannot because speculation about the experimentally unprovable is not science, it is “something else” but not properly called scientific.

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