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26 April 2006 

People,

I enjoyed Michael Lerner's piece, Welcome: Scientific Uncertainty and Cultures of Belief in CHE, in the April, 2006 newsletter.

It happens that I too am a believer in the scientific approach to understanding the observable world, as I believe most CHE Partners are.

But Mr. Lerner's piece stands on a common, and erroneous, foundation. It is the implied, and unexamined, belief that science is the discoverer and examiner of "Truth", and that other disciplines are based on belief, rarely if ever subjected to (scientific) examination and testing, and therefore unsatisfactorily "proven".

This is true in many cases, since western science is a belief system which defines what it accepts as "valid procedure" fairly narrowly, and other approaches often look for "proof" or validation in other ways. (This is something like belittling the Jewish kosher laws as being "unscientific", which they are, but so what?)

But perhaps more to the point is the historical fact that "science" is always working in unknown territories, commonly producing and defending erroneous conclusions (more often because of missing variables than human incompetence or venality) and in the past has assured us of such things as "DDT is so safe you can drink it."

The linear, reductionist, western scientific method has helped mankind achieve some wonderful things, and I expect it will continue to do so, but its scope is neither universal nor exclusive. Nor does it need to be. I suspect that at a deep, unscientific level, we all know that.

Will Newman II
CHE Partner
Canby, Oregon