Dear John: Is Science the best (or only) claim to Truth?
(Is Science with a political agenda and/or time table really Science?)
When you have a minute, please re-read the article I copied below arguing that climate science should be considered “post-normal science.”
The way I see it, modern progressives have hi-jacked science for their own political ends. Thus, as I’ve argued before, progressive elites (politicians, pundits, money elites, hollywood and journalists) have turned science into a ideology or a religion.
It is no coincidence that Al Gore is often described in the press with religious imagery, such as when he is called "the high priest" of the climate change movement. It is also no coincidence that Gore has leveraged this "exhaulted" position to accumulate vast wealth, just like “the church” did when it was one church, the catholic church and just as all formal religion still does today (to lesser or greater degrees.).
which brings me back to the quote I highlighted the other day from the article you emailed me ( see http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/20/republicans-and-the-trouble-with-science/ )
“Everyone, liberals included, is primed to trust evidence based on whether it confirms our pre-existing beliefs.”
This quote applies to everyone, liberals and conservatives. If the author of the article had a clue, he would not use this quote as proof that progressives are right to trust science while the GOP keeps its head in the sand for political purposes.
What this quote does is quite ironic to the authors purpose. What the quote means is that scientists THEMSELVES are just as vulnerable to conceptual bias as anyone else in any other human activity no matter whether they are liberals or conservatives or libertarians or whatever. We ALL have pre-conceived notions about how the world works and we use and apply this “world view” to make sense of what we observe. Often times what “we” consider as “the truth” is biased by our pre-existing beliefs!!!
Again, this is true no matter if we are talking about scientists or climate scientists or about anyone in any other career.
You liked the conclusion of the article because it suited your world view. What the author misses is that the he also has a pair of “blinders” or “rose colored glasses” of the sort he claims conservatives have.
“EVERYONE, liberals included, is primed to trust evidence based on whether or not it confirms our pre-existing beliefs.”
in other words Everyone wears a pair of custom made rose colored (or purple or cynical or blue or conservative or progressive) glasses.
This inherent bias we all carry around made it possible for a dominant conventional wisdom to carry the day for about 400 years of human history leading up to the Renaissance, the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment, all of which paved the way to our modern world.
The dominant conventional wisdom in the Western world from 1100 to 1500 AD is called Aristotelian Scholasticism. Copernicus, Bacon and Newton made scientific discoveries that demolished the old Scholasticm's monopoly on “the truth.”
it is important to note, however, that one of the fundamental assumptions that science used to demolish Scholastic conventional wisdom was the idea that the new "modern" science must begin in radical uncertainty. Nothing is to be taken for granted. Start with a fresh white piece of paper. throw out ALL received wisdom and truth. it was assumed the new science would never make the same mistake as Scholasticism: that is it would never claim to be to be a claim to absolute or inviolable truth.
modern science was supposed to remain fallible and subject to revision. science was not supposed to prove pre-determined conclusions.
This beginning was meant as an on going organizing principle for modern science itself, not just for the beginning of modern science as it threw off the shackles of a discredited conventional wisdom. A foundation principle of modern science held that any "truth" discovered cannot be considered absolute or inviolable -- instead "we" must always consider science to be a fallible enterpries always subject to revision.
Over the centuries, modern science has come full circle by trying to escape these earlier assumptions it was founded upon, including the assumptiont that science is a fallible and contingent discipline of rational human thought – it was never to be about the discovery of absolute truths. Discoveries were supposed to be considered true only until a better “truth” was discovered in the future. There was no such thing as “absolute truth” or consensus truth in science. Such thinking and assumptions turn “science” into a faith based discipline rather than a purely scientific discipline.
Ironically pure science is never about finding or proving some absolute truth. Pure science is (like I’ve said) fallible, contingent and open-ended, constantly changing and open to revision.
Liberals and progressive believe that “modern climate science” (and other sciences such as behavioral science or economics) gives them a moral authority to claim that their blinders are objective and correct -- while at the same time demonstrating that conservative blinders are ignorant and politically biased.
Science does not have any claim to absolute truth or to the “best truth” compared to any other way humans attempt to understand the world, including philosophy, religion, art, literature, etc. No domain has a monopoly on truth. Religion is one of many ways for humans to help them understand the deep mysteries of the world we live in. When religion pursued the hubristic goal of claiming to be “the absolute truth," it set itself up for self destruction. Early modern science provided unimpeachable empirical evidence that religion could not be a claim to absolute truth about the age of the earth, etc.
How ironic is it that modern science is following in the path of fundamentalist religion in claiming also for itself the role of finding and determining “absolute truth” or at least the “best” truth. Science is conventional viewed nowadays as the first truth among all other claims to truth.
This is downright silly and ignorant based on what we know from science itself!!! science over the last 100 years has proven over and over again that there is no such thing as absolute truth in science. Quantum physics for example is beyond objective human claims to “truth.” The quantum realm is literally unvisualizable. We’ve made up an entire new language to describe the quantum world that is based on our real world observations, but in fact has no direct link to these real world observations. Quantum physics is literally a world that bumps up against a hard and fast metaphysical dead end! In other words the quantum world is mysterious in ways we will never be able to understand or control or predict with precision.
All domains of human learning – science, religion, literature, art, philosophy, etc -- are equal to the extent they provide equally valid attempts to understand a world we live in that is fundamentally unknowable or predictable or controllable. It is not just the quantum world that proves the world is fundamentally mysterious. Complexity science is a relatively new endeavor that proves our day to day world is full of fundamental mystery too. Complexity science offers a powerful insight about complex natural systems, such as the earths biosphere or the human economy. that is these systems are beyond the human capability of accurate modeling and thus beyond prediction and thus beyond the direct human control.
The idea that science is the king of all human endeavors is a dangerous myth. Of course science has proven that a fundamentalist reading of the Bible is silly, but science has not proven that religion is useless or harmful or erroneous. Nor has science proven it is the last word on our understanding of the world.
My argument is partly circular because I also have a bias of course that I use to build the world view I am outlining here. The advantage of my world view however is that I am not claiming that any truth is better than another. I have no idea if my world view is “the” best. but I do know that progressive's assumption that science is the ultimate arbiter of truth is completely an utterly bogus. I am certain of that. This is a “fact” ironically proven by dozens of scientific discoveries – and philosophical advances -- of the last 100+ years and counting.
Post-normal science is another way to say science has become an ideology supporting a political agenda. Science is being used by progressives as a bludgeon to “prove” its political agenda.
It is the same way church leaders used the churches claim to "absolute truth" in the middle ages as a way to consolidate power and thus to maximize rent seeking opportunities in society. We all have blinders on: LIBERALS or Conservatives or artists, libertarians, buddhists, Muslims, construction workers, teamsters, airline pilots, professors, climatologists, generals, politicians, bankers.
The best we can do is to keep an open mind and to focus on adapting to change rather than trying to eliminate change or uncertaintly. Doing so will enable us to avoid the sort of hubris -- and historic human tragedy -- entailed in assuming we have a claim to absolute truth in any human endeavor.
power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
From: Sam Baker
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2012 3:01 PM
To: Sam Baker
Subject: Is climate science ‘post-normal science’?
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2012 3:01 PM
To: Sam Baker
Subject: Is climate science ‘post-normal science’?
Is climate science ‘post-normal science’?
this article provides (compelling) evidence for argument that climate science has been hi jacked -- and infected -- by politics and thus should be considered post-normal science. (or in other words so-called “climate science” no longer deserves to be called “science” because it follows new rules linked to the political / policy calendar. question: is science with an agenda really science??).
Monday, August 6, 2012
Is climate science ‘post-normal science’?
Over at Judith Curry’s Climate Etc. blog, there’s a great post up today by Steven Mosher comparing normal science (the hunt for the Higgs Boson) with post-normal climate science.
Mosher points out that in normal science, scientists can acknowledge uncertainty, they’re not under any particular deadline, values aren’t a factor, and other than the usual need to get published and funded, there’s not a lot at stake in any given experiment or research paper. Mosher offers up the recent Higgs Boson findings as an example of normal science.
The difference between Kuhnian normal science, or the behavior of those doing science under normal conditions, and post normal science is best illustrated by example. We can use the recent discovery of the Higgs Boson as an example. Facts were uncertain–they always are to a degree; no values were in conflict; the stakes were not high; and, immediate action was not required. What we see in that situation is those doing science acting as we expect them to, according to our vague ideal of science. Because facts are uncertain, they listen to various conflicting theories. They try to put those theories to a test. They face a shared uncertainty and in good faith accept the questions and doubts of others interested in the same field. Their participation in politics is limited to asking for money. Because values are not in conflict no theorist takes the time to investigate his opponent’s views on evolution or smoking or taxation. Because the field of personal values is never in play, personal attacks are minimized. Personal pride may be at stake, but values rarely are. The stakes for humanity in the discovery of the Higgs are low: at least no one argues that our future depends upon the outcome. No scientist straps himself to the collider and demands that it be shut down. And finally, immediate action is not required; under no theory is the settling of the uncertainty so important as to rush the result.
I think he could have equally used the “faster than light neutrino” thing from last year as well. In both situations, you had scientists behaving in a wonderfully open, honest, humble way, inviting others to please, please, test their findings. Heck, in the case of the CERN situation, as I recall, the scientists who released the findings were in doubt about them, and were practically apologizing for asking the rest of the world to figure out what was wrong with their research protocols. When the faster-than-light neutrinos were found not to move faster-than-light, the scientists who first proposed the idea didn’t call the ones who disproved it “fast-neutrino-deniers.”
This is not the case in climate science, Mosher observes:
Because values are in conflict the behavior of those doing science changes. In normal science no one would care if Higgs was a Christian or an atheist. No one would care if he voted liberal or conservative; but because two different value systems are in conflict in climate science, the behavior of those doing science changes. They investigate each other. They question motives. They form tribes. And because the stakes are high the behavior of those doing science changes as well. They protest; they take money from lobby groups on both sides and worst of all they perform horrendous raps on YouTube. In short, they become human; while those around them canonize them or demonize them and their findings become iconized or branded as hoaxes.
This brings us to the last aspect of a PNS [Post-Normal Science] situation: immediate action is required. This perhaps is the most contentious aspect of PNS, in fact I would argue it is the defining characteristic. In all PNS situations it is almost always the case the one side sees the need for action, given the truth of their theory, while the doubters must of necessity see no need for immediate action. They must see no need for immediate action because their values are at risk and because the stakes are high.
I think Mosher hits this one on the head:
One of the clearest signs that you are in PNS is the change in behavior around deadlines. Normal science has no deadline. In normal science, the puzzle is solved when it is solved. In normal science there may be a deadline to shut down the collider for maintenance. Nobody rushes the report to keep the collider running longer than it should. And if a good result is found, the schedules can be changed to accommodate the science. Broadly speaking, science drives the schedule; the schedule doesn’t drive the science.
Mosher illustrates the differences between normal science and post-normal science with reference to things like the climategate emails, which show considerable emphasis on a shared belief that the stakes are high, action needs to be taken immediately, and science must follow the political time-table of climate negotiations and United Nations publications, rather than following its own schedule. Well worth reading the whole thing.
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