The Newest Jerusalem

In my salad days, I used several episodes of the original series COSMOS (hereinafter all caps to distinguish it from the New, Improved Cosmos) in Biology class to help orient 9th graders to the basics of Evolution. Over time, I became uncomfortable with the tone of the series, which moved far beyond Science as a methodology  or a collection of techniques, and devolved into to pronouncements, always beginning with the capitalized "Science Says." Carl Sagan came to seem to me more and more as the high priest of a new dispensation that went far beyond the acquisition and application of knowledge about measurable reality. My view of this was confirmed when I came across a book by Sagan, something about a "demon-haunted world," that fundamentally identifies mental illness as all that is not Science. COSMOS came to assert -as does all materialism- that the reality of Science -what is defined as and duly refereed by Scientists- is the only reality there is, and everything else, far from being merely beyond the purview of scientific investigation, was and is irrelevant superstition,  representative only of ignorance, reaction, oppression, and darkness. And how is this different from the role of the priests of the temple in Ancient Egypt, or the Inquisition of the Catholic Church, which is so roundly condemned by COSMOS? In essence, not at all, and there's a lot of truth in the classic line "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition," because it can take many forms.

The current 2014 Cosmos series, far from being an improvement on COSMOS (except, presumably in special effects) immediately jumps on this bandwagon with the overarching statement, and within the first ten minutes, that "the Cosmos is everything that there is." I would reply with the Tagalog  "akka," or  for you only. Cosmos 2014, to an even greater extent than the original COSMOS, is Science become completely didactic.

There is more in heaven and on earth that can be reached with either the electron microscopes or the telescopes of Science, but that's on their agenda to become "politically incorrect." Taking a very important page from Stalin's takeover of Russia as Party Secretary, the insidious practice that's been readopted is that if it's not on the public agenda, it never gets discussed. And the mass media have been proven compliant with this goal. Science has become the dutiful servant of those who see control as the main goal of human society, pursued to the n-th degree. What previous attempts at totalitarianism got wrong was their ethnocentrism, violence, and brutality. The new totalitarianism will not discriminate on ethnic, racial, sexual, or any of the historic grounds, it instead will be directed with a suffocating benevolence directly at the individual, all individuals, in a totally non-discriminatory manner.

The New Cosmos will of course proceed to the Cosmos' self-invention in the Big Bang from an immeasurably small point (which no one can explain, but they're not going there). While stating that Science banishes us from the tyranny of mere imagination, the producer of the show, through Dr. Tyson, will relentlessly go there whenever they've reached some point that Science cannot address.
Science has begun to wax fundamentally mendacious. Current Science, for example, speaks of "Dark Matter" and "Dark Energy" with complete assurance, as though these things have already been measured and are known. In fact, they are only placeholders marking the inability of contemporary Science to reconcile its own metrics, exactly as the concept of "Ether" was employed in the 19th Century. The High Priests of what has become an institutionally captive Science must always act as though they know, lest the Great Green River of Grants dry up.

Modern science started with people who were very limited in many respects compare to present-day researchers, but in one thing they were immeasurably richer: independence. The advantage of the earlier system of patronage lay in the patron's ignorance of and consequent indifference toward their clients. As long as the client could be presumed to glorify or enrich the patron at some point, the client was free to pursue their goals with a complete lack of interference. Do contemporary scientists enjoy the same freedom? I would submit that many have lost it, and those who have not are in the process of losing it. The actual researcher is now being driven by forces that have nothing whatever to do with the actual practice of Science. More scientists labor at the equivalent of devising a better remote control for televisions than are exploring any Brave New Worlds.

A far too lengthy segment in the initial episode of Cosmos concerns the fate of Giordano Bruno. This segment is portrayed in a strangely crude, not even animated set of pictures, in stark contrast to the slick graphics of the galaxy shown earlier. One presumes this is somehow meant to convey the crudeness and brutality of those times....although, I suspect, all it did was put a contemporary viewing audience off. It's rather like getting kids nowadays to watch Rocky and Bullwinkle. The message of the fate of Giordano Bruno was in line with the rest of the message of Cosmos: that which is not Science is now very likely (soon = almost certainly) Bad. There is neither freedom of belief or opinion outside of the pronouncements of Science in Cosmos, only being Wrong.

Next on the agenda is the ongoing attack on free will. Once it can be firmly established (probably by the Center for Disease Control) that free will is just another superstition, all human liberties become irrelevant. I look forward to seeing this in future episodes....which, as of this date, I have no plan to watch. The litmus test for those who do choose to watch
COSMOS is to keep track of how much actual discussion of scientific method there is, as opposed to scientific pronouncements.....because method, and not statements of Truth, is all science really is.