(no subject)
Two strains of thought recently going through my head. First, I'll toss off an interesting article on the state of science in the Islamic world. It's really kind of depressing comparing the rates of scientific paper output; Turkey is totally owning the other Islamic countries, and it's still getting completely owned by Brazil (which Richard Feynman did not have high praise of its science program, albeit 50 years ago), which is getting destroyed by China.
Still, when criticizing other's anti-scientific biases, it's only fair to look at your own culture's. I was chatting with azgeodog on the issue; check out the occurrences of "secular geologists" on Conservapedia. As if there's a legitimate strain of religious geology that agrees with young-earth creationism. I'm not even talking about evolution here; there are legitimate complaints with evolution, and it's still quite possible that the evolutionary model is majorly wrong in some ways. But glacier movement, Ice Ages, radiocarbon dating, fossil fuels, different layers of strata... there's thousands of "mountains" of evidence out there that the Earth is pretty darn old.
Moreover... if it turned out that modern geology was all wrong, I find it highly doubtful that the real truth would actually be young-earth creationism. The general trend of science, from what I've read, has been erratically upward. Sure, it comes in fits and starts, occasionally gets sidetracked, and sometimes even backtracks. Nevertheless, the general trend is forward, because once something is found that *works*, people keep coming back to it, and disinterested types will notice this and tell others. This means that while it's vaguely possible modern geology is one big Lysenkoist nightmare that has successfully fooled a bunch of geologists, this also implies that the other options are just as bad, because they haven't been winning out in a fairly open environment. If YEC was true, considering that people thought that *before* and some still want it to be true, wouldn't useful information have been found that supports it? Take the state of medicine from 1840-1870. This was around when people were applying the scientific method to medical theory and realizing in horror that none of it worked, and it hadn't worked for thousands of years. It wasn't even a "basically correct but falls apart on specifics" theory a la phlogiston: the phlogiston theory at least was basically cognizant with reality and explained why wood burns a long time, oxygen ("dephlogistonated air") would allow its release really well, air too full of phlogiston (no oxygen) couldn't accept any more, etc. No, the four humors and all that are basically worse than useless and are actively wrong. But... there weren't better alternatives in the past that were inexplicably ditched for the four humors. It's not like people started out with the germ theory, then suppressed it and went for the four humors. While there are plenty of stories of great scientists being ignored for a generation (Georg Cantor, say), that tends to be about the maximum. So... if geology is wrong, then my guess is that nobody is right.
...well, that's what I'd like to think, anyway. But is it really true? I think so, but maybe not. Are there any good examples of a more correct scientific theory being held by a minority, and having it successfully suppressed for a genuinely long time? I can't think of any examples, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. (This is ignoring extremely vague yet correct predictions, or sheer wild guesses that were dismissed as not serious claims, though it does not ignore the right theory for the wrong reasons- if a religion steadfastly insisted that certain heavy metals were cursed by God and gave off evil rays and could be used to make bombs of dark energy, and should therefore be avoided, well, that would at least be investigated- and found to be basically correct anyway.)
Still, when criticizing other's anti-scientific biases, it's only fair to look at your own culture's. I was chatting with azgeodog on the issue; check out the occurrences of "secular geologists" on Conservapedia. As if there's a legitimate strain of religious geology that agrees with young-earth creationism. I'm not even talking about evolution here; there are legitimate complaints with evolution, and it's still quite possible that the evolutionary model is majorly wrong in some ways. But glacier movement, Ice Ages, radiocarbon dating, fossil fuels, different layers of strata... there's thousands of "mountains" of evidence out there that the Earth is pretty darn old.
Moreover... if it turned out that modern geology was all wrong, I find it highly doubtful that the real truth would actually be young-earth creationism. The general trend of science, from what I've read, has been erratically upward. Sure, it comes in fits and starts, occasionally gets sidetracked, and sometimes even backtracks. Nevertheless, the general trend is forward, because once something is found that *works*, people keep coming back to it, and disinterested types will notice this and tell others. This means that while it's vaguely possible modern geology is one big Lysenkoist nightmare that has successfully fooled a bunch of geologists, this also implies that the other options are just as bad, because they haven't been winning out in a fairly open environment. If YEC was true, considering that people thought that *before* and some still want it to be true, wouldn't useful information have been found that supports it? Take the state of medicine from 1840-1870. This was around when people were applying the scientific method to medical theory and realizing in horror that none of it worked, and it hadn't worked for thousands of years. It wasn't even a "basically correct but falls apart on specifics" theory a la phlogiston: the phlogiston theory at least was basically cognizant with reality and explained why wood burns a long time, oxygen ("dephlogistonated air") would allow its release really well, air too full of phlogiston (no oxygen) couldn't accept any more, etc. No, the four humors and all that are basically worse than useless and are actively wrong. But... there weren't better alternatives in the past that were inexplicably ditched for the four humors. It's not like people started out with the germ theory, then suppressed it and went for the four humors. While there are plenty of stories of great scientists being ignored for a generation (Georg Cantor, say), that tends to be about the maximum. So... if geology is wrong, then my guess is that nobody is right.
...well, that's what I'd like to think, anyway. But is it really true? I think so, but maybe not. Are there any good examples of a more correct scientific theory being held by a minority, and having it successfully suppressed for a genuinely long time? I can't think of any examples, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. (This is ignoring extremely vague yet correct predictions, or sheer wild guesses that were dismissed as not serious claims, though it does not ignore the right theory for the wrong reasons- if a religion steadfastly insisted that certain heavy metals were cursed by God and gave off evil rays and could be used to make bombs of dark energy, and should therefore be avoided, well, that would at least be investigated- and found to be basically correct anyway.)