“If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong.” Richard Feynman perhaps stumbled upon the backbone of science when he said this. Science is an area of knowledge in which we observe the natural world and quantify these observations to find a set of rules, or paradigms, similar to the axioms in mathematics.
Science has allowed for us to manipulate the world around us to create amazing things. Cars, computers or cough drops would not exist if it were not for science. But science has also been used to make atomic bombs and gas chambers. Is science progressive?
It all depends on how the word progressive is defined. The word has political connotations, and in that context, it means “favoring or promoting change or innovation.” (Oxford Dictionaries) However, it also means “developing gradually in stages.” If we consider the first meaning through a historical frame, then yes, science has a habit of being progressive, most notably with the Scientific Revolution in Europe. However, nothing is black and white. If we look at other events throughout history, such as the atomic bomb, millions were robbed of their lives. Is that progressive? Were the experiments carried out by the Nazis on unconsenting Jewish subjects progressive? This is the dark side of science, and the fact that these are hidden and the discoveries and innovations are touted out to the public is another indicator that perhaps science is not as progressive as it seems to be.
If we take the second meaning of science, then science is progressive, just because of the knowledge process. Due to the knowledge process in science, nothing is immutable. Therefore, many consider it progressive because it is not afraid to discard what is proved wrong by repeated, verified experimentation. Science is one of the areas of knowledge in which Popper’s theory of falsifiability is present. It may be used, or has been used to to disprove many theories, because as soon as there is one contradicting piece of evidence, the theory may be wrong. However, there are some exceptions even to this rule. Many theories in science often have “exceptions” such as the Octet Rule. It states that all elements want to gain a full outer shell of electrons (to be stable), but there exist elements such as Boron, which are really small, and therefore do not require full shell to be stable. However, the Octet rule is still accepted as a theory in science, even though there exists one that is seemingly contradictory. This is one of several instances in which science does not seem as progressive. This is because many theories are built on others, and they keep piling up. Like we saw in the BBC documentary about Fermat’s Last Theorem, if this theory is proven wrong, then several theories about molecules and compounds will come crashing down. Therefore, we see that in some cases, even in the process, scientists can “make exceptions” because otherwise, a lot of paradigms would be lost.
But scientists are not just afraid to lose paradigms. Last year in December, George Ellis and Joe Silk wrote about how physicists think that if a theory is “sufficiently elegant and explanatory, it need not be tested experimentally.” They believe in what Karl Popper said: a scientific theory must be falsifiable. Many cosmologists who are also advocates in this debate are supporters of the multiverse theory and inflationary cosmology. However, theorist Paul Steinhardt says that the theory of inflationary cosmology is no longer scientific, because it can accommodate any observational result. Is this really the cutting edge science we seek today? Instead of becoming a search for the truth, the latest science seems to be the dogged verification of one prettily worded theory after another. Is this science being progressive? Now, is science seeking the truth or a Nobel prize for a theory that may or may not be true? We would all like to believe that science is progressive. And it has been, throughout the course of history. Science has helped the general public revolutionise and rationalise thought. However, if the scientific community begins to abandon the very method that helped bring it to the point where it is today, then it will very soon become like the institutions that banned scientific and rational thought in the first place. This is dangerous, and we must work hard to prevent this from happening. Granted, the fine line between a scientist’s responsibility and society’s responsibility is hard to maintain because the burden of scientific truth always falls more heavily upon the former than the latter.
But science is also not afraid to admit when it is wrong. An example of this is the fraud committed by Andrew Wakefield. Allegedly, Wakefield found a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism (which were even published in the medical journal Lancet). However, in 2004, and then again in 2010, his work was completely discredited because his results were falsified and not replicated. Thus science reserves the ability to completely discard any discoveries it regards as paradigms, and use that discovery of a false hypothesis as a starting point off of which to discover the “right truth.” Wakefield’s work was a step backwards in both connotations of the word progressive. It was a step backward for preventive science - that which had been preventing disease rather than curing it in the first place. It was also a regressive step because it promoted ableism - implying that a child with Autism was undesirable compared to a “normal” child. However, the scientific community took this issue by the horns and completely discredited his work. However, this is again where the line between a scientist’s responsibility and society’s responsibility contribute to the progressivity of science.
Throughout this essay, I have assumed that western science is open to new ideas that are supported with empirical observations and thought. However, when it comes to indigenous science, is science really that accepting? There are many overlaps between western and indigenous science: they believe that the universe is unified, they believe in being open minded, in empirical observation and that there are several cycles and specific behaviours. Then why doesn’t Western science integrate knowledge found through indigenous science into their theories? Two heads are better than one right? According to Fulvio Mazzocchi, a scientist at the Institute for Atmospheric Pollution, “Western science is objective and quantitative as opposed to traditional knowledge, which is mainly subjective and qualitative. [...] Western science isolates its objects of study from their vital context by putting them in simplified and controllable experimental environments—which also means that scientists separate themselves from nature, the object of their studies;-by contrast, traditional knowledge always depends on its context.” Yes, indigenous science may seem the complete contrast of western science because of its use of intuition as a way of knowing. Is it really that far off? The Lakota thinker Luther Standing Bear wrote in his book The Land of the Spotted Eagle that the Lakota people believe that all is connected, and that they are only “a part of everything that was called the world.” This belief in symbiosis is central to the beliefs of many indigenous cultures, and also western biology. Indigenous beliefs are also similar to western science in many other ways. Indigenous knowledge emphasizes passing down a legacy to future generations, and remembering pivotal moments in their history, because it defines them. This is the same reason why Kuhn and many philosophers have spent their time trying to pinpoint when a scientific discovery was truly made because western science also has a legacy to pass down, and it is as important to them as the passing down of indigenous knowledge orally is to members of the indigenous community.
In conclusion, it may not seem like science is very progressive. The fundamental problem here, however, is that science is progressive in thought and in method. It is an unbiased way of viewing the world, and it relies on empirical observation to create laws to understand the world around us. However, science has gotten stuck in a rut. Just like E.E. Cummings created a completely new style of poetry and never moved beyond it, so science has been presented with a comfort zone in which it is able to still produce new work, but not move beyond to more progressive thought. So, yes, science is progressive, but there is always room to be more progressive. Science is limited by our bodies in observation. Integrating indigenous science and as many possible viewpoints as possible to see which conclusions are universal and which aren’t, and perhaps transcend limitations as much as we can.
No comments:
Post a Comment