Science in chaos………
I have just finished reading a book called The Complete World of Human Evolution, by Chris Stringer and Peter Andrews. It is a Thames and Hudson publication, and therefore intended for the popular, but educated, market. Stringer is Head of Human Origins at the Natural History Museum, London, and Andrews formerly held the same position. Both have been active in the field of palaeoanthropology for several decades…….impeccable credentials, then.
My overall impression? CHAOS. They write with such authoritative confidence, putting in just enough phrases like, “there remains some controversy over this”, and “there is some uncertainty”, and “some researchers doubt” etc to give the impression that the authors are carefully making it clear just where there is and is not doubt, controversy or uncertainty. And that then leads one to conclude that, on the whole, much has been discovered about human origins, that great progress is being made, that the science is in a healthy condition and that, in a nutshell, we can be confident that the scientists have got everything under control …………. nothing could be further form the truth.
If you can see past the tone of confident authority, and if you can avoid being bamboozled or mesmerised by the ‘naming of parts’ and the minutiae of classification etc, then you realise that palaeoanthropology is in complete chaos, and they know nothing, or nothing SIGNIGICANT, more now than they did 50 years ago when just a few souls, like the Leakey’s, were scouring the wildernesses of the world to find specks and scraps of old bones, teeth etc.
There are now countless bits of bone (though more often than not, a fossil is represented by just one tooth, or maybe a tooth and a couple of bone fragments), and there are a plethora of new techniques for dating them or extracting more information from them, such as the various radioactive measurement techniques, DNA studies, studies of the effects of various causes of wear and tear on teeth and bones, electron microscope examination, etc etc, and yet there is not one of these new techniques which is not doubtful, which does not have in-built suppositions or assumptions or unacceptably large sources of error, such that it can be used with any degree of certainty ---- and that includes genetic studies.
In fact, palaeoanthropology is a war zone with the battles lines laid down, alliances made, and forces drawn up to fight for one theory or another, one technique or another. And rather than one winner emerging, it seems that with every new find, and every new technique for analyses discovered the war zone fragments, more battle lines are drawn and more chaos is created…………… there is a familiarity about this……………
A couple of thousand years ago, philosophers thought to find answers to some of the Big Questions, and, remembering that philosophy back then included the beginnings of what we now call science, they thought that , either by pure reason, or by empirical investigation, they could come to know and understand the world, its origins, and the laws that, supposedly, govern its development. Later ‘natural philosophy’ broke off from the main body of philosophy, and with its own peculiar approach to acquiring knowledge distanced itself from philosophy and became science. From the dizzy heights of its apparent success it then looked back on its parent with scorn.
Philosophers soldiered on, but they eventually had to admit that, despite their best efforts, they could not answer any of the questions that they had set out to answer, could not, in fact, answer ANY questions. They dealt with this by retreating to the position that answers are not important and that it is actually the questions themselves that are interesting!!?? More recently, ably led by Wittgenstein, they have retreated still further: now it is neither answers nor questions that are important, but the thinking, the philosophising itself.
(I cannot forbear to point out that there is something of a conundrum here: philosophising cannot answer questions. It can, we are told, elucidate the situation and that is its importance. So, it can elucidate the situation, but not so as to enable questions to be answered? Question: does philosophy REALLY elucidate the situation, or does it actually confuse the issue? Does it tease out too many threads which actually do not need to be teased out and only end up creating a fankle?)
Anyway, to return to the main thread I am following: philosophers have created a chaos of ideas, concepts and theories and, in the face of never being able to come to any conclusions, have retreated to the position that, as I said, it is the philosophising itself that is important. Is science, then, I wonder, going the same way as its parent?
As far as I can see, the newer sciences particularly, are fragmenting in the same way as philosophy has done and are beginning to find it harder and harder to claim to be able to come to any definite conclusions. In this regard, I read a book on evolution recently, see my post XXXX, in which the authors stated that they were adopting the latest approach to teaching their subject, and that was to present all sides of the arguments. Ie the emphasis is on ARGUMENT, not on conclusions.
So, just as philosophy, in the face of being unable to come to any conclusions, retreated first to placing the emphasis on the questions, some of the sciences, faced with being unable to come to any conclusions, are retreating to placing the emphasis on the argument.
Trying to figure out what is going on here is not actually so straight forward. I have accused philosophers and scientists of retreating in response to perceived failure, but I do not think that is actually what is going on. It is not a matter of perceived failure, it is something else.
After all, this problem of there being multiple theories and nothing to choose between them has been around for a long time, and it has not always halted progress.
Consider one of the older sciences, eg physics. I am sure that most people who have an acquaintance with the subject are under the illusion that it is a lot more solid and certain than it actually is.
If we start with Newton: Newton postulated that all things remain at rest, or in a state of constant motion, unless acted on by a force. This was merely one of a whole raft of options set out by the ancient Greeks and others, and Newton, or one of his contemporaries, could have chosen any one of the others with equal justification. (The most obvious one is the opposite to Newton: that change is normal and that it is constant motion or staying at rest that has to be accounted for.) Why did Newton chose the option he did? I do not know, but I would guess that it was the maths, that it was mathematically the simplest option.
At any rate, the point is that there were, and potentially still could be, multiple theories to compete with Newtonian physics. However, physicists did not hang around. They went for Newton and to this day Newtonian physics is taught as though it was the only option. This story repeats and repeats throughout the history of physics. Even Einstein had competitors that have disappeared from sight. So, despite the existence of many options, physics did not fragment and become merely a battleground for competing theories. (That situation may be changing: there is certainly plenty of controversy concerning string theory and other aspects of the search for the fundamentals of the universe.)
In the past (to be found in some of my older posts) I have criticised scientists for backing theories when they have insufficient evidence (Quantum Theory, e.g., was adopted, on a vote, before there was ANY evidence to justify it.). I begin to think I over-simplified the situation.
Whereas it may be true that there are other approaches to gaining an understanding of the world, if you do choose to take the scientific approach then you had better choose the methodological options that work. Philosophy has shown the consequences of allowing one’s subject to fragment: it just reduces to a battleground where people slog it out and never actually ever come to any conclusions, never produce any result beyond more battle-fodder i.e. more schisms, more ‘angles’ and theories etc.
Whether good or bad, whether truth or myth, science has, thus far, produced results. I would suggest that that is down to the fact that, thus far, scientists have been able to make up their minds, have been willing to unite and stand their ground. The current trend, however, has science fragmenting in the same way as philosophy before it, and I would predict the same result: scientists will retreat from seeking results to someplace where they are satisfied with arguing and thinking that they are throwing more light on situations. Under those circumstances, science will stop producing results — no more ‘medical advances’, no more new technology, no T.O.E. etc etc.
