The 30 Years' War was still nearly a decade away from resolution in 1642. That was a religious war in Europe between Protestants and Catholics and still other Protestants that left millions of Europeans dead, a war that killed 40% of the population in some regions. At that point you'd do well to explain the Protestant faith as a destructive force in history, a tragedy unleashed a century earlier by Martin Luther. As it turns out, it was more complicated than that.
In 1642, Galileo died and Isaac Newton was born. It's easy to see that now as a year in which power in Europe shifted from the Mediterranean to northern Europe.
Galileo was a genius put under house arrest by the Catholic Church because he argued that the earth orbits the sun, one of the first to use a telescope to look into space at wonders like the moon.
Newton was a genius who explained gravity and the laws of motion. Newton was an Enlightenment philosopher (his one of the minds that defined the Enlightenment) working in a country that had broken away from the Catholic Church. In England, he was free to explain the world without the approval of popes.
After 1642, Italy lost its dominance (although to this day people visit it to see the wonder it was during Galileo's time - St. Peter's Basilica, among other wonders, created only decades before Galileo was born) and Britain grew in power and influence to become the largest empire in history, eventually ruling over nearly a quarter of the world's population and land.
A community that aligns itself with science can go to the moon. In a community that rejects science, you can get in trouble just for looking at the moon.
Which brings me to the United States today, the country that arguably became the world's most powerful as the British Empire began to wane from its peak before World War I. The US has partly come to power because of its great universities, public schools and corporations and partly because as Europe was devastated by two world wars, many of its best and brightest chose to come to the US to study and work. In the last decade, the US has dominated in Nobel Prize winners and about half of those Nobel Prize winners were born and raised outside the US.
We are now at the moment of Galileo's trial. This week Trump retweeted a video starring a woman arguing that masks don't slow the spread of COVID. She also warns about alien DNA and demon semen. We are literally at a point in history in which membership in the Republican Party requires a belief in conspiracy theories and a rejection of science. The GOP doesn't even offer anything remotely as beautiful as St. Peter's basilica in return for the rejection of science; the Italians of Galileo's time had the David to gaze at in wonder and we have the Donald to gape at in horror.
It is no trivial matter to choose superstition over science. Italy went from home to the Renaissance (the place where the progress of the Greeks and Romans that had been interrupted for centuries by the Dark Ages began again) to an also-ran, a country that to this day suffers from high levels of corruption and incomes that are about 40% lower than those in northern Europe.
Four years ago, I was eating lunch with a robotics engineer from Italy. He said, "I kind of don't want Trump to win but I also kind of want him to win."
Thrown, all I could think to ask was, "Why?"
"Because everyone thinks we Italians were crazy to elect Berlusconi. If you elect Trump, no one remembers how stupid we Italians were. You will make the world forget that."
We don't have popes making the decision about whether or not we are the place where the next Newton is born or the last Galileo worked. Here it is the people making that choice. While the choice we make to trust in science or conspiracy theories won't make the world forget how Italy derailed its wondrous Renaissance progress, it could easily remind the world of that derailment, another golden age derailed by a rejection of science.
R World (Ron Davison muses aloud)
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
30 July 2020
09 August 2019
How Hosting or Squelching Science Determines Where Progress Goes Next
In 1642, Galileo died and Newton was born. That's still a poignant symbol of the hand off from Italy to Britain for progress.
In 1500, Italy's per capita GDP was about 50% higher than Britain's. By 1820, Britain's per capita GDP was about 50% higher than Italy's.
Galileo was arguing that the earth rotated around the sun. The church had the authority of Joshua 10:13, a verse that made it clear that it was in fact the sun that orbited the earth. They put Galileo under house arrest and made it clear that developing theories based on observation was not to be tolerated as long as Italy had the church's authority.
Science traveled north. The Protestants of Northern Europe accommodated Galileo's theories and became host to the scientific method that the Italians had helped revive from Greek and Roman time. Newton went further than Galileo, developing a set of laws to explain what Galileo observed. Newton's science and math became a foundation for the Enlightenment and that, in turn, became a foundation for the Industrial Revolution and Democracy. Italy protected its past and the UK created a new future.
Today, we have a similar inflection point in the transition from fossil fuels to alternative energy. China now leads in the production of wind turbines and solar panels. Meanwhile, we Americans have elected a president intent on protecting coal - an industry that dates back to the time of Newton. Trump - like so many of his supporters - denies climate change in the same way that the Catholic Church denied we orbit around the sun. And science, less interested in the vested interests of coal industry profits or old testament prophets than reality, is shifting away from the greatest home to science since, well, Italy during the Renaissance or the UK during the Enlightenment.
Economic growth and prosperity follows science. It has for centuries. If we continue to deny the reality of climate change and what that means for a shift in strategies and the source of prosperity, we will play the role of Italy in the 1600s. It's not a good role. Shakespeare - born the same year as Galileo - set half his tragedies there.
In 1500, Italy's per capita GDP was about 50% higher than Britain's. By 1820, Britain's per capita GDP was about 50% higher than Italy's.
Galileo was arguing that the earth rotated around the sun. The church had the authority of Joshua 10:13, a verse that made it clear that it was in fact the sun that orbited the earth. They put Galileo under house arrest and made it clear that developing theories based on observation was not to be tolerated as long as Italy had the church's authority.
Science traveled north. The Protestants of Northern Europe accommodated Galileo's theories and became host to the scientific method that the Italians had helped revive from Greek and Roman time. Newton went further than Galileo, developing a set of laws to explain what Galileo observed. Newton's science and math became a foundation for the Enlightenment and that, in turn, became a foundation for the Industrial Revolution and Democracy. Italy protected its past and the UK created a new future.
Today, we have a similar inflection point in the transition from fossil fuels to alternative energy. China now leads in the production of wind turbines and solar panels. Meanwhile, we Americans have elected a president intent on protecting coal - an industry that dates back to the time of Newton. Trump - like so many of his supporters - denies climate change in the same way that the Catholic Church denied we orbit around the sun. And science, less interested in the vested interests of coal industry profits or old testament prophets than reality, is shifting away from the greatest home to science since, well, Italy during the Renaissance or the UK during the Enlightenment.
Economic growth and prosperity follows science. It has for centuries. If we continue to deny the reality of climate change and what that means for a shift in strategies and the source of prosperity, we will play the role of Italy in the 1600s. It's not a good role. Shakespeare - born the same year as Galileo - set half his tragedies there.
25 July 2017
What To Do About the Immaturity of Systems Modeling
Sam Harris recently had a conversation with Scott Adams (Dilbert creator and author of How to Fail at Everything and Still Win Big) about Trump. Adams predicted Trump's victory because he sees Trump as a master persuader. There's a lot to say about that but Adams made a really useful distinction about what he saw as the three stages of climate change policy. He distinguishes between:
1) The reality of climate change as an ongoing phenomenon that seems to be man made;
2) The ability to simulate future climate change with good models; and,
3) An appreciation of the economic policy implications of the above.
A decade or three ago, it was fashionable to dismiss climate change. This has become problematic for at least two reasons. One, the science is not that sophisticated. Certain industrial activity releases greenhouse gases. These gases - as the name suggests - work like a greenhouse and trap heat. That science is not exactly quantum entanglement and the data for greenhouse gas emissions and resultant warming seems to track pretty well to the theory. So Adams cedes this point and allows that climate change is probably real and ongoing.
Adams worked as a financial analyst at a bank, though, and challenges the second point: the ability to simulate future climate change. He said that it reminds him of the financial models he ran as an analyst that - should they reveal something his boss didn't like - could readily be changed with just a tweak of a few variables. Given we can't really forecast accurately what might happen, it is good to be skeptical, he says.
In this he has sort of put his finger on something really important and is sort of missing the point (probably intentionally).
What is really important is that systems define so much about what does or does not go well in our world - systems as varied as the economy and financial markets, energy systems, ecosystems and school systems - and yet we really don't understand system dynamics that well. Systems are tough to model and our models are not great. This is reason to be skeptical about any predictions but it also suggests that systems modeling deserves a massive infusion of research money. A crowd was gathered to watch a hot air balloon ascend and some woman said, "What is the use of all this new technology." Benjamin Franklin answered, "Madam, what is the use of a new born infant?" Systems simulation matters a great deal and is not that mature. Better to invest more heavily in it than to walk away from it. (And I think that computers' ability to simulate systems is maturing just when that capability is most needed for shaping policy dependent on such systems.)
And even with admitted limitations of models for any systems, it is worth asking whether even the models Adams was tweaking for his boss were all that bad. Once you understand a model for an economy or business, you articulate risks, a range of outcomes, and important variables. With good models you learn what factors they are most sensitive to (housing mortgages are sensitive to widespread economic downturns or refinancing from a drop in interest rates, for instance) and even spotty historical data can give you some sense of the probability of those events. (Yes. Nassim Taleb has rightfully pointed out that markets can be rocked by unpredictable events but risk mitigation can protect you from some of these rare events. A person who has saved three years of salary is better prepared for an event "they never could have predicted" than is someone with only three months of salary.) Financial models are a little sketchy in prediction but there are ways to gauge their efficacy in spite of a large margin of error. (For instance, only about 20% of businesses succeed past 5 years. If your bank lending model assumes that is going to raise to 50%, it will probably be wrong; if it assumes that it will raise to 25% or drop to 15%, it could be right but done properly even that should require a coherent explanation that tracks to the numbers rather than arbitrary tweaks.) Further, to the extent that Adam's boss was unique in cheating the models so that they showed what he wanted, his bank would suffer. There is a drive to make models more accurate and - within the financial world at least - big rewards for such accuracy.
Models force questions and conversations about what variables matter and they bound reasonable outcomes. It is true that climate change models will be wrong but the simplest truth is pretty easy to predict: we will emit more greenhouse gases and temperatures will be higher than they would have been without these emissions. There are a host of unknowns that come with that (will particular regions benefit or lose, will changes in wind or sea currents result in unexpected cooling in certain regions, might unforeseen natural phenomenon or new technology absorb these gases, etc.) but the general story is known. If you invest in stocks over a 25 year period you can't be sure of when your portfolio will drop by half or raise 20% a year for successive years but you can reasonably guess that over your lifetime you'll be a better shape for having saved 10% of your income than not. Same with greenhouse gases; reducing emissions will drive less uncertainty, disruption and climate change.
Denying climate change is in a long tradition of denying scientific results like the health hazards of tobacco or the notion that we orbit the sun. Climate change deniers are traditionalists who conflate market economies with oil and gas and see an admission of climate change as a threat to those forces. (It does seem like climate change will threaten oil and gas. The possibility of oil and gas being displaced by alternative energy is not a refutation of markets that periodically unleash gales of creative destruction, though, but is instead an affirmation. Markets are no more dependent on oil than horses and markets don't treat fossil fuel industries as sacred.)
As to Adams' third point about evaluating the economics of climate change policy, I'll just say this. If it is inevitable that we'll adapt new energy technologies, there is less likely to be a penalty for rushing into creating and then converting to alternative energies than there is to be a penalty for delaying that change.
1) The reality of climate change as an ongoing phenomenon that seems to be man made;
2) The ability to simulate future climate change with good models; and,
3) An appreciation of the economic policy implications of the above.
A decade or three ago, it was fashionable to dismiss climate change. This has become problematic for at least two reasons. One, the science is not that sophisticated. Certain industrial activity releases greenhouse gases. These gases - as the name suggests - work like a greenhouse and trap heat. That science is not exactly quantum entanglement and the data for greenhouse gas emissions and resultant warming seems to track pretty well to the theory. So Adams cedes this point and allows that climate change is probably real and ongoing.
In this he has sort of put his finger on something really important and is sort of missing the point (probably intentionally).
What is really important is that systems define so much about what does or does not go well in our world - systems as varied as the economy and financial markets, energy systems, ecosystems and school systems - and yet we really don't understand system dynamics that well. Systems are tough to model and our models are not great. This is reason to be skeptical about any predictions but it also suggests that systems modeling deserves a massive infusion of research money. A crowd was gathered to watch a hot air balloon ascend and some woman said, "What is the use of all this new technology." Benjamin Franklin answered, "Madam, what is the use of a new born infant?" Systems simulation matters a great deal and is not that mature. Better to invest more heavily in it than to walk away from it. (And I think that computers' ability to simulate systems is maturing just when that capability is most needed for shaping policy dependent on such systems.)
And even with admitted limitations of models for any systems, it is worth asking whether even the models Adams was tweaking for his boss were all that bad. Once you understand a model for an economy or business, you articulate risks, a range of outcomes, and important variables. With good models you learn what factors they are most sensitive to (housing mortgages are sensitive to widespread economic downturns or refinancing from a drop in interest rates, for instance) and even spotty historical data can give you some sense of the probability of those events. (Yes. Nassim Taleb has rightfully pointed out that markets can be rocked by unpredictable events but risk mitigation can protect you from some of these rare events. A person who has saved three years of salary is better prepared for an event "they never could have predicted" than is someone with only three months of salary.) Financial models are a little sketchy in prediction but there are ways to gauge their efficacy in spite of a large margin of error. (For instance, only about 20% of businesses succeed past 5 years. If your bank lending model assumes that is going to raise to 50%, it will probably be wrong; if it assumes that it will raise to 25% or drop to 15%, it could be right but done properly even that should require a coherent explanation that tracks to the numbers rather than arbitrary tweaks.) Further, to the extent that Adam's boss was unique in cheating the models so that they showed what he wanted, his bank would suffer. There is a drive to make models more accurate and - within the financial world at least - big rewards for such accuracy.
Models force questions and conversations about what variables matter and they bound reasonable outcomes. It is true that climate change models will be wrong but the simplest truth is pretty easy to predict: we will emit more greenhouse gases and temperatures will be higher than they would have been without these emissions. There are a host of unknowns that come with that (will particular regions benefit or lose, will changes in wind or sea currents result in unexpected cooling in certain regions, might unforeseen natural phenomenon or new technology absorb these gases, etc.) but the general story is known. If you invest in stocks over a 25 year period you can't be sure of when your portfolio will drop by half or raise 20% a year for successive years but you can reasonably guess that over your lifetime you'll be a better shape for having saved 10% of your income than not. Same with greenhouse gases; reducing emissions will drive less uncertainty, disruption and climate change.
Denying climate change is in a long tradition of denying scientific results like the health hazards of tobacco or the notion that we orbit the sun. Climate change deniers are traditionalists who conflate market economies with oil and gas and see an admission of climate change as a threat to those forces. (It does seem like climate change will threaten oil and gas. The possibility of oil and gas being displaced by alternative energy is not a refutation of markets that periodically unleash gales of creative destruction, though, but is instead an affirmation. Markets are no more dependent on oil than horses and markets don't treat fossil fuel industries as sacred.)
As to Adams' third point about evaluating the economics of climate change policy, I'll just say this. If it is inevitable that we'll adapt new energy technologies, there is less likely to be a penalty for rushing into creating and then converting to alternative energies than there is to be a penalty for delaying that change.
24 January 2017
Trump - Soul Mate to Medieval Popes
Trump knows there were millions of illegal votes cast and that climate change is fiction in spite of a lack of evidence for the first and an abundance of evidence for the second.
His criteria for truth is the same as the one medieval popes used: personal revelation. If you think that's a good idea, you might want to read up on what life was like in medieval times and contrast that with what life became after we (mostly) accepted the scientific method. There is plenty of evidence that testable hypotheses supported by plenty of evidence is at the root of all progress. We all knew he wanted to take the country back; even his most rabid supporters didn't realize he meant to take us back to the Dark Ages.
And now today there is news that he's deleted government twitter accounts that have dared to tweet facts about the climate. Censorship because of facts. It's climate change now, evolution and the neo-Copernican model next. Finally, there will be a ban on reports that Trump is infallible.
-----
Who does find revealed truth stronger than science? Not just the evangelicals who voted for Trump but a district in LA that houses a disproportionate number of Scientologists.
His criteria for truth is the same as the one medieval popes used: personal revelation. If you think that's a good idea, you might want to read up on what life was like in medieval times and contrast that with what life became after we (mostly) accepted the scientific method. There is plenty of evidence that testable hypotheses supported by plenty of evidence is at the root of all progress. We all knew he wanted to take the country back; even his most rabid supporters didn't realize he meant to take us back to the Dark Ages.
And now today there is news that he's deleted government twitter accounts that have dared to tweet facts about the climate. Censorship because of facts. It's climate change now, evolution and the neo-Copernican model next. Finally, there will be a ban on reports that Trump is infallible.
-----
Who does find revealed truth stronger than science? Not just the evangelicals who voted for Trump but a district in LA that houses a disproportionate number of Scientologists.
01 April 2014
My Invisible Friend Bernard Uses the Expansion of Space to Illustrate Social Change
Bernard was excited, which delighted me. I knew that his eyes lit up like that only when he'd been seized by a new idea he wanted to share.
"It's been a long time Bernard," I said as I sat down.
"How is this for a long time," he said leaning forward. "13.8 billion years!"
I had to shake my head. "That's a really long time."
"Yep. I heard scientists talking about new experiments that shed light on dark matter," he said. "And the big bang. Did you know that in the first trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second the entire universe expanded from something smaller than an atom to something the size of a grapefruit?"
"That actually sounds kind of good," I said.
"What does?"
"Grapefruit. Do you think they have any grapefruit juice," I asked.
"Out of what I said you heard, 'I think I'll have grapefruit?'" Bernard slumped. "You've got to be kidding."
"Bernard," I leaned forward. "I was! I was only kidding." Some days he was more sensitive than others. "Go ahead. It really sounds interesting."
"That's not even the interesting part," Bernard began anew. "That's just the set up for the interesting part. Get this," he leaned in. "The particles in the universe have to obey the speed limit, can travel no faster than the speed of light. But, the expansion of the universe itself can take place at any speed."
"Hmm," I said in what I hoped sounded like an intelligent tone.
"Hmmm," he shook his head. "You had better find that waiter and order your grapefruit juice," Bernard scoffed. "I think your blood sugar might be low."
I nodded. He shook his head.
"So this is pretty phenomenal to think that while the stuff in the universe - stars and planets and comets and even the light they emit can only travel so fast, the container in which all of this is moving can expand out at some multiple of the speed of light."
"Wow," I responded. "So you're saying that the space in which space happens can expand faster than the speed of light even though things in space can't?"
"Exactly," Bernard grinned. "Exactly." He looked like a seven year old who'd just played a Coltrane solo on a waxed papered comb. He actually rocked as he smiled.
"So this explains cultural evolution," he said. "It explains how it is that we get progress even though we're social creatures."
"The expansion of space explains cultural evolution?"
"Yes! See, we are products of our culture. So much of who we are is defined by that. If you're born in Indonesia there is a 99% chance that you're Muslim. It's hard to move faster than the speed of light if you're a particle or faster than your culture if you're an individual."
"Okay," I took the bait. "So what about a culture?"
"Aha!" Bernard jabbed the air dangerously close to my nose. "That can move rapidly. See Ron," he said. "Context is everything! Culture moves so rapidly that people can barely keep up. One century everybody is Catholic and the next they're Calvinists and Lutherans and Anglicans and Puritans and Deists. One year everyone is trying to be like Bobby Darin and the next it's Mick Jagger and then the next year rock gives way to disco. One decade everyone is embodied and hang out in clubs and the next they're virtual and hang out on social media."
"So what's the container that can move so much faster than individuals?"
"The container is the code, the DNA, the meme, the new normal. As individuals we can't travel much faster than that but that - that normal - it can change so rapidly. And given we're social creatures, we keep up."
"So who changes the code?"
"Social inventors. You succeed at that experiment and you've just changed the container - maybe even more rapidly than people could ever think to move."
The waiter showed. "What can I get you," he asked.
I looked up. "For like the last ten minutes I have not been able to think about anything but grapefruit," I told him. "Do you have that?"
Before the waiter could say, "Sure," Bernard let out with a groan.
"Something wrong," the waiter inquired, worried.
"Yeah," Bernard said. "I guess that just because the container expands rapidly doesn't mean the people in it move at all."
The waiter looked at me with raised eyebrows. I shrugged. "Excuse me," the waiter asked.
"I said I'll take the lox and bagel," Bernard said. "With sesame seeds."
"It's been a long time Bernard," I said as I sat down.
"How is this for a long time," he said leaning forward. "13.8 billion years!"
I had to shake my head. "That's a really long time."
"Yep. I heard scientists talking about new experiments that shed light on dark matter," he said. "And the big bang. Did you know that in the first trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second the entire universe expanded from something smaller than an atom to something the size of a grapefruit?"
"That actually sounds kind of good," I said.
"What does?"
"Grapefruit. Do you think they have any grapefruit juice," I asked.
"Out of what I said you heard, 'I think I'll have grapefruit?'" Bernard slumped. "You've got to be kidding."
"Bernard," I leaned forward. "I was! I was only kidding." Some days he was more sensitive than others. "Go ahead. It really sounds interesting."
"That's not even the interesting part," Bernard began anew. "That's just the set up for the interesting part. Get this," he leaned in. "The particles in the universe have to obey the speed limit, can travel no faster than the speed of light. But, the expansion of the universe itself can take place at any speed."
"Hmm," I said in what I hoped sounded like an intelligent tone.
"Hmmm," he shook his head. "You had better find that waiter and order your grapefruit juice," Bernard scoffed. "I think your blood sugar might be low."
I nodded. He shook his head.
"So this is pretty phenomenal to think that while the stuff in the universe - stars and planets and comets and even the light they emit can only travel so fast, the container in which all of this is moving can expand out at some multiple of the speed of light."
"Wow," I responded. "So you're saying that the space in which space happens can expand faster than the speed of light even though things in space can't?"
"Exactly," Bernard grinned. "Exactly." He looked like a seven year old who'd just played a Coltrane solo on a waxed papered comb. He actually rocked as he smiled.
"So this explains cultural evolution," he said. "It explains how it is that we get progress even though we're social creatures."
"The expansion of space explains cultural evolution?"
"Yes! See, we are products of our culture. So much of who we are is defined by that. If you're born in Indonesia there is a 99% chance that you're Muslim. It's hard to move faster than the speed of light if you're a particle or faster than your culture if you're an individual."
"Okay," I took the bait. "So what about a culture?"
"Aha!" Bernard jabbed the air dangerously close to my nose. "That can move rapidly. See Ron," he said. "Context is everything! Culture moves so rapidly that people can barely keep up. One century everybody is Catholic and the next they're Calvinists and Lutherans and Anglicans and Puritans and Deists. One year everyone is trying to be like Bobby Darin and the next it's Mick Jagger and then the next year rock gives way to disco. One decade everyone is embodied and hang out in clubs and the next they're virtual and hang out on social media."
"So what's the container that can move so much faster than individuals?"
"The container is the code, the DNA, the meme, the new normal. As individuals we can't travel much faster than that but that - that normal - it can change so rapidly. And given we're social creatures, we keep up."
"So who changes the code?"
"Social inventors. You succeed at that experiment and you've just changed the container - maybe even more rapidly than people could ever think to move."
The waiter showed. "What can I get you," he asked.
I looked up. "For like the last ten minutes I have not been able to think about anything but grapefruit," I told him. "Do you have that?"
Before the waiter could say, "Sure," Bernard let out with a groan.
"Something wrong," the waiter inquired, worried.
"Yeah," Bernard said. "I guess that just because the container expands rapidly doesn't mean the people in it move at all."
The waiter looked at me with raised eyebrows. I shrugged. "Excuse me," the waiter asked.
"I said I'll take the lox and bagel," Bernard said. "With sesame seeds."
12 August 2010
And the Cow Flew Over the Moon - Newton Counters Centrifugal Force
The leading Renaissance thinkers were willing to adapt their minds to the facts but weren’t sure how to fully explain them. Although it took decades for most scientists to accept Copernicus’s revolutionary claims, those scientists were not stupid. In addition to scripture and their own senses – it was obvious even to the casual observer that the sun rose and the earth was stationary – they had a fairly reasonable, scientific objection. Copernicus could accept facts as he observed them, but didn’t really have a cogent explanation of why the solar system worked as it did.
Imagine this conversation.
Copernicus’s debate opponent says, “So, Nicoli, let me grant you your silly premise for a moment. Let’s assume that we do, indeed, circle the sun. You claim that we’re spinning through space and traveling at thousands of miles per hour. Okay. What about centrifugal force? Spin a rock at the end of a string and see how many seconds it takes the ant on that rock to fly into space. Why doesn’t this happen to us? Why don’t cows slip out of the grip of milk maids and fly over the moon?”
“I don’t know,” says our hero Copernicus. “I just know what the data suggests. We are orbiting around the sun. I can’t explain it. I just know it is so.”
“So,” continues his opponent, “you have no explanation? You make no attempt to account for the simple fact of centrifugal force? You just want us to believe something that even you don’t understand?”
“Yes.”
Not much of a debate. On the one hand we have ants without opposable thumbs obviously unable to keep their grip on a rock in orbit, a phenomenon that would suggest that we should be observing panicked cows floating off into space if Copernicus was right. And on the other hand we have someone arguing that the data on the movement of planets fits better if we assume that it is the sun and the not the earth that is stationary, if we assume that we’re hurtling through space at about a thousand miles an hour. Preposterous.
It took an Enlightenment thinker – the Enlightenment thinker – to explain why. Isaac Newton solved two problems with one universal law. It is tempting to think – reasonable to suspect – that the explanation for our circling the sun would be different from the explanation of why it is not impossible to find our car in the morning, uncertain as to where it has spun off through centrifugal force. Newton sees a falling apple and realizes that it is pulled by the same force as the earth. Gravity is the universal force that explains why cows don’t fly and the earth does. Newton added laws – a theory – to observations and facts.
Newton gave the lovers of facts a set of laws that made sense of their facts.
Imagine this conversation.
Copernicus’s debate opponent says, “So, Nicoli, let me grant you your silly premise for a moment. Let’s assume that we do, indeed, circle the sun. You claim that we’re spinning through space and traveling at thousands of miles per hour. Okay. What about centrifugal force? Spin a rock at the end of a string and see how many seconds it takes the ant on that rock to fly into space. Why doesn’t this happen to us? Why don’t cows slip out of the grip of milk maids and fly over the moon?”
“I don’t know,” says our hero Copernicus. “I just know what the data suggests. We are orbiting around the sun. I can’t explain it. I just know it is so.”
“So,” continues his opponent, “you have no explanation? You make no attempt to account for the simple fact of centrifugal force? You just want us to believe something that even you don’t understand?”
“Yes.”
Not much of a debate. On the one hand we have ants without opposable thumbs obviously unable to keep their grip on a rock in orbit, a phenomenon that would suggest that we should be observing panicked cows floating off into space if Copernicus was right. And on the other hand we have someone arguing that the data on the movement of planets fits better if we assume that it is the sun and the not the earth that is stationary, if we assume that we’re hurtling through space at about a thousand miles an hour. Preposterous.
It took an Enlightenment thinker – the Enlightenment thinker – to explain why. Isaac Newton solved two problems with one universal law. It is tempting to think – reasonable to suspect – that the explanation for our circling the sun would be different from the explanation of why it is not impossible to find our car in the morning, uncertain as to where it has spun off through centrifugal force. Newton sees a falling apple and realizes that it is pulled by the same force as the earth. Gravity is the universal force that explains why cows don’t fly and the earth does. Newton added laws – a theory – to observations and facts.
Newton gave the lovers of facts a set of laws that made sense of their facts.
09 May 2007
Forcing the OR Between Science & Religion
Responding to Chrlane's comment on the previous post, I was struck by a thought that clarified so much of my squeamishness about the evolution vs. religion debate in recent years.
People like Pat Robertson and Sam Harris have been trying to force an OR between science and religion. Pat Robertson and others would say that the Bible is to be trusted on matters of origin more than scientists and would say that you can believe in God OR those secular scientists. Sam Harris would point to the illogic of certain scriptures and beliefs and say that you can believe in God OR science, but not both.
The secular scientists and religious fundamentalists both make me nervous for very similar reasons: they are insisting that we choose between science and religion, forcing an OR between the two.
Perhaps it is because the majority of us Americans are neither scientists nor theologians that we can so casually hold to our belief in science AND religion. I suppose that at some level it is logically inconsistent to hold to both.
But I also think I know enough about the process of science and faith to stop short of believing that either is infallible or, even, that they are addressing the same issues. I'm a Christian, yet the conversation about whether the Bible is inerrant seems to miss the point. For Christians, the foundational truths in the Bible are Christ's teachings - teachings typically communicated in the form of parables, stories that may or may not have happened. That is, the "truth" of the stories Jesus told have little to do with the truth they contain. By contrast, science is all about objective truth that can be measured, replicated, and studied.
I'm sure that there are plenty of people who would be horrified that I'm so naively and ignorantly insisting that the link between science and religion is AND rather than OR. And while the fundamentalists and agnostics who decry my lack of intellectual rigor may have a point, I think that they actually miss the larger point. Their conclusions are fundamentally uncivil - resulting in widespread dismissal of a large swath of the population. While forcing an OR between science and religion may work within the small confines of their own minds, it does not work within the wider expanse of society and civil discourse. I don't think it is any coincidence that whenever the OR groups gain power - whether they are running theocracies or atheist regimes - dissent is punishable by imprisonment OR death. As for me, I simply don't trust the OR groups, whether they claim to be operating under the guise of religion OR science.
People like Pat Robertson and Sam Harris have been trying to force an OR between science and religion. Pat Robertson and others would say that the Bible is to be trusted on matters of origin more than scientists and would say that you can believe in God OR those secular scientists. Sam Harris would point to the illogic of certain scriptures and beliefs and say that you can believe in God OR science, but not both.
The secular scientists and religious fundamentalists both make me nervous for very similar reasons: they are insisting that we choose between science and religion, forcing an OR between the two.
Perhaps it is because the majority of us Americans are neither scientists nor theologians that we can so casually hold to our belief in science AND religion. I suppose that at some level it is logically inconsistent to hold to both.
But I also think I know enough about the process of science and faith to stop short of believing that either is infallible or, even, that they are addressing the same issues. I'm a Christian, yet the conversation about whether the Bible is inerrant seems to miss the point. For Christians, the foundational truths in the Bible are Christ's teachings - teachings typically communicated in the form of parables, stories that may or may not have happened. That is, the "truth" of the stories Jesus told have little to do with the truth they contain. By contrast, science is all about objective truth that can be measured, replicated, and studied.
I'm sure that there are plenty of people who would be horrified that I'm so naively and ignorantly insisting that the link between science and religion is AND rather than OR. And while the fundamentalists and agnostics who decry my lack of intellectual rigor may have a point, I think that they actually miss the larger point. Their conclusions are fundamentally uncivil - resulting in widespread dismissal of a large swath of the population. While forcing an OR between science and religion may work within the small confines of their own minds, it does not work within the wider expanse of society and civil discourse. I don't think it is any coincidence that whenever the OR groups gain power - whether they are running theocracies or atheist regimes - dissent is punishable by imprisonment OR death. As for me, I simply don't trust the OR groups, whether they claim to be operating under the guise of religion OR science.
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