Self-Correcting Science

Science's core robustness is the fact that its practice is self-correcting. We humans are imperfect in many ways, so our ideas and opinions are usually off target or often simply wrong. Even when we try to be accurate, our incomplete knowledge prevents us from hitting the nail on the head and so we manage to bend more than a few nails in our attempts to comprehend our world.

Unfortunately, many of our mistaken human ideas and explanations can quickly get cast in concrete and so our errors persist through time. Rigid institutions like governments and some religions tend to cling to their fallacious views—often digging in their ideological heels and persisting in their beliefs, long after overwhelming evidence proves them wrong.

The scientific process is quite different. Scientists are no less likely to be mistaken than any other human, but they operate in a manner that is very effective at highlighting misunderstandings and subsequently rectifying them. Part of the self-correcting process is due to having scientific cohorts looking over one's shoulder and spotting errors. Scientists are often quite eager to identify inaccuracies in their colleagues.

Another crucial part of the self-correcting process is the manner in which scientific statements are presented: they must be framed in such a way that other scientists can easily put them to the test. And testing is what science is all about. If a scientific proposition cannot be evaluated by experiment, it's pretty much regarded as useless.

Thus science has relentlessly and steadily advanced toward improved knowledge and truth, as teams of scientists check each other and collaborate. The differing perspectives of individual scientists can create an ongoing dialog that counteracts both the propensity for one person to become overly attached to their pet idea or allowing the stature of any one individual to dominate and thus override opposing views.

Sometimes, however, we are presented with an example of science's self-correcting process in the form of just one individual acting alone—a special person who comes to an insight pretty much on their own. It calls for that individual to be both persistent and honest. Einstein was such a person. He wrestled pretty much alone for years with the conundrum of conflicting perspectives—and after a decade or more of mostly isolated contemplation, arrived at his startling conclusions about relativity.

Another favorite of mine is Johannes Kepler—born in 16^th century Germany. Surmounting numerous obstacles that threatened to confine him to a destitute life of poverty and ill health, Kepler eventually arrived at the truth of the orbital properties of our solar system's planets. Through a fortunate series of circumstances, he found himself able to put attention for three decades to the dynamics of planetary motion. Humanity—but especially Newton and other scientists who followed him—took a giant step forward in discovering the truth about how planets orbit the sun...thanks to Kepler.

What I find fascinating about Kepler is that he entered his 30-year struggle with wrong ideas. He had had a revelation that God had planned our planetary system such that the planets all obeyed simple and elegant mathematical interdependencies that were patterned after relationships between such perfect geometric shapes as spheres, cubes, and pyramids. He took his ideas even further by coming to believe that the planets' orbits were related to each other in the manner of musical harmonic intervals. These notions were so compelling to him because it was so elegant, and seemed to him to be so close to the truth.

For over 30 years Kepler pursued his revelation, trying to prove that his ideas were true—that it was all God's sublime plan. Yet he was wrong. The planet's orbits do not relate to each other in any such perfect harmonic or geometric ways. The beauty of it was that Kepler was a scientist. He possessed an integrity and a tenacity that kept him going for all those years; slowly revising his theories. Because he adhered to the self-correcting scientific process, he gradually let go of his erroneous thinking and arrived at the truth of planetary behavior. He discovered three elegant laws of planetary motion that proved to be far more profound than his earlier harmonic image. His work was so beautiful and genuine that Newton could come along a few years later and formulate his theory of universal gravity, which took our understanding to the next level, and the next step toward the truth of planetary motion.

Caught with the Seed

A tufted titmouse caught with a sunflower seed in his beak. Click to enlarge.

Checking Greed

Humans have a natural tendency to respond to their situation with greed, if conditions are allowable. I don't believe that we are naturally or genetically driven to be greedy—it's more that the conditions we experience can promote it. Western society in particular has become very materialistic. The predominant economic system—capitalism—literally cultivates greed. In a similar fashion, I do not believe that people are inherently violent, but put them in a threatening and uncontrolled environment and violence will emerge. In other words, we have to have greed and violence modeled for us or taught to us, for these insidious emotions to prevail.

There is an alternative to consumption and greed. There is a culture—the longest-lasting human culture on the planet—that successfully checks and limits greed. It is the people often referred to as the Bushmen of South Africa—residents of the austere Kalahari Desert of modern Namibia. The Bushmen consist of several different tribes—pretty much all of which have names that we Westerners find literally unpronounceable, due to their native tongue being what is often referred to as “click languages.”

Bushman society has endured for about 200,000 years—pretty much from when anatomically modern Homo sapiens first came upon the scene. They live extremely simply, in the manner of hunter-gatherers; foraging daily for what their tough environment offers them. It's a struggle for us high-tech, industrialized people to grasp what their culture is like. It's hard for us to grant that—just in terms of longevity—Bushmen societies are the most enduring, successful human civilization ever. Our more modern societies have survived for far less time. 
 
We transformed from hunter-gatherers to being farmers and/or herders only about 12,000 years ago. We are the new and out-of-control kid on the block. When humans settled into farming communities, we began for the first time to accumulate things. (The Bushmen—frequently on the move—could not afford to stockpile; they had to travel light.) Rather than gather or hunt from nature's offerings as the Bushmen do, farmers planted, harvested, stored, and planted again. This style of existence brought much more food—hence the population grew and crops could be stored and used in trade. But people were now completely dependent on their crops; they were far more vulnerable than the hunter-gatherers, who did not specialize.

Fear and greed surfaced and flourished in farming societies. Fear of crop failures pervaded those societies—along with fear of wild animals that would destroy or consume those crops. In abundant years fear decreased and greed blossomed, as farmers stored their harvests and began to trade them for various material goods.

Bushmen took a different road. They never had an abundance or tried to store it for the future. It never even occurred to them. Nature provided for today and if not tomorrow, they'd simply move on. Their diet consisted of a wide variety of food, so if one thing did poorly, they simply switched to something else. Farmers instead literally had all their agricultural eggs in one basket.

In addition, however, the Bushmen knew that greed had a way of insinuating itself into society, whenever any individuals were able to feel superior to others. Any hint of inequality encourages greed. So the Bushmen developed rituals that kept inequality, and thus greed, in check. For example, when a particularly skillful hunter returned to camp with a generous hunk of meat, it would be shared equally—but the hunter had no hand in deciding the apportioning. Others took over and divided up the gift. They didn't stop there, however. From the minute that the successful hunter returned, through the division of his trophy, the band kept up a banter of derogatory comments. The meat was criticized and belittled, as if it was unsatisfactory. The hunter's skill was deprecated, as if the group was ashamed of him.

This good-natured ribbing also occurred when any member of the band excelled in other ways, or threatened to grow a larger head. It has been a very successful technique to stifle greed and arrogance, and to promote equality within the group. It's worked for some 200,000 years. It seems doubtful that modern human culture—in which greed is encouraged—will persevere anywhere near as long.

Science, Philosophy, and Religion

I have blogged a few times about the differences between science and philosophy. I was educated and trained as a scientist, and have found it a struggle to comprehend the philosopher's way of thinking. Since retiring to the country to follow a simpler life, I no longer professionally practice science, so it's given me an opportunity to turn to philosophy to work at trying to grasp some of its concepts. It ain't been easy! It's like moving to another country as an adult—after your inherent language-learning skills have drastically declined from when you were two years old—and struggling with a very different language in a very different culture. But thanks to several online courses in philosophy, I'm beginning to be a bit conversant with it.

Just as a little background (and to remind myself of the contrast), here are the dictionary definitions of the two disciplines:

• Science: “the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the natural world, through observation and experiment” Root meaning: “to know.”
• Philosophy: “the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence.” Root meaning: “love of wisdom.”

So science is an activity, while philosophy is a study. Science is an objective examination of the natural world (which includes humans), while philosophy is a subjective examination of what we humans know or can come to know. While the ancient thinkers believed that we can arrive at truth and knowledge through sheer reasoning, science conducts experiments to develop knowledge. The difference is sort of like the study of the properties of the external world (science) versus the study of the internal world or of our mind's ability to grasp the external world (philosophy).

While today's science is partitioned into many disciplines, philosophy has also grown to be categorized into several branches. One of my online courses defined four subdisciplines in philosophy:

1. Metaphysics—What is there? What's it like?
2. Epistemology—What can we know? How do we know?
3. Value theory—What's good/bad? How can we be good/bad?
4. Logic—Which links it all together. (I quickly become swamped when reading logic. It's yet beyond me.)

When we delve into these four branches, we find ourselves facing moral, aesthetic, and value questions. We get into questions of what we should do, and what is right or wrong.

Science, on the other hand, is amoral (not immoral, as some people would say)—it is by and large unconcerned with the rightness or wrongness of what it studies. Thus, for example, many scientists engaged in the development of the atomic bomb in World War II, with little moral examination. That is not to say that scientists ignored the moral questions. For example, even though he had a hand in initiating the US's atomic bomb program, Einstein later came to regret his role. The point is that science does not include moral evaluations as part of its activities. That's philosophy's business.

I find it interesting how differently many religions approach and interpret these scientific and philosophical questions about the nature of the world and the nature of human knowledge. Religions have a very different perspective. Yes, humans can reason, religions say, but truth comes from the gods, or the one God. Thus, truth (as well as morality and values) is found in scripture or possibly through mystical insight, but not through human reasoning.

This religious perspective is often taken to an extreme by religious fundamentalists, who contend that everything known or worth knowing can be found in scripture. This approach does not really seek understanding through the gradual acquisition of knowledge, but by locating finality (fixed and complete answers) in scripture. This difference is a source of most of the conflict between religion and the disciplines of science and philosophy. This conflict is largely absent, however, with nonfundamentalist religious people—people who may revere scripture, but do not contend that it is the sole repository of knowledge and wisdom.

With every online course I take, my appreciation for both science and philosophy grows. I also gain better understanding of the basis of conflict between how these two cognitive ways of looking at reality clash with religious fundamentalism—and realize that there need not be conflict with all religious belief.