On Zizek's misunderstanding of science

Each time Zizek speaks about science I get annoyed. From comparing the trauma to Einstein shift on the role of mass in general relativity, to his grand unifications... all the time he falls on the typical non scientific temptation of validating himself with examples from science. Let me tell you something, you don't need to. And let me tell you another thing, most of the time you are simply wrong.

And he goes further, even to explain what we feel and understand: "Scientists perceive themselves [sic.] as rational, able to appraise potential risks objectively; for them, the only unpredictable-irrational elements are the panic reaction of the uneducated masses... What scientist are unable to perceive is the "irrational" inadequate, nature of their own "cold and distanced" appraisal." From In Defense of Lost Causes. I mean, really, do you really think what you wrote? or is it a political act? And he keeps on it: "We are not talking here about science as such [of course, how will we dear, but ...] about the way science functions as a social force, as an ideological institution: at this level, its function is to provide certainty[...]". Here Zizek seems to forget himself complaining that science is not giving answers anymore, but just opinions: it seems that we are warming the world, and so on.

Then he continues with this stupid pseudoscientific argument about free will, talking with Dennet... I cannot imagine a worse way of wasting your time, maybe arguing with (or worse, about) Berkley. Do not argue about the possibility of freedom, assume freedom and think what the fuck to do with it.

And he keeps on this: worried about how the latest techno-scientific developments (which potentially give the human species the capacity to redesign and redefine itself)... God sake Zizek, we are doing that since we are humans! Every organisms do that as part of his life. A good example of this widespread mistake, is the report in new scientist on the cannibals who changed their genome in 200 years, they also miss the point, saying at the end of the article that this "really supports the concept of very rapid adaptation of humans to the environment". Here, environment means the social respectful manner of eating your dead familiar. Technology, as Heidegger noted pretty well, is just changing the speed of what has always been. Remember Goethe: Thou`rt after all - just what thou art.

On pag. 314 he's describing an autonomous system without knowing it. Please Zizek, do not just quote Varela, you also need to read it. I mean, we know you see that Varela is almost verbatim repeating Hegel, but Kant and Deleuze are nothing more than grasping a bit of what operational closure means, and put it in philoguese. There was never a natural world. The environment appears together with the cell, and it is determined by her structure. Biology 101 in Chile.

We need to embrace science. There is no modernity without it, no Europe, no openness (in which other place could a chilean like me work?). It is true, we make an ideological work, and we get the prize for it. We are the fancy thought whores of the capital. But we also do something else, and it has to do with carving our way to truth. And the carving tools are good to keep.

Photo by Lou Rouge