Even though I’ve always been interested in Science and Technology, had fairly good grades in science subjects at school and took an engineering degree, I only finally understood what science was really about about five years ago.
What did it for me was a simple book written by Georges Charpak and Henri Broch about why we believe weird things(1) and how we can tell they are wrong. It was a wonderful introduction to the field of empirical skepticism.
What really opened my eyes was that there was an answer to that elusive question that I had been asking myself for a long time: how can we be pretty sure that a claim is true or false and be confident that we’re making the right choice.
Well, turns out that most of the time we can’t be absolutely 100% sure of anything. The only field where what we discover is by definition absolute is Mathematics where theories stand in pure theoretical form in a world that is unencumbered by physical reality.
Science on the other hand deals exclusively with reality, the physical world. As a result nothing we gain from science is absolutely certain, we just keep improving our model of reality to incorporate and make sense of new observations.
Science is incontestably the best tool invented by humans to make sense of the world in a systematic, verifiable, accurate and exceedingly useful way.
However, all scientific truths are provisional: they are held as true until others with more explanatory powers come to replace them.
A simple example illustrates that point quite well: Newton discovered the laws of gravity in 1687 and showed that they were generally very accurate, except in some circumstances where the results they would produce would not be in line with what could be observed, in particular when considering fast moving objects.
It took a few centuries to find out why Newton’s laws would not work in these cases. Einstein’s general theory of relativity completed Newton’s law in 1915 to make it work in all cases, regardless of the speed of the moving object relative to the observer.
So, strictly speaking, Newton was wrong, his findings were just a “crude” approximation of reality and worked in an effective, but limited way. Nevertheless, his law was and is still useful and yields very accurate results in its domain of application.
Science constantly re-invent itself. New ideas that challenge the established consensus may take a while to take hold and displace the old theories, but in the end, they always do.
Better truths always replace the old ones: science is self-correcting; since the only goal of scientists is to make better models of the world we live in, anything that yields to better results is eventually accepted.
I’m not saying that the process is smooth and that every scientist is dispassionate and impartial, after all, we’re talking about people like you and me and they can be stubborn, dishonest, error-prone and be slaves to their expectations and beliefs just like anybody else.
Eventually though, sometimes after decades, newly trained scientists exposed to new theories will adopt the new findings and build on them.
A case in point is the geological theory that initiated our understanding of plate tectonics.
Before the proposal by Alfred Wegener in 1912 of continental drift as an explanation for the geological similarities between far-away continents, there was no real satisfactory explanation for these observations.
It took about 50 years for continental drift to become accepted as a valid theory.
Science discoveries can take a long time to become prevalent, especially when they challenge prior knowledge.
Science is hard and most of us don’t have the knowledge, inclination or capability to understand a particular issue and make an informed judgment based on its scientific merits.
Whether string theory is really useful or just high-level intellectual masturbation is beyond me. I can’t chose a camp and have to sit on the fence on that one, looking at the protagonists exchanging arguments until one side gives up and embraces the other.
On the other hand, anyone can understand epistemology(2), the philosophy of science and its methods.
Why is it so important?
It’s the foundation of how we acquire scientific knowledge; how we can say that something is true or not and when we can say it with confidence.
Knowing and applying the scientific method to everyday life is a must: do health claims hold up to reality? Does that politician say the truth?
How can we detect, judge and arrive at a conclusion that we are confident is likely to be right is of the utmost importance: everyday we are faced with decisions that have an impact on our life: does homeopathy really work the way it claims to? is that advert for anti-aging cream really truthful? Is that magnet system really going to take care of our water-hardness problems at home? is wearing a piece of crystal really going to ward away harmful radiations from your computer screen? is it true that you can’t be moral without religion?
Just asking the question is the first step. Most people do but lack the background to then make a really informed choice as they can’t really discern between the arguments, unable to detect the fallacies.
Of course, not all hope is lost though!
There are some simple questions you can ask yourself and check if any particular claim is dubious; there are also websites and magazines that are extremely helpful in helping getting the other side of the argument.
That will be the subject of another post though … :P
(1) The original French edition of the book is called Devenez sorcier, devenez savant.
I believe the equivalent English version was augmented and is called Debunked! ESP, Telekinesis, and Other Pseudoscience.
(2) Strictly speaking, in English, epistemology is the study of the philosophy of knowledge in general while in French it’s strictly that of science.
