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Author: Xtifr

Jan 20th 2013 at 4:20:19 PM

There's a ''big'' difference between science and progress, and not even in a whoever-those-characters-are way--that is to say, not in a snarky way. Science is about empiricism and studying the way the universe actually works instead of leaping to conclusions. Science may sometime (often, in the last couple of centuries) ''lead'' to progress, but civilizations were progressing ''centuries'' before science even became a thing.

I'm not particularly attached to the current name--as I said at the outset, I just picked it as a placeholder--but the idea that science and progress are the same thing is simply and completely wrong. They can be ''and often are'' in direct opposition.

(And how the heck is that simple fact "offensive"?)

eta: Nor is the trope picking sides or implying that science=good; progress=bad, or anything like that. The description explicitly mentions that either side, both, or neither, may really be in the right in when this trope is used. It's no more about paving-the-earth than it is about condemning tree-huggers.