In our current society, many people worship science as if it is a religion. I don’t blame them. The scientific method is great for making inductions and predictions with great probability, efficiency and precision. However, certain key theories that were produced in the history of the scientific method have taken a dominant place in our belief systems and are making us act in crazy ways.

The specific paradigm I have problems with is that of scientific materialism, mainly influenced by Newton and Darwin. These two gentlemen have been extremely influential in the scientific, social, and cultural realms and their theories are still used up to this day. Whether or not their theories are true is not the main point in this article; what is important is how their theories influence how we behave, and it isn’t pretty.

The Paradigm of Scientific Materialism

Before I go into how this paradigm is influencing our behaviour, I will first highlight a few important aspects of it:

1. The idea that ‘only matter matters’, stemming from Newtonian physics.
According to Newton, physical matter is the only fundamental reality and therefore we can derive knowledge from observing how matter behaves. Newtonian physics is also reductionist: everything can be understood by dissecting it and studying its individual parts. Furthermore, every action produces a reaction. Therefore, occurrences in nature are causally determined, which means that natural processes can be predicted and controlled with mathematics.

2. The idea that the ‘secrets of life’ are to be found within the genes.
This makes sense when you believe only physical matter is real: if only matter matters, the key to life and behaviour must lie inside the material body. This idea got real support when molecular biologists Watson and Crick entered the scene.

They claimed to have found the material origins of life with the discovery of the DNA double helix. As a result, it is a widely held belief that DNA determines our physical and behavioural traits and that with knowledge of DNA, you can alter and control those traits [1].

3. Darwin’s struggle of life and the survival of the fittest.
According to Darwin’s theory of evolution, all life is struggling to stay alive and it only makes sense that the fittest would survive, procreate, and pass on their genes.

4. The idea that ‘evolution is random’.
According to Darwin, evolution is a result of random mutations that happened to accidentally be beneficial to the survival of the organism. The result is that the mutated organisms have a better chance of survival and will pass on the mutation.

Now, this all seems perfectly rational. However, if we adopt these beliefs and act accordingly, they aren’t so great anymore. The paradigm of scientific materialism creates a passive society that is obsessed with material production and consumption.

Here’s why:

According to Newton’s view, there is only matter. This has led us to focus on everything that is matter, including material possession. This combined with Darwin’s notion of survival of the fittest causes an obsession with material goods. Due to the belief in survival of the fittest, we always keep competing to become fitter and fitter. This leads to the perception that we live in an extremely hostile world and that we are in an ongoing battle for survival.

If only matter exists, the way to become fitter is to do that through matter, which usually translates into acquiring more material goods. Furthermore, the idea that our genes are responsible for our behaviour and the idea that evolution is random make us victims of those processes. It takes away our responsibility, which makes us prone to conformism and refrains us from acting responsibly. All this leads to gluttony and pollution which is leading us to our own demise.

I’m not just making this stuff up, it is illustrated in the statistics of the past 500 years:

The population of humans has increased from 500 million to 7 billion since the year 1500; the value of all the goods produced by mankind in the year 1500 is estimated at 250 billion in today’s dollars, while in present-day we produce goods with a worth totalling 60 trillion dollars; and in the year 1500, we used to consume 13 trillion calories a day while in present-day we consume 1500 trillion calories [2]. This means that the population has increased fourteen-fold, compared to 240-fold for production and 115-fold for energy consumption [3]. Furthermore, studies have established that our gluttony and pollution are leading to the 6th mass extinction of life on earth. If we continue in this trend, half of all species will be extinct by the end of this century[4].

Social Darwinism

To make things worse, there is another issue with Darwin’s theory because it can lead to straight-up IMMORAL behaviour like megalomania, racism, and even genocide because it can justify ideologies with ‘eugenics’ and ‘social-Darwinism’. In the following quote, German philosopher Arendt beautifully describes these dangers:

“Darwinism met with such overwhelming success because it provided, on the basis of inheritance, the ideological weapons for race as well as class rule and could be used for, as well as against, race discrimination. Politically speaking, Darwinism as such was neutral,  and it has led, indeed, to all kinds of pacifism and cosmopolitanism as well as to the sharpest forms of imperialistic ideologies […] For political discussion, Darwinism offered two important concepts: the struggle for existence with optimistic assertion of the necessary and automatic “survival of the fittest,” and the indefinite possibilities which seemed to lie in the evolution of man out of animal life and which started the new “science” of eugenics”.[5]

Social-Darwinism and eugenics claim that survival of the fittest doesn’t just control the evolution of biology; it also controls social and cultural developments. This means that the individuals that are ‘fitter’ socially and culturally are justified to force their will upon other ‘weaker’ individuals. In general, these ideas lead to megalomania of the elite, a naive belief in progress, and justification of things like colonialism and racism.

Moreover, eugenics uses Darwinian evolution theory to justify the ‘purification’ of society. One of the most prominent examples of this is the Holocaust and other horrible events that happened in Nazi Germany. The fallacy made in applying evolutionary theory to culture is that the evolution theory in biology claims that the passing on of traits is realized through genetics (nature), while the development of culture is realized through tradition and education (nurture)[6].

I’ve painted a pretty bleak picture when it comes to scientific materialism:

It can justify immoral behaviour, as the atrocities surrounding social Darwinism and eugenics illustrate. Furthermore, the paradigm of mechanism turns humans into passive beings and makes us focused on production and consumption, which is destroying our planet. We are disempowered by the Darwinian notion that evolution is driven by an eternal struggle for survival and by the idea that we are victims of our genes. Consequently, if our behaviour is determined and controlled by the causal-mechanical process, why would we try to actively change it?

You might be thinking: ‘Aren’t these theories the fundament of our science? We can’t just get rid of them like that.’

Well, maybe we can, cause luckily there is an alternative.

The Alternative to Scientific Materialism

The alternatives to these theories are explained wonderfully by cell biologist Bruce Lipton in his book Spontaneous Evolution (2011). Let’s first tackle the idea that only the physical is real.

After Newton, there have been multiple physicists like Roentgen, Curie, Thomson, Planck and Einstein proving that the world is not just made up of matter but that there are also invisible forces and energies at work. “Quantum mechanics emphasizes that the material Universe – with all of its atoms, particles, and matter – is actually a component of, and controlled by the indivisible universal matrix of energy forces that collectively comprise the field”[7]. Thus, behind every particle is a wave controlling what the particle does.

Next, the idea that our DNA is the key to life has been disproved by the human genome project that found significantly less genes than predicted. We only have 23,000 genes (not more than a roundworm) instead of the 150,000 that was predicted.  Furthermore, only five percent of the world’s population suffer from birth defects, which means they have mutated genes that code for dysfunctional proteins (Willet, 2002, pp. 695-698). Therefore, most people have a set of well-functioning genes and can’t blame their genes for their behaviour or limitations.

Moreover, research from the field of epigenetics shows that for a large part it is our environment that controls the expression of our genes[8]. Additionally, new evolving science is revealing that the mind plays a major role in this process[9]. Therefore, the belief that biology is preprogrammed is fundamentally flawed. Epigenetic science reveals that instead of being victims of our genes, we have the power to control our fate by controlling our perception and our environment[10].

It is also easy to find an alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution, and don’t worry, you don’t have to give up the idea of evolution altogether.

Bruce Lipton objects that Darwin focuses too much on the survival of the stronger individuals instead of focusing on the weakest elements of society being eliminated. According to his alternative version of evolution, survival depends on how quickly people share and process information and how well they communicate with each other[11].

Lipton promotes the alternative Lamarckian view of evolution, which states that “evolution is based on an instructive cooperative interaction among organisms in the biosphere that enables life forms to survive by adapting to changes in a dynamic environment’’.[12] Seems like there is a pretty good alternative to scientific materialism which will not have the detrimental side effects. So, let go of these dusty old theories and adapt the new alternatives. This will transfer to your belief system and cause you to be a more pleasant human being in a world that also suddenly seems to be a much more pleasant place to live.

Doesn’t that sound nice?

Book Recommendations

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Notes

[1] Lipton, B. H., & Bhaerman, S. (2011). Spontaneous Evolution, p. 128. London, England: Hay House UK  Ltd.

[2] Harari, Y. N. (2011). Sapiens, a Brief History of Humankind, p.275. London, England: Penguin.

[3] Ibid

[4] Lipton, B. H., & Bhaerman, S. (2011). Spontaneous Evolution, p. 3. London, England: Hay House UK  Ltd.

[5] Arendt, H. (1951). The Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 178. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace & Company.

[6] Buskes, C. (2006). Evolutionair denken, de invloed van Darwin op ons wereldbeeld, pp. 380-381. Amsterdam,  the Netherlands: Uitgeverij Nieuwezijds.

[7] Lipton, B. H., & Bhaerman, S. (2011). Spontaneous Evolution, p. 100. London, England: Hay House UK  Ltd.

[8] Ibid, p. 142.

[9] Lipton, B. H. (2010). The Biology of Belief, p.161. London, England: Hay House UK Ltd.

[10] Lipton, B. H., & Bhaerman, S. (2011). Spontaneous Evolution, p. 63. London, England: Hay House UK  Ltd.

[11] Ibid, pp. 110-114.

[12] Ibid, p. 145.