The Dogma of Science
(I'm trying to work on my personal metaphysical outlook, or something like that. Please feel free to comment. Honest opinions don't exist in a vacuum.)
"Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow. " (Agent Kay, Men in Black)
One thing that really bothers me about people who hold Science in the greatest regard, but who aren't themselves scientists (and sometimes those who are), is their apparent belief that the actual body of scientific knowledge is static.
It isn't.
Facts don't change. (At least, they certainly aren't supposed to.) But our understanding of them, and even our interpretation of them, does.
When my mother went to college in the late forties and early fifties, she learned there were three taxonomic kingdoms of organisms: Plantae, Protista (generally single-celled organisms), and Animalia.
In the late sixties, as more was learned about how organisms were related to each other (and how they weren't), Robert Whittaker proposed a system of five kingdoms: Monera (bacteria), Fungi, Plantae, Protista, and Animalia.
When I first decided I was interested in biology, in the late eighties, this was still the system that was used. (I still remember talking to my mom about it, and how surprised she was that there were two more kingdoms!) Now, some twenty years later, it isn't. (In fact, back in the late eighties, there were already rumblings about changing it.) We now have three domains: Archaea (archaebacteria, or non-aerobic bacteria), Bacteria (non-archaebacteria), and Eukaryota (everything else). The idea being that archaebacteria and bacteria are no more closely related to each other than either group is to all of the eukaryotes. Eukaryota is then divided into *a number* of kingdoms, depending on who you ask. (The two bacteria domains are, too, but I don't know much about them.)
Have the facts changed? Have bacteria really changed that much in sixty years? Not at all. But our understanding of how they are related to each other, and to other organisms, has.
Who knows what the generally accepted system of taxonomy will look like twenty years from now?
The same is true of all scientific knowledge. One hundred and fifty years ago, atoms were the smallest discrete particles of matter. Sub-atomic particles weren't even theorized until the late 1800s.
Last year, black holes had event horizons, beyond which nothing, not even light, could escape. It had something to do with the incredible mass at the center of the collapsed star (I'm not a cosmologist). Now, however, Steven Hawking is proposing that black holes themselves don't exist (at least, not as they have been understood in the past). "In its stead, Hawking’s radical proposal is a much more benign 'apparent horizon', which only temporarily holds matter and energy prisoner before eventually releasing them, albeit in a more garbled form." (http://www.nature.com/news/stephen-hawking-there-are-no-black-holes-1.14583)
But then people say things like, "The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it." (I found this attributed to Neil Degrasse Tyson, but I don't know if that's accurate.) Which part? When? Since it is no longer preferred, does that mean that Whittaker's five kingdom model was bad science? If Hawking's new theory about black holes gains favor, does that mean that we can collectively erase all memory of that horrible, horrible Disney movie? I mean, what will that say about what we consider scientific knowledge today?
Discussion of science is best couched in terms of models, and theories, rather than proof and truth. These are things we think we know. Things that haven't been disproven, but that could be. To date, the evidence fits, but it's fluid. It's capable of change, updates, revision. This doesn't mean that it's wrong. It doesn't mean that any and all other ideas about a fact or group of facts are equally valid. It just means that there is room for new evidence, or new interpretations of the old evidence.
I realize that this leaves scientific knowledge open to uninformed (often willingly ignorant) people saying, "This is only a theory, which means it isn't true!" But what happens when we take the opposite tack?
When the generally held beliefs about science become hammered down and taken as fact, it becomes Science, with a capital "S." Spreading something as truth that you accepted in toto from someone you consider to be a higher authority is not teaching scientific thought. It's preaching Scientific dogma.
I'm not saying that you can't believe in something that you yourself can't explain. But if you can't explain it, how can you get me to accept it?
"We are arrant knaves,
all; believe none of us."
Hamlet, III.i
"Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow. " (Agent Kay, Men in Black)
One thing that really bothers me about people who hold Science in the greatest regard, but who aren't themselves scientists (and sometimes those who are), is their apparent belief that the actual body of scientific knowledge is static.
It isn't.
Facts don't change. (At least, they certainly aren't supposed to.) But our understanding of them, and even our interpretation of them, does.
When my mother went to college in the late forties and early fifties, she learned there were three taxonomic kingdoms of organisms: Plantae, Protista (generally single-celled organisms), and Animalia.
In the late sixties, as more was learned about how organisms were related to each other (and how they weren't), Robert Whittaker proposed a system of five kingdoms: Monera (bacteria), Fungi, Plantae, Protista, and Animalia.
When I first decided I was interested in biology, in the late eighties, this was still the system that was used. (I still remember talking to my mom about it, and how surprised she was that there were two more kingdoms!) Now, some twenty years later, it isn't. (In fact, back in the late eighties, there were already rumblings about changing it.) We now have three domains: Archaea (archaebacteria, or non-aerobic bacteria), Bacteria (non-archaebacteria), and Eukaryota (everything else). The idea being that archaebacteria and bacteria are no more closely related to each other than either group is to all of the eukaryotes. Eukaryota is then divided into *a number* of kingdoms, depending on who you ask. (The two bacteria domains are, too, but I don't know much about them.)
Have the facts changed? Have bacteria really changed that much in sixty years? Not at all. But our understanding of how they are related to each other, and to other organisms, has.
Who knows what the generally accepted system of taxonomy will look like twenty years from now?
The same is true of all scientific knowledge. One hundred and fifty years ago, atoms were the smallest discrete particles of matter. Sub-atomic particles weren't even theorized until the late 1800s.
Last year, black holes had event horizons, beyond which nothing, not even light, could escape. It had something to do with the incredible mass at the center of the collapsed star (I'm not a cosmologist). Now, however, Steven Hawking is proposing that black holes themselves don't exist (at least, not as they have been understood in the past). "In its stead, Hawking’s radical proposal is a much more benign 'apparent horizon', which only temporarily holds matter and energy prisoner before eventually releasing them, albeit in a more garbled form." (http://www.nature.com/news/stephen-hawking-there-are-no-black-holes-1.14583)
But then people say things like, "The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it." (I found this attributed to Neil Degrasse Tyson, but I don't know if that's accurate.) Which part? When? Since it is no longer preferred, does that mean that Whittaker's five kingdom model was bad science? If Hawking's new theory about black holes gains favor, does that mean that we can collectively erase all memory of that horrible, horrible Disney movie? I mean, what will that say about what we consider scientific knowledge today?
Discussion of science is best couched in terms of models, and theories, rather than proof and truth. These are things we think we know. Things that haven't been disproven, but that could be. To date, the evidence fits, but it's fluid. It's capable of change, updates, revision. This doesn't mean that it's wrong. It doesn't mean that any and all other ideas about a fact or group of facts are equally valid. It just means that there is room for new evidence, or new interpretations of the old evidence.
I realize that this leaves scientific knowledge open to uninformed (often willingly ignorant) people saying, "This is only a theory, which means it isn't true!" But what happens when we take the opposite tack?
When the generally held beliefs about science become hammered down and taken as fact, it becomes Science, with a capital "S." Spreading something as truth that you accepted in toto from someone you consider to be a higher authority is not teaching scientific thought. It's preaching Scientific dogma.
I'm not saying that you can't believe in something that you yourself can't explain. But if you can't explain it, how can you get me to accept it?
"We are arrant knaves,
all; believe none of us."
Hamlet, III.i