Three key unspoken beliefs that all Scientists share
There is a single real world that is external to each of us but shared by all of us.
There are rules that govern how the real world works. At least some of them are discoverable.
The rules that govern the real world all interact with each other in a consistent manner.
Three corollaries to the three beliefs
Whatever works is right.
Whatever doesn't work is wrong.
There are degrees of wrongness.
Discussion
The first belief is akin to the "there is only one God" idea in religion.
Science is grounded in observation. If some of us experience a different world (i. e. a world with different rules) then what is observed depends on which group the observer is a member of. Yet Science depends heavily on the concept of "repeatability". Two people, any two people, each of whom does the same experiment are expected to get the same result. In fact, if other scientists are convinced that both people did the experiment correctly but got different results they decide there is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. Now it is sometimes found that one or both did the experiment poorly. Then the next thing to do is do the experiment yet again and try to get it right this time.
If scientists decide that both did the experiment correctly then they start looking for something else to explain the situation. They have found in many cases that "all other things being equal" is not true. There is some influence that has not been properly accounted for. Early experiments to determine "G", the Gravitational constant, ran into this. People would make very precise measurements of how fast things fell. Good experimenters got differing results. This led to small adjustments for altitude. But there were still problems. This led to the idea that the density of the earth differed from place to place. This density difference has since been turned inside out. Geologists now use sensitive gravitational measurements to determine some of the attributes of rock that may be buried way below the surface of the ground. This is one of the tricks in the bag of people who look for oil for a living.
Now this is definitely a belief. It is not a provable proposition. If you find a thousand or a million or a billion examples of everyone seeing the same thing that doesn't mean that there is not some situation just around the corner that will be the exception that disproves the rule. And to some extent this is a self fulfilling prophecy.
In quantum mechanics there is a theory called the "many worlds" theory. (Do not confuse this with the "many worlds" theory in cosmology. It's a different theory that I do not have time to get into.) In quantum mechanics we have all these situations where (to keep things simple) there are two possible outcomes. The "many worlds" theory says that both outcomes actually occur. But the world splits into two copies. In one world the first thing happens. In the other world the second thing happens. We (or at least the copy of "we" that we are following) exist in only one copy of these many worlds. As we look back we see, for instance, the first outcome of the most recent event. And we also see a specific outcome of the previous event. And so on. There is a world in which each possible outcome of each event happened. We see only the world as it is in our "world line" but there are zillions of other world lines in which events resulted in different outcomes.
In this conception of quantum mechanics there are in fact many worlds with a copy of each of us occupying many of them (remember, there may be events that caused us to not come into existence in some of these other world lines). But we can only see the world and the world line we are in. Scientists (and science fiction writers) have spent a lot of time working out detailed "many worlds" theories. No one has come up with proof that the theories are wrong. How could you? But most scientists go about their daily business as if the theories are wrong. And so far they have not come across any evidence that they are right.
Another line of thinking is the "Matrix" (from the popular movie) idea. Maybe the real world looks quite different but we live inside a giant sophisticated computer simulation of the world we see. Again, if the simulation is sophisticated enough and well enough done, there is no way to determine that it is a simulation. Here the proper response is "who cares?" The problem for Science just becomes "what are the rules in the simulated universe?" We can't beat the simulation. Therefore we have no access to the "real" real world. So it does us no good to try to study it. So we might as well stick to trying to figure out the simulated rules in our simulated world. Those are the rules we can use to advantage.
The second belief is one that philosophers have spent a lot of time on. There are systems of philosophy and religion that say "you can't so don't". There are also religious systems that say "the anointed get into heaven no matter what they do and the rest don't get in no matter what they do so why should anyone try to figure things out?" And, if your objective is to get into heaven, then it makes sense to not try if you subscribe to the "anointed" school of religion. But here we are talking about your efforts to achieve salvation in the next world. Most of us spend a lot of time trying to navigate around in the current world. For those science says "Science can be at least of some help".
And Science has a pretty good track record. Science has found out a lot about how the world works. Some scientists believe that all of the rules are discoverable. Some don't. But all scientists believe that there are undiscovered rules that can be discovered. So it doesn't really matter if they can all be discovered or not. As long as there are more rules that are currently undiscovered but haven't yet been discovered there is reason to continue the endeavor.
No scientist believes that all the rules that can be discovered have already been discovered. Nor do they believe that knowing the rules of science allows you to find the correct solution to all problems. There is even a shorthand for this. "Science is about 'what'. Religion/philosophy is about 'why'". Put another way, Science tells you a lot about what is possible but it doesn't tell you which choice among the possible choices is the "right" choice.
The third belief is actually quite a subtle one. Scientists believe that all the rules apply all the time. Now each rule can have a specific range of operation. So most rules don't apply in most situations. They can be effectively ignored. But part of a proper scientific rule is to define what situations it applies to. If a rule is applicable to a particular situation then it must be applied. Put another way, you must look at all the data when trying to create a rule. If you can't say why the rule applies here but doesn't apply there then there is a problem with your rule. This trips nonscientists up all the time. A rule may look perfectly good if you apply it to only a limited number of situations. But if it doesn't apply universally you better have a "whereas" that says in effect "but it doesn't apply in these other situations". Let me give you an example of this sort of thing done right.
Newton said "f=ma". As far as he knew this was a universal rule. But then Einstein came along and said in effect "f=ma + a relativistic correction". And he showed that the relativistic correction was such a tiny number in a lot of "normal world" situations that it could be ignored. Scientists and engineers know where the boundary between "normal world" and "relativistic world" is so they can keep it simple most of the time but fall back to the more complex relativistic methods when they need to.
A more common situation is where someone makes a "bold new" discovery. But no one else can get the method they claim to have used to work. This is common in the world psychic phenomenon. They say essentially "I did this and here's what happened". For instance they find certain people that can identify a card selected at random "at a rate above chance". But others make what appear to be the same test but don't get the "above chance" result. This situation has come up repeatedly. And the same explanation has been made repeatedly: shyness. Apparently the phenomenon is shy. If there are too many "negative vibrations" around the phenomenon goes into hiding. Many scientists have a different explanation: bad experimental procedure.
The same thing happens in more traditionally scientific situations. Check the Wikipedia articles on "N rays" or "cold fusion" for two examples that happened more than 80 years apart. The "shyness" explanation was trotted out in both of these examples. Eventually scientists concluded that the original discoverers just got it wrong.
Now let me move on to my corollaries.
The first one ("whatever works is right") seems obvious and sensible. But scientists have gotten really good at coming up with really weird results. The classic example is photons. People have been studying light for a long time. As I pointed out in my previous post, Newton did some wonderful work and in 1704 published his results in a book whose title rendered in English is "Optics". A lot of good work was done before this and a whole lot was done afterwards. In spite of this no one could decide whether light was composed of waves or particles. That is until Einstein came along in 1905. His answer was "neither". Instead light was composed of things called photons. Photons behave like waves in some situations and particles in other situations.
To a lot of people this was a completely unsatisfactory solution. An answer of "particles" or an answer of "waves" would have been natural and satisfactory. But the fact is that the extremely weird theory of "quantum electrodynamics" (the modern successor to Einstein's original work) does an excellent job of telling us how light will behave in all kinds of situations. QED (the standard shorthand for quantum electrodynamics) works. "Waves" doesn't work. "Particles" doesn't work. And science has now built up a long list of truly weird theories that work. Evolution (which is not actually that weird) works. Quantum Mechanics (actually its modern descendent "The Standard Model") works. Relativity works. The list goes on.
The second corollary ("whatever doesn't work is wrong") also seems obvious and sensible. But in practice it is not. As I just got done pointing out, in the case of light, "waves" doesn't work and "particles" doesn't work. But they are both connected to our day to day experience. Similarly, the Bible as an accurate historical reference doesn't work. Pre-QM atomic theories don't work. What is now called "Newtonian Mechanics" (e.g. "f=ma" and other non-relativistic theories) doesn't work. In some cases the old theory that doesn't work is readily discarded. If it strikes people as weird or unnatural they are happy to let it go.
Most people had no idea what "N rays" were about. They didn't much care when they were "discovered". And they didn't much care when they were debunked. So it was pretty easy to discard the whole "N Ray" theory. And the whole "N Ray" battle was scientists versus scientists. The general public felt it didn't have a dog in the fight. But in the case of the other now discarded theories I mentioned, people had a lot more invested in the old theories. There are large, well funded groups invested in the whole Evolution "debate" so leaving the discredited alternatives behind has turned out to be much harder. But that's why this corollary is so important. Except . . .
There are degrees of wrongness. All scientific theories have problems. The gold standard of scientific theories is "The Standard Model". It is the governing model for particle physics and is generally characterized as "spectacularly successful". It has problems. The biggest and most obvious problem is that no one knows how to reconcile it with Relativity. So it fails the test for perfect scientific theory. In fact there are no known perfect scientific theories. So how do scientists deal with this? The short answer is they fudge. That's why scientific theories are always referred to as "theories". It is always possible that the theory will be modified or even completely replaced by a quite different theory.
Scientists have now had hundreds of years of experience dealing with this issue. And part of that experience is with dealing with theories that are known to be wrong but have proved to be useful anyhow. They try to balance the utility of each theory with the problems its inadequacies can cause. This has resulted in an informal "wrongness" scale:
Degrees of wrongness
Best - These are well established theories. Scientists believe that the core of the theory is correct but that some modifications may be needed in the future around the edges. Also, any theory that is in contravention to the core of the theory is easily demonstrated to be wrong. A classic example of this is Evolution. Evolution grew out of problems with all bible based theories. So all bible based theories are known to be wrong. The core of evolution is known to be solid. Some tweaking (the relationship of two species, evolutionary mechanisms, details of the evolutionary record) may need tweaking but the core is solid.
Very good - These are theories that have had a great deal of success. But there are known problems for which no known solution currently exists. A classic example of this is The Standard Model. The relationship of this theory to Relativity is currently a big problem. There are other issues where scientists are not sure they have everything right. Note: Finding the Higgs Boson substantially reduced the problem areas seen with the Standard Model.
Good - The theory works well in a lot of situations but has a number of known problems. Like Very Good theories the core looks solid but here there are a lot more problems around the edges. A classic example of this is Plate Tectonics. This theory solved a lot of problems. It gives us a good way to understand a lot of geology. But there are a number of open problems having to do with how some plate boundaries work. There are a lot of areas where current understanding can best be described as "incomplete". But there are a number of areas where the theory works very well and there is currently no better theory on the horizon.
Ok - Science has had a lot of success with an incremental approach. A bad theory is better than no theory at all. A lot of theories don't work very well. But they work some of the time and the fact that we know where they work and where they have problems is helpful in determining what additional experiments might yield useful information or what problems a new theory might solve. A classis example of this kind of theory is the "Cooper pair" explanation for superconductivity. It works pretty well some of the time and not well at all a lot of the time. Nobody currently has any ideas that seem to work better. No one would be surprised if a new theory came along that was quite different to do a better job of explaining Superconductivity.
Poor - These theories are typically found where scientists really don't have much understanding. A good example of this would be planetary formation. There used to be what appeared to be a good theory. Small "rocky" planets formed close to stars where gasses were boiled off. Gas giants formed further away where it was cooler. Then came all the data on exoplanets from the Kepler spacecraft. It turns out there are all kinds of planets of the wrong kind and size in the wrong places. Scientists have some ideas but mostly it's early days.
Not even wrong - This phrase is attributed to Wolfgang Pauli, the great physicists. In describing ok and poor degrees of wrongness I emphasized that these theories all were useful to the extent that they were helpful in pointing to where a better theory might be found. "Not even wrong" theories are so bad that they just add noise to the situation.
So given all this wrongness why do scientists get so exercised about theories or criticisms from outsiders? Scientists are very aware of how problematic some of their theories are. And they dearly love it when a new better theory comes along. But is generally pretty easy to slot a lot of "new" theory into one of the above categories. Scientists get exercised when a new theory slots into a category that is lower than the one their current favored theory occupies. They also get exercised when a theory is advanced or a criticism is leveled that they have seen before (frequently many times) and have already thoroughly investigated.
The evolution "debate" falls into this category. All of the early scientists that worked on evolution were practicing Christians. They were very familiar with the bible. Where the bible appeared to get it right, those ideas were incorporated in evolution. But in many areas the bible got it wrong. Darwin's "Origin of Species" was first published in 1859. It was immediately criticized. Several new editions were quickly put out that included additional material addressing these criticisms. The sixth edition, the one commonly available now, was published in 1872. It should be shocking how many "new" arguments against evolution are in fact old arguments that Darwin addressed in great detail over a hundred years ago but apparently it is not. But most people who oppose evolution have never bothered to read Darwin or familiarize themselves with subsequent developments. I recently published a post on "Ken Ham Creationism" (http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2014/02/ken-ham-creationism.html). Many of Hams "modern" criticisms of evolution find well supported refutations in Origin, a book that is now over a hundred years old.
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