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Even a Scientist Can Be Wrong
I recently heard of a statement made by Neil deGrasse Tyson that I thought must have been a misquote. I looked into it and, sure enough, that wise man who’s quoted on tee shirts and coffee mugs said, “The good thing about science is that it’s true, whether or not you believe in it.”
Whoa. The list of superseded scientific pronouncements is a long one, but I seem to recall a couple of real bloopers from his own field of expertise. It was once thought – as late as the early 20th century – that our own galaxy was the extent of the universe. Lo and behold, it is now accepted that there may be 100 billion galaxies comprising the universe – and counting. Now that’s a major whiff.
Not to mention the fact that luminaries such as Einstein, Shapley, Hoyle, and Gold believed that the universe was static, that is until Hubble peered through the Mt. Wilson telescope and verified the findings of that crazy Catholic priest George Lemaitre who had been trying to tell them the universe was expanding, and had been since the explosion of the primal atom (I won’t say creation).
Stay tuned for more alterations in “settled science.” It’s the nature of things.
Published in General
Interesting piece at Quillette today about the acceptability of scientific illiteracy.
I found Krauss’s article quite revealing. He was very inexact when he said, “In this, and all areas where scientific evidence is both public and sufficiently overwhelming,” with regard to Justice ACB’s refusal to engage Senator Harris on the climate change question, calling it “politically controversial.”
I’m sure if you were in casual conversation with Justice Barrett on whether climate change was happening, she’d answer in the affirmative. She’s a smart woman and “climate change” on its own is a tautology. Climate is changing. Always has. Always will (until the planet is dead). The question scientists like Krauss have left unanswered is whether and how much mankind is contributing to that change.
Cosmologist* Krauss can theorize all he wants about “the physics of climate change” (selling books much?), but until climate scientists are able to make some accurate predictions based on their theories (which they haven’t except in very localized, short-term instances), they’re not “overwhelming” us with scientific explanations. They’re not even providing “sufficient” ones for “climate change!”
And that wasn’t the point of Harris’s questioning anyway — to get Barrett to “admit” to the reality of climate change. She wanted Barrett to agree with her that government should take over the energy industry or some other “rational” public policy “to address one of the most significant global challenges of the 21st century.” An arrogant proposition for a scientist of any stripe to make.
Krauss is suffering a bad case of scientism. He thinks it’s his role as scientist to prescribe public policy. It isn’t. His job is to explore the universe (in his case, literally) and try to explain what he observes using math and science. What politicians do with the information isn’t even remotely his area of competence. And often, it’s not theirs either.
*My nephew the planetary physicist has much more credibility on the issue, since he actually studies atmospheres of planets, rather than the cosmos.
My frustration with the scientism surrounding the climate debate is that the politics of those like Gore, Mann and others is that they have fought against any real scientific discussion. “What do you mean ‘give you my data and code’ – you will just try to find something wrong with it!”
The climate team does everything they can do to prevent any research not aimed at showing that CO2 is the problem. See the “Climate Gate” dump of emails from several years ago to see how hard they worked to prevent the publication or discussion of alternate theories. As a result, new entrants into the field don’t look at alternate theories.
This is what’s known as corruption of science.
Yeah, like cold fusion . . .
There’s also evidence that the smartest (or at least the best educated) are more likely to believe in nonsense, because the smartest (or at least the best educated) are the best when it comes to defending one’s beliefs.
Oh, I dispute that entirely! The Left doesn’t “defend” its beliefs (in total non-reality). It silences opposing views. Scratch a leftist, uncover a totalitarian.
Arguable.
Technically, “science” is synonymous with “knowledge”, and “knowledge” is arguably synonymous with “truth”.
The scientific method is the pursuit of truth, but the method is not in and of itself “science”.
Arguably.
If one accepts this argument, the real question becomes “what is science?”, which is of course synonymous with the question “what is truth?”
In other words, one can argue that academics invented the word “science” to get around the tricky question of defining truth.
“What is truth?”
“Science is truth.”
“Ok, what is science?”
“Science is truth.”
“Seems legit.”
Too many of those.
Your rebuttal implies that The Left is made up of the smartest (or at least the best educated) people. I dispute that implication.
I like to say that a dominant scientific theory is like the “fastest gun in town”.
It may be the “fastest gun” that will ever come to town; or a “faster gun” is checking in at Miss Kitty’s saloon even as we speak.
Krauss’
Good points with Krauss’ argument. I think the major issue is that it is an attack on epistemological and methodological humility. There is a sense that you are supposed to charge in wherever your econometric software takes you, as long as you can repeat the experiment and get the predicted results (the science part). And well, that just doesn’t seem like the right way to behave.
I would add, if mankind is contributing to climate change, is it for the better or not?
Mark Twain said it best: “Science is such a wonderful thing: You get such a wholesale return of speculation for such a meager investment of fact.”
Richard Feynman on Quantum Mechanics: “No one understands Quantum Mechanics.”
Santayana: “Our knowledge is a torch of smokey pine that lights the pathway but one step ahead, across a void of mystery and dread; bid then the tender light of faith to shine, by which alone the mortal mind is led unto the thinking of the thought divine.” (And he was not even a religious believer…)
Astrophysicists, such as Dr. Tyson cannot explain why the initial entropy of the universe was so small.
Nor can anyone explain why the fundamental constants of the Universe are what they are. Indeed, the possibility that the fundamental constants would all be the values they are is estimated at 1 in 10 to the 500th power. That number is so large it can actually not really be comprehended. 10 followed by 500 zeros. Sort of in the realm of miracles…
Physicists cannot explain 96% of the matter/energy in the Universe. Those who wax arrogant over the capacity to sort of understand 4% of the Universe should not get carried away with themselves.
Science doesn’t actually “explain” anything. Science describes the world. General Relativity and Quantum theory do so very precisely in their (very different) realms. Most other theories not so much. Yet General Relativity and Quantum theory are not compatible with each other. One is analog, the other digital, or quantized, and they are conceptually incongruous (or “complementary” to use Bohr’s felicitous terms, like wave-particle duality). To find a theory of everything would require that one of those theories be subordinated to and become a part of, or emerge out of, the other of those theories. Right now the effort is to explain Gravity (General Relativity) from Quantum Theory, hence String theory, M theory, etc. Thus Quantum Theory is seen as the more fundamental theory. And it is the most mysterious, and the least poorly understood. For example, Quantum Theory at its core says that Consciousness collapses the wave equation. Schrodinger, who produce the wave equations of Quantum Theory did not know what to make of this and never figured it out. He became a pan-psychic vedantist. Neils Bohr pretty much squelched discussion of this most central conundrum of physics. SO even the physicists are not being honest with us about what the meaning of their science is. Quantum Theory says that mind and matter directly interact, with mind ascertaining the denouement of the collapse of the wave equation. One perspective on that would lead to the conclusion that Science (Quantum Theory) confirms the existence of the immortal soul (Quantum non-xerox rule and conservation of information in Quantum/mind interactions). Scientists would object in sotto voce.
Our current confidence in “Science” is stressed indeed by the idiocy of the approaches to COVID19. “Science” looks an awfully lot like superstition at this point.
I rolled my eyes so hard at this, my humors got out of balance.
That seems to be what the alarmists always miss. Life for people and plants too, was BETTER when things were warmer.
That’s why they changed it from “Global Warming” to “Climate Change.” And since all the policy prescriptions are socialist, one might be tempted to call it the Climate Change Conspiracy.
Actually they changed from “global warming” to “climate change” because either increases or decreases of temperatures were all bad, and all somehow resulted from the same global warming…
I copied this into a document so I can reread it. But I have one question: Do you understand the physics of this, or are you only addressing the philosophical?
When it changed, it lost all claims to Science. Any statement that appeals to science must be falsifiable. Dropping the claim that CO2 in the atmosphere causes temperatures to rise in favor of causing climate to change just doesn’t cut it as science.
To which I add, the best evidence seems to show that CO2 levels LAG temperature increases. Because what is actually happening is that more heat due to increased solar output, is warming the oceans, and the oceans then release CO2.
So, all we have to do is lower the thermostat on the sun! Easy peasy!
Well, it’s both a philosophical problem and a physics problem. I conceptuatlly understand the physics. I could not at this point write you the relevant equations. It’s been too long since I’ve done that and I was never well trained in Quantum Chemistry but worked in that field for a short time. The physics have been extensively described from the dawn of the Quantum era, most pointedly by Erwin Schrodinger, the physicist who produced the wave formulation of Quantum Mechanics (Heisenberg produced the matrix formulation of Quantum Mechanics, but the two are equivalent and Schrodinger’s wave equations are easier to use). Shrodinger produced his famous “Cat in a box” thought experiment. An old book on the topic was “Whose Afraid of Shrodinger’s Cat?” Actually, scientists today are pretty much afraid to seriously address the question, since polite physics company shuns such scientists. Neils Bohr, in his Copenhagen interpretation basically declared verboten any investigation of the phenomenon. Quantum systems exist as superimpositions of probabilities. A radioactive atom has 2 possible states, undecayed and decayed. The Shrodinger wave equation represents the superimposition of these two possibilities simultaneously and says that both possibilities exist simultaneously. The act of making an observation of the system leads to a conscious awareness of whether the atom has decayed or not. The quantum system then changes from a superimposition of probabilities both existing simultaneously, to an actual outcome due to the observation itself. This is termed the “collapse” of the wave equation, into an actually existing single state due to the act of observation. Physics has no means of explaining this interaction of consciousness and quantum systems. Quantum systems also behave differently when observed as opposed to when they are not observed. A photon unobserved, traveling through an array of half-silvered mirrors, with many paths to a target, will take all possible paths simultaneously. When observed it will not. No one know why this is. That’s why Richard Feynman said no one understands Quantum Mechanics. Philosophically, it relates to the question of what Consciousness is–Dennett says an illusion. But something that interacts with matter can’t be illusory.
I’ll do a post, or several posts, explaining this perspective. The discussion is both conceptual physics and philosophy with some neurophysiology tossed in. The point is that Consciousness is possibly something very different than what it is conceived to be in our more or less pre-Quantum mind set, that prevails everywhere. Once one gets an idea of what Quantum Consciousness might be, it changes entirely how you see and understand the world and humans in it. Sort of like a Ptolemaic to Copernican shift. The problem is that the ideas will be about as popular in our world now as Spinoza’s ideas were for his fellow Jews in his day. Or as Galileo’s were for the Pope. Though perhaps I excessively aggrandize the import of the ideas.
Well, I’ll look forward to your posts.
And some of the best to thinking outside the box. Scientists tend to fall in love with their theories.
“It remains a badge of honor for many who like to describe themselves as highly cultured or artistic to describe themselves as mathematically challenged, or to say that their brains aren’t wired for mathematics.”
It’s certainly not a badge of honour, but I consider myself mathematically-challenged. I may have gone no further than 11th grade math (and even then the teacher gave me a barely-passing grade out of pity), but I’m still way more numerate than the students Krauss talks about in that article! My mathematical abilities came to a screeching halt with quadratic equations, but I can still estimate the population of a country to within an order of magnitude!
I wager that Krauss is actually overestimating his students’ abilities. I wager that they’re just as bad at literacy as they are at numeracy.
I’m sure there are many more questions folk like Krauss leave unanswered, but these are the ones that immediately spring to mind.
To be fair, both slogans are equally valid scientifically, if not equally useful politically. The scientific hypotheses are 1) that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are causing the averageglobal temperature to rise over the long term, and also 2) that this rise in average global temperature is causing climatic change that may manifest as reduced temperatures locally, depending on the location.
I have no problem accepting that both hypotheses might be correct, but of course one’s preferred choice of political slogan has absolutely zero bearing on the difficulty of proving either of these hypotheses correct.