On Dissent

Always get your expectations right. Thats what they say.

Thats why when it was announced that the forum will be about
William of Occam and the lecture was really off, I was having
doubts as to whether I was in the right room hall or not. Maybe I
was in the right location, but the location itself has shifted to a
parallel dimension. Regardless of what the actual state of affairs
is, a short entry had to be written. Since not much information
about Occam has been presented by the lecturer, aside from
saying that Occam was persecuted, the topic had to change.
Aligning myself to the lecturers topic, this entry will be about
dissent and cultural change.
As a background for understanding dissent and cultural
change, he presented an introduction on Medieval Science.
Apparently, the zeitgeist was like the The Script album: the
struggle was between scientia (science) or episteme vs. doxa
(opinion or faith). Politics and religion also had a pull on science.
Credibility was measured by your authority. Proof didnt matter if
you did not hold a position of power. In addition, it was also
heavily philosophical, and therefore relied more on logic than on
empirical observations and data. The Medieval period was all
about change. They wanted to know what changed and what
remained constant, since the entities and relationships that
remain constant are those that are from God and by God.
Since this approach was terribly lacking, scientists had to
engage in dissension. Dissent is basically, not consenting. No
consensus is made. You do not agree. In this context, it is the
breaking away from the current ideologies and ways of
approaching science. Scientists who were involved in the
dissension saw that in order to obtain knowledge (in spite of
what the skeptics argue), they had to evolve. Using mathematical
proofs derived from observing nature, they presented their
different theories. Much like what Galileo did. And like Galileo,
who was put on house arrest and whose work was made null and
passed off as a mere intellectual exercise and void of all truth,

many dissenters were persecuted, especially since it proved the

officials in the higher echelons of power were mistaken and that
their beliefs were inconsistent with what is actually the current
natural state of affairs.
But because of this dissension, we achieved cultural change.
With the changing of the mind-set from being authority-oriented
to being proof-oriented, we are able to arrive at the current form
of the scientific community. Valuing empirical data over authority
paid off, causing great advances in science and technology. One
current issue though, is the ethical issue still. Even if we are no
longer being dictated what knowledge is (to some extent), there
is still the issue of not stepping on the rights of others.
Changing mind-sets and shifting mental paradigms will
allow us reach for cultural change. So the question is: What
mind-sets can we use in order to progress, given the Philippine
context (while dodging the propaganda and the mind-sets that
are being fed to us by first-world, capitalist countries)?
John Paul N. Ada
2010 - 46567