MacCruiskeen » Mon Nov 29, 2021 8:19 pm wrote:It's not just philosophical, though, it's highly practical. Indeed, it's urgent. Since late 2019, billions of people have had their lives disrupted or destroyed by powerful actors who cite TheScience™ as justification for a Great Reset. For nearly two years now, hundreds of millions of defenceless children have been force-masked, antisocially-distanced, browbeaten, frightened, indoctrinated, addicted to screens, thorougly and lastingly conditioned, marked for life, taught to fear the air they breathe and the humans who breathe it -- and now they're being pricked with dangerous experimental gene-fiddling substances they demonstrably do not need, but which will make billions of dollars for the manufacturers.
All this is all "justified" by reference to Germ Theory, the sacred, foundational and barely-challengeable dogma that they, we, all of us, are under constant mortal threat from ubiquitous Flying Killer-Dots, tiny wee monsters we can't even see, things that aren't even alive but like nothing better than making us sick and killing us..
Are even scientists human? Call me cynical, but I think so. Are they sometimes lazy, vain, complacent or corrupt? (Whaddya, whaddya.) Do powerful individuals and institutions have a vested interest in not biting the hand that feeds them? (You go too far, sir, by God you go too far.)
Have scientific paradigms ever changed? Only with difficulty, usually slowly and reluctantly. We might ask Copernicus, Galileo, Einstein, Alfred Wegener or Ignaz Semmelweis, just for starters.
Can it be that even today's TheScience™ is not infallible? The question might conceivably be worth looking into, while there's still time and while we're still allowed to.
Ha! You admit in your later examples that it is indeed a philosophical question. I happen to believe philosophy is of profound practical importance and underpins everything we do, even today. From your experience of having studied it, you believe otherwise, so I bow to your superior knowledge.