SSM Plebiscite

[Baggers]

Science is a human institution and a human creation like a lot of other things, and is therefore enmeshed in group dynamics, politics, peer group pressure, institutionalized bias etc., the same as any other human endeavour. To believe otherwise is IMO pure folly.

The term pseudoscience is absolutely intended as a negative slur, as though any information presented as such is the work of cranks, snake oil salesmen etc. It never occurs to materialist science that there may in fact be a limitation on their own methods of identification, measurement etc. that may preclude some very worthwhile aspects of knowledge from serious and worthwhile consideration. Some of the best aspects of being on this planet cannot be measured, they can only be lived and experienced.

I don't think it is either/or but rather both. There are some in the science community who are somewhat arrogant and label many things out of their domain as pseudoscience or similar. But perhaps the term pseudoscience is not a put down but rather a comment that puts it aside from the testing of more traditional science, at this time (plenty of pseudoscience eventually became reality... in time). There is much in this world that does not fit science models but that does not mean it is real. Sheldrake gets stuck in this idea that science is confined to 'materialism'. That's a pretty outdated idea. There has been plenty of scientific experimentation on what consciousness is, where the mind is and what it is, etc.

I got into an argument with a known 'skeptic' some time ago, someone who only 'worshiped' science and that if it wasn't scientifically provable then it aint real. I asked him if he loved his mother, he snapped back 'of course', I then asked him to prove it.