The Magician\'s Twin (Youtube) - Transcript. Rough Draft PDF

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A rough transcript of the Magician's Twin video from YouTube for the course Science, Technology and Society....

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How science is the “savior” and one should forget faith. “The new oligarchy, must increasingly rely on scientists’ til all the politicians become the sciemntists’ puppets” – CS Lewis, The Willing Slaves of the Welfare State

Modern science has remade our world, but at what cost? -

Synthetic and “designer” babies Illegal organ trade Student addiction to technology Nuclear wars

The dark side of science and technology. 3 prophetic authors: GK Chesterton in “Eugenics and other Evils”, George Orwell “1984”, CS Lewis in “The Abolition of Man” CS Lewis has written the “Narnia” series and about Christian theology, interest in scientism (the effort to use the methods of science to explain and control every part of human life)

Jay Richard’s, PhD. (Co-Author: Indivisible) -- JR Angus Menuge, Ph D. (Editos, CS Lewis: Lightbearer in the Shadowlands) – AM Victor Reppert, PhD. (Author: CS Lewis’s Dangerous Idea) – VR John g. West, PhD. (Editor: The Magician’s Twin) – JW Michael Aeschilman, PhD (Author: CS Lewis and the Restitution of Man) – MA

JR: He is very much a skeptic and critic of scientism. AM: He was opposed to an ideology which in his view have been confused as “science”, a particular materialistic approach which wanted to reduce everything that we can learn scientifically to materialistioc cause, blind undirected cuases VR: He admits that science is a “perfectly legitimate enterprise”, in fact he studied it quite a bit. JR: He never attacked science itself but scientism, this idea that the methods of natural science should be the bar by which every intellectual discipline should be held.

JW: Just like in all human disciplines Lewis thought that science could be corrupted that some people could pursue science to have power over the world and power over other people, in particular. MA: What he saw was that you have to avoid those extremes not only in the employment of science but in the popularization of it. You could not afford to ignore the finding of science, the importance of scientific method, you had to see that it is one of the greatest applications and developments of the rational method but that it was very dangerous and in the 20 th century it had very malignant consequences to deify it. Scientific socialisms, the scientific version of politics – the Marxists called their system “scientific socialism”, well no one in his right mind in 2012 will say that Marxism was scientific, but people did in 170 years. Social Darwinists to racial science in Nazi Germany was given enormous prestige, to racialist views by their apparent clothing people such as Heckle and Mulshot and Beushner popularizing reductive science ideas with immense success, more so in Germany than in England. Lewis saw these developments, he saw that two World Wars in which one he served and was badly wounded had roots in barbaric and hysterical scientific ideas, abuses of the scientific method, abuses of scientific terminology and language – abuses of scientific faith. ------When warning about the abuse of science, Lewis made an unusual comparison, while others considerd it as something modern, Lewis compared it to something ancient – MAGIC.

JR: CS Lewis thought that science and magic are twins. Now if you think about this, it is very strange, but I think that Lewis is very perceptive here. He highlighted three different ways that science and magic are quite similar.

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SCIENCE AS RELIGION

Science has the ability to function as a religion.

A magical view of the world can give one a sense of something more than just their everyday lives. It gives you a grand vision that something out there that we don’t or narrowly experience. It can give a sense of meaning, I think theres a real reason why fantasy stories are beloved -- whether Lewis’ own Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. Iot really strikes a deep chord in people, whether theyre religious or not. It is about a sense of grandeur in the universe, something higher than ourselves. And for some people

who aren’t religious, this magical view of the world can even be more attractive, because it substitutes for that (religion).

In the same way, science can be alternative religion. People like HG Wells ( Things to Come, 1936), turned Darwins Thoery of Evolution into a cosmic theory of life developing in this line of struggle in the universe. And then human life develops and so this character fights against nature and evolves through eugenics and conquers the world.

This epic struggle of evolution, is a religion for Wells. Similar to HOW Richard Dawkins thought that “Darwin mad eit possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”

People in Reason Rally March 2012, to day a lot of people consider science as a quasireligion. People celebrate Darwin Day, February which really takes ion the trappings of religion.

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SCIENCE AS CREDULITY

Science and Magic encourages a lack of skepticism. This might seem outlandish as science is about hard facts, and magic is about only faith and magical thinking. How does science promote that credulous thinking.

His doubt on Freudianism Lewis believes then , that in the modern world, anyone can believe anything as long as it is veiled in the name of science. And he believes one of the leading causes of science-filled gullibility is Freudianism. He was intrigued by some of his claims on psychoanalysis but ultimately rejected the efforts of Freud’s followers in explaining everything from religion to theft as a result of our subconscious urges. Lewis believes that if you take Freud’s view into eventual conclusion, that actually undermines even the belief in Freudianism. Lewis’ point is where does this end? If you belive that all reasoning fundamentally is based on urges and there isnt real reason that we can judge based on evidence and that we can’t be self-critical, then that destroys Freudianism. Lewis’ satirized this by his work, The Pilgrim’s Regress where a pilgrim was jailed by Sizigmund (his own first name) and that jail is rule dby a giant that can make anything transparent just by one look. This makes this imprisonment a horror as during the pilgrim’s stay in the cell and looks at other people within it, he sees their organs, their intestines – and that essentially substantiates his point on Freudianism – if you try to discover everything, you are left with nothing.

His doubt on evolutionism Lewis believed that evolutionism, the popular idea that matter could magically transform itself into complex and conscious living things through a blind and unguided process. He believed that evolutionism, much like Freudianism, contained a fatal self-contradiction about the human mind. Darwinian view depicts that reason was simply the unforeseen and unintended of byproduct of a mindless process via survival of the fittest. Lewis argues that if my own mind is the product of the irrational, how can I trust my mind when it tells me about evolution? What this means is that if natural selection and random genetic mutation gave rise to intellectual capacities are consistent with survival-enhancing behavior but we have no reason to belief that there is no true reason. And that our reason is just sort of along the ride with our survival-enhancing behavior. How can a mindless process produce minds? This just shows how gullible people can be in the name of science.

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SCIENCE AS POWER Science and magic, as Lewis argues, is similar in the quest for power. Magic was about the quest for power, magicians want to harness the deepest parts of nature in order control the world, and Lewis said that much of science was actually devoted towards power over the world. His doubt on scientific utopianism Many believe that modern science is a catalyst for peace and prosperity – a scientific utopia. For the scientific utopians of Lewis’ era, science was the saviour that will allow us to remake our world. Modern science brings us good things, but on the other hand that tendency to want to control things can bring us the Orwellian state (George Orwell’s “1984”) and so Lewis thought that modern science is more dangerous than magic, because magic failed and doesn’t work, and so it couldn’t be used to control the world, but modern science works and has the potential to control people, by the right jobs, by the right treatments you can manipulate them. Therefore, there is no other way of protecting and limiting what you do in the name of science, some ethical basis that isn’t dictated by science that can control it, then you are facing a really bleak future. Lewis’ doubt on scientific utopianism is highlighted in its work That Hideous Strength which tells of a story where England is made to undergo a scientific dictatorship led by a constitution named National Institute of Coordinated Experiments (ironically, NICE), which performs scientific reformers including sterilization of the unfit, selective breeding, biochemical conditioning, experimentation on both animals and criminals, and above all, truly scientific planning. A scientific planning that is pretending to provide a new humanity that is doing away with traditional ethics and traditional restraints. Lewis depicts a world in That Hideous Strenth where there is nothing sacred. Danielle Bellas told us that the essence of modernity is if nothing is sacred. We see the consequences of the world, and there is nothing sacred including the human person – and therefore there are no distinctions between individuals and anything natural. In his last days, Lewis has become increasingly concerned about scientific authoritarianism. He was very concerned about the dogmatic use of science which is why he wrote That Hideous Strength and The Abolition of Man wherein he worries and predicts the rise of a new class of people, of experts speaking in the name of science, who would dictate to everyone else.

In fact, by the end of his days, Lewis was worrying about the rise of Scientocracy – a government and society that claims to be based in the clams of modern scient but in reality really is based on a scientific clique, of a few people speaking in the name of science and maybe they are adopting the majority of view of science but they are claiming for the right to rule based on their scientific knowledge and expertise. And this concern about scientific authoritarianism seems eerily prophetic.

In a world driven by science and technology, those who question the new order, like CS Lewis did, increasingly find themselves labeled “anti-science” and Lewis would have rejected the charge. Lewis did not accept the idea that science was a special kind of knowledge that was somehow immune to inspection, that was somehow cordoned off from the nonspecialists assessing the deliverances of science. Lewis was well-aware that there’s no such thing as “science” but “Sciences”, and each science has its particular methods and its particular areas of study, and also that the “Sciences” meet to be good, need to interact with one another but they do so by means of the larger tools of good, rational, critical-thinking, and so the things that the scientists say are subject to review by everyone who is able to think well, to think critically, to think rationally. Lewis did not deny that scientific expertise might be necessary for good public policy in many areas, but he insisted that science alone was not sufficient. Knowing how things work, how cells work, how ecosystems work doesn’t tell you what you ought to do for your society, because public policy I not just about the technical expertise of how things work – its about what good is worth having at what prices. And as CS Lewis pointed out on these questions, a scientific training does not give you added value. Scientists are not moral philosophers, yet political and social judgements involve not just how things work, but also how should we act and what’s worth spending money on and what’s worth doing and what freedoms are worth giving up or not. And on these questions, someone’s scientific training does not give them the right to dictate the rest of society. “I dread government in the name of science, that is how tyrannies come in.” – CS Lewis Lewis thought that science was a good thing but it also thought it held some strong dangers. The biggest danger was the penchant for control. In a scientific view, if you think that is the only we can have knowledge of the world and so if you think I have the scientific truth about something, that’sthe end of story, I know everything – that really

tend to feed a power trip. Whether you are a scientist or a political trying to latch onto the prestige of science, you really have people who can abuse their power because they think that “We’re the only ones who know what should happen because we know how the universe works, therefore we should be able to dictate what our cultural beliefs are, we should dictate what our government should do, how we should design governmental programs, we should dictate governmental programs and we should dictate all manner of public policy. And anyone who doesn’t have a scientific training or isn’t part of the consensus view of science is basically stupid, or againstprogress or gainst science, and so should be really swept by the wayside and shouldn’t be listened to.” And Lewis thought that that almost totalitarian impulse was a dangerous thing. Lewis was, rightfully so, frightened by that potential of science. And that’s why he stressed that we really need to find a way to understand the limits of science and that there is something behind science – a larger, transcendent ethical sphere behind science and that we aren’t just blind matter and motion, that we are a part of a designed universe that set limits on what we should and shouldn’t do. Its an age-old question of how can we prevent something good from being twisted for evil ends? CS Lewis hoped that scientists themselves would find a way to rescue science from scientist, creating a regenerate science that respected human rights and honored human dignity – a science that will no longer be… the Magician’s Twin....