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This is a prelude to a post on Climate Change and Capitalism.
Those who are familiar with the topic of belief will find nothing new here. This is a note for those who, like most of the reporters that I see on TV, could not pass the science part of Jeff Foxworthy's ten question test to decide if one is Smarter Than a Fifth Grader.
I come from the math-science side of Academia. I believe in science (thank you Aristotle, Roger Bacon, et al.) I believe scientists in general, even those whose work I know nothing about. That is because I know how they decide what they claim is true. That is, I believe in the scientific method and I think that those who have not practiced it may not understand that, inherent within science, are two of the most charming devices for the prevention and correction of errors.
The first is that your evidence must be reproducible. If you get results and someone else performs the same experiment and doesn’t get those results, then there is a problem and you basically start over. This is quite different from the way disagreements in religion have been handled. When Jesus and Mohammad have different visions then you had a very long religious war. Then of course there was the Pope and Martin Luther.
The second involves the difference between scientific and faith based belief. Faith based belief is often absolute – the expression that comes to mind is “written in stone”. Scientific belief is very tentative and can perhaps best be described as a belief that the position in question is the “best explanation available” at the present time. It may give way to a better or more complete theory at any time. The example that comes to mind is Newton’s mechanics which stood for 300 years before the arrival of Einstein's relativity. Those who are familiar with (or should I say committed to) faith based belief often imagine that the practitioners of science meekly accept its current beliefs as if they too were written on stone tablets. (I think I have seen this argument used by the intelligent design folks.) This is a more profound question because it speaks to the possibility that the whole enterprise may become biased in favor of its current beliefs. (The claim currently made about global warming.) In fact, it is true that errors have, in the past, been allowed to linger too long, the Piltdown Man comes to mind.
The corrective for that is, I think, one of the most profoundly delightful aspects of science. It is this: far from worshiping the pedestrian follower of the current perception, the scientific community reserves its highest accolades and greatest honors for those individuals who shake the very foundations of the current “best available explanation.” Carl Sagan is very well thought of as a presenter of science, but he will never compare to Albert Einstein or Charles Darwin in the pantheon of scientific stars.
Science saves its loudest applause for those who “look where all have looked and see what none have seen.”
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This is a prelude to a post on Climate Change and Capitalism.
Those who are familiar with the topic of belief will find nothing new here. This is a note for those who, like most of the reporters that I see on TV, could not pass the science part of Jeff Foxworthy's ten question test to decide if one is Smarter Than a Fifth Grader.
I come from the math-science side of Academia. I believe in science (thank you Aristotle, Roger Bacon, et al.) I believe scientists in general, even those whose work I know nothing about. That is because I know how they decide what they claim is true. That is, I believe in the scientific method and I think that those who have not practiced it may not understand that, inherent within science, are two of the most charming devices for the prevention and correction of errors.
The first is that your evidence must be reproducible. If you get results and someone else performs the same experiment and doesn’t get those results, then there is a problem and you basically start over. This is quite different from the way disagreements in religion have been handled. When Jesus and Mohammad have different visions then you had a very long religious war. Then of course there was the Pope and Martin Luther.
The second involves the difference between scientific and faith based belief. Faith based belief is often absolute – the expression that comes to mind is “written in stone”. Scientific belief is very tentative and can perhaps best be described as a belief that the position in question is the “best explanation available” at the present time. It may give way to a better or more complete theory at any time. The example that comes to mind is Newton’s mechanics which stood for 300 years before the arrival of Einstein's relativity. Those who are familiar with (or should I say committed to) faith based belief often imagine that the practitioners of science meekly accept its current beliefs as if they too were written on stone tablets. (I think I have seen this argument used by the intelligent design folks.) This is a more profound question because it speaks to the possibility that the whole enterprise may become biased in favor of its current beliefs. (The claim currently made about global warming.) In fact, it is true that errors have, in the past, been allowed to linger too long, the Piltdown Man comes to mind.
The corrective for that is, I think, one of the most profoundly delightful aspects of science. It is this: far from worshiping the pedestrian follower of the current perception, the scientific community reserves its highest accolades and greatest honors for those individuals who shake the very foundations of the current “best available explanation.” Carl Sagan is very well thought of as a presenter of science, but he will never compare to Albert Einstein or Charles Darwin in the pantheon of scientific stars.
Science saves its loudest applause for those who “look where all have looked and see what none have seen.”
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Wayne, do you have any opinion regarding an American scientist (dead or living) that might be considered to be at least close to the pantheon of scientific stars. Of course I know that Einstein did live out his last years in America but I guess I mean someone who did their greatest work here in America as an American.
ReplyDeleteRobert Oppenheimer, Linus Pauling, Jonas Salk, Edward Teller, Benjamin Franklin, and Jon von Neuman
DeleteMy favorite anecdote about the genius of the scientific method and how the scientific community responds to new ideas is commonly referred to as the Alvarez theory. In 1980 a father son team of Walter and Luis Alvarez noted that the layer of earth at the K-T boundary (when the dinosaurs disappeared) contained an unusually high amount of iridium. An element rare in the earth’s crust, but common in stony meteorites. The father son team wrote and presented a paper suggesting that a meteor impact might have caused the extinction.
ReplyDeleteAt the time the idea was vigorously attacked by the scientific community, mainly due to the lack of a smoking gun, a huge crater. Scientist scolded:
1. If it were true the iridium layer would be thinner farther away from the impact. As more scientists measured the layer around the world it turns out the layer does vary and a thickness map began to emerge.
2. Computer models indicated the impact would have caused massive fires and they would have been more severe near the point of impact– Actual measurements at the K-T boundary showed increased carbon deposits and there was a pattern .
3. Computer models indicated the particulate thrown up from the impact would have caused a decades long cold spell with virtually no summers. Ice core samples and other indirect evidence matched the models.
4. As the evidence mounted it also indicated that the impact should have been in the western hemisphere near the equator. Eventually a geologist pointed out his finding (from exploring for oil), which turned out to be the Chicxulub crater. It was in the right place, it was the right size, and it was the right age. It was the smoking gun.
In 2010 an international panel of scientist pronounced the Alvarez theory as the most probable cause of the dinosaur extinction. About as close as you will get to scientific dogma. And I watched it all happen in my life time.
That is very nice.
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