Sahn Cost Porvdigms host corel pm aest; FAITH, HOPE, AND ASPERITY BELIEF SYSTEMS, SCIENCE, AND THE INVENTION OF REALITY S nD WORLD VIEWS IN COLLISION ad On the night of February 26, 1987, Canadian astronomer Tan Shelton was lonkng throug the teleseope atthe Las Campanas Observatory in Chile; what he saw became the selenide event of the decade in th astrpomieal world. On tat night, Shelton be- came the first to se the star Sanduleke —60" 202 come to the nd of its cosmie tether in that most spectacular of celestial ‘reworks displays, a supernova. Avoonding to current astro Dhyleal wisdom, ouch events occur when the hydrogen that ‘ual the thermonuclear furoacs of stare ttle bigger then our SSsun uns out, allowing the contracting foree of gravity to gain the upper hand over the expending forces of thermal radiation. "The star's mass Un eolapes in on itself until the pressures ‘alld tothe print where the star terally blows its top sentter~ ingot of mate at the nero eid having eb & final, rapidly spinning bell consisting solely of neutrons at an {ncrodibly high demsity In fact, vo dense isthe material of suet fe peutron star” that one cubie inch of it would weigh more ‘han a Dillon tone, end « pinbead's worth several milion, A though many sperora hve ben sen in dnt guns, che Importance of supernova 1987A was twofold: Tt was time that aatronomere had extensive observations of star before it became suicidal, and it happened in the Large Mage- lanie Cloudy a galaxy “only” 170,000 light-years distant—essen- tially next door oo the astronomial seale of things. While upernovas have been observed from Earth for centuries, going ‘ack atleast ao far as the Chinese necounts of what is now the Crab Nebula in 40.1054, ooervation oftheir neutron star resi- Ave dates back only fe years end constitutes one of the major Selonce stories of the 19608. Since tho discovery of these neutron Stars or as they a more eallogually termed, pulsars (for “pul- ating radio souross”) serves as an admirable ease study of the ‘Saye of selene inthe Inte twentieth century, let's climb into @ Time machine and go back to thoee exeting days to retrace the ‘stops lading to thie momentous discovery. ‘Toe story begins in 1965 wi the decision by Jocelyn Ball, « young woman from Northern Ireland, to seek a doctorate at Cambridge University in the then-new Beld of radioastronomy. [As Bell (now Jocelyn Bell Burvell) tells it, she had become fas: inated with astronomy as «young gil when her architect fe ther mas hired to design the obervatory in the spall Trish town tt Armagh, Unfortunately, even then ehe saw that a necessary ‘ondition for evecosful pursuit of the astronomer’: noeturaal rt isto hae a night ow constitution, easly being able to ia- terchange the poral hours for sleeping and working. Despite ber passion forthe stare, inthe 1960e her constitutional ned for {good nights elep at the normal ours looked Uke a fatal ob- Siele to any budding astronomical aspiration. But 1s luek ‘Poul ave if this wea the fie when Martin Ryle of Cambridge tres developing one of the fist telescopes devoted to searching {he shay inthe radio rather than visible ight part of the eletro- magnetic spectrum. Sine the beat tne for “seeing” atthe fe- ‘quences is during the daylight hours, Cambridge was th place for her, and of she went armed with an undergraduate degree im physics to work for ber PhD. in a group led by Anthony Heish. ‘One at the most saered rule of academic inatitatons every: where is tat the graduate students perform the slave labor, the (Cambridge Tonttate of Theoretical Astronomy being rtauzeh upholder of thin renerebleprineple. Conaequentiy, Bell spent her fist fro yoars asa grafuate student wielding’ 20-pound slogehamper, helping to comstrut the raiotleenpe that she ‘would later use to gather the material for her doctoral diserts- tion. Following completion of the telescope in 1967, team leader “Rewish assigned Bell the thesis topic of measuring the angular Aiareter of radio galaxies (quarr) from the way their signals “inked whe en frm Earth ue ola od of ae rial emitted from the Sun. Hr job was to operate tho telescope Singlehanded end snalyar the output until sbe accumulated ‘enough data fora respectable thesis. Since the telescope spewed ‘cut 96 feet of thre-track paper each day and eovered the entre ‘ky in four days, Bell's data analysis activity wan hardly eee coergy-intensive than building the telescope ist, involving a= ‘tid eyebaling the telescope record and reparating the wheat of true twinkling signals from the chaff of French television, military radar, aizeraft altimeters, and other “arth basod Sources of interference. ‘The telescope wat turved on in July 1967 and, not surprisingly, by October she was already 1,000, ‘ect of chart paper bend. It was we thi point that the fun, ‘oth galactic and earthly, began. Ta ove of the 400 feet of chart readings prodused with each sean of the sky, Bell otced that there wae about Ball am teh of ‘what sho termed “seruff” that resisted elasiGeation. She saw’ ‘thatthe vera? was uelther twinkling or mao-made interfereno, and then recalled having seen sila pattern before on another ‘record from the same pert of the sky. Furthermore, abe noted ‘thatthe mysterious signals seamed to be eppearing perodally ‘on sidoreal time of twenty-liee hour, fifty six inate, the ‘ime needed for a given loention on Barth to return tothe same position relative to the fwd stare (the siereal days four mse Utes shorter than the torrestrial day due to the Hart's orbital ‘motion about the Sun).‘At this junetare Bell doused the signals with Hewish, and they desided to look at them again one faster recorder that ‘would allow tena to ple ont move deta This rourdor was oc- Cupid atthe moment, 20 they had to walt until mid-November {oaks the now reading. As so often happens in life, just when [Fou went s #431 (oF a 0p) there's not ane to be found anywhere; {stronomical anomalies are slnllar, and Bel bd to wait several tveeks before sho could reaoquie the odd signal. Imagine her ‘Nuprice when she finaly found it again and discovered that i twas pulsating at the metronomic rate of almost exotly 1¥4 sec- ‘nde. She inmediasly phoned Hiewish, who promptly dismissed ‘the signale er man-made in ight of their extreme regularity. ‘However, an Earth eed nuree woUld keep terrestrial tne, not sidered, eaating avery dark shadow over Hewish’s offhand con- ‘lason, But the feast variable tar then known hed period of fun tind fs dog, and it was diffealt to conceive of what kind St tar would rotate in ite more then second ‘Tin Get attempt to recone these conficting facts was to conjecture thatthe obrervationt were radar siguals bouncing of the Moon, ora eatelite in an od orbit. But such an explanation Aidt wash, sod sive only astronomers and the stars Keep sie- tral tie, Hevwish thought that perhaps some other abeerratory had a program under way that would aesount for the unuaal signal, His queries to other radiostronomers turned up 90 ‘ch program, The next tral explanation was the LGM Hypoth fs, postulating that the signals were intelligent eommusion- fons from “litle grean men.” Ana tet of this conjecture, oowish caloulaed the Doppler sift ofthe pulse asuming that the LOM would be om a planet, sod thet the planet's orbital ‘movement sround its sar would ereate a clustering of the pulses ts the planet moved toward Barth and spacing-ot of the wig tals az it moved away. This explanation abo came © cropper ‘when the only Doppler site noted was that due to the Barth's TRotion around our tun, At this point, theory gave way to ane ‘ther obeevation, whieh deGnitively settle the matte. ‘unt before leting for her Christmas holiday In December 1067, Bel was working late one night analyzing « reeord fom 8 Aiterent part of the sky. She noted some more seruf that looked remarkably similar fo het ofthe LOM signal, AS weren- Alipity would have i, the teleseope was due to sean that part of ‘the hy nigain that very night, aod ai luckily gota strong reed- FAITH, HOPE, AND ASPERITY s fing showing an extremely regular train of pulses coming in at the rate of about 1%4 seconde per pales, Sines another rule of graduate student Lif is that you don't telephooe your professor S13 aoe (at lest you don't if you value nshing your degree program), Bell just dropped the recording on Howie’ desk ‘witha note anking hi toleep the recordar going ovo the vara- ton period, and left for ber holiday. Hewishhinwelf then made ‘a recording’ in midJanuery confirming the sseond source, ‘thereby removing the LOM hypothesis from further considers” ‘Son on the grounds that it war extremely unlikely that there could be two groaps of LOM trying to signal us ‘on diffrent frequencies at the same time. So when Bell returned from her ‘Christmas break, she had to important problems to deal with: (G) there was more than one pulsar, and (2) it was time to start ‘writing up a hess deseribing her original work on the angular lameter of quasars (although it ultimately contained an appen- Aix deseribing the pulsar obervations too) Forced into accepting thet the source of these pokes were ‘some sort of stellar phenomena, Hewish, Bell, and three others ‘rom the Cambridge team eoasthored the fst paper on the sub. {eet which was published in February 1968, bd whieh veil Inte between identifying the souress as neutron stare and as ahite darts, the kind of object oar own sun will contract into a few billion years from now. Six months Inter, the astrophysial ‘community seepted ‘Thomas Gold's interpretation that they ‘wore neutton stare as being tho only plausible explanation ft- fing all the observations. This propoal followed up s theoretical suggestion that rite Zwieky and Walter Baade made in 1904. ‘The general picture of how a neutron star acts to produco the observations seen by Ball and Hlewish is shown in Figure 11. ‘While the sclntieexeitement ended ere, the story was wil far from over ‘i Tn 1914 the Nobel Committee awarded its prio in physic for the frst time to astronomer, eting Martin Ryle and Anthony lowish for their “decisie work in the ditoovery of plasm.” ot a word. war esid shout the actual dncoverer of plas, Secelyn Bell Shortly after the award ceremony in December, ‘nother mambor of the Cambridge estronomien! group, Tred ‘Hoyle, sid in spech in Montreal that Bell’ findings hed been keep eecet for six months while her eupervieors “swore ily pinehing the discovery from the isl, or that was what iteam of swan jolly good gil but eho was just doing her ob Tada noticed it it would have been negligent." He state that se had made the disovery using his telescope, under > hi instructions, making a aky vurvey that he had initiated. Other astronomers wore len tartan. ‘The historia! fact ro- tained that Ball was the fet person who had recognized the aay sgn an fats fd Herb, rete ohare by not putting this story on Sim, showing en upset, slightly Dookish Jane Fonda or Mary] Streep lookalike publiely de- ‘ouneing suave, but faintly winston, James Mason ish profoe- sor on the step of the Stooehoim City Hall for casting ber and Der contribution ase in pursuit of personal fama and glory. ‘Uatortunstly for Hollywood, real life ax usual hed quite di ferent ending in mind. Ta response to the varlots aime and ‘ounterelaims, Joslyn Bell had the last word when she stated that Hoyle “has overetated the case ao at to be ioormect.” But sil, given the proclivity af the fm industry for warping and Aistorting realty in purvult of art and entertainment, tot to rontion hard eath, maybe there's hope yet for realization of my Vision In any eas, the entize pulaareplode serves asa sterling ‘example of the bright ido of the folemays, mores ad byways ‘of contemporary scintife lif. Por a lok atthe dack side, e's return to our time machine and go back a few more years to ‘zamine another tempat in the artrophysieal teapot. In the writings of Plato and Horedatus we fd the asertion that the Sun now rises where it once set. How could they make such a bisarre claim? And why do so many eatures have legends of global floods, manos from heaven, darkness on the Bart and other such strange phenomena? Ta i960 the Macmillan Publ ing Company put out the volime Wolds ix Gelixion by «Ras. sinn-born peychoanalyt, Tamanuel Volkoraky, who pirported to explain those and many other phenomena as the esl of @ series of lett eatanlyems taking place during” hitereal ‘mes. Ths book so enraged the scent community that Mac- nillan, under pressure of a boyestt of its textbook division, Innaded the bestselling project over to Doubleday and fred the ceditor responsibe for dealing withthe manesript. It's instrue- five fo examine Velikorsky's claims and methods as an example of the sort of thing that sends the aclentife ertabliskinent into popleetie ‘The gist of Velikovsky's argument is theta lange comet was expelled from Jupiter sometine around the year 1600 nc. Ts fomat passed very close to us, with its til touching the Earth fand causing a rain of petroleum, ax wall as darkening the sky {for several days with its dust and debris. In addition, tho ‘Barth's rotation rate was slowed down by the comet, resulting in earthquakes, hurricanes, tidal waves, and & variety of other dra nT ll9100007 ‘matic eovironmental shesanigens, Electrical discharges betwoon ‘he Barth and the comet eased a reversal of the Earths inag- ‘ete, the pola regions shifted, abd th arth ais af 20- tation wan altered, routing in n change in the onder of th season, Purtbrmore, the Barth was pushed into « larger obi, Innathening the year fo 360 day. "Yakoraky eorrlte heft pan ofthe oma with the x= us ofthe Isesites from Beypt, claiming that tho plagues of ‘ood, vermin, and hail noted in the Bible were th reul of the ‘art's contact with the comet's tal, He sso explains the part {ng ofthe waters ofthe Red Sea a being due tothe sopping of the Earth's rotation, ad that the manna from heaven rustaln- lng the Iaraniea inthe dvart waa composed of carbohydrates from the comet. Worden Cltson then anerta econd paaage af th comnt Bfy-two years lta, this tine interfering wih the arts rotation junt atthe tie when Josh commanded the ‘Sun to stand wil. And what does Vellavakyauy about the Sden- {it of this celestial rroletert He claims thatthe comet ix ow ‘what we eal th pliet Venus! But the story doesn't end there. Tn Velikorky's swnario there was another clove cometary en: ‘counter around the year 800 x. thio time withthe planet Sars. ‘Thin oar colin Knocked Mare out of Tia orbit bringing it ‘lowe fo the Hart on at leant theo occasions Thee near mshee shifted the Earthr orbit even further sway from the Stn, Bringing about the eurent year of 385% dupe At this pot, ll thes planets settled ints their eurret positions, hus folding Up ‘the tent on Vellzorakys exes eeu, ‘One might well inquire ax to what Kinds of arguments end rmethods Veltovaky employed to explain thine catastrophic Eo- ingen. Pundamentally, Words ix Collision is based upoo an ‘int manuscripts, Igeods, and traditions. Ta later Tlume, ‘Bort ie Upheowal he ele evidence seh a the exitence of oa ‘dain Antartica, rock formations with reversed magnet por lusty, fol beds containing animals from both desert and for- it, an well an other geslogia! and palentalogieal fact. The ‘metry origin of Venn also gave rae lo Vollkoraky'sspetia: {ep un ath ana he aerial or het 1nd oritnally been expelled fom Tapitr, leaving behind 1 pow koow as the giant Rad Spot. 1t probably goes without saying that mainline astronomers, eolpits, astrophysicist, and paleoninlogistsepeak with oe oud voice in their condamnation of both Vslikovaky's methods and his conclusions. Wile his work repracenis an imposing Dlec ofsustnined scbolarnip, there are just to may incon: ‘tances in far to0 much of hs historiai,archaslogial, etre. ‘nonce, and phyaisal dst to take the arguments seriously. For {instane, while it did tura out that Ven was sorehingy hot, ust as Velikoaky hd predicted, tie ix almost certainly dus 9 ‘an atmospheric “freeahouse eft” and not to any lod cf come tary origin, Purthermor, the atmosphere of Ven ie almost to- tally devoid of the hydrocarbons thet Velkovaky claimed would ‘be found os its main constituents. Moreover, the surface of ‘Venus appears to be over 1 billion years old, intead of just a {ow thousand pears as prodiced by Velitovaky. For these reat sons and many more, Valikovsky' vision ofthe toler eystem has ‘ow been relegated to that sora ofthe selene attic wheres ‘ociont astronauts, the Pitdown man, phronologist,ertol soma al th ther paar of deci ite the traly devastating holes fn ie theory, Velikovaky ied in November 1979 eanrinend tht he had bees the vietar 3s war against the Brahmins of eeienen. And, in fact, his ideas ie onto this day in some cirles. In our quest here to uncorer the cosmos of what constitutes “ecientfe” Knowledge, i's worth {sing moment rane ep an ori Clan res as antipodes of the spectrum of what is . : ‘ammoniy At first plane, here appear to be e number of similarities between the work of Bell and Hewish om pulsars and thet of ‘Velitorsiy: unexplained astronamil phenomena, eonjectazes sod refutations of various theoretiea! explanations; a phyically tuncbserrabe explanation interpreted tn At the obeerreions— ven a public controversy over some sosilogealaxpactn of the the world of science goes about distributing ite anoladen ‘With thee points of contact, why i it thatthe selenide comms sity choe fo remard Hewish with ie highest bono, the Nobel Prine, while a the same tae vilfying Vellkovdky and dsmlse- {ng him as what could charitably be termed misguided crank? ‘Just what was it ecatly about the pulsar work thet made it the height of respectability and was to obriouny Inking inthe of {fori of Vollorskyt ‘The long end proper answer tothe quostion wil occupy us forS e such ofthe remainder ofthis chaptar; the short answer is tht, ‘yy eommon consenrus in th sientide community, certain stan ‘ards have boon st for what contitutesseceptable evidence and ‘methods, with the pulsar work adhering to them while Veli Kovaky's didnot. ‘The contra point for us i ths volume isthe degree to which thooe commonly cepted standards generate ral rather than virtual nowledge of the universe in stele Put shother wey, do the methods and standards of sence produce « brand of imowdge that in somehow more certain or of highor {intrinsic podigroe than the methods and standards of other aeek- rv after truth lke Velikovaky? Tho frst stap toward a resoli- tion of this overarching question is to address x diffrent ‘question: Just what dove constitute the practice of “science” as ‘hat term is commonly used in today’s worldt DID You SAY SCIENCEY ‘Back inthe days when T stil attended cocktail partis, the most vkward situations always aree at thos odd moweats when the ‘music stopped and socal onvention dictated that T make some {ele eft to “mix.” Generally at thes tes, ie conspired to place mo next to some slightly frenatie, upwardly mobile yuppie {ype suflering from an overdose of adolescent enthusiasm for drinking deply from th brackish waters of lif, notte mention ‘our host's er. Inevitably such encounters began with the ques- tion "What do you dot” Resisting the temptation to rep, "Ab, ‘yen, the elarzal question,” or give some other equally sophomoric esponn, in the early going Tused to anewer booealy that Tm ‘ mathematician.” To restions to thls Bit of U-advised candor {ell into one of two catagories: «petulant pout followed by the curious compliment that “I was always terrible in math,” oF ‘what was even worse, «bright smile and the remark “Ob, you'd Tove my unse, Ho's an eeoountant.” Being slow learoer, I ‘nended some tne to realine that such frank confeesions of poo- {sional perversion were not the rod to success on the cocktail and-corn-hip circuit. So T began experimenting with other, ess ‘Soterie replies “Tim an electriel engineer, a chemist, an Sgronomist (“What's Mat”, « scientist” The results could hardly have been worse if Td claimed to have boea « psychi tiet, an Undertaker, of, heaven forbid, sume buck-lapping politico type. inaly, T hit upon the winning solution of just sayig that I was an unemployed tennis entc, at which point tay Social Interaction Indor shot up like ® Misatoman masalle: ‘ut tho ead eoneuson tobe roachod fom thievery statistically ‘nsigniteant sample that thee ina wide vero of great ma ceeptions and Rental misondamtandigs feating around, tres tong te ected pb ax ona of oh ie “rays in which thy spend ther aps Cand night. ‘Tying to dl the eens oot othe aforeminioel eecoun fers, I eventually came tothe surprising Teliantion that the, term acne seem fo bo used interehangeabiy in general ser satin in atleast tre quite dstiet aod neguraent ways: go te and sto oi tha espn the Science = |» a particular appre, the ecentife method + whatever's being done hy intitle carrying on Tedendae’ actige ‘As a general rule, the nonssentife public usually ops for the ‘third interpretation, csessionally the fst, but virtually never the seeond-—just the opposite ordering from that given by the seloatifc community tise. I's no wonder C. P. Soow could de- ‘elop « lengthy easy om the two clare.” ‘The fundamental misundervtanding on the publi’ part of ‘what constitutes “soientisa” activity gise ris tan array of subsidiary mispereeptions about the goals of eciente and the way Scientists go about ther business of trying to achieve thom. Lat ‘me ist Justa few ofthe more important popular tion: + The primary gal of iene i the eccemlation of fate, Uaforts- nately, the mere cataloguing of data isnot enough; we also ‘aguire some overall organizing principles and relationship ‘betmeen these principles and the dats. Actually, for selentister ‘the more reliable fact i, the more trivial and talmportat it ‘becomes. For instance, the atomis weight of carbon ean eonf- dently be given as 12.011 atomic unite. Yet this fet i basi cally just euriosty until We eorrelated with smlar facts ‘bout the other chemical elements, sing the laws and theorne ‘of chemistry and phiste + Seen dtr vey ond ca't do atic othe fallaee of aman ‘operons. Bvery human undertaking must somehow ple and. choose as to what aspects of realty to omit in order to probe ‘other aspects of the world, In thls regard siane ie no diebu debit 9004 $210 ” PARADIGMS LOST cnt from religion, art arate, mystic, any of Ste ‘ier competitors in he realltygeneraion buna « Subige Powis tat Slay i nt nthe business of nim explanations Every slate ln or the- Pe naert to molienion there nemo unsere, ‘thangse “uta” nslens. «eared prinriy wth obing rc adel pro dime Teen tink of tingle sateen at sien: Ghat oad isthe from he stale For ot weet lean pm payed for understanding, ot fr obtaining pr {afermatin abot bow to bud a eter adn ore nut {Sur dng foo rion et the weak of mildivogeddowag- tna facts “alone = ecology” mlspernptin 29 furaive Da mui fw nina werd al ows. Some tine back, I had the enerveting experience of working fora man who tuflred from the delusion thst doing scenes Tncant fading eases to practical problems posed by tndustri\- {Sty goremmest polieymalers, and other dreamers, sehemers, fend cesalled ten of atime. One convertion that T ruefully feeell involved may temerarious aim tat if you focus attention ‘on dading welldned answers, thea you're not doing reeareh, A leat not scenic researeh, Research involves ideas, not an” Seer In my rie, what counted was developing 8 deep under- ‘Santing ofthe question lef; whatever “answers” there might ‘be mould then follow as corollaries of this insight into the real tare of the question. A ealition itealf i nt the ultimate gol; ‘what's important is understanding why an answer is possible at {ad why it fees the form Phat it doe. The point I was mak- {ng was that technological svancement and the acquisition af tleside knowledge have ony the fdblest points of contact with ech other. Technology is primarily engineering, and new teth- Slopes come more from fighting with physical reality than ‘rom acientite theories. Beskee i's not clear that new tecnalo- fn ive us a beter wederstanding of nature anyway, o,med- mn medicine rie-t-is Chinese aeupunetare. "the moral of the foregoing Hil tale is thet even many people ‘wbo practice under the rubric of what in the vernacular is ealled Tcicnist bold te e riew of sionce and seiotite work that at beat fall ito th third category noted eamir, which me might fomportlydaverite ax "the General Electric Syndrome.” That i SEO in Going iit must be elence Well if GE is doing it 0 eo probably int scene, at least not the ind of selnoe that most ‘members ofthe global stientife community would recognize. Tt tay be high-grade technology or world-las engineering or even palhbreaking developmental research, but definitely not scien, hue fo pint ot ere a ti bration i ino way intended to minimize the tly outstanding sod genuine sel tite work that i carvied out at plages like GE, 18M, Bell Labs, axon, and so on. But it's not the real aeience going on in these ‘corporate receerch Is that members ofthe ube have in tind ‘when they think of, aay, IBM. What comes to tind is eompat- ‘rs, typewriters, and all th other ofice paraphernalia that ar ies the [BB logo and that people use in thei day-to-day aire. ‘The development of theee gadgets is the main busines of such ‘an institution, and that development is defnitely not selene; tx ‘tsehnology. Now lls get bck on course and examine jurt what is that doe constitute selence ax its seen by the aclentsts ‘hemealves ‘Paradoxically, scientist usualy think of sience as one aren of life in whieh ieslogee play no role. Nevertheless, there is a Collection of boli ad ideale about the practioe of selence that the scientific community lings to with such universal tenacity that i's dificult to dseribe it as anything other tan an ideo ogy —the ideology of weiner. The seientige ideology is « mixture of logieal, historical, and tocilogieal ideas abot how sence shoul operate in a Panglosian world, and reets upon the fel owing pillar: + The epics! stractre of weence: This pillar represents what ‘many of us lea in our early nchooling about the procedures followed inseeoee. Hore we fnd the sequence: Otmeratons Pete Hypothesis xperinent Laws Tory ‘To many, thin diagram representa te emene of what wo thi athe scene math Otoervations give Hae fo conjecture Sh hypotinn, whi in tara are shecknd out by performingSaati tad 1990 62 iz PARADIGMS LOST ‘experiments. If the experiments don't eonfem the hypothesis, then new hypotheses are farmed, juts in the pulsar work de teribed carer, Those hypothe at wurvive are encapsulated {Sto empiri! rltlonaip, or lam, which in torn are mbed- ded in larger explanatory theorien is this sequence of wleps that’ bean the focus of tot of the philosophical analyee of the proceatof science, we shall disuss in dota Inter. However, to {he practicing eiotst there much more othe sient entar- prise than mere piloeoph. T*yereity of elena” Science ie » public undertaking with tuuny fits that alain mst pan through before i ac pled as part of the eurrent conventional wisdom. Two ofthe fount important are the refereeing procs for scene arti ‘les andthe repeataility of experimental results Before & rable scene journal wil publch a research announce. {Denti ent out for review to other workers fn the Bel, ot hips insure that tho els are caret, Du ls to uy Statin their sgafcanee within the framework of current owiedgs inthe tren Ina snlar manner, published work s Supposed to report al the Stas of tho imetigalo's experi Inert setup ao that auy Interested party ea, in prinepl, epeat the experent ad try to replicate the reported resats ‘Thus in the tlopan world where the sient Melogymeizs, Teferteing and repeatability heep the scintie proces (and {he sient) honest + Pler ree: Te morn scientist fn mac the same stots Soh ari of Remini en oes to nveding «patron to Snanoe pursuit of the muse. The {lterene is that nowadaye everyone ha the suze patzoa——the federal government. Asa result, most funds are allocated by federal agencies, making liberal use f the so-called pect re ‘ew proces: This invalven committees of experts from the Tartu lds geting together nnd recommending to the fand- ID egenis tue poets and those scolar waco work they {eal iments support. Aewording fo the Molo, thi proces en tures that moey Is channeled to thowe ens, institutions, and Iivduals showing theelaaeet eden of being able do something productive with Given the highly egalitarian, logical, meitocrati nature of the acentife ideology, it eames as no surprise that many scien- tists asap ita at leant very clos approximation to the way cc! FAITH, HOPE, AND ASPERITY 6 scene rly a1 afr dtd consideration of Us poi "ner stn, tthe ent nt rma tat estat ‘tapi wou ama srsny sun eyebrow o te ne te Father sia fac hat the eon idsogy Toa et Stay un the pre fee, ang msde oeieratons oft motives aa nn fh entities, The does ta which this ‘mioa cat & lod over the ay" lee ned above wil scapy our santo trougout Ua hea, Forno la sek to th shee abo and tae te mpuighs cn tin cpu struct of snc an tent feBe {othe quis of fot what Kind cf Lave tbe pens of scien ble fo ofr un sboxt hn antar of the we snd whether tht Kind of knwrledge is fn nome way saperios to ‘any other kind. ete ‘THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHER'S STONES ‘ho issu before the house for the next couple of sation son: ‘sideration of the dual questions: a Do sini Uri any see fl ut about the way the ‘ows scionce have anything Uke methad for for See havea renting and Singe all theories must neessarily be expressed in some kid of language (natural, symbole, matheratieal), tho fret question ‘takes us into the provine of the philosophy of language as tool for representing reality. The cond quettion desls more with ‘sonon per oe, forcing ws to confront th natural query “What's ‘special about esiouet” Tn other words, why should we balieve that scientific knowledge is any more corrector reliable then any * other sor? So our short-term objectives are to explore the ques: lon marks in the fllowing diagram: Selentite theory J. Objetive reality tt Sciontite methods ‘To addres these (wo foundational question marks, it wil be nee- ‘wary for us to dip briefly into tho work of saveral twentieth6 PARADIGMS LOST ceutury philosophers of language and science. But before dv- {fe int te ideas of thee thinkers, let's frst go back couple of ‘illennia sod fix our attention on some of the pivotal ideas of {he aneent Groeks that ultimately led to the confused state we find ourselves in foday. “Ta hs last wil and testament, Aristotle offers the following logical sogusace of steps—ie, an algorithm—for dispsition of estate! Ualil his choven gon-inaw, Nianor, came of age, the ‘Malo was to be managed by three exeoziors. Tf Nieanor died rior ts the time when Avstole's daughter, Pythias, would be Thi enough to marry him, Chen Theophrastus was to step in and fit Nicazor's designated role. But if Pythlas marzied someone ‘ise who, in the opinion of the exseutor, didn't disgrace Aris- {oles name, then she was given permission to use the family [Tnentrat tne at Stagira which was then to be furnished to her tact by the exwoutors. ren after death, Aristotle leaves bo stone unturned and no pasty unaeevunted for—just the io of detailed, step-by-step proceription that we might have fxpecied from the min who favented the ides of formal logieal ‘dation ‘For ‘Aristotle, the proosdure for uncovering the truth of things wus to postulate premines, then use the now-faiiar ier logical deduction to derive the consequences implicit in {he premises, The classical example of this protedure, wih (no's all familiar with from Philacophy 101, i: ‘Premise Iz All men are mortal. ‘Premise TI: Socrates is a mn. Consluson: Soeratee is mortal, {Note that nothing is said here about Ube actol trath or falsity Gf te premives. Maybe some men are not mortal oF maybe Soe- ‘ates realy 0 woman or # bermephrodite or whatever. Physic ‘al realty and truth play no role the deductive method the Groin tre aenmed to a tre, wth the conclusion following {rom thie asumption. ‘Prior to Avsttle the traditional moans for structuring expe ance was the mgt, a term deriving from the Greek mythos, Tmaning “word,” in the seano that iti the definitive statoment ‘on the subject: A myth prevents iteoif ax an authoritative as- Cunt of the fois that isnot to be questioned, however strange FAITH, HOPE, AND ASPERITY ” ‘tae we, Assn tte fanos mytlgt Jonah Cap ‘bell, myths serve several functions: . + Meteo: Myha aren an tan on “exproee ‘awe, humility and respeet” in recognit Itimate | i ‘Sits of lite and the universe, een ee + Gomi yt prove ta age of tho une planations for how it works. ai sates: + BERD vat bly mas thd ma + Bocas euport he “entering ad baron ‘on of the individual sina: ‘Myths need be neither tru false, nor ft, aul Stns tow aver, they age ot the Kd of fet that hes enerament {sae al ako perish cise one ap frie thn the fl Se os shy ml corn tt wat rine ot is point ‘age-old conflict between seienee and religion starts to take off. fe - “otha th ue of mt, naan «Bnd ot ata Les et Stine oe both an at he Som of rth het al i oss and ae sont nea a tno os fh ces hing dove satering he hereof andy the esters? Carty dpe Stow ey canon ssh ti itt toheve a ble sate tn rie some ean {Su for hat woul servi seam eit wh oe Scoon A mye ver hvu fa sa ‘Ser leo td ea no Pre Steere gry wen had ot on pry hy or maybe te opr af doa mami et pot ward tn ng tote ot igh hve oe ta toe Inte hed’ cpponsind fo the Pat cio, teen Gir pert pole tia ae agi a ee ‘wera th evs of diye nb pos oa nerve es mn for n e pone ond Sons eens rade erga ts ars sth what hewn coe fo beter ne | open ss of te rty cis from mp Grex ttn for en tsunt rh rath cnbekememtsed sok tate Ga indo toh tat Anas wes ag1¢'00004 6 PARADIGMS LOST gzusp when he developed logos into “logic” by use of the proces dete Oe of in uf ith a caine er {fo provide an exlantion of how rs) work. Ta v- ‘Selly speseh, en explanation” i unualy taken to be the #2- Sor toa question that begin “Why?” Such answers inevitably erin with “"Becnase,” and the question and aniwer together Constitute what we gotealy cal latement of one and eft ‘Thus, “Wy is the sy blu” is azawrod with “Beene the air toolvuln beorb al Frequencies of vsble Hight excopt thos in {ho blue partof the epectrum.” And “Way doce water boil at 1070 (at sen lev” anrwered by "Bocase at that tempera {ure the ermal motion of th water molecules is able to orer- ln the etteran.stoyphere preare’™eause end eel, ‘Stimuluerespeoe The mothod of logis! deduction is Aristo’ {hori some might say maternal counterpart to the ‘planatin of physi! happenings By ease ad tsk. his Pigs, hrittl attempted to combine the purely Lgi- cal method of dedetion with his ideas about the nature of phy {ext rely in order to draw conclusion about the way the werd Tealy mora, In Arstole's view physial attr was componed UF thee things qualities, form, sod mpc. Ho flt that there tras only one kind of mater, whch coud take many for, the Tundancotal forme beng nr, carl, Are, and water, Boca {hove four fundamental forme’ ere not lent in any sensei ‘which we might understand chat term, they could be trans. Tred ito och eter To tet, this scheme gave rie to ‘Sint todaywe might erm Avs version ofthe hydrologic [pen The Sune het shanges water nto er: eat vse, 20 the oat in thie ar pls the rest of Tt up (ote aks he eat then Teaver the vaper, which becomes progresiely more watery fgutn, a ths prooess results in loud formation, There estes 1 porkve feck eftet in which the more watery the loud, fhe more the water dives eway ia opposite, the heat. Ths, loud ges colder sad contracts, The contrection then rertate: fen waterignas tothe ter, heh fall ap ruin or,if the eld’ ent has now fallen below the frvesig pont, bail ano. 80 m8 fee bere the rletlees cain of enuse and efect being employed {e “explain” the obvervad behavior of water, ai, beet, ral ad aon: "What's amazing about the whole setup is how all the ‘trong trons somehow combine fo produce something smack {iy low to the way tings relly do work! ‘For almost two thousand years Aristotaian loge and physics served as the “seienee” of the Hine, explaining various spect of nature, body, and mind by logial eonmguences of ae tions of the foregoing type about the nature of matter. Oddly soongh,denpite Aristotle's main cocupation ss an oberrational biologist, the bigget daw in his entire world picture wes that he sudvocated no experimen or eren use of obervations to serve as check onthe validity of his underlying premise. Basealy, his was an epistemology in which ome inferred specie instances (Conclusions) from general observations (premises). It was not ‘nti the work of Prince Bacon inthe sevententh century that ‘someone had the courage to challenge the authority of Aristotle ‘and suggest tarning the situation around, Le, trying t infer {aera instances from specie observations. ‘Bacon's argument was that Kf ne wats to come to gripe with ‘the way the word realy iis neeeaary to begin the investin- tiom with the facts of life rather than prejudices about what ‘hose facta might be. ‘Thus followed the priniple of tadacton, uherehy conclusions sbout future events are drawn on the bars of repeated past servations. Sach an approach in fart what we ‘might come to expet from « man who was not only 8 philoso per, but also lawyer who roe to the post of lord ehaneellor of England before being diemineed for taking a bribe (a inden tion, perhaps, that the eurret dubious ethical stato of tho lea, ‘nunca and polite! profesions are not Ito trentith-oentary aberrations, after al) Ta Bacon's view of thing, if we obotrve ‘the Sun rising inthe est forty eonwecutive deg, then we ca predit that it wll rise in the east on day 51. And the longer we fbverve euch Zogular bebavior, the more confdentiy we ca ‘peak about is continuation. Tne nutabell, thie i the taethod of {nduetion—Iots of individual obervations eventually reeling {nthe inductive lap toa general enneluson. On the one hand it's satisfying to have a method that takes into acount what Nature is actualy doing; an the other hand, imhy should such x procedure provide reliable information about the way things work? On what grounds ean I be eertnin that everytime I put water into my le-eube trays and leve thea i the freezer fora Tew houre Tl soon have ioe for my scot the rocks? Just Deause it's always happened this way befor, does that give me any asearanee that today's drink wll have the customary satiatying “eink? The short sneer ia that there'slias Mc ildai PARADIGMS LOST i aa tty wen tt crag ober cena a Roeser tyme GRO att ir i pees ~~ es gy Fn th wb ar ac a paoresson wUME: That's treble, Hos oun Ang wm roam WLotrace T would hate, but we eed (Ue eonlusions of) the oo ee ve ng rn aye gh hi rac, a ina me cen teeters irene Thapar meee ie et pene on re ae rane pong epg Feit tera newts Seotte de praceemresea ice ig kieran Seposoed hiceomere nes wt eric cect erat tegration Seca ee Someta nents Foerster Se cerca armen ae ieee arene ae ie meee maaan iaat ae a oraeerea cae aa ea Bereigr iene acre Saran anenn sa Scares long base acta this [Newton added the idea of the dewerption of nature in mathe- ‘matical terms—the keystone in the arch of selentie knowledge ‘shore foundations were Ind by Aristotle. More then his emank- able experimental reults in optics, mechanics, and chemistry, ‘Newton's lgney as writ large In his Prisipa ie the den of wha ‘we would today all the mathematie! made. Newton showed not nly bow to “eneode” Bacon and Gableo's word of obcrvation| {nto mathematical form, but alo invented the method (eaeulas) for using the mathanatieal machinery to grind out theorist ‘that could be "deeoded” into new impled statement about Ne- ‘ture, The essence of thin procedure is depoted in Figure 1.2, ‘where the physical systam to be modeled (eg, the solar systern sn eletrcal ireult, or whataver) ison tho lef, while the formal matheratieal system that repreente it appears on the right Also on the left is our earlier notion of eabelity, represented as ' property of the physical system in which certain parts of the system exert infuenes “canting” things to happen elsewhere in the system, Tho torm implication used on the Fight to reprecent tlther the proces of Aristotelian dedution or that of Boconian Induction asthe menns of proving mathematical statements to be logically correet. Thess staements are urualy called theorems nd follow from axioms and the abore logical rules of lnferene. ‘The vet of implications i the logeal counterpart ofthe physial causality noted on the left ide of the diagram. ewe implied Statements are then isterried—i.e, devodedinto aseetions About the way the material eyatem really i ‘With the ideas of deduction, induction, obervation, and ex- periment welded together by the symbolic formalism of mathe- inate, the stage is now set for 8 bref aesount of the alphabet bay which modern sence tras to ineribe the secrets of nature. ‘The main letters in this alphubet are faets/observations, law, theories, and models. Lt’ take lok at hat each of these com ‘expla mans inthe content of toedern eiene. In Dickens's tle Hord Timer, th schoolmaster Thomas Gred- {tind opens the story with the statement “Now, what T want i, Frets. Tench these boys and gels nothing bat Fast Fact lon ‘ave wanted in fe, Plant othing eh, so oot out everythin fe "You ean only form the minde of reson shar wpe ‘Face nothing ee wil ever be of any service to hem” Sek to ets, Sot" Wile Gredgrnd i badly a tle model ofthePARADIGMS LOST ° tort |g ecotng ° SACURE 1.2 Nealon soho for mathematical modeling tint stout, i om tig i seth cee Sem ee oy nk art ie nea. ce ad at rer see en as ode, fei ate ee cr Ce eae line ie arcrr. cai s taoing print Ts er be "Bere OU tg a sinner reed ee eda ica sie ae ame pre EG ah a ee ote oe i ed ae ne al a ee reer ee ifcoe fash deo a te is aston i ti ee ee eT og See Es ep ec ae et Sere ret ea ey sams Bete ree eka Coat eee ee ae i es Sr a Gee wea poe ee eget, Sree ad Bint see ean i le Fad ects ey ate coe Se ere ET cake ta eet ee Se en soe crear aninia ne eee oe. Reco le opal ioe i mee Erbe 2 ie oe ‘The characteristic properton of laws of the foregoing type are that they: 4. are about Kind of events (experiments involving the pres- ‘res nd volumes of gases in eplinders), not about any ele slar event (a particular experiment ‘with a pericuar tylinder using a particular gus), 2. show a funcional relationship between two or more kinds of es important to observe bere thet there are many different types of laws, not all of which are aclentse. The reader might Like to try to datinguith among the following in regard to thelr Scientie charactor: parking regulations, the ‘Ten Command. ‘ments, the Law of Conservation of Energy, the Law of the Ex luded Mile. Useful as it is, the above prestare-rolume relationship (Boyle's Law) still doen't tell as why an inersane im preerre i linked with x decrease in volume. For this we need theory of sues. An explanation for Boyle's Law ean be obtained only If wre invoke the atomic nature ofthe gas, and think of Stas being coupes of a large number of lite “billiard balls” randomly ‘moving about, ootesonally elliding with each other end with the walls of the eylinder. Newtonian machinion describes the o- tion of each sack bal, and by combining their individual ino tions we ean in prinepleealealate the preesure on the container vals ty determining how many balls ar colliding with the walls at each instant, and the strength of each sueh eullision. With ‘this petare in mind t's easy to sen why when the volume of the pliner in halved, the pressure doubles. Sines the cylinders ar ‘face aren has boon eut in half, the Hkellhood tht a randomiy ‘moving ball will collide with th wall doubles. Nevrton's laws of ‘mechanical motion inthe context of thin gas situation form the ‘mss for what is termed the Kinetic Theory of Gase, «free: ‘work that ensbles us to explain Boyle's Law. ‘The characteristic fenture of wthoory is that It offers a means of relating the laws describing telus of event to a framework ‘nd a set of principles deeribed in tome dflering from those90001 re ‘ued for the laws, Thus, the Kinetic Theory of Gases doen't [ke ono of the Hien of preaure oF volume at al, but only the ‘tion of a parti, together with its associated mans and veloc ip. We oblain en explanation of Boyle's Law by deriving the law from the principles (Newton's Iams of motion). Uue Hee ofthe ges molecules ar tte blind balls ying “about inside the eplnder also ustrates the notion ofa mode! of { phyeical situation o, more prosueyys pkywical model as 6 ‘ranted with «frmel of matRomatial, model, No one tke sri- tunly he iden that the gat molecules realy are hard tittle {lane spheres, but this farms out to bea very useful picture tipon hich to let common seave feed in order to generate inte Bos ‘bout ow the physical aystam wil act under various ‘Gaeumstauses Te same technique ix employed in other types “oy to the serodymamie properties. Similarly, in the gas exa Sie many reel properties of the ges, Uke its reaetiity, color, perature and so forth, are neglected to study its pressure ‘olume relationship, Facts, ns, models, and theries—aueh are the tol hat the seni ne to propect forthe gol of realty fn the mountainoon doings of Nature. Figure 13 depicts the Hnterowametions between Gets Inndmaris on the terrain of Depending upon your ineintion, there ary several diferent ‘pillenophical portions fat ean be taken as to whetber the nug- is of really that tara up in the elentist's prospecting pan are Fea old or the mother Inde. Inthe philosopher's game, each of thes positions ie associated with a partivalar philosophical + Roam: Realist blir that thor san objective reality “out there” independent of ourvelves. This reality exists solely by ‘Arte of how de ori, and iis in principle discoverable Tp application of the msthods of sence. T think i's fal to “at this te the potion to whieh most working sciatists SRlectite They believe in the posiblity of determining ‘Shethor or not a theory ie indeed realy true or faae, Indie aoe ary FIGURE 1.3 Obration, ley, avi, od made tire of hin positon i ha outer of enw poll akon te m8 of 8 ata pol than re enya avery dopartent of pn tng ven faculty aero of whan land that whet {hey were deserting withthe eye ahd eqntons wa ob fie may Aso of he Hostd, “Orvis, at + Tuirumextatom: Thin seo sings to the beet ‘li ru nor fae, bot hn the sa a sf ne ‘aenls oF clulatingdevco for padeing te seus of ex Serene Basal rans oh ne ate aly are genuinely rel are the reals of obeereton, i, Gradgrindan Poet A ipsa statement slong the nes comes frm the eager Rudolf Kala, whe rear inthe ‘onlest of mathemati! fede ding: “[Prejuie] eae soul enrated ody independent of tetsu ‘Seo ih et be or sna nt cca eat he data" In Ught ofthe enginer's hunger for any solution Wat work,” perhap auch ti erzun portion ceptable nen nearing, but is hard to 0 bow ican be defended on ‘ther tna pragmatic grovnds Au wl te later in the Doo, Siete prota rly tu mec depart Soe cal cpierng hen one panes fo fant qu pistemoloy in quantum mechanic, Tere, tos tho prepa fee of intrumentain i hat “it works.” + Ralaisom: Tn thin neresingly poplar truth is no Ioager rata batwots& ory ou en indepeaetbat sther depends ttn parton someting Hk the Ags Mehta he eo lng te ry Tas, fr « ‘non ay om pases om age to ae, or fre sory > Tet fom try to theory, whns tea hang, In it a ort at en tee fan tha change ou a, Thm haap bry rth ot So realty ut ther, io ae, wht our meaurng in serous nes) ell yo tia our Pot Ina aa SURE GIG eh tn eddy pnoper of sae are eas Feedncts aneusts of nay, apt end oad Ste Peceat ofthe ssire amas oft pros of ce Thee el fer malign peter nthe Tt Sc cn unmet hat Hoetoe sk THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION OF THE ‘Do sets proved a they do Beaune tore are chee ret ‘ho tor dong sory cll hone procedures recreble merely ‘enaae a crtain group satiny thant ‘To dig deeper into the warn science might be able to vindicate the ere of the Teallts and gain « lime of their nirvana of objective realty, there's ee but to stop into tho twentieth Geatury aod look lit hander atthe logieal structure of ei ve es seen by the plilrophers. While most practicing sien- (Gna, otto mention laymen, find the discusion of such matters [usome, they are inerapabie and cannot be ignored in a work buch es ther Besides, st David Hawkins wisely note, “Thooe ‘eho most ignore, least eonape.” So with this exedo as our battle Gry, Its briefly cormider what the philowphers have to eay Stout the correlation betmeen the prazie and the tons of xi- oe» and thelr connection with any Kind of objestive reality. RATIONALITY POR REALISTS It Plato's Academy in Athens serv as the geographien! foral polat for Gres pllbeophy and its view of the world, then its Frrentith-contury counterpart ean only bea small seminar room {the Mathemstin Department of the University of Vienna, FAITH, HOPE, AND ASPERITY 2 ‘where a group of physicist, mathematicians, and philosophers Inet every Thureday evening for soveral years in the 10208 and 1800s to debate the relationship between the theories of scence ‘nd objective relty. This group, christened the Vienne Cire 1, eventually came to ‘what amounts 10 the inwtrumentalist position tht the only meaningfel statements that ean be made ‘re thoae for which we can give a dette prescription (method, algorithm for their veriteation. Thus, uso of a word ks “jel low" would be equvaleat to specifying «procedure for verifying that any particnlar object pressed the property af being yer low. In this way, the meaning or realty of “yellow” became ctuivalent t the statement of the procedze for Its verifeston. ‘This, in eatense, forme the base for the notorious Verideation ‘Prineiple which lay a the heart of the wehool of loge! poi tam, the form later given to the philosophy expounded by the ‘Vienoa Ciel But fo understand this blend of empire and Jogi i's necseary to go back a few years end lok atthe work of ote ism nh of the tne, Tadwig Witten: WITICENSTEIN, LOGIC, AND LANGUAGE or ordinary men, the middle ofa batld with bullats fying ‘and bombs bursting amid eris of human pain and agony it Iherly the kind of place in which to engage in contemplative Dhilosophieal speculation. But Ludwig Wittgenstein wat 'n0 of ‘inary man, and during the course of his valiant service with ‘the Austrian Army during’ World War 1, be developed ideas About the relationship of Woughtsexpresed in language to the ‘Actual state of affairs in the world, ideas that were later en- shrine in the pages of his elasie work Tratatwe Zope phils. pices. ‘The basic teet ofthis sominal volume, containing the, ‘nly ideas of ‘Wittgenstein’ published during’ his lifetime, is” ‘hat thore must be something in common between the structure ‘of'ecantooco and the structure of the fact that the nentanen fa: sorts. In ths view, representation of the world fn thought ie ‘nade posible by logis, bat the propeitions of loge do not in ‘and of themselves represent any actual state ofthe word. Th, Tole was neomeery but not eulent to deuribe any kind of ab: jective reality. However, for Witgenstla loge did reeal whichPARADIGMS LOST ‘hat reality was at leat conlatent—o.g., if the statement ‘Wynter bolle et LOC at sea level” is true, then the atatemeat ‘Water doos not bol at 1000 at eon level” anna also be true, "Witigenotein lastrated thee dees by what he called a “pe- tar theory” of language, in wbleh be compared logical propesi- finns to pitares, A piture can represent some physeal state ‘ing eeriain typer of aymbels; language can do likewise but ‘Tithe dierent sot of symbols. Th pieture bears some relation Tip tothe physical rally that it represents. 8, for example, ‘Tomces human face in a photograph the nose may appear in the ‘enter of the face both io physi! realty and in the pctare. lowever, if the piture is by Salvador Dali we might find the ‘ue appearing in some quite dient location, or not at all. Of ‘Blaroe we might tay to clarity the relationship between the pi fare aod the object—for example, by introducing color oF per~ pecivebut euch an attempt at elarfention only gies rise to ‘Riser pleture, which ta wl require ational analysis. At ‘hmm stage the essenee of the picture bas to be understood dic Seay, ove fll Sto an infinite regress. “the pltare theory of language, proportions making up the lmaguage are thought of a5 analogous fo « serine of pictures. Furthermore, since Wittgenstein exsuzgs thatthe logiea trae- {irs of lnnguage mirors the logical structure of reality, the lan- iponge “pictures” represent povible states of the world. Tt {alses tht nguisticstetemanta are meaningful when they ean, Jn pencils, be corrlatod with the world. Actual observation of the word wil thon tll they are tra o false, To ustrate, we ean fay Bat “the United Nations is in New ‘Zonk but iis meaniogles to state tat “is United the New in ‘Tore Nations” Of evtroe, difbrent logics! rales (grammars) ould be developed in whieh the later siatemeat is meaningful ‘but within th context of conventional English grammar it has fo Logie! structure at all So the main claim of the pitare the- wet acl to make th latent it xn nly be “shew.” Farcoacanion gave rie to Wittgenstein’ fons metaphor in {he pouulinat scion ofthe Tract ons serve a eucdations inthe following way: 5y- wars "peognies thm a2 booer- (oe whe unrstanda el when be has wud testa topo sin up beyond thn {Glam oo pe, row sony elder eter has eid eo i ot ts Setween eality ad i desption in Inguags ano be Sey rata ee otra nara tea Peete Be rst i ert dae Woy to desert inne angen, cote, mathe ‘cal, or otherwise. eine See 3 Thee fon proiam about whether what we say about the worl coreponds tothe ney the world rll 4 We'muntt kw the te unre of te nreepondene be- {oem what we say and thn way thing bat we ea ony ‘oe langangy Tlf deeibe thateorepontene . Words fa language sam sve exw the erred corepaae dene, an we mast take Feourne erly to slosny it 1s ta ptr hor ae ner re wl al {nto the insite rege of Socio of oeiptons deseriptions .. . ae “ AL Stop 5 we come to ove ofthe mont famous statements inal of Philosophy, with which Wittgenstein concluded the Tractatus: “What we eannot speak about we must pass over in silence.” Z Ws eay to coe how Witgestlss exploration of te ater ay of ngage oie, and servation tthe wri would sp {el to the meres of the Vieane Cirle, wit tet emer bout constructing a coherent philosophy’ of ence from an + ‘mlgamation of logie end empirical patemology. nd indeed the Tacfaas did serve avn pint of deprtare for any of their dsibrations, wit several members of the etl in regular eo. tact with Witgenten 2 Vienna, attough Wittgenstein seit ceams nver to have patigated the Thur ght ‘lscussiow. As an one wis, wl the Vienna Cle was Dany ting together the tots of gel postivam sing Witge of unarmiing th elie erty the devon oe oe, spring te ei a yn Grp of ies‘Remember thos old 19 teats where some sequence of numbers 4a giren and you're supposed to pak the “right” continuation of the sequence as a demonstration of your smarts? This kind of problem lee atthe heart of what stared to bother Wittgenstein About his psture theory of language, ultimately resting in his “epudintion of the entire iden. Consider the following simple ex- tuple. Suppoce the inital sequence is (1, 2, 4,8} and you're ttked, what's the “natural” or “right” continuation. On those fbeurd high-school IQ and College Board tests, the examiners ‘would probably give full eredit only If you answered with the ‘Seuence [16,82 64,128). Preramably this i the “correct” an- ‘Seer because you're supposed to recogaae that each term inthe ‘rigiol sequence is twice a5 large as its professor. Now there's no dob that thit is one logically defesible reason for iruesing thatthe right continuation ie one that extands this pat- {erm But there can be other continuations that, depending upon the context, would be equally lgieal nd corre. For instance, if the context were the high-echool football stadiums rather than the examination root, then the moet logical contiouation might bbe [1,2 4,8) + [Who do wo approciate?”|. Or even in the fxamminetion room you ight Think vf continuing with [9, 1, | 25}, patra that rofcts the Juznpe in the original sequenee. | ‘Tha plat is that in the abeence of context, Le, additional itor | Imation, there's just no sueh thing axa “tural” continuation ‘ofthe sequence. The reader will reognize this situation as just ‘nother illustration of the Problem of Induction stated earlier, find its just this Kind of difiulty that began to trouble Wit (ensten after the Tata "Following the First World War, Wittgenstsin epont time as «| igh school tenher in village ebools in Austra, whore it is ru- Imored he taught some of his pupil about the Liar Paredox (CoThis sentence fs fale). By all accounts he waa very popular | ‘vith the students, but waa eventually run out of the vllage by | Uheis parents, moet Hkely on aocount of his homosexuality and | Inabilty to Toate to the conceras of the peasant families in the regio where be worked, Im any ease, during tis time e began {to became discaisted with his piture theory of language, since At gave no elaar-eut anew to questions Ike “Why should we see the prinlpls of loge to be tru, even though i's aot posibe to ‘exprem the reasons in words?” (Because we can only “show” - Se serial thee tat nt sa") Or “ether tame ind of under loge trtre teri the wt oo eur thou syrcos fist somehow enn be ld sep forthe apuset saear, dens of he propestion of ogi” Tn oer nore see at ‘frls for organising sre sprint sed wii ot esi at that we eenot arate even tough we all fellow hse Tales antomatiely bon we “aed nits ea ‘hen we a to ech or? "Ins ltr work itgvstsin osidered tis Kind of que to, coniag tothe untappy ota tat there sould ding lpzal stature tothe wort wiih our mds ‘tart adhere or vce ven. Tn the doa nlp carl at {he propos of ae ret thera of imngung, eo tere ae na to by our toe of language in vege tad lng exerome, Congas, Witenes sluon te wy the vght eontinnton of the enqueen (1,248) 8, 2,64 128] and not ["Who fore eppacatet st ve soy hot goo "inte same way" bent pe shae for at Be, ‘Ths te continuation i cated by sole! contdnretos, td bears wo oat with any Lindo secs ra fot aoe Bet serum, Hi thn nnelued that tn ar se poe ley ‘ular te property of ssa grup. Henn, Witgantas sve “writ” slun t te Probl of Indusion ty oceing hina ot with how we ould tn ert ix procins ‘ost th ennai, but rather wih how se some be {si boat tie ptoe. Tie impnton of a his for sos that ene et upon & foundation of tam for rasta el Sg, ruil ep ofthe matin schon of ete ought, ‘Weil come tek to this rns ntien of cae eat ile St fore rn ay hi Sisto to we teary Witgesoa fo diy the sacle langue, thereby tying tn atcoer th uso of sls as eout tn word THE LOGICAL POSITIVISTS AND VERIFICATION {In his account of the evolution of knowledge, Auguste Comte ‘dentsed thre stagoe of development. (1) the Uebel, Ia ust omen alr of he nlite oe ons of spirits; (2) tho melophyriet, in which there is the use of abstraction and. generality (8) the polite,a! PARADIGMS Lost ipetiaipae ee permenant Shoe tae anaes aa Sree Teme ce teat dc iat chia al ea Tae es eset Be dal et, SEEN fate Re ate Fake ger EN ieeits ae omens Seer erator ae Eee rate Oo SE Oe a cena aay a pel en aaa ta 2 en a a aa Tee hcl Sr or ee fas Sen mre Coote epi ea fm eo pt ra Soa, omer eet ee tat aves ea eee Degree meni boars ene Does Se eee oper ae oe ee eee eis aeare et Pec aeen eee Se ee eee arg wed ee at Prater phere ‘Popper, the son of a Viennese lawyer, was orginally interested {n developing methods for separating sciotiestatements from puvadoectence. He alo fok an active part in the diseusions of The. Vienna Cirle, whose members at fst thought Popper shared thelr interest in mmaning, « misunderstanding that was fom cleared tp. While sts teen-ager, Popper recognized that ‘bo amount of supporting data will ever bo sufficient to confirm @ Lypothessy but all takes to rte itis ovo pice of negative tridence. Bo, for instance, if 1 hypotheice that ell Ferraris are ed, no matter how many med Ferrari Ise, the Problem of In ‘duction will ell prevent me from stating with eerainty that FAITH, HOPE, AND ASPeRITY 2 this isthe color of a Ferrara, Homere, all I need dois go to ‘the Ferrari factory in Maranelo and ses that there is even one white ar being but, and T ean then eonfdenty assert that my ziginal hypothesis is false. This chan of argument constitutes what Popperian eal the method of fsfaton, and forms the Ibart of Popper's view as to how selene, ax opposed to psouder ‘snnes, is to be eared ut, Tn his ova words, "The enterion of ‘the scientific status ofa theory i ia flab, or rfutabl- ity, or tatabilty.” ‘Bopper is rnlst end belies that there ia an objective real ity out thre that sciese an acquineSnereasingly acurete i= formation about. His mthed is eonjeeture and refutation: We make 1 hypotheis and then look for evidoneo to falaty i For ‘Popper, on theory ofa give situation eta be preferred fo ar other if there are more potential obeavation hat ean route the theory dan ean refute Its eompatitor.In other words, the more statements that eould be refuted by direct observation a theory rakes, the beter the theory is. The classe example ie the by pothesis that the art's orbit around the Sin ir eirlar, a5 ‘compared {othe hypothesis (thors) that it ean elie with the ‘reular orbit as just a special case. Sings there are tnore pote” tial observations tht will falkity, or refute, the ereular hypoth is, the thoory that the orbit in circular would have more empirical content for Popper. To understand cleely the distinc ton between Popper's views and thooe of the lope] postivits, {t's instructive fo examine the eompanioon given in Table 1 ‘While Popper seems to have banished the Problem of Teduc- tion from the philosophical banquet table, his eonjeeturew-and refutations methodology isnot without a few daws of ite own, ‘The moat difeult obstacle i what is known asthe Problecr uf Auurlary Hypotheses. To lustrat, let's go back othe red Fer rari problem. If T happen to sees white Ferrac\ on the read? thereby refuting my original contention, the “red Ferrari” hy pothesis ean always be rearrested by adding some new beck round condition to the station euch at “twat realy & Ferman, ‘ Lamborghini,” or "It was ered ear that bad only been painted white," and 20 on. Following thi line of alec, ‘any theory in trouble ean always he aaved by th introduction af sultable auxiliary hypotheses, since it may then be csimad that ‘he orignal astertion wasn't wrong; the error was in one ofthe Dckgroundeae may be formulated in ee a sehick may be He ee ond their fee fee may be reduced by way of fe feat mp (at a) ms ir Sree ead to ox inftite repress TABLE 11 Laid pvt vrna Ppper 2's eas ple great emphasis upon scene method ring iene ebout how they nah to boar, niet {pg entirely how ny seually do bare in practic. ‘The hard {oss ane at very few sso, fan, apand mc te lok {ng for dala ov tying to dovslp experiments at would falsity {hei hypotheene-jur he oppante fa fat. Ths commonplace ‘Seerstin ends ut nt eomideration of he way social conven: hme sd Hens terion what ae fo be tie thw ition thet Popper hinvel ulmatsly cene around Yo oo- nowlging in connection wit his original problem of distin. ‘ubingseeuce from peeadocinte, Ho Say coneded that {ine tant to know whether or nota thory se scertife, we ould lok end sce how i hand by peop rather than con sider its logical structare—a position remarkably similar o that arrived at by Witlgeastein in his dliberations on many of the sume inser. ‘An important way station on th road from the purely realist position of the positivist and eaziy Popper to the completly Felativstie stance of today's Kuhnian, a dncuesed inthe next setion, isthe work ofthe Hungarian eduester and Tinré Talat. After serving in the antiNaal resistance dating ‘World War Il, Lakatos became « high-ranking ofcal in the Ministry of Hauction, later decing to the West during the Hungarian uprising of 1956. At this time Lakatoe went to Bae land, whore he bopan work on his Ph.D, thesis at Cambridge on {te theme of mathometieal discovery. This novel work, preeented in the form of a dialogue centering on the proof of Leoubard Euler's famous formula relating the sumber of faces, vertices, and edges of w polphodron, led Lakatos to x deeper interetti the question of the “dynamics” of theories, Thus he went one step further than Popper spd the portvists by centering atten: tion not just onthe etrustire of seentie theories, bat also upoo how they shang. Tho vohile for this study wat what Lakatos ‘termed a seiutfe eacarch program (SRP). For Lakatoe, an SRP ies sepeence of theoriss in which certain rethodologeal rules are followed. The primary components of fon SRP are + The hard core—an inviolate cluster of hypathees at the enter of the program 4+ The protetoe bella sat of surilary hypotheses + The negative heurivis~aeetamptions underlying the hard eore that are aot to be questioned + The positive heartioma sot of suggestions or hints eaying how the SEP is tobe altered A good example of the hind of SRP that Lakatoe Bad in mind is the Ptolemaic view ofthe solar system, in which the Barth sits at the canter withthe various planets moving about om orbits that are decribed as complicated opeyelee, These curves are Sst the path trased out by x Bzed point on, aay, the ren of 8 fo as you roll it along the top of Hat table. Cols of diferentsiaes give tie to diferent epieycls, and Ptolemaic theory uted ‘combinations of these eurves to describe the planetary orbits ‘Tho hard core of the Pema program i the gece by- pothesis, together with the newest of the planstary orbit ‘ring etven by epieyele. The protative belt consists ofthe do- tails of the various (ypes of epieyeles, while the postive beuris- fie would consist fa plan’ for’ daveloping ineresingly plsieated modes ofthe planetary system. Note that this pae- itive heurstia is not a vague, general set of prineple, but a ‘quite specie et of procedures giving definite advice on bow to ‘rocotd;inluding instructions cn how to handle anomalies. ‘Oa th postive side ofthe lger, Lakats's Was were an im- provement over Popper's since they acknowledged the social di fhensione of selene. Tn hit sens they served as forerunners to the idee of Kuhn, Purthtrmore, the Lakatos vision of what eon stitute scientific truth had the virtue of showing that no parte- ‘lar research program is unambiguously to bo prefered to any tothe In this way, the SPs opened the door for the anarehieal ‘iews of Paul Feyerabend, which wel lok at n'a moment. Also Torts credit, Lakatos daeeraed two important fests about seien- lise procure (1) scents have aafilent faith in the hard fore fiat ancmaliee exe explained amay, and (2) seintists ave feneral ideas abst how ono should try to cope with (Ge positive heurists). ‘As to Uabilitiee of SRPs, there are many, not the lest of ich is thatthe choiee between two SIRPs for Lakatos is no reser than the eholea between two theories for Popper. The as- Stooment of which of two programs to prefer eventually comes flown to 4 situation analogous to baving Donald Trump and Harry Helusley tossing ponnice of tho top ofthe World Trade ‘Cente, the ie Grand onl Hata Baron of Manhattan being ltvarded fo the one whose penny Ineds i's a meaningless fume without a erterion that they ean employ to see who will Slign as ing ofthe towers. But there iano operational way for ‘hem fo decide whowe penny land fist without invoking outside lgents, it additional information outside the two “programs.” Lakatte's SRPe ad other drawbacks as well, "Tere were great dicultes incoming o agreement as to just svt constitutes the hard core ofan SIRP in any specie staan Gon. For instance, Newlou'e riew of planelary motion used the {aversecoquare lew of gravitational attraction as an inviolate hy- ‘pothesis, eae part OF the hard eore of Newtonian mechanics ———— FAITH, HOPE, AND ASPERITY » ‘Yt in considering the motion ofthe plant Urenus, both George Ary and Friedrich Bessel suggested modifying’ the invere- ‘square las to neount forthe observations, while Urbain Jean- ‘Toeoph Laverrer and John Adatnr suggested Keeping the law ‘nod explaining the mation by the presence of a hitherto-anab- served celestial Body (whieh turned out to be the planet Nep- une). “Silly, before the Theory of Relativity was ‘promulgated fn 1905, some suggested modifying the inverse ‘Square law to account for aberrations in the perihelion of the planet Afereury. In fact, the Eneclopacdis Britannic (1910 ed tion) stated that the gravitational law should have the exponent 2.0000001612 instend ‘of 2 to make Things come out right! So ‘ven in that mot sold of seientie bastions, Newtonian mechsn- ies, theo wero heetod disagreements as to what should and should not be in the hard core A fn diffelty for Lakatos is ‘hat the iden of the postive heuristic is hopelaely vague, This part of the program is supposed to tell ar what to do to modify the program but, in fact, emergos during the course of the re- earch As a result, i ays nothing about wht one i wupposed todo to carry out an investigation ueceestully Lakato's vision of the seentite entorpise i fa richer than Popper's in that his notion of hourities directs attention to int portant aspects of seientite practice not streawed by Popper at A, Neverthe, the dicate with hie SEPs cast arpersons ‘on the kinds of views of seentie “reality” that ean be expected ‘rom any such program, ‘Soe see the rarious attempts by Wittgenstein & Co. to pro- vide a solid, logical foundation, or metho, for the scent pur- of knowledge all come to one bad end or another, Dare we fntertain the idea that perhape there is no method Well, Paul Feyerabend not ony entertain the notion, he insists pon i Tn studios of eeientife method, there are two prineipal branches: AA. Rules or techniques to use in the aistovery of theories 'B. Rules for the objective evaluation of rival theoriee ‘The Vienna Ciel claimed that only B was the legitimate pror- ie of the philosophy of science; Paul Feserebend denies that ‘here is any valid distinction between the fro. ‘In Apainet Method, is. Gamoun meniferto for scientite snarehy, Feyerabend slates his baie then in the following way:£90009 iy te et i th chrvonenimantess tas Seas Te ana tly eet ne ne Ber eee Rent cusmrteri ari ste ceetearee terete Soe ran cenit Somasaeee en elaneiess esas Siti cee amore Seen hee Sta seicmmaners ane pace mete aaarae inimconss cy en ween rae Ra oe we esaeee eee Se cae eee Saeed emiece meat ieee Se rangement ~ omer oes rt antnarioetsy Rien faacens Ele etc een arson eae tiey Sea ea Sfoaewc se eae =e eee | {ue et any noone is ore a mater of rca onvertion in the ‘sie cman than ta prea of lil mode at free, Hongition of this taring fast constittes Sau for Thomas Kubn, whose ideas about paradigms in felenos eat the het of what by far the mot aod-aboat ow athe sclntite enterprise ia he wocod half of this con sry. BUDDY, CAN YOU PARADIGM? | ‘Tulian Bigelow, an electric! engineer who helped John vox Ne Inman build the Jobnniae computer at the Tnstitute for Ad- 2 ee FAITH, HOPE, AND ASPERITY » ‘vanced Study in Prineston inthe eary 19506, tls a story about bow hen he drove down from Cambridge, Massachusatt, to be {interviewed ty von Neumann for the jb, he met with the great tan at his home in Princaton. As the story goes, there was & large dog romping onthe lawn, and as von Neuzmaun opened the door to Tet Bigelow io, the dog ran into the house and stared running from Toom to rom, niding everything in sight in the ‘manner commonly practiced by dogs everywhere. Busy in their Aiseusion, neither von Neuann nor Bigelow paid much eten- tion to thee eanine anties for quite awhile, bat Bnally von Net man’s curity overeame hie courtly Central Earopean manners and he asked Bigelow if he always traveled with his dog. Bigelow rplied, "It's not my dog. I thought it was yours. ‘Such are the presuppositions that pervade every aspect of ‘human setvity, selence (and sietists) being no exeapton. And its exactly thee kinds of presuppositions that conrtitus the tcleus of the idea underpinning ‘Thomas Kuhn's notion of & ‘stent poraign. Tn 1947 Kuhn, young professor at Harvard, was asked to organize a ft of lectures os the origins of seventeenth-entary ‘mechanics. As preparation, he begen tracing the subject back fo its roots in Aristotle Phys, being struck time and agein by ‘the total and completo wrongheadednes of Acieftls eas, As noted eave, Aristotle held that all matior was compoved of spirit, form, and qualities, the qualities being sz, earth, Sr, ‘and water. Kuhn’ wondered how such s brillant and’ deep thinker, aman who had single-handedly invented the deductive rethod,eould have been so daly erong about eo many things involving the nature of the physical world, Then; as Kuhn re- ‘ounts if, oe hot summer day the ans ease to im in each ‘hile he was poring over ancient tex in fhe Urery: Lok st the universe through Aristotle's epee Tastead of trying to squeeee Aristotle's view of things info a modern framework of atoms, roleules, quantum levels, ands forth, put yourself in Aris” totle's positon, give yoursif the previlig world riew of Aris: toils time, and i and bebo, al willbe ight. For instance, if ou adopt Aristotle's world view, one of the presuppositions ie {hat every body seeks the location where by ite tare it belongs ‘With this presumption, what could be more natural than t0| {ink of taerial bode as having spirit ro that “eavenly” bodies of artike qunlity vise, while the apie of “earthly” bodice nuoes them to fll?FIGURE t4 The eel pallor “praions” ‘This stroke of inspiration resulted in Kuhn's developing the fides that every slentist works within a diatintive paradigm, « ‘ind of intelectual gestalt that colors the way Nature is per- ‘sive, The situntion x raguely analogous tothe pitare in Fig- ttre 14 where ane way of loking shows what appears tobe two ren face to face in profile, while another way shows a flower “According to Kuhn's thes at presented in his enormously in fvential 1962 book The Strate of Siete Revolutions, sen- St ut Hh he rt of my, ere out tes yoy ‘fire within a framework of presuppositions about what con- Stitates a problem, a solution, abd a method. Such a background ff shared ansuunptions makes up © paradigm, and at any given imme a particular sientie community will bare a prevaling| ‘peredigm that shaper and dirests workin the fld. Since people become so attached to their paradigms, Kuhn claims that seien- tile revolutions involve bloodabed on the sae order of magni- Ade a2 that commonly seen i palit! revolution, the only Aifrence twing thatthe blood fr now intelleetual rether than Tiquidbut no less reall In both ean the argument is thatthe tanderiying asues are not rational bot emtional, ad are settled ‘ot by Tope, sll, ad appeals to reason, but by icational factors lke group allation and majority or “mob” rule. As ‘un states i "Phere iano standard higher than the sant of the relorant community. The tranfer of alegianes from on6 Drag to another ise ecnverslon experience that cainot be forced.” With these ideas in mind, just what constitutes a pare digm anyway, a least as that term is used by Kuhat The arse? in not easy, and Kuhn has come infor plenty of eritiism forthe vagueness of the notion. But th base eoncapt ean be made leat by the folowing map-making analogy. Let's imagion ssintie knowledge of the world as being the tera iscogila of the ancient guographors and map makers. In this context, a paradigm ena be thought of ee a crude sort of imap in whieh territories are ostined, but not too accurately, ‘with only mnjor landmarks Like large rivers, prominent snous {alns, and the lke appearing. From time to time, explorers vet ture into this Mhdeined territory and eome baek with accounts of native villages, desert regions, minor river, and xo on, whieh tre then dutifully entered on the map. Often sueh new informa fiom is inconsistent with what was reported from ear expedi- tion, oo it's periodically neewsazy to redraw the map totaly in accordance with the eurrent best entinate of how things sand in the unknown territory. Purthormore, there i not just one map taker bat many each with a diffrent ea of sures and data on the lie of the land. As ¢ recut there are a number of cempeting maps of the same region, and the adventurous explorer hes fe imate ® choise of whish map be wil belive before embarking ‘pon an expedition tothe "New Word.” Generally, te explorer ‘il choose the old, relible frm of map makers, at leat unl fguaip and reports trom the Explorers Society ahow too many dinsrepaneies between the standard maps and what has actualy been observed. As these diserepancies accumulate, eventually the ‘explorers shift their aloginee to a new firm of map makers whose pictures of the territory sem more inline with the re ports of the returning adventurer ‘This exploration fable gvee a fle pieture of the birth and oath of ascents paradigm. Kutn raised that revlutionery changes in science overturning old ores ae notin fact the normal process of ecianse, nor do theories start small and grow ‘more and more geoaral as elalmed by Bacon, nor can they ever be axiomatizod as assorted by Newton, Rather, for most telon- tints major paradigus are lke » pair of spetasies that they put on in order fo olve puis. Ocarinally« paradigm shift fakesi PARADIGMS LOST ¢b!o0007 ace wn the apectacln get smashed, and tay then ut on Tw pir tat tutor everything nt be shape, ss, ad folore One this sift tke pasa new generation of scents rough up rearing he w gisoe tnd acepting the Dew ‘sion of “tsuth™ hough fae new lase, nimi to 8 ‘hole new set of pul tobe slvd nthe procs of carping "ta praigns hae gent pace vlo for h sient st “the praigms ave gent praca ae forte sini scrpz ore aie forte exponen Without them no one would Ene hrs to bok or how tpn tn experiment (expedition) ti bt dat. Th tmervaion bingy tthe cosa point tint there ao uch thing as an “ens?” sieredon ot {ack we svays eo by interpretation, a the lterpretaton we thei ive bythe prialing parsdgm ofthe momeat Ta ober ord, tn oberon an experinens of selene are made on The ban of thoes at ptbnnecontnned within the pre ‘ing padi, As Bi po ie Shoory rod per “ign you what yom ean sere" Assring to Keh's i rie ef ctw, he of mal Thelin agape in he snp given by the curzent pare: Sg tion ako, aod wih pea Aly, Ut the {nep ges redrawn when the nora slats (explorers) tara potash dhtu'ot Sting into theo up that fh ap begins iF canpr ino «morse inosine, Bet what bappens Airing thw ine ef petdigw ens Tingine we area th ni stage fh eri, were he od pradign cat sovont for ertainsnomalio, stange cea Stone the ke, Two new theories emerge, which oer St Treat "erplantions forsee aberrations” Toe heorin pve iret aap orn peta i, reat real {Bes Afar a period of competion, ome of ths ris bina to ain the aceptane of the sls community. The renoos tony not be objective a all but may rovlve about ater ko Simply, sigue, tbe soil potion of the hors deren, overnmedt sla plc, nnn forth Thin suppor ds to EXjermets tht then “eorroboreta™ the tory, st he ore {roe neem nae sporter hey En cy, enpecialy song the young Turka inthe vente eau tity. Boon “realty! gin t fake on the ln of he new hese, at scents onfreraly beg to se and tt for co tain Features of treaty and ignore ober. ‘But wa i th emma bd pw i al aor ote —r— otter, competing theory? According to Kuhn, in that event Mxe- ality" would have taken a quite difrent turn, and th sioatige view of the world would have been sexn through that pair of ‘spectacle rather than the Bret. This means that there i no wash thing as scientife “progres,” atleast aot Inthe sense that one ptradigm builds upon its predecessor, Rather, the new paredigan {urns in an entirely different direction, and co much Hao 1s lost with the abandonment of the oid paradigm as B gated from the new. Now we “now” a difewent universe, Af Kuhn's thesis true, then it ale destroys one of the main pillars of the sclentife method, sine the mhole dea of « seen: {igs experiment rests apon the assumption thet the oberver eas be sontially separate from the experimental apparetus that tests the theory. Kuhn contends thatthe observer, hi theory, ‘nd his equipment are all exentally an expression of point ob ‘iow, and the results of the experimental txt must be an expres: ‘ion of that point of view ar well. This position eftetively nex sarts that seienee isnot objective, But atthe same time we Know ‘that sconce isnot totaly subjective either, sinee paradigms tre {rentully overthrown. Bo wee eck tosouidration of the cxntral question: What isthe relationship ofthe eientiat to central au ip of the sient to the ‘he most rrottionary aspect of Kuhn's elaine ie that they tir omit things ike knowlege, tah aad external Fae Infact, Kuhn state that in scent truth an enily eptona sod gratuitous conspt. AB be pula “Does fe relly ely image that there is tome one ful, objet, true aeoons ‘ature and thatthe proper measure of siete scisrament {he extent to whic ft brings as ltr to that ltiate galt” {hin most practicing sletints would cay that yen, sues bat lps ahel of lott But apparenty Kuh does thnk so cies Sm Ua ths omy forse ol of tn at aayay, eo you cant measure siete ‘gut lower tthe way things are In themaave, Returning io 5 ‘ap-makiog sntlogy, Kutt’ claim is tantamount ts belt hat not oly are there any map mle each emplaisng if {erent aspen of the territory but that Is i principle impor ‘never fo produce complete map ofthe entre regen, Se you can't fadge'a map by how lowe Ht comes to ts deal Pate imap sce suc a map i iteralyundrawable In some ways this ae of argument is risen of Wiigensei's an talebye iis PARADIGMS LOST ruage cannot doveribe the intrinsic logical atructure of the sword Sat Me the revlon hey dni, Kees eget er mit th tse epenten fs efor com ip. abvach be ra's minor ste hates sn bo fete fb putiog the hoa ing tk nt he enti ‘Step, Ou of ans spn erin ta en the as fer Duley Shaper eo empisiond tht Kah wo wren EN denying the avy sed sonalty of eee. Shapers Tat sce sarding oan mtg ena ot tats art upto ok yea nal sbied the oor trang tht ton tough we may” be wearing rveslred {Sirsa tnt hee how vated Stay sted, bt oie ulin esp sy a tar ete Grog lad ad Ser In shor gina tay {ont er i'n ei Bt they on eet We aac salut pt vbr neo of Kus es tat he later to ie costs pen teva erates of erie vl Sow aah ses a pari te pace seve wma ois ar Tagen savy ext sre t pve ep {urton: At at Pit Go un of Gocopansen fs Rating emurh fring sat prnign Gal? Koes il tip slr i ea Wi nds hah of irra” be aa st he arom mt ot ae ora {Sf oreaasingwone teres in samest eta oy ovapusng Gaps ae ienging tgs fo obs ferep tsar, Wht ater eos for nny change out! that tay are gry amped by We commen, S50 yu not tes aero tema ore Sou to eperte win he framers spre fe Xm iota eemquets, oo fd Kab tant the eal preigms cao rey be emparedy eeu be des Sir thn nt im rf ey ohn ftaar os post tno Kaa may site of tn flog {ang at npr nny wa + Aecurte: Consequenees of the theory whould be in agreement ‘with experiment “tae Sn lo wt ani dig Rese atm terete Sukarno cee ec a eerie! Eres SESS core ne arena os a ‘ously unobserved relationships. as at's cl hat the ira ofr he share ai fr he ‘ory shoes ut that thre i posible way of svg tun: ‘atin fortis sles feet : ‘To compare Kuhn with Feyerabend, Kuhn saye there are ules (the Fivefold Way) for thar chic, at thts appiaion ‘aay be problematic and they canna be ive objective non. Aion, Feyerabend says there are no role whalaceer but lke Kn, resta much of his canon the estan of ncommensure 1s thors, ‘We ean also compare Kubo with Popper and Lakatos by not- ing that, oughly speaking, ‘Paradigm = Hard core 4 Positive hearst cuahling us fo conset Lakatie's SRP to the mation af ign. As fares Poper i meron, hn eatel themes of em. Sse, tet, refutation, are ako present ts Rubs word, bat aly daring the couse of practag tornalvelnee, Poppers ene at thre Foul fore moecion ooo Conietues in cee, but only forthe exposure af such sno {resto falsifying tess i busely sna fo Kahn's lin at ther rationale forth intron oft ww pradigm, bat nly fer the attempt to "artesat” the paradigm and eke 1 dal sccesatlly with anomie. The print of divergence be {meen Kuhn abd Popper arises wait omnes tine to tif res be paradigm to another. Popper below thi ean and ald (and is) done satinaly, logeally, and with lite fae; Kaha ‘7s this method my be fae inthe betes, but wel ence St doen't work fat way. ‘With Kuhn we have come to the end of the Kine as far as con: Aexoporary views on te ways siene operates bth to frm ndPARADIGMS LOST roms Wigs. late its vew tn word Si the path Shan ubn ston compte pe le with tof relat cn rane manderng next een P37 {Tectia he competing pnts wel sey esa: sets ig ue: Hw ron ent ali? PHILOSOPHICALLY SPEAKING ne ; ea Sar ae cts “eg tr letra wae Fe tm ii cn ay Teena ul una ee ats ee ee crease eoesen a rest gt ree ene waa etnies race ete oe whi a a ee me ey Doone + Realom = Objective realty ext. 1 Teiitmestean = Holt he readings noted on measuring ‘Stroment. : «Retain Rea ie what the comity sys tbat “easy saw that bles at to wheter or ot there's ine tins of cen dlerain one's potion aa ratio 15 an irrationality wit rstpatits believing in method, tonics nots The various philosophers and pilvophica ‘hots tok dieing vows oo tice matter, and to expound {het coveted lol more tne and space than intended, bat ‘ecactenyo. Consequently, befor gogo to consider hat the racing scons tetnlven, an wel competing Heao- Gas have tsy abut thse mallets [have ted fo urmarine {ery wo fa naa 2s the able shows, torre {ng conclaion ofthe philssopers i tha, as Hintein std, {site Bunt ere ht on ot of deve veda ysis supported te iden of an objetivo ret “ont there {ter orton ere deci To adr parades, Inds quey ent fo th laboratory intend ofthe ory fener TRAIT 62IeF__wETHOD ARGUMENT] [iteserein elim ratinalit pictur Ingunes [Wittgenstein TT relation irationtist language rae lace poitiits iostrumentalmn rationalit eration rep [Popper slim rationalist faetion atatoe relatives rationale ‘SRP! |Porerabend ‘laiviem —Leratonlet “anything gos” In ltiviom rationalist ——parndign| TABLE 12 The Blo he phibwophr Bags ‘and listen to what tho players rather than the Monday morning ‘quarterbacks have to ay about the hole busines, ‘In 1979 the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton held a ‘cebration to honor the ene hundredth anniversary of the birt ‘of Binsin, the institute's fret and moat clobrated resident ge ‘aso pan fr this celebration, committe was formed at tho institute to arrange & program and invite stholars from aqound ‘the world to yartcipats. Just ax Caour divided all Gaal into three parts, te TAS committe deided to arganite tho Einstein cvateonial similarly, focusing on Binsten's slence, the histor. cal genesis of his ides, ad, Soally, the plillsophical impact of his work. As Freeman Dyson tall it, the committee sollited ‘ames and put together lists of otholars whe eotld be invited in ach of the three areas. The committee wan personally ac. ‘guaintd with almost ererzone on th lit of seen. Ae Yo the Iistoriaas, the committee didn't low themn personally bat at least had heard of most of them and knew of their work. But ‘when it came tothe philoephers of sien, Dyson remark that fhe committee was nat ony unfamiliar with them personally, bat Jned never even heard th names of most of ther! Mor then ny abstract argument could ever hope to show, this its episode conveys the level of contact between the activities ofthe working selentist and tho arguments of the philowopber: Tt is exasly aol In Dyton’s words, "There's a whole culture of philosophy ‘out there someshre with which we have no contacts at all there's really lite contact betwoen what ‘vo call science aad hat these philosophers of sennee are doing whatever Bat in” ‘Dyvon's observation serves to unravel the contradition notod007 9919 moment ago between the eit of sents ad hoof ie fowphors. As far as moet practicing acentists are conerned, {hers midi more dango then & psoper in the of sheng tn face, there appar fo be somethin {ted Loe ani’ bcren the slot and piwober, tn Shc the slit yan Inne pes heir yarn he {tewptn by the posopbor to prem thei attentions toe {hem Aba inesion of telat of er th psc Mr fy GeltMaon a ties eatin with him a dolor pee ‘on foridding i to agar with Pboopbere on the grows {hat oa be angers to is belt ; one cme othe erage two surprising contin hat it enn so wn sy in od ok ‘help from ® of arene. Homer, Jour cowerat obeyed wat Slain do aod oes the roeder nue oh iors € what they dot ie rion ship to tier tnowidgepemrating matin, then, wnt Tetie,comieratio of mates pilose! aaridabl Mont ot our tre thin volume str spo what setts trevealy dung, ut in ech one of thom thor rong der. SKretf pope presppeitin editing th itr frettion of tw ru, The reer shoal try to hep tees {Ser nes nd we slog r= let rlaig the myriad empeing armen ‘Wine philosophical factors probably are honored more in the ac tan oe pret of tes, solo! peste are other mutter. Scene sot yet dove by peru ea. ‘hved machin, bat by al im thinking ed fig ban Tine an it pombe fortis fact fo have ome pect Spt vay scene pronto te coelsiomn nxt the a ihe universe faction, Lats take few page fo eoier the fevoogy of seine abe thn te ln, an aonb are. ‘rar (oak down ou out mat ering tbs fhe way aioe {mento hat ions a rh” A TALE OF TWO SUICIDES {dig Botimnnn and Paul Kaninrer were th profes a So Wave af inv oh ay pr st a ety thy tes pli tis nent ond Bl net eto FAITH, HOPE, AND ASPERITY ° by thelr colleagues; and they both committed sniide. While per bps extreme in the outcome, these two eases serve ay exarplos ‘of one expect of the way ecient truth is determined at lant sx such by the social climate of the ines as by the dictates of ‘eaton and lgie alo, Boltemann, physicist, i perhaps best remembered for his work in thermodynamics and the enneetions be discovered be. tren the theory of heet and the more genera issues of Faso tess and order. He is today eredited with having introduced the ‘notion of entropy as measure of the disorder present in cal leotion of objects of any sort, an idea that later served as the ‘busi for the theory of information, which tareed out to be 20 racial to the development of modern eorxmunisations tech. ony. Tn fact the formula S = & log W, expresing the entrory § 1 being proportional othe logarithm of the numberof poe: sible sates that a aystem can assume, is angrared on Bolte ‘mann's tombstone in Vienna's Zentrafrielhof, "fitting ‘memorial to the importanee of this fundaimental ides Ta th expression, the constant of proportionally fis even tay ‘ered Boitemenn’s content in recognition of this maguifoest achievement, But at tho time he way carrying out this poneers ing work, the achievement was anything but maguideent a! leat ‘if one was listening to the lading seientiats of fhe day ‘Boltsmann's problem was thet his thory af est involved en secemblage of atoms moving acgording to the sual rules of ‘ewionian mechanics. He used this concept ofan stom ab pare tile of matter to construct his thoory of heat as a statisti] Property emerging cut of the overall motion of these alam. ‘Note that ths idea was put forth around the turn of the com: tury, several years before the work of Ernest Rutherford, 7. ‘Thomson, and Niels Bohr gave the ooncept ofan stom its mod ‘ra Birth. As a result of ie atomitie speculation, Boltxans ‘ame jnts heated confit with several of the glans of the sien. fige community, mest notably his Vienneee eolleague, rast Mack and the German plyslal chemist Wilhelm Ostwald, who argued forcefully against the idea ofthe atom. Ostwald par. ticular, preferred a theory of est hated tpoa the notion of en. sey rather than matter. Depressed by the aerimouy of ts ‘pposition, a8 walla his filing erosight and what he tought of ‘5 the decline of his mental fatulie, Bolisiann tock is if i Duino, Tialy, on September 5,1980 PARADIGMS LOST ‘Tragieally, Boltemann’s euiide took place almost ectarmi- ously will the mork by Thomson and Wutherford in Britain that would lad to a completo vindication of his iden So here tre have textbook ilaetration of how the soil climate of the ‘iene community, as well a the influence of ro grett eo, feted to delay introduction of what ended up being 8 major eo0- {eibution to our way of thinking about the way the world works ‘Now let's move the clock forvard almost exnetly twenty years trol examine the eats of another Viennese profesor as iustra tion of how these same social foros can work to rid selance of ‘equally controversial, but this te erroneous, ides. Paul Kamera was «profesor of biology atthe Univrty ot Vina ie Sept vim ith a Stl sk at bred ernpibaes sod ober types of em ‘hn el moet ko yun an eet soit te ormaer fr Teplice of whet tiny we woh tx thy itera [ins this smiation af se 40 poe eal, enpe oo surprising tn Ramuerer sported the de hat Sepia carers cane peso to pring, by Lae hic nberitanen. For elses tent upon improring the amen ren the dn tht nba sit He erg, i= arsed tte ean beso lds great appear fer Rammeres tora be et ut prove the ea with Ro ‘Mfamour experts om te mit on “nur Vw fonta recom an, with the mae acing he ccna nupt pede of the tale emtay of ter specie of teas tat breed fhe tr These pate rough pte 0 tintin of the mal ht br wos to rab ont he Beck the Sinpey tena Goring the erure of mating in water Kare Imer’ experent inated foreng fhe ite ond to Deed [a water for severt! generations, his claimed reruts being that sch tonde then developed the nuptial pads characteritie of their naturally waterbreeding cousins. The supporters of Karm- tnerer fovused upon thie experiment at clear-cut evidence for LLataarckiam; opponents mained highly doubtfal and requested ‘loser lok at the evidence "These experiments with the midwife toad came under heavy sttak from naturalists in both Europe and Americ, especialy ‘Willams Bateson in England and Kingsley Nobo in New York. On a visit to Vienna in 1925, Bateson saw Kammerer’ laste FAITH, HOPE, AND ASPERITY Fy ‘maining specimen of a midwife toad with nuptial pede and later faked to reexamine it i his owa lab. Katerer replied that it ‘ould not be sent from Vienna At the sae fin, Noble was have ‘ng doubts about some of the parteulare of the phyeicl strus- ‘ure of Kammerer’ clsimed niptial pads, and visited Vienne in 1808 to examine the last specimen pereonally. His resulta pubs lished Inter that year in Netar, claimed thatthe ao-alled pads ‘were nothing moze than black markings made with Todi fk At the time of Noble's report, Katerer was preparing to leave Vienna for a postion at Moscow University as head of a new laboratory in Lamarckian biology. Noble's Notere article ‘appeared on August 1, 1926, Ina ltr of September 22 to the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Kammerer wrote that he hed exam ‘ned Noble's claims aod found them to be totally accurate He went on to protest his ignarsnoe of how the inking had been dove, but acknowidgd that his experimental eoneisions about Lamarekism were baseless. After withdraving from the postin Moscow, th letter enneluded with the poignant statement “Eazy ‘ot in a positon to endure this wrecking of my hfe work, aad hope that I shall guther tether enough eourage and strength to put an end of my wneked life tmnorrow.” And, infact, dar lng « walk inthe Wienerwald the nextday, Katinerer shot him. self in th head. This was another extreme example of selene peer-group pressure and its somtimes trie ect upon the live of aslentstn deviating from the group norms. Only this ire the pressure acted to diseredit wrong result reer Ua to “suppress correct ones, ‘The tales of these to Vienne professors serve to under- score the somtimes dramatic inte thatthe soil compo ‘ent of scoce plays In estebshing what we take to be tg seletie “truth” ofthe moment Thc socal factors operat ‘within the selentite community laf aa wel sin the cute ‘orld shaping not only the way seontie activity is exrrod ut at alto the meaner in wish certain Meus tke ‘Bale ‘manos, ar buried while others thrive: One of the pioneers studying tec seta dotermionstay at eat sie scene fe ‘al, the sociologist of selenee Robert K. Merton, who in 1962 ented tall ti wtb trae or carci the siete enterprise” Roughly spuaing, in oer terme ean pve Merton’ mma aM2 PARADIGMS LOST + Oniginlily: Scientse results should always be original, in, ‘novel. Stade that add nothing new to what is already known fre not part of velence. + Detachment: Selenite undertake their work with no motive other than the advancement of knowledge. They should have ho personal axes to grind insofar asthe reeults of their work ov and they should eve no peyehologicel ecmmitment to & Derticlar print of view. Th impersonal style of moet sien- ‘Bie communications ie a dieet consequence of this norm. + Univomalty Cline sod arguments ould be given weight ac. trding to thei intrineie merits aloe, and should not depend ‘spon religious, sosa, ethnic, oF personal factors surrounding the individaals whe tuske them. Tn thor, hare are no priv Ingel sour of sob nore + Suoplicim No eet satnent of fc shold be taken on {i Allan shall arfllysrtinied for tral a unc a ror of fot ae ny uch mistake ould be fe pate iuneda'ay: Ho po mpi, stents shoul {run no om a natn when omen fo Sine of cet ta «its sev: All acts kml shoal be tet ‘Stele anyone. Than rvs of ower aren the Pe Sue property of ho ont, bt ar ple ponds hat shuld Te tmoitedinmeitty th emmy of selene. his Sous debts to whet rat enpeng in Gmeted mary wuaeh seinen tia Anyone involved with the way stent practice actually ‘works will mediately recognae that thec preseriptions are vi ‘lated every day of the wesk in both trivial and not eo trivial ‘rays serving the seme rule inacones that general lews serve for Telely a lange. There's sothing particularly disturbing about {Ri gap betwoon thoory and practice, just as the fact that human beings Japa fo banks, and drive thelr eas too fast fe ot realy news either. Wht is disturbing, to some anyways ‘what appears to be an inereasng incidence of such violations of The spirit of sciene, at lat as Is embodied in theee norms. Such an incrssed pace of corner eulting in eience sera eepe- cially evident inthe last dende or so, certainly ided and abet fod by seienot's Paustian bargain with government funding igvocies, Neverthslnr, the Mertonian norms are stl the thos t0 ‘which the community of scientists subseribes, snd form the Inert of the code by which the behavior of most ecentet is judged by their peers And in exaetly this way the norms rake their contribation to the way seleutists think, hence to wh they altimately come to secept atthe way things are. But these fac- tors working inside the seientige community are not the only ial components influencing the work of science. Of oqual limportanc are the frees atbeting veenee from the outside et Desally in today's masemedigantarated and caa-hungry ‘world, In his 1971 Stato of the Union addros, Prosident Richard M. ‘Nixon declared thatthe tine had come for the country to wage ‘war on cancer withthe “ane kind of concentrated ert that Split the atom and took man t6 the Moon..." This pronounce: ‘ment led to an arlanehe of money pouring into the nation’s ean ar recearch laboratories, abd resulted not enly in a war on fancer but also in e war among the various reearch establish iments for » generous hunk of the federal government's eae? war chest, One ofthe foot soldiers in bth of thes eonits was ‘William. Summerlin, a young skin specilint at the prestigious Snso-Ketirng Tata for Casa Here Sa ew York a5 ‘Amid the high-pressure poitial climate surrounding eancer research and the feverish busting and grantamaaehip, in Mare 4978 Summerlin applied fora five-year federal rrearch erent from the American Cancer Society to pursue his special interest fn akin grafts and immunology. In particular, Summerlin fet that he was on th track of developing procedures whereby skin treated by his technique eould be transplanted without rejection. ‘Thinking that «lite favorable pubilty never hurt the ese of relatively obscure, but ambiiour, young researcher, Summer + lin presented an outline of his workin progress a a selene writ. ers" convention. The rerlts were predotable: three-eslima headline the meat day in The Now York Tet declaring aa ti cover ay ap rantrtaee, Summerlin was oo hie way, oF 90 1 seemed, ‘Daring the couree of tho next year, while Summerlin traveled the country prosnting seminary and leture on his worky eal leagues were Song it ineresinglydifeult to conta his Fe sulla by independent experiments, In fact, even workers in6100007 Samet om baton at lun Katerag ore agte reproduce th claimed propertie of the spe “sum tevin aki” leading to 8 showdown bobween Summerlin and ‘Stouo- Kettering Director Dr. Robert A. Goodin March 1974. On ‘io way to ths fateful meeting, Susmnertn pulled out s bck {Ep peo and hurriedly inked Sn some dark patches on the ‘hile ive be was bringing as ovdenoe for his claims. At the ‘me Good dia’t notice the Summerlin embellishments, and it ‘was only when the mise were returned to the lab assistat that ‘Stimmerin's “help” was discovered. ‘The assistant immeditely eported the matter to his bre, at whieh point Sumnmerin wes {stantiy suspended. While be deayed any wrongdoing, assor- Ing that be bed inked in the ekin grfts on the mice only to make ‘thea more euslyideotiale, Summers credibility was sbat- tered by th indent, along withthe erodibility of ix suppoted ‘ohnighe for akin grafts “Ineteetingly enough, the Summerlin episode bears some strange siniaritiee to that of Kammerer and the midwife ‘ads, ‘although without the same tragie mucidal ending. The point in abing these eases ere ir ant so much the isue of whether or fot Kemmerer or Summerlin was really guilty of fraud, but Father to llurrate the dagree to whch fore outside the world of selene, in thie ease the federal reearch-funding extalish- tment and the pablle at large, contribute to ereating « climate that ean drive ssientists to manufacture and/or artificially ex hance what they claim are "the facta.” And money is not the nly euch presstte, Politienlconalderations, especially these in- Solving what i often termed “human nature,” ean and do play ® ‘Eeamatie role fa infaeneing what's seientineatly “right.” A good ‘Mlsteaton of this Kind of eet was the controversy over socal ‘Darwinism in th Sst haf of the eetury, a debate about which ‘re ahall have mach more to say lator when we consider its mod- (Sm inearnation: the Sociobiology Problem. In this context, it nay even be sae to ay that th ral srue i the cock between the norms of iene, as exemplied by Merton's Uist, and the ‘tports" of polis as encoded inthe ideclogise of certain polt- cal movetsats (in the ease of scioislogy, Marxism). "Te foregoing storios barely ceratch the surface of the many rays in which eoiologicl considerations thape shat lence Tinks of at being tros, with many far more detailed accounts ‘poled under “Te Dig Deeper” in this volume. Por our purpotes heaps teases Soe ae Sealers re eee ee Seer spe aed aie Sete sine Ses Son cn a mer Seana ene co Se en eee Soh: Wind va Gos nese tee eee Neidio ele ve eee Soran oe nae ie ee ca dee are ce ae rete Sach cee nan at ett SARTriee he cea gta oh oor St a earn ere ener se ction Be et ae oe Wena er a mete nce at ome er flee Mein Brea au, amr of sts twigs So ering nema 5 ome aly er core ehh eter et Sort ta a ah oe ae oe one ee ee Se ue wie ere cca a Salaries cease mel Sipe Charceenantem nie mara Sats ena ea, Speed ans vere om io etcetera Sn Shear anaes ae roe Ser eae meee eee ten Se jee re ae es eee fe ess eet ae Se ee ss eee eee emer sata pes en reer Sere ene Se ee ae ae seen i te ie sa AF gs Stop vin tt ino edn wk sol hn et ma pt Bat0g100007 - PARADIGMS LOST cena of the spectrum of what's currently held to be “ood sci hoe.” We ae nally in potion to give the long answer tothe ‘tection posed carer about why Vellkorsky's wrk has been {eegated to the dustbin of peeudorclenee, while Boll's was 1 ‘warded with the Nobel Prise for physies (although not to her). ON THE FRINGE OR AT.THE CUTTING EDGET As editor of a scents journal, I'm rogulanly faced with the ‘unpleasant tak of telling potential contributors that their pa> pers are gol suitable for publietion. Generally the reasons are the usual ones: frivial or aonexistontreslt, poor writing, work ‘outside the scape of the Journal, and soon. However, oceasion~ tily T gel e popes that I dent even bother to mond out forthe ‘astomary refereeing proves, rejecting it out of hand. Such pa- pers are the bane of thn elitarof almost evry selentifepublea- Hon, and every editor soon deoomes seusitized to ther tllale ftom of nonsense maequereding a eines. Since my own jour ‘al is devoted to mathematic, papers ofthis wort tend to involve tuch wellknown inpossbilitis as squaring the crete, triseting fm ang, and doubling the cube, although they ocesinally a= ‘Great famous outstanding problems lke Fermat's Last Theorem or the Riemann ypothoia (3 which ease T's eompele to lok. tt them seriously, eventhough there's uot yet been one that was ormet) Luckily for me, mathematics is an aren where it’s dif- ‘Bult t ry to dren up such pseudoscience in respectable clothes ‘and not have it show. Certainly my eolleague in biology, medi- Cine, sod the socal slences mist hav ft much worse i this re- gerd. But fost what is it aboot this Kin of paper that {immediately stampe it a8 pabudoseione to the traned (and jaune ‘iced selenide eyet To atswer this pusaling query, let's briely reall what's been Isaraed so far about the actual practice of seenes in today's world. ‘Our deliberations up io now allow us to summarize compactly the practice st opposed tothe phibeophy of science inthe folow- ing two principe: A. Thore isan ideslogy of science onsiting of cpt struc fare Clocts > hypothesis experiment ~ law theory), together with the processes of verison and peor review FAITH, HOPE, AND AsPeRITY 7 B. Reenos is scala, with the standards for what con- [With thus tacts of modern selontde life in mind lt me now oer & short cheekist of “sights and sounds” (end smells) for detecting peendoscines. If you'r reading a paper and each the whiff of eren one of the itera on this lt, be sosured thet the ‘thor is dealing in pseudossence, at leaet bythe standards pre- ‘alling In today’s world of stinee. Por the following list Tu indebted to the outstanding work Seiony and Unreson by Mi cael and Dalsle Radner, to whieh I direct the reedss attention {for afar more extensive account of the whole ealture of poeudo- science and pevudeacietisis, + Ascchronitic thinking: Cran and prevdssentita often re {ert kode hore tat were dard by he te fommunity years, o ren centri, ag on beng inadequate ‘his isin contrat tothe weal notion of erackpt tmnt a wing novel, original, otfet, daring, and ieginativ. Good zamplen of ha kid of eaakihnee are the ereatiosi, ho {isk their objections fo evolution to eatastrophism, clang hat geelagiel evidence supports th atatropierether thas nifrnlirian view of the Kind of geloial setvty they so secite with evolution, The argument Is saachroniteinoofar {i preents the uniformitariaainetastropham dshoansy {1 wore sl ie debe + Seeking mpteia: Scents donot set out in tir work ta Jon for "acral. Max Plancle wasn't Inking for trouble when he carried out his radiation emission experimen aod Michelon and Morey certainty were tot expecng protien + when they devised thir experient to txt for the hunter ‘us ether, Purthrmore cenit do ot roel one leery in favor of enotber say brense the new theory explain the ‘onalod eet On ie thor hod t's an ea sel ‘Bleudoncienee devoted to eniguas tnd istrise, be they the Sere Titel UFOs yeti, spentamons ean sr ther even more feat phesomenn The base principe unr: ising sch tree neous to be that here are ore tings eevn and earth han are dreamt on your piesph," co00001 PARADIGMS LOST pled with the methodological principle that anything that con bbe sen ae matey oupht to be seen as one + Appesie to myths: Cranks often use the following pattern of ‘esconing: Start witha myth from ansint times and take It ax fn seoount of actual occurrences; devise « hypothesis that ex- ‘lain the crests by postulating conditions Chat obtained wt ‘hat time but that no Tenger hol consider the myth es provide ing evdenoe for aupportof th hypothesis; argue that the hy- ‘polaecis to couimed by the myth as wall as by geological, paleontologien, or arehacologial evidence. This i a pattern of ‘reular reasoning that ie absent from the Backboards and laboratories of slence. + A Carel opproach fo ecdene: Paoudoscientits often ave the ftitude that sheer quantity of eidenee makes up for any de- feienoy in the quality of the individual piers. Farther, ‘oeudocientits are loth ever to weed out their evince, and ‘ren when an experiment or study hat bean shown to be ques- onabl, it ie never dropped from thelist of confirming evi- dence. « Irefalable hyphens Given any hypothesis, we can always sak rt ie wld tak to produce evi agin 1 o> ‘ng coosivele could speak ugaint the hypothesis, theo it has 22 nt biel ei, Pratt ed th hypotheses of this tot. The prime example af such a tis is ereationiam; it's just plain not possible to falsify the treationiat model ofthe word, at w'l so in the next chapter. + Spurious imilrtcn Cranks often azgue that the principles that underlie their theories are alrendy part of legitimate si ‘eee, an soe theseves not mich an revolatonariee but ‘ore as th poor cousins of scence. For example, the study of biorhythms trim to piggyback upon lgitimate studies earzied ‘out on elrndian rhythms and ler chemical aod eletrical os ‘llators known to be present in the human Body. The basie feetidoseiene claim in thir area is that thore is similarity Tstween the views ofthe biorhythm theorists and those of the ilogieal researcher, sod therefore biorhythms are consistent ‘with earrent biologie! thought + Explanation by sonar: Ts commonplace in ssionce to offer ‘eetavi for explanation of eertaln pheaomens, such ws the ‘ric of Hie or the extinetion ofthe dinoraurs, when we don"t hove « enough data to reconstruct th exact eireumatances of FAITH, HOPE, AND ASPERITY ° ter tn ona etna ors poser ty mere snarls Witoat Pope tek sou 2d horas. A pre faints regard te ent ob SSS ivevaucewsrearattsns SO any to taeam aeece maui carn cana nena Te ne Reates. - a Sg aaa ec far eens cman | Sees torihoacenras | ee fee Start mortage cane Peghranesrwssntmes cee pases Sei | Seca oucines maeccraricnr cee Baler a ee ome Scie aerate cena ae cian | Eevee ie eater are | mee mere mee ae | | ‘s tiny ways to fend of ais Wal uly actos a "al elt ith tattle mae sure our aenoos es ‘age fat rt an near et fost sty rte 0 tekaowindge whatever erica you do secre A asa of {is lent ploy tavorte tongue of pendent Thy slvays cpl to ec, but onset perton Ug oti Thay on sie dou oth techni for ‘Bene oto an ron te a, ‘etre res ering tiny eet ‘he major defense of preudocene i summed up in the tate | pent Ans thing is posribe” the paeadoncientde. rerion af Feyerabend's philosophical ne tog "Anything Goer” Bare 1a we considered thn quation af sonpetton between motesPARADIGMS LOST teen tra cutlass mee pietrenioms cineca ieee roar oe atenseyaa sty cry Bree hist satieertemil ae rash meh eat pate siech ey tats suet a tet a .tenas fae Se Se kana nats saan si Recetas oe wa arama cet ar ao bpd TNO tanks i ct, repirar stout st sieht Sart nn re ee A mies Sa Brees tate ol are teal ea amr canara canes MRE pnuocelentin isn worm their way Int the competion mater ears cians Ue Siaiair aang wg hehe BEN GS cence vac pS ate tr a Srlarcnn Merereier caries Se cma: stain aes erates Wigan te alr freer ESS eeu Go ereiisms seer lotic tse ace raga a eta td ices ona Se ener ster tuna haan ER Eta een i what pea rong set ned a a ty oe SS enero Shue co aeeeea ie inion gern eemnan Seta SE ia afore rem oer Sinaiyeceatioweat zor na Supcumayad maplietame tecraiiae anya hee oe Sime actrees eee TE hema ee fasts lite a'r tea APE ers ca Si meer ee reer ee nt a met oa or a ee oa ib ke Parente Yor Ee atic aa suena ona eee Sey sree eee meee SENG reer ooh ee aml TE OS ian ceria rere Palit wha ete enero ae or eae ted Tea eter sear ee eran Ss ec patos are: ep apegepntytotech Sie Seng ina eee ye SStieay nina ae aaa Serie Pe ie Brean setae rents lhe Drtatpeears Settee arate sie Deen en ety Sirece at, Soe e eeee Pa me nag Sas ee eer ne Seti etaTenen Sepals eet eae sh Toei cae area Sor eres ee Fe perneeiereeere mee rent Soho eseg.oooey a PARADIGMS LOST that sions has to ofr i areane, diffealt-tofllow if, ands, bts or maybes. "Belief apstems outside sclanoe come in many forms, some of them covered by the general umbrella of peeudosclene. By far ‘the most interesting and important alterutive toa seientife or- dering of the word ie that provided by the prinsples and tenes of organized religion. From the besinings of Western scenes fn the Middle Ages, there has been a sort of (not sbways unde- tlared) guerrilla war waged between the Church and the sien- {ie coomunity en the mater of which is the keeper of true Inowledge about the natare of tie namo. In the next section we ‘will examine this confit a ou Goal statement about the alter- ‘tive realities thet we tse to shape and interpret our daly live. ‘THE PULPIT AND THE LAB [A few years ago Dayst Fernandes, a mother of thre living on ‘welfare in New York City, bought lottery ticket. that eame up winner, returning alooet $3 mlion « tidy proft on #4 i ‘fstinen. Littl di Mrs, Fernandes realize that in her good for- Tune she would becoae embroiled in a classic cae pitting the lain of scien againat thge of religion. As the story poss, Mrs. Femandes bad asked Young friend, John Pando t par. have letery tekets for ber. Pando, a staunch believer i the power of prayer, thoaght thatthe chances of suotes for one of ‘he tists would be grenty enhanoed if he asked for the divine rervention of Saint Eleggus, Apparently Mrs, Fernandes was sympathetic to his belief, for he clnized that she nd promised torgive him bal th proceds if any ofthe tickets struc gold. If you've already guessed the punch line of tis story, you'r just a ‘it ahead of me ‘Ope of Marx, Femander’s Uskels was drawn to the tune of $2,877300:20, but abe refared to fork over the promised half of fhe pie fo Pendo. In th trod and true Amercan fashion for ‘eating with sush lights, Pandos immedints response was to le ‘laevuit agenat ber, nan attempt also to gain entry to the Milioonire’ Gi. Ms, Fermnodes argued that the agzeement tees legal and/or unenforomble on a number of grounds, in ‘ding the fect that John Pando Was a minor under the age of AND ASPeRITY o ‘ehtson, After hearing the competing arumenta, Judgs veard Gree a, Judge Bae {itd Greeneld ofthe New York County Supreme Gout ruled ac ont ra tt eager ffudine the mater of age, but came up with a Gaal erdst in iievewine tame ten cae canine nance eeet Steers a are Pando hadn't proved that Saint Elaggus had Yigg cite tn Sel igraas caer gra rer soe eee debate is the reasons given ‘Gooping Prods’ share of th fortane, een i ay tt ne sank toma amare te iyo parse ean paeiee si eti?atecen of eget ma berry ses other tricks of the medicine ie eee Sessa Sees aes 1th Realty Game, elon has sins sc covet tp ener in bm ks arte bntvon tae actual peti of seleen ead ha rn ttn of moat major raligins Lets take nthematen a an ee Bie, Hare haven ai tat eps detains foe eli hve «sera Inguage cnprctale says Sp {sae gt per of preperation fore rth ‘oly missions (famous unsolved problems) to which membery of {ait devote their entire lve, rig and eomevhay {ruy code (o which all prctioners eat aluglzse eh» sm, eset av pet In st of the eee wel fe boar sitting smarty to th surface charters ‘nay rapins. Bath sere ad ligous model of te or it atention to partis pater erent ao ‘ature So penn or it td th see owt between th religion ew nod thal Tots coder soe of th major ares in which sconce oe aa ich since an+ Zanpuape: Th language of tclence is primarily directed to- ‘ward preditin, explanation, and control religion, on, the ‘lice hand, is aa expression ‘of commitment, ethial dedia- ‘on, ad existential Kfeerientation. So ven though there are ‘superfcalemlartos atthe syntactic level, the semantic eo2- font of selenite and religious laguages are poles apart. + Reality: Ta ssligion, beings eonoersing the natare of realty ‘te presupposed: Thies jont the oppost of the reais view of (rience, wh ie dineted toward dicovering reality. Thus re- Iigion taut give up any claims to truth, at least with respect {eany facts extemal to one's om eomntment. In this regard, ‘he realty content of most religious beliefs is much the same fs in the myths considered carier. Fundamentally, what we have in clone is a baie belief that the universe in ander Sandable using eational arguments, experimental observa: tions, even divine dneprations, but no act of bind faith. This fa vicwpunt that isnot necemsaily shared by many religions «+ Modul: While both seontie and religious models are analog Gn and used as organising image for Saterpreting life expee= heen, religious models ko saree to express and. evoke Ustinetiveatsitader, ax well as to entourage allegiance to a ‘ray of Ife and adherence to polis of action. The imagery of ‘lizious models elstsself-commitment and a measure of ethi- (al dedication, These are features complealy anathematc to the roe of todos in scienes. Ta veligion the roto ie “Live by these rales, think our way, and you'll see that it works.” The fontrant with the tradicional isslogy of sien is ela «+ Parodia: Tn the dineursen of paradigms, we st that sien- tife peradigie ere rubjee to a variety of constraints Uke timplily, fledeation, the Seluenee of theory on observation, fando forth, lof thore features aze abot inthe seleeton ‘of erligios paradigm. + Methods: Ta scene there iss set of procedures to got at the ‘sheme of things observation, hypothesis, experiment fa veli- tion there is method, loo—divine enlightenment. However, {he religious method is not repeatable, por is it necessarily ‘vallable to every interested investigator. ‘Table 1.3 daplays a comperative chart of the diferent ways of since and religion, How are we to divine what this table i y~ ing to convey abvut the rexpotiveablitis of seienee and rel- ‘Gon to tell ws anpthing unafal about ourselves and the universe FAITH, HOPE, AND ASPeRITY « ‘beet mater God and bamaaiind phenomena of Nature {aformationsouree reed mod, bly * Tooke ‘crpereents objective of stady purpose and plan sechanis language verre spn smatemation method Marary meaourezet nd ‘interpretations ass sts moral imperatives explanation valaton ‘eroma experience repletion, eating itations mechani goal or rahe expand conmasity church "selene ellie TABLE 1.3 Ralipo compared with was ehh 1 sxe hatter a a lat thre pol -swera to this classic conundrum: cme a 1, Train: Seen and gion here ‘em: Sinen ai ion hare ihren spe of 2 hmv Rtgs and scientie explanations of Bas ‘ean be brought together on the same plane. ere 2. Porat iet Sieea somes ach unite the sae realty (whatever that from reali (herr tat might be), bat from difrent perp” ‘To my mind, only th lst possibility makes any sense whatso- ver, Tho frst lends to the all to depresing territorial disputes ‘of the Kind that 50 mach blood has een sed over through the ears, while the second is elf-dfeating since scientific Views are ‘always changing. As a raul, a theology that attaches itself fo ‘one scientife family today wil surely be an orphan tomorrow. ‘With the above considerations on religion under our belt, we see that both peeudoselence and religion provide alernate real ity-atructuring procedures radically different in character from those employed in aienee. T's of interest to ponder why there is ach a diverse mixture of nomicientie knowledge specially in ‘iow of the claims of virtually every sat that ie own brand of ‘medicine is uniformly most powerful ‘My view on this matters quit simply that neither alence norreligion aor paeudossinee gives « product thats satisfactory to ‘MV eustomers; the wares are Just not attractive enough. Tn some {aces the beliefs are aot weful in the way that people want to Cimploy them, For example many people have a deep-seated pey- ‘Ghologieal need for security and ta to conventional religion fo" tnyths of all-pomerfal and beoeicent Beings who will attend to {his neod for protection. Scions, with its imysterions and poten- tilly threatening pronouncements about black holes, the “beat feaih” of the univeree evolution from lower beings, oueear Soloeaust, and so on, oilers anything but comfort fo such rial ‘ols and, an eres lots eustomers to the competition. Base ‘ally belief thrive teeauos they are bool, ad the plain fet is {hal thore is more than ove kind of usefulness. "To the practiing scientist, the forogoing observations come as ‘sobering if not threatening coneusion, since they sem to pat in jeopardy the conventional wisdom thatthe red to truth ies in te “objective” toca of selene, not the subjective, romantic tutions of beivere and eruseders. But if we accept Peyera~ Dend’'s arguments of alternative and equally valid belief systems, then we are inexorably led fll elle nck fo the postion that there ere many altaative realities, not Jost within seience itself Dut outside a wel, andthe particular brand of reality we select is dictated ar much by our peyehologeal need af the moment as by ny sort of rational choice. To the fal analysis, there are 90 ‘complete nasmers but only more questions, wth sence provid- ng procedures for addreming certain important and interesting Clans of such questions. INTO THE COURTROOM OF BELIEFS ‘The British philosopher Joho Locks appears to have been the first to use the word “seieee in anything like fe modern mean fig when be equated “scientfeal” with esrtainty and demon ttsion of koowledge about tho physieal world. Tn the chapters {hat fellow, we tll be out to quertion the degros to which sence ‘livers thee lefey ana, Our al pilosophicel theres cen- ter about the sternal posses: What is real, and what sour rele. tGouship ex human beings to this realliyt In the course of ftlempting to shed Hight on these Bobbeey Twins of pilosophi- ‘al spevalation, I have ehoten the vehicle of s courtroom mets- FAITH, HOPE, AND ASPERITY o or within which competing sini (ed ametines Soaciente and/or rigs) parr ea glad is cans My ‘nom thing nt uml in hema Fin Boor hat ww wt on sve th siden pretreat proven, Sanh reba tha erat in fat sete sd Watt mater est tein! bt rather Stanscetite i sa epee aves poe, ig aa drain rer fat Th ony at ht Characins a whe than ng oy era ty eo ht i em we Tan just as in economies where Adam Smith's ie ‘guides: tiv dow ferent ilo proprsve cantly in eens we tte Iara Bot, bi tet ek ut ne ees a and beliefs that don't prove useful o enough people over a su flea Jong period of time, Pt iNTeae ia te reader tothe oa jude of wheter ot stent” (toe that wil be nyt om) aoe 2. fortnight at ne th Ha Sista a tha eri a ci nie cai tnt flower a tia ae grap of thee then bat en more ips not il cove that hs ey ar sil orth an a erst tn aly by exqiring dee far he pronase tt of el be pa Ue toto rents etively a's rai paerain ot ity. 8o ow thatthe athens ave en stag the pele of ‘Segance sien atl ihe ils! tale, he oun © sely inert tn en te oti Mato betes eos {od Nature Lat he opening eres proce