Sapiens author Yuval Noah Harari thinks that modern humanity puts too much blind faith in science. Harari suggests that many people believe that science is true, unbiased, and progressive because it’s rooted in discovering facts about the world, but he disagrees. Harari emphasizes that scientists still have to interpret the data they observe, meaning there’s a level of storytelling involved in scientific theories and they don’t solely deal in hard facts. He also suggests that “economic, political, and religious interests” impact scientific research. For example, when politicians need better technology to win wars, or corporate executives seek new technology to make money, they fund scientific research that will help them achieve their goals (like developing the atomic bomb), whether or not that research actually helps humanity progress. Harari concludes that the rest of humanity should thus be more wary of science, and he advocates thinking about whether or not scientific advances actually benefit us, rather than blindly trusting in science’s findings.
Harari argues that it’s a mistake to assume that science is necessarily reliable just because it’s rooted in observing facts about the world. Scientists observe the world, but they also “need to connect observations into comprehensive theories.” With this, Harari underscores that science isn’t just about observing facts and collecting data; it also involves speculation about what those facts say about the world. Scientists are also often wrong, and their theories get replaced with newer theories as science progresses, suggesting there’s a significant amount of guesswork in the scientific endeavor. From Harari’s perspective, scientific theories aren’t actually that different from ancient religious texts, which also offer theories about the world and how it works. Harari thinks the central difference is that “Earlier traditions usually formulated their theories in terms of stories. Modern science uses mathematics.” Harari suggests that scientific theories are “stories” that interpret the world, meaning that humanity shouldn’t blindly assume scientific theories are reliable just because they’re centered on observation and told in the language of mathematics. Harari also points out that scientific research costs money, meaning people with power and money control which research programs get funded. For example, nations with war interests (or desire to expand an “empire”) often fund scientific research into new weaponry. Effectively, powerful people fund the scientific research that will help them achieve a particular goal (like wealth or political expansion). Science is rarely—if ever—neutral.
Harari contends that since scientific advancements typically serve the elite’s personal goals (like wealth or expansion of empires), they don’t automatically serve humanity’s best interest. Research into machine learning is one such example of this, as it’s primarily funded by corporations who want to automate their production lines to save money. Harari imagines a future in which computer programs evolve skills that “humans can neither rival nor understand” and start deciding “whom to give a mortgage to and whom to send to prison” without human input. Harari suggests that such technology will help some people get richer, but it might harm humanity in the long run. Similarly, Harari worries about governments who fund cyborg technology to embed computer chips in insects’ bodies, for spying behind enemy lines. He imagines a future in which humans embrace the evolving technology without knowing about the “philosophical, psychological, or political implications” of inserting computer chips into our bodies. Once again, Harari suggests that governments fund technological advancements to help their empires amass more power, but that doesn’t mean such advancements will be good for humanity. Harari concludes that science’s emerging technologies don’t necessarily come about with humanity’s best interest in mind, and he warns his readers to think about how beneficial a new technology is before blindly accepting it into their lives.
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Science, Wealth, and Empire Quotes in Sapiens
The Scientific Revolution has not been a revolution of knowledge. It has been above all a revolution of ignorance. The great discovery that launched the Scientific Revolution was the discovery that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions. Premodern traditions of knowledge such as Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Confucianism asserted that everything that is important to know about the world was already known […] It was inconceivable that the Bible, the Qur’an or the Vedas were missing out on a crucial secret of the universe—a secret that might yet be discovered by flesh-and-blood creatures.
Mere observations, however, are not knowledge. In order to understand the universe, we need to connect observations into comprehensive theories. Earlier traditions usually formulated their theories in terms of stories. Modern science uses mathematics.
Throughout most of history, mathematics was an esoteric field that even educated people rarely studied seriously. In medieval Europe, logic, grammar and rhetoric formed the educational core, while the teaching of mathematics seldom went beyond simple arithmetic and geometry. Nobody studied statistics. The undisputed monarch of all sciences was theology. Today few students study rhetoric; logic is restricted to philosophy departments, and theology to seminaries.
Consider the following quandary: two biologists from the same department, possessing the same professional skills, have both applied for a million-dollar grant to finance their current research projects. […] Assuming that the amount of money is limited, and that it is impossible to finance both research projects, which one should be funded? There is no scientific answer to this question. There are only political, economic and religious answers.
Henceforth not only European geographers, but European scholars in almost all other fields of knowledge began to draw maps with spaces left to fill in. They began to admit that their theories were not perfect and that there were important things that they did not know.
Scientific research is usually funded by either governments or private businesses. When capitalist governments and businesses consider investing in a particular scientific project, the first questions are usually, ‘Will this project enable us to increase production and profits? Will it produce economic growth?’ A project that can’t clear these hurdles has little chance of finding a sponsor. No history of modern science can leave capitalism out of the picture.
It’s unclear whether bioengineering could really resurrect the Neanderthals, but it would very likely bring down the curtain on Homo sapiens. Tinkering with our genes won’t necessarily kill us. But we might fiddle with Homo sapiens to such an extent that we would no longer be Homo sapiens.
