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Chapter VI– Science

A Voice from the 21^st Century

By, Timothy Bowling

Chapter VI– Science

- The Pursuit of Understanding -

The 17^th century French mathematician and philosopher, René Descartes, decided to doubt everything that could be doubted. He wanted to find truth and understanding, and didn’t want preconceived notions to influence the results. Descartes discovered that there must be one assumption, however, or all pursuit of truth was meaningless. He had to acknowledge he existed, and he adroitly declared that famous line “Cognito, ergo sum”, or “I think, therefore I am”.

It is a reasonable assumption, since if we don’t exist, than any inquiry we make into anything else is not really happening. Since we are thinking about something, then we exist. Beyond that, assumptions often lead to error, so everything must be observed, described and tested to understand them and prove they are what we think they are.

We do this all the time when confronting something new to one degree or another. Acceptance of the fact comes easily at times, and in others it takes a bit of experimenting and observation to decide the nature of whatever phenomena we are considering. Personality can come into play, with the more skeptical questioning and the trustful person accepting.

We all have enjoyed watching small children when they first come face to face with something common enough, but new to them. In an effort to understand, they will observe and experiment until they believe they understand it. Then they will file it away in their brains as an experienced occurrence for future reference.

This is how science works. We take anything and analyze it to understand its nature. This can be done by experimenting with it, observing it, comparing it to known experiences than describing it to file away as understood and build from there. Understanding our surroundings is necessary for our survival. Water can drown, fire can burn, lions can eat us and falling from a tree can break our legs.

- Methodology and Viewpoint -

The methods we use to determine the nature of things are appropriately enough called our scientific methodology. This methodology has changed from culture to culture and age to age. The methods we use determine the type of results into any inquiry we make. If our methods are faulty, or we are building on incorrectly derived information from those faulty methods, our results will be skewed and incorrect.

A good illustration would be the Indian parable (which probably dates back to Han Dynasty China, forever immortalized by the 19^th century American poet, John Godfrey Saxe. Six blind men each came up to the elephant, and by feeling it, attempted to describe the creature. The first came to the beast’s side and said it was like a wall. The second one grabbed the tusk and determined it must be like a spear. The third man felt the trunk and said it was like a snake. The fourth grabbed a leg and determined it was like a tree. The fifth man touched the elephant’s ear and said it was like a fan. The final man touched the tail, and said the animal was like a rope. They proceeded to argue ridiculously on the true nature of the elephant, even though none had ever seen one, and were all partially right, but were also all wrong. The story is told to illustrate the opinion of the inanity of religious argument, but it is apropos to illustrate how faulty methodology can yield faulty results.

Because these gentlemen were unable to see the object of inquiry, they had to rely on other senses to determine the nature of the elephant. There is no problem there, since oft times we try to understand something invisible, such as magnetic fields. Alternate methods need to be employed in order to make observations, and with evidence gathered we can extrapolate from things we can perceive and deduce the nature of phenomena. The major flaw of these gentlemen in the story is that they did not approach their subject from various angles and examine the whole animal. Worse, they argued their opinions so that pride stepped in, and no reassessment of the facts was possible. Now imbued with wrong assumptions, any further inquiry on the nature of elephants will be awry for them and each will have different results.

It is the ideal in science to approach the subject as Descartes did. We must assume nothing but that we exist, and observe from scratch without bias or prejudice. This is easier said than done, and has been the exception rather than the rule throughout most of our collective history.

There is also a cultural bias inherent in scientific methodology. If a culture does not question some dogma, then the method of approach will not either. This will reflect in any resulting discoveries since anything discovered might be based on data that is incorrect. Examples are obvious, and can be dangerous. If witches are real, then effects observed can be the result of witchcraft. If a person with more skin pigmentation is not human, then it is okay to own them as slaves.

Sometimes the assumptions can be so easily disproved it is remarkable that they were held so long as indisputable facts. In 350 B.C., Aristotle wrote:

“… Just as the downward movement of a mass of gold or lead, or of any other body endowed with weight, is quicker in proportion to its size.”

As a classic philosopher, he was not generally questioned on this one, especially by people who viewed themselves as the caretakers of classical knowledge. When the Italian Galileo said they would fall and land at the same time, men who had not questioned the assumption were outspoken in defending the classical position. After all, many, such as Giorgio Coresio, the professor of Greek at the University of Pisa, had written works themselves accepting the classical misconception as self evident. Without an honest experiment to test which theory was correct, and with pride standing in the way, they argued in a vacuum only to be proven wrong.

Faced with such obstinacy and arrogance, the pursuit of truth is sometimes arrested for years. When Galileo went further and said the Earth is not the center of the universe, opposition came down on him fiercely. A misconception of Biblical teaching made this a very important issue to the established intellectuals and the Church, so Galileo had to recant his findings or be burned.

Our history is rife with such obvious examples of dogma bringing about wrong assumptions and resulting in faulty conclusions. However, there is a less apparent example of cultural bias is the general mindset of a culture. As an example, let us consider two ways of approaching the nature of reality.

- Methods of Thought -

The first approach has been more prevalent in western cultures, wherein models are used to explain the results of observed phenomena and with experimentation are improved upon as additional information is discovered. If at some time in the future information is received that cannot be explained in the model, a new model is adopted. This occurred in physics in recent memory with Einsteinian versus Newtonian models. Newton was not wrong, but Einstein was able to build on that and discover more parts of the elephant, as it were.

This approach gives logic and order to reality. Effects are born from cause, things can be measured, and formulas can be written. From the simple, force equals mass times acceleration, to the complex – energy equals mass time the constant speed of light squared. This is a logical and rational approach that has allowed many of our modern technological wonders. The language of science becomes mathematics, and even with relativity, the mechanisms of the universe are in place.

The second approach has been more common in eastern philosophies, though it has had its influences in the west in Gnosticism and to an extent in quantum mechanics. Roughly, if one observes a phenomenon, the results of this act of probing will be skewed since the observer and the phenomenon are changed by the very action of that probe. Therefore any discernable reality has no meaning so it’s pointless to try.

This has resulted in cultures that remain unchanged for hundreds, if not, thousands of years. Reality is unknowable. Technological innovation doesn’t have the impetus it does in the first approach. The physical world becomes something to transcend in order to know a true reality. Interestingly enough, there has been a trend lately in the west to use the second mode of thinking, especially in quantum physics and chaos theory, at least in combination with the first method with formulas and exact observation.

- Sub-atomic Concessions -

Originally the atom was thought to be the smallest particle possible. Werner Heisenberg

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