food for thought. ( Archived) (23)

by Robert Martin on Monday, 19 September 2011 at 19:19
When that unfortulate mother attempted to make a political statement by coaching her child to ask Rick Perry why he didn't believe in Science, she made a critical error. Science isn't something you can believe in. Science is not a system of belief. Science is a system of doubt.

I'm about as geeky as anyone can be about science. I read science literature for fun. I memorize physical constants. I give impromptu science lectures to anyone who will listen. I'm a science nut. But all that scientific study has taught me something very important about science itself. Every scientific theory is wrong.

Is the Earth flat? Of course not. We know it's round. But to a hunter-gatherer on the plains, fifty-thousand years ago, the theory that the Earth was flat was quite reasonable and backed up by a lot of experimental evidence. To a very large degree the Earth _is_ flat. It requires some pretty difficult measurements, and some sophisticated reasoning to tease out the roundness from all the evidence of flatness.

But eventually we realized that the Earth is round. Is it a sphere? That's a reasonable theory, but it's wrong. The Earth is _nearly_ spherical, but deviates from that standard in both random and systematic ways.

Does the Sun circle the Earth as Aristotle said, or does the Earth circle the Sun as Copernicus? Neither of those men had any good way to tell. They had beliefs, but no evidence. It was only when Gallileo studied the phases of Venus that the matter could be settled. In any case, once you look further you realize that they were all wrong. The shape of the motion is not a circle. It's close, but not quite. It's not an elipse either. Again, close, but not quite.

f=ma. No it doesn't. Oh to a very large degree it does, but we know that at large velocities, or in strong gravitational fields there are differences. I am confident enough in f=ma to trust my life to it. But I also know that it's subtly wrong.

E=mc^2. Nope. Oh it's close, but at the quantum level, we just know this is wrong. I trust it enough to follow the guidance of my GPS (did you know that GPS depends strongly on both Special and General Relativity) but I also know that it's subtly wrong.

E=hv. Nope. Quantum mechanics may be our most accurate of theories, but we know it's subtly wrong.

And here's the real kicker. We learn the _most_ when we are wrong. So scientists are constantly _hoping_ that they are wrong. Because when we are wrong about a theory, like f=ma, we discover something wonderful and new like relativity. When we are wrong about E=hv, we discover something grander and more general like String Theory.

The overriding characteristic of scientists is _doubt_. Indeed, I can go so far as to say it is in the nature of scientists _not_ to believe. Because the profit of science comes from the doubt, not from the belief. It is the scientists who doubt who win the nobel prize. It is scientists who doubted who have become household names.

A true scientist looks at a physcal law, like f=ma, and asks: "What's wrong with that law? Where's the flaw?" Scientists work hard to find something wrong. They are somewhat disappointed when they fail to find it.
Science is a system of skepticism, debugging, questioning, and doubt. No true scientist believes.

Rick Perry's answer to the child who was being so rudely and naively goaded by his mother, was "Evolution is a theory with gaps". He's dead right about that, and every evolutionary biologist would heartily agree. And all of them, or at least those that are worth their salt, are working to fill those gaps! And every scientist hopes that we never run out of gaps to fill! So anyone who rolled their eyes over that part of Perry's answer deserves some eyes rolling right back at them for being so gullible and credulous as to actually treat a scientific theory as an article of faith.

Evolution is not the kind of thing you believe in. It's a heavily overloaded theory that rests on a very strong foundation of facts. It's a masterpiece of logical thinking, data gathering, and factual analysis. It is a crowning achievement of biological science that answers far more questions than it asks. And it's wrong. Oh, not wrong by much. But gaps? Oh, yeah, there are gaps. You can appreciate the beauty of evolution. You can use it to make predictions. You can use it to understand past events. But believe? Not if you are a scientist. If you are a scientist, you doubt.

Don't get me wrong. When Perry says "We teach creationism in Texas" I think that's stupid. Creationism, and it's Illegitimate Daughter: Intelligent Design, are not science and should not be taught in a science class. The reason is simple: Creationism is about belief, not about doubt. What science class should be teaching is doubt. Systems of belief, like Creationism, Intelligent Design, and global warming should not be taught in science class.

Global Warming? Yeah! When people start ranting about the "Climate Crisis" and point to skeptics and accuse them of not believing in science, they are making a profound error in logic. True scientists look at a hypothesis like Anthropogenic Global Warming with a significant amount of doubt. AGW is a _lot_ less certain than f=ma, and we _know_ that's wrong. No scientist has said that humans are definitely changing the climate. The most that any scientist has said is that humans are probably having some effect. That leaves plenty of room for doubt!

Al Gore is not a scientist. He's a believer. (I'd believe too if it made me $100M). He leaves no room for doubt (science). He is sure. He's created a new religion, and he accuses the unfaithful of being (gasp) "deniers"!

Oh, I'm not saying we shouldn't be careful about our emissions, we should. I'm not saying that AGW is a hoax. I just doubt it. I'm a scientist. That's what I do.
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Mark Collins-Cope and 20 others like this.
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Holly Martin You have it right. What interests me is why we care at all? My dog, although she is sweet and wonderful, doesn't care, isn't interested and wouldn't be. I don't think the higher vertebrates care either. The question is why do we?
46 minutes ago · Like

to hell with food for thought !!!....i've gotta get some food for my tummie... my tummie's starting to sound like the beginning of an MGM movie

lol, you better get some food. though this is the sort of reply I expected.

especially from me, huh ??...

Well it is in the philosophy column. Thanks at least for commenting

I can't stay in this thread, because i don't have a clue what you are talking about. Sorry.

Hi, tomcatwarne, nice to see you. How are you doing?