I cannot speak for others my age, or any age for that matter. I trust science much more than tradition or common sense or what I was programmed with when I was young. So saying, I need to define science before I can speak to it. First, Science needs People, without them forces and matter would still operate as they do. But unobserved and unquestioned they would just be force and matter. Second, there needs to be a Process that organizes information, considers possible cause & effect relationships and draws conclusions. Last and most important, to some extent that information has to be transformed into a Product that can take the form of new or better knowledge itself or a useful application of that knowledge such as a tool or article that serves a purpose.
People, Americans in particular, want facts and truth that are absolute, that will be true for ever; and they want it now, right now. But that’s not how science works. Universal truth is the business of philosophers who frame their understanding to match their beliefs and beliefs are too many for them all to be true. Likewise people frequently if not always bring a bias to significant questions as to what is true and what is not. We are inclined to believe what profits us or what we want to believe. In the 1950’s & 60’s every research university that received support from the tobacco industry proved conclusively that smoking was harmless to smokers. The rule of thumb for researchers is that you must disregard any bias (preconceived notion) that might skew your process in favor of one outcome or another. Neither wisdom nor Belief rely on unbiased peer review in the vetting of their conclusions.
One can think of it as good science vs. bad science. Set up an experiment that will yield results that are both credible (measures what it claims to measure) and reliable (can be repeated over and again with the same results). Bad science may be driven by profit or passion or random strokes of misinformed incompetence. Pure research would have, should have us, “Do the math, check your math, use credible-reliable methods and go where the numbers take you.” But doing science is expensive and research universities need sponsors to help underwrite the costs. Unfortunately sponsors can be (often times are) motivated by profits in the marketplace. The politics of that arrangement generate opportunities for bad science and it is what it is. But even then, I trust the Science. It can take a lot of time for good science to trickle down through the peer review process but in the long run good science does prevail.
Astronomer Carl Sagan wrote, “We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.” He went on to observe that living in that kind of dependency has the potential for devastating outcomes. Ella Al-Shamahi, a prominent British paleoanthropologist & evolutionary biologist explains that human (brain) biology has not changed in over 20,000 years; that 99% of our history is evolved to a hunter-gatherer society. Modern technology has arrived in just the latest fleeting moments of our species timeline and our bodies and instincts are stuck playing catch-up with a modern world.
Between Sagan and Shamahi I get it. Two of the most credible scholars in recent history come at the same dilemma from different points of view and present the same qualified reservations. They’ve done the math, applied proven logic and meet at the crossroad. I am an old man, something I allude to more often than I care to admit. With that I’ve had a long time (in human years) to weigh and measure this human journey. With enough experience I have grown comfortable with big numbers, 20,000 years of reflecting on our beginnings and the long backstory my prehistoric ancestors left in their fossilized remains and artifacts. We are Super Social animals and we truly need each other. Born with the need to share time and space, to care for one another and be in community. But there is another side to the human personality. We also dwell with competitive, hostile, selfish, greedy nature and the two-sided ‘Self’ has to navigate that impasse.
This has been a rambling reflection; I blame it on old age and the acceptance of my human condition. I prefer cooperation to competition and affection to malice. The difference between being #1 or being #10,000 is irrelevant. When our sun goes super nova and glows red the earth will vaporize leaving no fossils, no artifacts, nothing to speak of. But my story and myself; it is real and we were here.
People, Americans in particular, want facts and truth that are absolute, that will be true for ever; and they want it now, right now. But that’s not how science works. Universal truth is the business of philosophers who frame their understanding to match their beliefs and beliefs are too many for them all to be true. Likewise people frequently if not always bring a bias to significant questions as to what is true and what is not. We are inclined to believe what profits us or what we want to believe. In the 1950’s & 60’s every research university that received support from the tobacco industry proved conclusively that smoking was harmless to smokers. The rule of thumb for researchers is that you must disregard any bias (preconceived notion) that might skew your process in favor of one outcome or another. Neither wisdom nor Belief rely on unbiased peer review in the vetting of their conclusions.
One can think of it as good science vs. bad science. Set up an experiment that will yield results that are both credible (measures what it claims to measure) and reliable (can be repeated over and again with the same results). Bad science may be driven by profit or passion or random strokes of misinformed incompetence. Pure research would have, should have us, “Do the math, check your math, use credible-reliable methods and go where the numbers take you.” But doing science is expensive and research universities need sponsors to help underwrite the costs. Unfortunately sponsors can be (often times are) motivated by profits in the marketplace. The politics of that arrangement generate opportunities for bad science and it is what it is. But even then, I trust the Science. It can take a lot of time for good science to trickle down through the peer review process but in the long run good science does prevail.
Astronomer Carl Sagan wrote, “We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.” He went on to observe that living in that kind of dependency has the potential for devastating outcomes. Ella Al-Shamahi, a prominent British paleoanthropologist & evolutionary biologist explains that human (brain) biology has not changed in over 20,000 years; that 99% of our history is evolved to a hunter-gatherer society. Modern technology has arrived in just the latest fleeting moments of our species timeline and our bodies and instincts are stuck playing catch-up with a modern world.
Between Sagan and Shamahi I get it. Two of the most credible scholars in recent history come at the same dilemma from different points of view and present the same qualified reservations. They’ve done the math, applied proven logic and meet at the crossroad. I am an old man, something I allude to more often than I care to admit. With that I’ve had a long time (in human years) to weigh and measure this human journey. With enough experience I have grown comfortable with big numbers, 20,000 years of reflecting on our beginnings and the long backstory my prehistoric ancestors left in their fossilized remains and artifacts. We are Super Social animals and we truly need each other. Born with the need to share time and space, to care for one another and be in community. But there is another side to the human personality. We also dwell with competitive, hostile, selfish, greedy nature and the two-sided ‘Self’ has to navigate that impasse.
This has been a rambling reflection; I blame it on old age and the acceptance of my human condition. I prefer cooperation to competition and affection to malice. The difference between being #1 or being #10,000 is irrelevant. When our sun goes super nova and glows red the earth will vaporize leaving no fossils, no artifacts, nothing to speak of. But my story and myself; it is real and we were here.
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