Thought created an image of the world. Then thought worshipped the image it created.
Now, science is an astonishing 'labour saving device'. It has enormous utility. So helps create more wealth outputs for less wealth inputs. But that is all it can do. It cannot change people's minds. Only thought does that.
Once upon a time in a world far away in a different multiverse, a people needed a new tool for survival. Times were hard, crops were failing and there were regular famine. They created a powerful new tool, by thought, to deal with it and save them. This tool was merely an image of the world, not the real world. And they knew this, recognising it's extreme importance and the danger of forgetting it was just an image. And promised their descendants in their constitution that their first duty was to make this critical point clear, forever. It was written in stone plain for all to see and was sung as a hymn before meals and on special occasions.
These wise people realised their new tool was an image and by creating it, had divided the world from itself into 2 distinct parts - 1) the whole of the world and 2) the image as a useful tool. So we're acutely aware of how things could go badly wrong if they forgot the tool was not grounded in the real world. All they had to do was remember this and remain conscious it was just an image. Notwithstanding it's huge power to increase the production of wealth the people realised to forget it was not the real world would be a terrible mistake and lead inevitably to systemic shocks and bizarre macro level events no one would be able to see coming.
Never Forget was their mantra.
Eventually the hymn became a narrative. That is to say, the people found a way to speak about the tool in real world terms, without having to discuss it directly. Which was very convenient because no one really understood how it's causes and effects were linked. No one had ever seen directly the tiny parts the tool told them made up the things the senses could touch and feel. But it was obvious that this is what it appeared to do and who cared anyway. By using the tool religiously, believing the narrative as it had faithfully told them, within a thousand years this people became rulers of their star system.
It came to pass that the narrative was so ubiquitous the people decided to formalise its existence in the real world by giving it a proper name. In their wisdom they had decided to make what was an image of the world, the same thing as the whole of the world. Just like that!
As time went by, though famine was a trinket of ancient history, poverty was unknown and super light speed travel was cheap for even the ones who realised they could play more than work with no negative effect to anyone, an advanced in its own right, every now and then systemic events would hit the multiverse out of nowhere, crippling the entire solar system for several years. This might not have been so bad because things always came back to the normal levels of advance. The problem was that these relentless advances were only manifest in material wealth. The people had yet to make any metaphysical progress and find a way to remain connected to the whole of the world and each other.
To be fair, the tool never promised this. It was not in the design. And the projenitors were well aware of this as has been written and this is how they were committed to worship.
Why was this a problem? Well, the people always found themselves embroiled in a metaphysical crisis surrounding it seemed, the very existence of this people, in spite of there being no real threat. As soon as one such crisis had been sorted another reared it's ugly head. These crises always drove the political sentiment of the time. It might be another global war no one understood the cause of. An imaginary threat to the ecosystem of the multiverse for which there was no authentic proof. Or even an unstoppable phage which threatened not only this multiverse but could so easily spread to the others which eventually turned out to be largely a dreadful mistake.
There was this weird man who occasionally got noticed but was never take seriously. Often mocked. Worst of all, the hacktivists who sung proud of being able to see down the rabbit hole and often were heard stridently spouting about taboo topics which no one else, they claimed, had the courage to speak about, took this man's guidance and claimed it for themselves without giving credit to the man. The man didn't care too much because it was a matter of daily ritual to carry out tasks which assured he remained grounded in the whole of the world. Not as an activity of arrogance but one of living a short life in this world well, and directed toward the whole. So the ignorance of the great masse and their planet savers was relatively rather a trifle to him.
The Assembly of the New Narrative finally gathered to decide on what to call the tool as a way to formalise it. Over the thousand years of progress the people, without realising it, had forgotten about the golden rule set out clearly when the tool was thought up. Remarkably, they decided to use the name the man had coined and which the masses and their authorities were now to claim for themselves.
They called it 'SCIENCE'.
And so it goes...