h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think the emperors new clothes argument is very valid here but I do have a nervous tic at the thought of scientists taking the moral high ground because they are 'right'.

If we can accept that humans have limitations (generally not able to fly unaided, swim underwater for prolonged periods, see the ultraviolet or infrared ends of the light spectrum, hear sounds outside a comparatively small scale and a few other things) we have to admit that our experience of the world is, at times, limited by our human condition.

Many people 'believe' the truth of science at the moment rather than accept it as a bench mark on a long road. When the USA put a man on the moon they used the physics of Newton, not Einstein, probably because it was easier and the end result would put the moon lander down within a metre or two of the planned landing site. Pragmatism, (We know it's not right but we're going to use it), excellent!

This article is excellent but I feel may be used as a rod to beat the people who want science to admit that it offers a view of 'how things are' which is flawed, in the same way as all other human activity is flawed.

I heard this week, through the media, that eating certain fish is good, specifically for the brain. My mother, not a famed scientist said that it was, I spent my adoescent years trying to refuse fish and telling her that it was nonsense to suggest that this one food type was good for a specific part of the human anatomy and that if she only knew a bit more science she would understand what I was talking about. Do you remember when you knew everything?

I don't think it's so much a case of scientists taking the moral high ground, just that a couple of them (both left wing, like me by the way), got pissed off with being told repeatedly by people who were really clueless that there was no such thing as evidence and facts didn't matter. There is, and they do. The single refutable proposition is the bedrock of science; often, these get refuted and in so doing we gain a better understanding of the way the world works. On the other had, philosophy comes up with propositions that cannot be disproved. The most egregious of all propositions is the postmodern one, that all is discourse and anything goes. Well, faced with a choice like that, I'm quite happy to throw my weight behind the scientists.

No arguments with the politics from me.

However what is the bedrock when talking about Quantum Theory or String Theory. It's this 'Bedrock' idea that reminds me so much of religion! If people noticed that eating fish helped your brain and said so, how is that 'worse' than science in the long run? Newton said some stuff that worked but Einstein tells us that he was mistaken. The benefits we gained from the Newton 'beliefs' still serve mankind.

But the major difference between science and religion is that only science generates models from which one can make predictions. Creationism is a model, but it isn't a theory, as theories themselve generate secondary hypotheses that can be tested.

Anyhow, I think we're going off on a tangent here. My entry was not about science's way of seeing the world, per se, but how postmodernists had arrogated for itself the exclusive right to describe how we understand and see the world. And how Sokal blew a huge hole in this belief.

It's a great article and I agree.

Vestboy -

I think your posts are well-stated. A couple of thoughts:

A documentary on String Theory (the subatomic variety) had the physicists themselves asking: If there is no way to prove or disprove this theory, is it science or philosophy? One answered that such a magnificent mathematical construction is unlikely to be wrong, an argument I find unconvincing. Plus I wonder if advancing technology will eventually allow experiments to prove or disprove the theory - many of Einstein's theories were proven only decades later.

And a trivial point - I wonder if Einstein would call Newton "wrong". I prefer to think Einstein added some "detail" to the picture to cover extreme (to Newton) cases.

Hi Steve, thanks for the points. If I led people to think that Einstein called Newton 'wrong' I didn't mean to. I was trying to make the point about when people in the field of applying science don't use the more correct method if the less correct one is easier to use.