Science is a form of human cognition. It extends natural sensory-based perception, augmenting the senses with instruments and reason. Ostensibly, it is a quest for the truth of nature underlying changing appearances: a search for laws which succinctly express observed regularities and for fundamental entities and their properties. But science must also be understood as a biological strategy of a particular creature to cope with its environment. The study of nature is a human undertaking, performed for reasons that involve the characteristics of human agents as well as those of the world studied. It is no more able than natural cognition to perceive the world as it “really” is apart from any perceiver. (For example, how the world “looked” before there were eyes to see.) Science may be more advantageous than ordinary perception for some purposes—like making money, technology, and war. Even the most seemingly disinterested research is often ultimately used to control nature or other people.
The truths sought by science are no more independent of the inquirer than the truths sought in ordinary cognition. Both ultimately are survival strategies: we see in ways that allow us to live. Of course, normal perception seems to us a transparent window on the world, which we take for granted. Yet, we know that it is a product of the nervous system, as much shaped by the biology and needs of the organism as by the external world. We must surmise that scientific cognition is likewise a function of the observer as much as of the world observed.
As a form of cognition, science focuses on a world it presumes to exist independently of itself, yet is haunted by the same ambiguity that troubles human consciousness generally: the doubtful relationship between appearance and reality. Scientific objectivity aims for a god’s-eye perspective. Yet, all description is necessarily from the point of view of the embodied observer. Objective description skirts acknowledging the observer’s subjectivity. Yet, all observers stand in a first-person epistemic relation to the world—whether through their natural sensory-motor instrumentation or via external devices that extend human agency. Science has developed protocols to avoid the idiosyncrasies of individual observers. But has it transcended the biases of homo sapiens, of particular cultures, or even of this generation of observers?
Science is not a matter of passive observation. It actively intervenes in nature—through controlled experiment, obviously—but also by imposing theoretical models on gathered data and by imposing resulting technology on the natural world. The model may dictate the sort of data sought. The presence of technology and humanly-defined environments changes the planet. We can no longer study nature in the raw, but only nature transformed by us in thought and in deed. Similarly, natural cognition actively intervenes, though without our normally realizing it. Our ideas about reality (including scientific ideas) transparently shape our experience.
The relation of the scientific model to the real world cannot simply be taken for granted in the way that the unconscious model is in ordinary experience, which has been informally “tested” through generations of adaptation. The scientific model must be formally tested in experiment, which is the whole point of doing science. This is hardly straightforward, however, since experiments yield their results in test situations that are already prescribed by theory. The experiment is effectively a physical realization of the theoretical model. That is rather like building a machine whose parts and operations are believed to be analogous to some natural process or system (in other words, a simulation). If the machine works, then the model is presumed to be an accurate representation of reality. However, a machine does not need to reflect reality in order to function. It only needs to be consistent within itself.
The parallel between scientific and ordinary cognition works both ways. We can learn something about natural perception by looking at scientific method. Helmholtz’s 19th-century idea of “unconscious inference” intuited how brain processes resemble formal reasoning. Brain processing is now understood as a form of computation. In particular, we can begin to account for the miracle of conscious experience by putting ourselves in the place of the brain as an agent, like ourselves, with a point of view. It is not merely a mechanical system operating passively on cause and effect, but a self-programming system. It is programmer as well as computer.
The epistemic circumstance of the scientist mimics that of the brain, sealed inside the skull. Both situations demand radical inference. Just as the brain relies on the input of receptors to infer the nature of the real world, so the scientist relies on instrument readings. The brain uses unconscious perceptual models, according to the body’s needs and goals. Scientists consciously model observed phenomena, according to their goals. The brain’s unconscious perceptual models are reliable to the degree they enable survival at the individual, group, or species level. By the same token, scientific models, like other human practices, should be regarded not only for their truth value but also for their ultimate contribution to human well-being and prospects. “Good” science is not only science that is done properly but which also supports a human future.
If we look deeper than the myth of science as detached, objective knowledge—a modern creation story—we recognize its social commitment to provide a certain kind of practical empowerment. Then science appears to form an integral part of the general management of society, as the conceptual and technological extension of human powers, both active and cognitive. As our modern interface with nature, science should be integral with the social planning that necessarily involves that interface. While that is a double-edged sword, wariness of mad scientists should be tempered by wariness of mad political leaders.
Like ordinary cognition, science focuses on what it can do, the scope of which should at least permit us to survive. Far from a divine revelation, or an open window on objective reality, science is an unfinished collective human enterprise. It provides a model of international cooperation and method for achieving consensus. Science is itself an experiment. For that reason, it is important to recognize its strengths and its limitations—in particular, to value it as a human construct with potential either to unify humanity and ensure its survival or to hasten its extinction.