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.

A Cosmic Coincidence, Part 4: Coincidence or Destiny?

I began this four-part tale by calling the collusion of Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler an unlikely cosmic coincidence. A long string of improbable incidents had to occur, one by one, to gradually draw together these extremely different people. If any one event had not happened, the chain that bound them together would never have formed. Any one link missing: no partnership.

When they were young men, several alternative events might have occurred, to prevent their ever meeting. Tycho’s nose-severing duel came very close to ending his life. There was enormous pressure on him by his family to follow the noble Danish, non-astronomer path. Kepler had several brushes with death as a child. Many plagues periodically ran rampant through his part of 16th century Europe. He was extremely lucky to have gotten his scholarship; his deep poverty otherwise would have relegated him to a sad destiny.

In the middle of their respective careers—before they met—there were numerous occasions when the imminent partnership could have gotten derailed. Both of them had a patron suddenly appear, just when their careers were threatening to dwindle, which reenergized them. Both of them were obsessed with precision. Had either one accepted less than the best, their collaboration would never have happened; they literally required one another.

They both became exiled from their homeland—pointing their paths towards each other. Kepler’s first book nearly missed getting to Tycho—which would have prevented the dashing Dane from learning about this obscure math teacher in the boondocks of Austria. Both of them judiciously ducked the inquisitional eye of the Catholic Church—unlike Galileo, who later ran afoul of the pope. If either Tycho or Kepler had been blocked in mid stride, their fabulous synergism would not have happened.

So was their collaboration really coincidental, or was it destiny? Of course, this question is unanswerable. And it’s only we humans—with our ability to peer into the past and connect the dots—who read chance or fate into unfolding events. To all of our fellow creatures—who are more open to and engaged in the present moment—things are just as they are. No mystery, no guiding hand.

If Tycho and Kepler had not partnered to bring about their astronomical revolution, others would have done it—albeit at a later date. On the other hand, if the story of an Earth-centered universe had not been so entrenched for nearly two millennia, the understanding our duo came to would likely have been discovered long before them, by other pioneers. The truth of our world is not owned by any one person, partnership, or institution. It will become known to us in due time—despite our stumbling ways of seeking it.

A Cosmic Coincidence, Part 3: Kepler the Humble German

Johannes Kepler was born the year before Tycho’s famous nova blared in the heavens. Quite the opposite of the noble birth of the flamboyant Dane, Kepler was born to a poor, dysfunctional family. His father deserted when he was a young child and several of his relatives were mentally disturbed. Kepler was a sickly child who sought solitude in his studies. He may have become just another wasted mind, had not the Lutheran duke of the region, wanting to challenge the superior position of the Catholic Church, funded full scholarships to promising young Lutheran scholars.

Young Johannes escaped the poverty of his origins and received a fine education—aimed at becoming a Lutheran clergyman. That suited his disposition, he felt, and spoke to his pious devotion to his God. His clerical game plan got derailed, however, when he was assigned to go teach math in a school in the outlying region of Austria. He regarded the move as banishment to the hinterlands and the end of his clerical plans, but he dutifully went.

Kepler had an innate mathematics skill and a budding interest in astronomy. His teaching job—not very demanding of his time, since he was not a good teacher and was avoided by students—allowed him to begin to dabble in astronomy. He also possessed the necessary astrological skills of a good astronomer of the day, and made a couple of fortunate predictions—based more on an astute observation of current events than the stars. His reputation grew.

One day, while lecturing in a rote manner to his bored math students about geometrical shapes, Kepler had what seemed to him a mystical insight into the motions of the planets. They revolved around the sun (he was already sure) and their distances from the sun must follow the simple mathematical relationships of geometric solids like spheres, cubes, pyramids, etc. His insight expanded further, telling him that the orbits were also related to each other in the manner of musical harmonic intervals. It was all so elegant! He spent the next few decades avidly pursuing these ideas—all erroneous, but it led him ever more deeply into astronomical studies.

His pursuit of his fantasy led him to ask new and bold questions, while his mathematical prowess and dogged determination kept him on the path. It gradually corrected his errors and pointed him in the right direction. He began to develop new (and correct) ideas about the paths of planets. Maybe they are ellipses and not circles? He came very close to describing the effects of the sun’s gravity on planetary motion, but gravity was something for Galileo and Newton to explain later.

Kepler needed accurate observational data to verify his conceptual models. He drew ever closer to discovering and latching onto Tycho’s observational treasure. Through an extremely unlikely set of events, both Tycho and Kepler became exiles from their homelands. This led later to both of them becoming honored subjects of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph, who reigned in Prague.

United at last, the two of them wrestled disagreeably back and forth for a couple of years. Then Tycho died of his pee poisoning. Kepler inherited Tycho’s voluminous works and over the next 30 years dove into his theoretical studies. More and more he began to ask “why.” It led him into new territory: he began to seek physical causes, rather than just good descriptions of planetary motions.

This path eventually led him to discover his three laws of planetary motion—which for the first time put astronomy on a sound and simple mathematical foundation. Without these laws and their mechanistic insights, Newton wouldn’t have been able a few years later to formulate his laws of universal gravity, as well as the role of forces and momentum, in determining the motion of the planets and all stellar bodies.

Next time: Was this partnership a coincidence or was it destined to have happened?

A Cosmic Coincidence, Part 2: Tycho the Gregarious Dane

A fortunate circumstance—in Tycho’s eyes—was his noble birth in Denmark in the middle of the 16th century. Being a male in the ruling class in his time meant that one would study at the finest universities all over Europe, and later assume the envied and cozy position of rich landowner, statesman, and plotter of intrigues at royal court. As it turned out, however, Tycho would dance down another path.

He was enamored of the heavens as a child. The regular passage of celestial bodies fascinated him. In his teens he watched a partial eclipse of the sun and he became hooked. A couple of years later he witnessed a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. He was stunned to find out that the popular stellar data tables (all based on an Earth-centered perception) had predicted this conjunction, but with errors of as much as a month. That simply was an unacceptably sloppy result! He knew he could do better.

In his teens Tycho perceived an insult from his cousin, that led to a sword duel; during which Tycho lost most of his nose, and nearly his life. (He fashioned a silver nose that he wore the rest of his life.) Then in his middle twenties (while still in college) a life-changing event happened to him: a new star appeared, which he named Nova Stella. It was the first nova observed on Earth in some 1700 years and maybe the first of our story’s cosmic coincidences.

In the minds of 16th century astronomers (and for 2000 years before, for that matter) the firmament of stars was unchangeable. Thus the nova could not be in the firmament, but it must be like a planet or comet: changing and wandering weirdly in the sky, close to Earth. Tycho swung into action and took more precise measurements of the nova than anyone else (even being a rank amateur). He proved that the nova was a member of the firmament. His reputation soared.

Buoyed by this accomplishment Tycho rebelled against his noble destiny; refusing to live the dull life of court intrigue. He was going to become a new kind of astronomer. He caught the eye of the king of Denmark, who set Tycho up on his own island near Copenhagen and generously agreed to underwrite the costs of his astronomical experiments.

Tycho was a measurement freak. He couldn’t care less about the reality of those celestial points of light—he just wanted to build accurate tables that others could use. Europe’s sea explorers were needing the kind of accuracy he could provide for their locations at sea; and he’d show the world that those eclipses could be accurately predicted!

Over the next three decades and more, Tycho built and brilliantly used the finest astronomical instruments ever seen. (This was all before the first telescope got pointed heavenward.) He created many volumes of superb data—his legacy to the world of science. Many students flocked to study under him. His ego grew without bounds.

Tycho lived hard and large. When not quite 55 years old, he drank copious amounts of wine at a party, but refused to pee as he partied on. For the next two days he couldn’t urinate and painfully died a couple of days later from sepsis: complete internal infection. His extraordinary body of work was to pass into the able hands of Johannes Kepler, who aptly used the data to forge a new astronomy. His story next time.