clock12
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Orthodoxy is easier to swallow than adaptation and growth.
Look, you did it again!
So is it just a matter of convenience? Laziness? Seems too pat an answer to a "meta"-problem that complicates so many aspects of life and has dogged us since time immemorial. Nevertheless, it is axiomatic. Sticking to the script is easier.
History and tradition are how we pass the collective knowledge and wisdom of generations long dead to the present. Without these, we would likely still be living in mud huts, worshiping fire. Learning from the past is vital to progress. This is all well and good. Many traditions turned out to be simply practical advice (washing your hands before eating was a religious tradition practiced long before anyone even believed in germs.) Other traditions are just empty rituals, their original meaning forgotten or supplanted. This doesn't deter the devout, however, who are happy to go through the motions as if they were casting a spell.
The impulse to adhere to "tradition" is often nothing more than a collective abdication of our ability to fashion our own lives. Most children assume they will really understand what the hell is going on only after reaching adulthood. In this respect, adulthood is quite the letdown. Some are nonetheless willing to look about them with clear eyes and realize that, as we knew when we were children, we are all just making this up as we go along. This can be as frightening as being lost in the wilderness and realizing all your maps are obsolete (or fake). Or it can be as liberating -- providing us the freedom to draw a new map, sans glaring errors, to better approximate that fragment of the territory we can apprehend more or less objectively.
Most people, however, will cling to those ancient maps, deriving whatever meaning they can from what may as well be random scratchings. Sometimes a whole new "worldview" or "lifestyle" or "religion" will arise as new bits of data are combined with, and extrapolated from, traced-out selected portions of the old maps handed down through the millennia, drawing "complete" new ones with no more objective validity than their dubious sources. Many will even admit to this, saying that its "truth" is a distant concern compared to the benefits of the comfort to be had in its possession. These are all that stand between us and the howling chaos! Faith is a precious gift that allows some to face the dread uncertainty of this unbounded and unknowable territory without losing all heart.
Many find their comfort in ignorance. Rather than have to deal with the daunting prospect of constructing their own compass, many will fall back to: "If it was good enough for my grandpappy, it'll damned well be good enough for me!" They will proclaim their ignorance with boldness and pride, and prefer the company of others who are aren't filled with the irritating and dangerous propensity of curiosity. They will see themselves as taking the "narrow path" of virtue and righteousness. In fact "virtue," "purity," "innocence," and "narrow path" are among the positive traits associated with ignorance.
I am so glad you brought up science in this context, because it fits right in here with the rest. It is just another "meta" level of the same process: acknowledging the multitudinous flaws in logic and understanding that brought us all our superstitions and mythologies and wrong-headedness, we now have a tool to objectively observe events and draw conclusions (maps) based on that unambiguous observation instead of our florid imaginations. Wielding this tool, we have wiped away many errors and misunderstandings about the nature of the world, the universe, and even other humans (which is a more complex problem).
But it turns out that not all scientific observations are indeed unambiguous. So now you have proponents of one theory over another, each using the careful methodology of reason, logic and objectivity; each offering "proofs" to show their interpretation of the data is the correct one. Whole careers and reputations (and funding) could be at stake, so there is no want of human nature's signature trait as scientists allow their ego -- their self-identity and emotions bound up with their vested interest in seeing a particular outcome -- to abandon objectivity in their pursuit of a "win." Max Planck, the theoretical physicist who originated quantum mechanics, one of the foremost scientific minds in history, had this sobering insight: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." Oh, shit!
The scientific method was a tool devised for the very purpose of solving this problem! Thus far, it has proven inadequate to the task. As you say, it is the best tool we've got, though it is flawed and subject to every kind of mischief than mankind has ever innovated.