Oh science, when will you learn?
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Last Modified: December 30, 2007 Issue: December 2007 |
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I’ve been watching a History channel series called The Universe. Apart from the horrible dramatisation of ’sinister’ stars and ‘evil’ planets, something about the series has been really bothering me. It’s the arrogance with which the scientists who appear on it present their theories. In particular, one episode titled ‘Alien Galaxies’ included a lengthy discussion of ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy.’ The existence of these mysterious entities was presented as the absolute Truth. However, far from enjoying such a status, these are theoretical concepts that essentially serve as placeholders because the empirical data does not match the theoretical expectations (watch the documentary Most of Our Universe Is Missing). Yet, the scientists, maintaining the pretense that science is Truth, spoke with absolute conviction. I’m not sure if this is a public facade or if they are self-deluded. Either way, you’d think that these people did not belong to a tradition that once maintained the existence of ‘the ether’ in order to make sense of the empirical observations, only later discarding the concept when other observations put its existence in doubt.
This is a small story that illustrates the ’surprises’ scientists keep stumbling upon just when their arrogance has them believing they’ve got it all figured out.
Note: Apart from the aggravating arrogance of their positions, I think the pretense to ‘Truth’ denigrates what it is that makes science exciting: the search for theories that work to explain phenomenon. These theories are constantly being challenged by new observations that then require new explanations.
D. T. Cochrane is a new father who thinks about business, power and social economic change. His profile picture is of the Crab Nebula. It is the remnants of a supernova. Current scientific theory says that they seed the Universe with the ingredients of life.
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The first thing that your post made me think of is the distinction between ‘laws’ and ‘theories’ (and hypotheses)… the use of this distinction in explaining phenomena is already problematic, but still, i think it’s troublesome that people speaking in the name of science don’t even follow their own methods.
What comes to mind in particular is that Moore’s Law is not a law in the same way that the Laws of Thermodynamics are laws; but calling something a “law” adds legitimacy to it and adds to its symbolic power. Treating Dark Matter as Truth, as law, is another act that I see potentially being just as problematic as Moore’s Law. Laws used in this fashion have a way of becoming self-fulfilling prophecies. Whereas the computer hardware industry is trying to ‘keep up’ with or ’slow down’ to adhere to Moore’s Law, what might be the consequences of treating Dark Energy and Dark Matter as Truth? Even Moore himself doesn’t use the word ‘law’ anymore to explain the development of the CPU. Calling Dark Matter a ‘theory’ or even a ‘hypothesis’ might acknowledge that there is still much that remains uncertain and plenty still to be researched, though it won’t do so well for the pocketbook.
An interview with physicist Robert Scherrer on Dark Matter and Dark Energy is particularly revealing about the traditional scientific perspective: “… that may just be the way things are. We don’t get to pick the universe we live in.”
The whole notion of ‘laws’ within science is being questioned. The well-known conflict between relativity and quantum mechanics is just one example. One of the outcomes of trying to resolve this conflict may be a metaphysical crisis that causes the practitioners of science to re-examine their unquestioned foundational assumptions, particularly the supposed eternal, universal nature of the ‘laws’ they devise. Ilya Prigogine anticipated just such a need when he referred to physics as the ‘clay feet’ of the sciences.
This is a good point. I would add that some recent research in genetics, specifically with RNA, is calling into question previously held “laws” of evolution. Apparently some RNAs respond to environmental factors and notify our DNA which genes to activate or deactivate. If the scientific ‘laws’ governing biology are in turn dictated by social ‘laws’ (which aren’t laws at all) your metaphysical crisis is sure to come quite soon, coupled with an identity crisis for many [insert official font]scientists[end]!