It is a curious manifestation of the wooly-headed thinking of many pseudo scientists that they are almost paranoid about debunking the alleged dogmatism of philosophy while they themselves seek to enthrone “Science” as the ultimate arbiter of what is true and what is not. In public debates on important social issues they reject out of hand arguments which are proposed on the basis of cogent reason and unimpeachable logical premises. In their counter arguments they do not show how the arguments violate the rules of logic. They simply reject them as emanating from “religious” presuppositions. However, in the process of doing this, they themselves implicitly (and often, explicitly) make claims which cannot be sustained either by factual evidence or even by logical consistency.

Science, as a human discipline, is not to be ridiculed or rejected. God has provided man with reason precisely so that he can try to know the world around him – the world in which he lives, moves and has his being. The objective of human reason is the pursuit of truth. All science is directed towards this objective. As long as the “Truth” remains unknown, science has a role to play in human development. In fact, the quest for truth, like the quest for beauty and goodness are ingrained in human nature. This is precisely what differentiates humans from all other animals. However, our pseudo-scientists seem to forget that all science is an on-going process. The more we learn, the more we discover that we do not know. It hardly behoves the scientist, therefore, to pretend that he has understood the truth. The Truth will always remain unfathomable. Knowledge does not guarantee understanding; neither does understanding necessarily lead to wisdom. The pilgrimage from knowledge to wisdom via understanding is a long and arduous journey. What is required in this pilgrimage is an attitude of humility and openness, and, above all, an acknowledgement that our knowledge is always tentative and open to correction and further development.

Furthermore, it needs to be acknowledged that the quest for knowledge is a collective enterprise which involves all of humankind, and all of the other disciplines in which humankind is involved. It is presumptuous in the extreme to assume that one can definitively proclaim a “fact” on the basis of any one discipline. The great physiologist Sherrington (1953) states that: “Though living is analyzable and describable by natural science, that associate of living, thought, escapes and remains refractory to natural science. In fact natural science repudiates it as something outside its ken. A radical distinction has therefore arisen between life and mind. The former is an affair of chemistry and physics; the latter escapes chemistry and physics.” (Dobzhansky: p.3). Many neurologists today attempt to explain thought in purely neurological terms. Dobzhansky (p.52) asserts that “To the former (neurologists), there is no great difference between fish and philosopher, and nothing more remarkable about his human brain secreting thoughts than about his liver secreting bile...”

Man’s scientific achievements have caused him to become arrogant. Scientists have deluded themselves into believing that they have crossed the threshold which gives man mastery over Nature. Just as they begin to crow about the achievements of science, they are confronted with the unimaginable power of an earthquake, or a tsunami or a volcanic eruption or a devastating hurricane. Medical scientists have not yet fathomed the why and the how of the sudden appearance of previously unknown diseases such as AIDS. They are still struggling to understand how viruses mutate or how schizophrenia has reached nearly epidemic proportions in a world which claims to have gained mastery over nature. Dr. C.G. Jung the eminent Psychotherapist warns us that “Rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree. If the affective temperature rises above this level, the possibility of reason’s having any effect ceases and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wish-fantasies. That is to say, a sort of collective possession results which rapidly develops into a psychic epidemic. In this state all those elements whose existence is merely tolerated as asocial under the rule of reason come to the top. Such individuals are by no means rare curiosities to be met with only in prisons and lunatic asylums. For every manifest case of insanity there are, in my estimation, at least ten latent cases who seldom get to the point of breaking out openly but whose views and behavior, for all their appearance of normality are influenced by unconsciously morbid and perverse factors.”

A recent event, startling in its ramifications, adds weight to the caution that scientists should not rush to conclusions about anything based on the current status of available knowledge. The New England Journal of Medicine recently reported that a victim of a car accident in Belgium who was diagnosed to be in a “vegetative state” for five years, and who was considered to be beyond recovery suddenly showed signs of brain activity by the use of sophisticated MRI scanning techniques. According to a New York report, February 4th. “Experts said . . . that the finding could alter the way some severe head injuries were diagnosed – and could raise troubling ethical questions about whether to consult severely disabled patients on their care.” Quite obviously, diagnoses made on the basis of current technology are proving to be inadequate. “I’m convinced as an observer that in these few cases, the MRI technique, in these researchers’ hands, gives us a window into human consciousness that we have not had and that potentially adds to the clinical exam we currently use,” said Dr. James L. Bernat, a professor of neurology at Dartmouth Medical School.

Given the total inadequacy of the present state of neurology, it is amazing that some over-enthusiastic doctors can emphatically declare that they can determine when an human embryo “is likely to satisfy the neuroscientific definition of a person or personhood, which is a state of being conscious of oneself and one’s environment, and of being capable of thought and willed action.” The neuroscientific basis of defining human “personhood” is not only inadequate, it is patently unscientific. In her preface to the masterly book by Dr. Theodosius Dobzhansky – “The Biology of Ultimate Concern”, Dr. Ruth Nanda Anshen reminds us that “It is ultimately impossible to make a true statement about the physiological dynamics of the human body without taking into consideration the spirit which forms the flesh. It is ultimately impossible to describe the self-destructive tendencies in a neurotic person without describing the structures of estrangement in man’s social existence. . . They show that the departmentalization of our knowledge of man, although it was and is a matter expediency, is at the same time a cause for distortion.” Dr. Jung also strongly affirms that “The connection with the brain does not in itself prove that the psyche is an epiphenomenon, a secondary function casually dependent on biochemical processes.”

The present unsatisfactory state of human knowledge and the immense vastness of the unknown requires all of us, specially self-appointed scientists, to have the humility to acknowledge that science does not have the answers to all our questions. The true scientific attitude is one of openness and willingness to examine other insights, even those presented by the non-scientific community. To dogmatize science is to close the door on all serious investigations into the human condition. Most importantly, it needs to be remembered that Man is not a mere subject of scientific investigation, to be placed under a microscope and to be examined by physiologists, biologists, neurologists, endocrinologists and the myriad other scientists. Man has a transcendent destiny, and the meaning of Man can only be grasped in the light of his ultimate purpose.