Most science, as it is often practiced today, tries to control nature. But for all science’s success, the world is becoming too toxic, human violence remains undiminished, and we are less content than most plants and animals. We may be living longer, but hardly better. This is what comes of our mistaking the primary purpose of science: control can certainly be a by-product of the scientific method, but the main purpose serves a higher ideal.
As with all rituals, scientific or supernatural, control is only half the equation. The other half is spontaneity. Control is necessary within the competition of landscapes; control is provided by the landmarks and pathways (which we have inherited, from evolution, from culture, and from personal experience), which lead us to what we need to survive. But when things fall apart — when our landmarks and pathways stop working — we need to be spontaneous. We need to notice, and consciously ritual with (experiment with, or play with), new qualia, and new qualia comes to us from ecosystems.
We have to cede control and instead play with what appears to us, to see what answers come our way. Be it a scientific experiment gone wrong or some other crisis, we have to “get what we can” from it. Thus, conscious ritualing, and good science, is practiced with both control (knowledge) and spontaneity (play).
The higher ideal that science must serve is — or ought to be — ecosystems. If not, the average scientist might as well be shaking a stick at the clouds. He or she is doing little more than improving the stuff we can own — making our cars go an extra 10 or even 50 miles per gallon isn’t gonna solve the energy problem, much less climate change. If we can look beyond the landscape and into the ecosystems which inform them, however, we can turn this around. The rituals of science are more successful when ecosystems are taken into the equation.
Be Qualiadelic!