Following on from Richard’s recent entry on the inherent beauty of science, and to be serious for five minutes, my argument with PZ (and HWMNBN) isn’t just their religiously fundamentalist and laughably hypocritical virulence towards anyone who expresses a view different from their own, but the reasoning, or lack of it, behind that stance.
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I, Editor by Henry Gee
This is the Nature Network and therefore Terribly Extremely Very Serious foothold for Nature Senior Editor Henry Gee. If you want fun and games, visit http://cromercrox.blogspot.com/
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The Unknown
- Date:
- Thursday, 27 Nov ember 2008 - 16:04 UTC
The PZ-mindset is one that sees science as a zero-sum game in which the acquisition of knowledge is a monolithic advance across ever-decreasing realms of ignorance.
However, if there’s one thing that almost 21 years at Nature does to your head, it’s to show you that the world of knowledge is inexhaustible. The more you find out, the ocean of ignorance appears to become wider, not narrower.
Science, if properly approached, is a business of setting very well-defined tests on tiny rockpools on the edge of that ocean of ignorance, whose answers can never be anything more than provisional and subject to revision.
Science therefore demands a certain humility before the evidence, very far from the triumphalist braying practiced by some I might mention.
That’s not to say that there exist things that we can never know (though it might) – only that there are always things that we have not yet discovered, and that the process of discovery expands our horizons disproportionately.
Therefore the thrill of science, for me, is not learning how to put things together, but the often sudden and wrenching shifts in perspective that science offers.
For example, the discovery of Homo floresiensis shows that the story of human evolution is much more complicated than anyone has possibly considered before. It’s that, more than the amazingness of the finds themselves, that attracts me.
What surprises me is how scientists are so conservative, so afraid to embrace the shock of the new. Whenever I suggest the possibility that (say) the canonical view of the history of life on Earth isn’t — indeed cannot be — the nice neat story we learned as kids, I am sometimes accused of pandering to the creationists, as if these people really offer any kinds of an intellectual threat (as opposed to a political one). In the end, the PZ error is the adoption of a mindset every bit as conservative as those of creationists, a mindset reluctant to embrace change, to abandon old paradigms and adopt new ones.
If I hadn’t utterly forsworn the idea of writing another pop-science book, I’d write one called The Unknown in which I’d take the PZ- and HWMNBN view of science to pieces, aiming to reinstate science as an activity in which we maintain our childlike sense of wonder at the world, rather than seeking to control or dominate it, or – worse – imagine that science has something to do with a whiggish notion of ‘Progress’ or ‘Destiny’ that historians have long abandoned as laughably antique, because it’s nonsense.
Last updated: Thursday, 27 Nov 2008 - 16:04 UTC
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Comments
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To do this deed,
Promotion follows. If I could find example
Of thousands that had struck anointed kings
And flourish’d after, I’ld not do’t; but since
Nor brass nor stone nor parchment bears not one,
Let villany itself forswear’t.
Do the damn book, Henry. Just do it!
Forgive me for only reading diagonally, as they say in French, and sticking at the loathsome phrase, “a zero-sum game”.
But yes. Humility in the face of limitless ignorance. And looking at all the neat stuff in the tidepools, meanwhile.
What surprises me is how scientists are so conservative, so afraid to embrace the shock of the new
Well, scientist are human after all, and humans prefer to stick to the familiar most of the time. Not that there is anything wrong with that! Change always involves certain amount of stress, and change all the time probably means chronic stress (we all know what that leads to). In terms of scientific activity, imagine what would happen if we were changing the theoretical framework all the time! Me, I’m one of those who rejoices in the beauty and flawless internal logic of a theory (and get pissed when it is slayed by an ugly fact)
Do the damn book, Henry. Just do it!
I value my marriage and my sanity more.
Isn’t that what I was
whiningtalking about here? In a whiny sort of way… And Christian – this post was largely driven by a theoretical paper I was trying to get published :)But it’s funny how it was only Editors who became involved in the discussion.
Henry – I was wondering what you meant with “I’m outside now” on Richard’s blog. Didn’t think you could remain quiet…
Other than that, not a squeak from me. I still feel bad about the bad aftertaste this discussion seems to have left – it’s been rattling around in my melon all week.
What you need, Henry, is a ghost writer.
Henry – I’m with John Wilkins and would urge you to write the book. You could always do it on the train…
@ Bob: Would The Beast volunteer?
@ Stephen – what would a book say that I haven’t already said on this blog? And after a year or more of work, would anyone care? Would it change minds? PZ and company are as good as fundies at ignoring inconvenient truths.
Hey Henry – you were the one who mentioned the idea of a book! But even if you have said it all here already, it would still be valuable to rehearse and develop the argument in book form. It could be presented as a whole—rather than piecemeal on the NN site—and might well have more impact. I think people would be interested to hear the scientific counter-view to Myers/Dawkins.
Sanity and marriage are over-rated. I did my book/s and OK, so my marriage broke up, but I’m still sane tiddly pong.
I just talked with Mrs Gee about it. SHer reaction was that I should just do it, probably because I am already unhinged.
That sounds like an overwhelming mandate to me… Get writing!
I doubt it, he wouldn’t want to die first. I could probably rustle up an alternative – one that doesn’t shed as much hair.
science as a zero-sum game in which the acquisition of knowledge is a monolithic advance across ever-decreasing realms of ignorance
This attitude might be more prevalent among those scientists who are not actively engaged in research, and/or who do not encounter significant numbers of grant proposals or manuscripts on a regular basis. For me, there’s nothing like reviewing grant proposals, to make me aware of the ocean of ignorance. This is not by any means a broad-brush criticism of biomedical researchers (of which I am one), but rather a recognition of the challenges of identifying and developing ways to treat disease effectively and to alleviate suffering.
On the one hand, Henry’s proposed book would provide an alternative to what a friend calls “the recent pile of atheist books”. On the other hand, I enjoyed reading By the Sea enough to hope that more lablit fiction might be in the works instead. Not that Henry couldn’t work on both sorts of books, I guess ….
Thanks so much, Kristi – I’m really pleased you enjoyed By The Sea. When you come to Cromer you can see some of the actual locations used in the book. Hey! Forget Morse’s Oxford, we can haz Sheepwool’s Cromer!
I suppose, while I am tearing out my remaining hair writing this book I don’t want to write, you can read Siege of Stars. Yes, it’s SF more than LabLit, but there are some scientists in it, having sex, so no change there. Siege is just the first third of a trilogy that’s already written (some people might have read the whole lot in draft form) but won’t be released unless the demand from my adoring public becomes insupportable. :)
Siege has, as of today, sold ten copies. Eat my shorts, J. K. Rowling.
In an RRResearch post a couple of years ago I wrote:
The real number line analogy: Scientific knowledge is like the “real number line” used in introductory math classes. In the line, every point is a number, but no matter how close together two points (or numbers) are, there are always infinitely many other points separating them. The real world similarly contains infinitely many things to discover. No matter how much we find out about something, there are always many more important things to find out. I use this analogy for beginning science students, who are often concerned that all the important discoveries have already been made.
That’s a very good analogy, Rosemary. I come from a taxonomy/systematics background, and the analogy we use is related. If you have a phylogeny (evolutionary tree) of n species, there are n-1 gaps between them. The more species you discover, the more gaps you create between them, so as you discover more, you actually know less. Weird, eh?
Henry – I think that just means you’re converting unknown unknowns to known unknowns. You’re just learning that you know less.
I know nothing, officer.
Lots of novels, films, books and so on have titles of the form
The [proper name] [subsidiary noun]
for example
The Ipcress File
The Odessa File
The Italian Job
The Manchurian Candidate
So, perhaps in that vein, I might call my book
The Rumsfeld Paradox