Political Implication to Science

Introduction to the Politics of Evolution

Essentialism

Magic

Teleology

Pareidolia

Creation Myth

Empiricism

Induction

Deduction

Replication

Implication

Personalism

Characteristics of the human mind

One of the ways to think about scientific thinking is overcoming childhood tendencies of the human mind. How do children think? One characteristic of the primitive human mind is Essentialism. Something has to be either a cat or a dog, that is the way we think. Darwin tells us it is possible to move from “catness” to “dogness.” There is no essence to human things that makes them unique and unchanging. Personalism we see human agency behind everything. “The Gods make it rain.” They don’t. Earthquakes are God's punishment to their doings. Humans are always behaving badly so God's should punish them. We don't think things just “happen” in this sense. Magic Santa Claus is a great example. Many people around the world never get over their belief in magic. This is related to personalism. Magic assumes that there are unseen, unexplainable powers to cause things to happen. Most people in the world, most of the times believe in magical explanations. Teleology we tend to think things don't just happen. Things have intentions. Water seeks its own level, has a mind of its own. Darwin is trying to say most things have no purpose or intention. We must stop thinking that things have intentions. Pattern recognition, our minds have a strong tendency to observe patterns in the world around us even if the patterns are not present, this is known as pareidolia. Science attempts to separate real pattern seeing from fake. The problem of pareidolia is, that when people feel like the victim of something, they use pareidolia to come up with conspiracy theories. (9/11, AIDS, etc.) We have to overcome all of the things mentioned above in order to evaluate scientific argument. Another factor of the primitive mind is the need for a narrative. Human beings think constantly in...