Makeup and Unmaking

I have long held plastic surgery procedures that irrevocably alter a person’s visage or other bodily features for no other reason than the person’s disdain for their natural appearance to be fundamentally immoral (in contradistinction to reconstructive surgeries that restore the creative work of God to its original beauty, in a manner akin to the restoration of an Old Master painting to its original beauty after it had been damaged by fire or flood). Makeup practices are non-permanent and therefore far less drastic than plastic surgery, but the same corrupt notion is at play—the hubristic presumption to ‘correct’ God’s masterpiece, as if a 5^th grader assumed the artistic competence to pass corrective judgement upon a masterwork of Michelangelo.

Makeup as such cannot be deemed immoral, anymore than wearing beautiful clothing or cutting one’s hair in an accentuating style can be. Vestis virum reddit—“Clothes make the man”. Makeup is like a frame on an Old Master painting; no one goes to an art museum to view the frame, but without the accentuation of the golden wood surrounding the art itself, the piece would appear less luminous. Makeup qua accentuation of Divine Beauty inherent in the created physical person is indeed a morally commendable, though optional, act in adornment of the Temple of the Holy Spirit. But when makeup becomes a true ‘remaking’—a deconstructive practice whose specific goal is the desecrative correction of Divine Creation—it takes on the character of an impermanent pseudocosmetic unweaving of the Cosmos. Cosmetology for its own sake partakes of Satan’s repugnance for the created order and echoes the Satanic ‘Non serviam’.

Philosophiæ Doctor a Scientist Doth Not Make

Must one be a Doctor of Philosophy to be a Scientist? A philosophical question.

An engineer of '90s PBS Kids fame by the name of Bill Nye “the Science Guy” has recently made many controversial headlines, contrapositioned by those within the “Scientific Community” who dismiss him and his statements as the simple opining of a mere engineer (pronounced with a lethal dosage of vitriolic venom). While this post takes no position with regard to the specific content of Mr. Nye’s statements, the recent controversy occasions a brief inquiry into the nature of what precisely constitutes the nature of “Scientist”—must one have been degreed a Philosophiæ Doctor (Ph.D.) to be a Scientist properly so called?

The Scientific Method prescribes certain criteria for a theory of natural phenomena to be held as generally valid, including rigorous and independently reproducible hypothesis testing. Such methodology necessarily presupposes peers of specialized, professional competence; hence the relegation of Natural Philosophy to the See of Academia, possessing plenary and exclusive jurisdiction over the theologians of “all things visible”.

With science thus wholly professionalized, all those lacking degreed credentials regulated by authority of the Academic See were henceforth declared anathematized. The scientific writings of non-scientists were systematically declared heretical by the Censor Scientiæ, and those claiming the title “Scientist” without the sanctioned ordination of the Academic See were declared excommunicated latæ sententiæ, notwithstanding the validity of specific truth-claims so advanced.

Those who dare defy the monopolistic power-grab of the Scientific Community are henceforth declared schismatic pseudo-scientists, wolves maliciously misleading the flock of secular citoyens.

But in the beginning it was not so.

The term scientist has a recent etymological gestation, brought to birth by the quasi-pontifical high priest of secular social theory Auguste Comte in the 1800s. Long before the Christian Era up until the dawn of the Modern, Natural Philosophy was the area of philosophic enquiry whose specific content encompassed the workings and wonders of the natural world. Natural Philosophy predates the Scientific Method, originating in Presocratic Greece, refined by Medieval Scholastics, and systematically developed by Renaissance thinkers of Neoplatonic Keplerian ilk.

Paradoxically, in the age of tyrants, monarchs, emperors and autocrats, the domain of licit scientific inquiry remained open to all persons, while in our own egalitarian age of parliaments, republics, populists and popularizers, democratic claim to legitimate science has been all but eradicated by the crippling totalitarian clutches of academic autocracy.

Natural Philosophy maintains no monopoly on the practice of systematic inquiry into the nature of the Cosmos; sed contra the ranks of natural philosophers are by nature open to any lover of wisdom who sincerely pursues the truth of physicality.

But in our New Dark Age, the democratic light of natural philosophy has now been all but extinguished, for a Ph.D. constitutes the prerequisite for attaining the rank of “Scientist” from which Academe grants no dispensation. Remedially, the Weltanschauung of Natural Philosophy must be restored to its rightful claim as definitional defender of those who profess the work of "Scientist", for if a genuine philosophia were again demanded of those declared Teacher of the Love of Wisdom, the swelling ranks of pseudo-scientific sycophants would surely begin to thin. 

 

 

 

(Mostly written 4 June 2017, 5:30pm; completed 2 December 2017, 6:30pm.)