Chemistry and the mundane

I heard someone remark how they thought science could contribute to how food was made. I am sure we have heard these wide eyed comments before and not just on this subject. That someone would suggest such a thing amuses me. Food is the basis of chemistry, biochemistry and the application of physics. While it is mundane it is most vital, it is probably how we learnt some of most vital aspects of dealing with chemicals. A friend of mine has always eaten cake with fascination and why not, cake she claims is the invention of a very clever chemist. Cooking is magical if you think about it, combing flavours in different way with different temperatures is very scientific, and yet we take this fro granted.

I spent this weekend making kimchi (Korean pickled cabbage). It was fascinating to think how someone came  up with the idea in the first place. The careful process of draining excess water out of cabbage, adding various spices and vegetables to the mixture all to have vegetables during a cold winter. Cheese is just as fascinating. At what moment in time did we decide to drink another animals milk and when did we realise we could cook this milk to make something completely different out of it? The first cooks probably felt a sense of adventure to create different tastes and textures, preserving food, making it more palatable, heating or cooling it. Even now when you see a good cook you get the feeling that they know something innate about combing ingredients and dishing out something tasty.

It also brings me to my next question- have we lost our most basic understanding of how things are created? As a child I was fascinated by basic experiments, it made my world come alive, boiling water bubbling away on a hot stove, a magnifying glass enlarging small objects. The very basic of these activities are some of the most profound. We live in a world where we are surrounded by very complex technology however the most basic of these is what started it all. Everything around us is technology from the humble door latch to a touch screen computer.  It is not the complex that informs the basic but the other way around. 

Save me from the good doctor

Medical procedures are almost always justified on the basis of brining cures to a larger population for the greater good. To reject or question a procedure is seen as rejecting science and giving into superstition. I find the defence of science problematic as it positions certain kinds of knowledge as superstitious and it has created an environment where to critique science is taboo. I am sure the doctors who worked on curing Henrietta were doing this for her own good and to help future generations their goodwill is not to be questioned but their ethical standpoint should be. Non-dominant groups of people have a deep sense of suspicion towards the medical establishment which is justified their bodies are used for experimental purposes. Apart from that there is issue of being mistreated while seeking medical help. We seem to have an implicit understanding that medical procedures are invasive and violating of human dignity. 

Here is a documentary by Adam Curtis  on how Henrietta Lacks cancer cells were used without her permission for research 

Scientific therefore neutral

Does science = neutrality ? This is  an assumption we take for granted in the modern era(by modern I refer to the era during and post enlightenment). We have come to believe that science unlike religion is more informed and is rational. The term rational is quite problematic as it assumes there is something irrational. It creates a dichotomy between ancient and medieval and modern. Modern being a better state. The realm of the other 2 eras is relegated to being romanticised or being seen through biased eyes.

Our idea that science is rational when compared religion or belief is misleading, science is never neutral. The assumption that cutting something of from its natural environment and studying it will give us a neutral response. Psychology is one such discipline that desperately tries to use scientificity as a means to justify its end. At it heart lies the assumption that it can acquire the same status as the natural science if its methods are mimic those used in the natural sciences. Statics come to the rescue here; breaking something down into numbers will apparently make it more scientific.

This fallacy has often lead to disastrous results by scientists conducting scientific research. One of my favourite examples is intelligence and intelligence testing. Intelligence is a badly defined concept and one that most psychologists do not agree upon. On this shaky foundation intelligence tests were constructed using scientific means. The Nazis picked up on these ideas of inferiority and superiority as a basis for killing people. this of course is well documented history and an extreme example. There are a lot more horror stories but I will skip them. Today intelligence tests help separate students with difficulties from well functioning children. We set up special schools for such children. All of this can hide behind the guise of being helpful and science.

We have come to believe in science as something that will give us the right answers. I use the term ‘believe’ deliberately because we don’t question its authority and believe in its benign presence. We assume that if an idea has some scientific backing it is good and correct and neutral.

Science however is never neutral, and it can never be. By writing a certain way or by following certain methods and idea does not become neutral. Natural science isn’t neutral. It takes a certain amount of conjecture and intuition to prove something in the natural sciences. The natural sciences are learning to live with uncertainty. Psychology however needs to prove the existence of things that are merely constructed by it. By hiding behind the guise of pseudo neutrality psychology subtly pushes its own agenda.

Most scientific ideas are based in not so neutral ideas. Take for example eugenics, which sorted out good healthy people from the ones that were useless to society. This idea has taken the form of cultural differences or gender differences. Women are not unclean creatures (not a medieval idea as we like to assume) but they are trapped by their biology. PMS syndrome is presented as evidence for a woman’s weakness and her inability to be as competent as a man. The people behind such research are not consciously trying to suppress women nor are a part of a grand conspiracy; they are products of their environment in which women internalise passive roles.

Good science if there is such a thing isn’t about proving something it is more profound than that, it is about accepting that a problem may not have an answer or the answer isn’t what one hoped for or that the answer isn’t dependent on the method.

Science has come to take the place of religion. Lets not say but religion was false and look at how it oppressed people. This is a weak argument that goes nowhere. Lets not assume religion was universally bad and science is universally good and is helping us become rational beings. We can’t discard either. We need to question both. Lets not assume that a sterile lab can give us all the answers we are looking for and we can do things better.  The egocentricism that modernity has assumed towards other forms of thought are repressive.

I am attaching 2 links one to a program which is aired on BBC Horizon which starts with the question how long is a piece of string. This program challenges the idea of observation and measurement as an absolute.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbodZKrAOGg

The second link if for a documentary by Adam Curtis- All Watched By Machines Of Loving Grace. This documentary looks at how we have come to believe that technology will set us free and how ideas of order and balance have been oppressive.  The documentary a lot of interpretations these are just two of them that I thought complimented the paper.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxb3Vs9i7DU&feature=related

this link is for part one of four.