But is it really true that science is not democratic?

One of the many religious professions circulating in the public media is that science, according to some professors with a lot of ink on their faces, is not “democratic.” But what does this statement really mean?

Isn’t saying that science is not democratic an indirect way of saying that science can succumb to anti-democratic methods and thus give them at least an authoritarian political character? Or it could mean that science does not descend into illusions WillpowerPerhaps continuing to repeat the old “still in motion” before those who really want the universe to be brought to its knees, once again, before the many ambitions of the temporal powers?

Is it sufficient, in the eyes of our time, for science to reaffirm the primacy of rationality and empirical observation to declare it “anti-democratic” and, therefore, dangerously hostile to the liberal conquests of recent centuries? Or is this the same old trick of politicizing the neutral to empower one party by challenging the other?

What concept of democracy arises, or is supposed to be proposed, from such a declaration of the supposed anti-democratic character of science? Would it not be precisely those who wanted to force an authoritarian change in society to transfer their authoritarian ambitions to a representation of science, on the other hand, that had no political character in itself? We are not here, again, at the crossroads between the neutrality of scientific thought trying to make speeches What is this and the events With the sole aim of a better understanding of the realities of the world and of the private powers that want, on the contrary, to make him say what is best for them?

Intelligent people who in their lives have opened some useful books and publications to obtain qualifications, or those who have not thought much about the subject, know that science is not and cannot be, what blows up in the newspapers and on television: it is they, at most, babble and shout to whoever pays the highest price . On the other hand, science also listens to the child if he says something right, because the dividing line of scientific discourse is right there, but this age that thinks it knows everything, in the end turns out to be an age that knows nothing, except for what the tycoons of power say.

If, then, we consider certain categories, some might say, we can iterate without saying Bacon and Descartes, Science is a method, while others, without thinking too much to repeat Popper’s words, would also add that it is based on “falsifiability”. Science, with the conscious addition of the word “modern,” certainly is In addition to method, but it cannot – or should not – be reduced to that extent. Science interpreted as the only way is just blind application, ie Technique (τέχνη), which we translate as “technique”, but it would be more correct to translate it by ars which opposes the term in the language of the Greeks nature (φύσις). there Technique She is also represented as a goddess aiding Icarus in his mad endeavors among many mythological ones: this representation, like many others, does indeed contain a warning and a link between technique and the dangers of arrogance (ὕβρις), as well as the unfortunate adventure of the son of Daedalus. Here, too, the ancient Greeks come to our aid, showing us, by the brilliance of their allegories, that this technique deviates from physis where do you come from. The modern term “physics”, derived from the Greek, denotes, in fact, a discipline devoted to the systematic observation of nature and in an authentically rational context, or in a truly advanced society, physics should not be subordinated to technology, but rather the opposite.

It is as strange as it is tragic to observe how the contemporary age which cries out the word “science” is, then, the age from which it has distanced itself, and which drowns science in mere technology in the service of profit. Science, in the true sense of the term, can be defined as a rational discourse based on the critical observation of facts and their synthesis through the application of logical criteria reconciled into theoretical generalization.

To put it in simple terms: Isaac Newton sees an apple falling from a tree and this is a fact which he summed up in the logical-mathematical formulation of the universal law of gravitation through theoretical generalization. It is a practical definition of science that ignores the many vicissitudes of contemporary times and, paradoxically, has become incomprehensible to those experimenters who deviate from the general rules of scientific discourse and indulge in the secondary observations contained, as Nietzsche has already criticized, in a scene with strong comic overtones, he writes about that hunched man in Swamp mud and faithfully intend to study the leech’s brain, while Zoroaster accidentally steps on it. The person Nietzsche openly mocks was found At home and in your field of work Drenched in the mud, the leeches of the bog bite him and he confesses: “Next to my knowledge is my black ignorance.” It is he who, in the work of a rock intellectual, tirelessly says: “I am blind and I want to be blind.” That is, I want this method, which, it would seem, essentially brings me closer to reality, and practically infinitely distances me from it.

Nietzsche’s mimicry of this odd comic figure, folded and centered in the leech’s little brain, suggests that he is really not a man of science, and therefore not a man of conscience. So it is enough to read it Zoroaster To find the grim, angry faces of some TV celebrities who attract new kinds of leeches and mirages that claim to drive us all, pre-authorisedAmong the swamps of your irrational and undemocratic delirium.