We Can Think with the Implicit, As Well As with Fully-Formed Concepts

We can now adopt a new understanding of scientific knowledge and its role in our society. The concepts which science presents change every year. Neither today’s nor next year’s concepts are representations of reality. Many people mistrust science altogether and gladly adopt anything from any other source. Our best thinkers also attest to the fact that every picture, every representation, every theory and set of concepts can break down and be found false. On the other hand it has become quite impossible to live without science. Science has already gone into most of the things we touch all day. Without science six billion people could not live in our crowded space. Neither believing nor attacking the scientific pictures makes sense. Every scientist is aware of the constant change and ambiguity in every field, but no critic of science would like to board an untested airplane or do without electricity and computers. The scientific concepts are not just true but they are not just invented. We cannot get further if we stay within concepts. But we can shift from the concepts to consider how they are generated. Instead of being trapped in the picture of nature which science presents, we can think about the process by which concepts are constantly formed and reformed in a wider context. We can examine the reciprocal interaction, the zig-zag between the wider context and the changing conceptual pictures. To think about concept-formation is most urgent where technology is applied to human beings. This is studied so poorly and primitively, there is no real science of applications at all. Compare the market-application studies with the process in the natural sciences where every new finding is replicated in many laboratories. Every study is many times improved upon. The instruments and measures are based on many layers of careful studies. In contrast, where technology is applied to millions of people, what masquerades for “science ” consists of one or two studies never actually replicated, always on the starting level without validated measures, often paid for by parties interested in the market. The well-earned respect for science is mistakenly transferred to these few studies. Government polic