Contemporary scientific dogmas and the excomunion of heretics

In every historical moment there are conceptual and/or scientific models that are to a large extent the ideological sustenance of the prevailing power systems. States and their political, academic and religious structures are based, to a large extent, on such models.

These models change as time goes by. New data are obtained, other conceptual approaches are developed, and finally, the model change occurs, what Kuhn called "the paradigmatic change". Generally, the authorities and political, religious and academic powers resist this change, but in the end, the accumulation of information and the diffusion of new ideas impose the substitution of old visions for new ones more adapted to the state of society in that moment.

Although this process has been systematic throughout history, the elites of each period act as if their conceptions were immutable, sometimes true dogmas.

This also happens in the contemporary age.

Human societies organize their knowledge through the symbolic systems of their cultures.

In each era there are dominant models that relate to the social and political power structures in each region considered. These models, which were for a long time religious, often dogmatic, allowed the domination of controlling groups at political or priestly level.

At the same time that the elites imposed a system of knowledge, they ensured their political control and the enjoyment of economic and social privileges.

Modern history of dogmatism

The process of replacing European dogmatic religious systems began early in the so-called "Middle Ages", taking shelter in the medieval "Universities" and urban centers ("bourgs") that developed  through the demographic and commercial expansion of commerce.

Dissenters with dogmas were declared "heretics." Some, like Giordano Bruno and Tomás Moro, were executed for their ideas or behaviors that contravened the postulates and norms established by the political and religious castes. Others, such as Nicolás Copernico or Galileo Galilei, were bitterly criticized, forced to reject, dismissed or persecuted for their ideas.

The new ideological systems put aside philosophical structures based on biblical, canonical and Greco-Roman influences.

After the triumph of the European industrialist revolution, the new systems of knowledge were definitively imposed, leaving aside geocentric religious and dogmatic approaches.

The new economic and political structures engendered a system of knowledge generation based on a network of academic, corporate and governmental institutions.

It is within the framework of this "network" that "official" knowledge, valid and / or "fundable" research and projects have been defined, as well as articles published in so-called "referees journals" scientific journals.

According to the work of Thomas S. Kuhn "The structure of scientific revolutions" (Augmented edition of 1970), "normal" (official) scientific research is very little concerned with searching for novelties of capital importance, both in the domain of concepts as in the phenomena. The aim is to develop the conceptual frames accepted more precisely, as well as to obtain data that "confirm" what is already known.

James Lovelock points out in his work "The Ages of Gaia" (1988) that academic scientists may think they have freedom but in reality most of them "have changed their freedom of thought due to good working conditions, a regular income, a position and A Hostel. They are also limited by an army of bureaucratic forces, from funding agencies to health and safety organizations. Scientists are also limited by the tribal rules of the discipline to which they belong. A physicist would have difficulty doing chemistry, and a biologist would find it almost impossible to do physics. To complete the above, in recent years the "purity" of science is more closely guarded by a self-imposed inquisition called peer review. "

The current scientific model or system is called normal science or "paradigm". The paradigm of normal science in Kuhn's vision is the set of theories, rules, procedures and knowledge that permeate a given society at a specific moment in its history. At present it refers to the scientific "model" adopted in a generalized way in the contemporary globalized society.

In this "globalized" society the official scientific construction works through the accumulation of scientific data that allow (supposedly) to "advance" in knowledge, in particular to achieve greater detail in the concrete application of models.