Heretical Thoughts About Science and Society
August 11th, 2007 by jimflFreeman Dyson on the need for heresy in science.
As a scientist I do not have much faith in predictions. Science is organized unpredictability. The best scientists like to arrange things in an experiment to be as unpredictable as possible, and then they do the experiment to see what will happen. You might say that if something is predictable then it is not science. When I make predictions, I am not speaking as a scientist. I am speaking as a story-teller, and my predictions are science-fiction rather than science.
August 11th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
He has valid points but he wanders off, as do most academics, in to a binary choice state of either this or that.
Bah !
Such false binary choice framing is delusional and serves to deny the complexity of large dynamic loosely coupled chaotic systems.
I do support his call for more heresy as long it doesn`t lead to more false binary choice framing.
August 13th, 2007 at 6:25 am
I read it again, looking specifically this time for some example of binary choice framing and found none. It seems to me like he is specifically acknowledging the complexity of large, dynamic, loosely-coupled chaotic systems.
August 13th, 2007 at 10:16 am
jimfl posted:
“I read it again, looking specifically this time for some example of binary choice framing and found none…”
Example :
He presents the oil issue as either you believe the Peak Oil folks or the abiotic oil folks, not as likely that we don`t know or actually have a very slight chance of knowing (both “sides” could be correct as far as they consider the data [maybe it is actually a disagreement over appropriate flow rates] or completely incorrect in their framing). Also the “warming” issue is presented as something that MUST take money from other issues of concern OR those issues need to be funded. No reason that ALL those concerns can`t be funded. Too binary, either OR framing.
The human race is knowledgeable enough to operate as an AND culture and leave the cavemen either OR thinking behind. We can`t do everything but we CAN do ALL the necessary stuff.
August 16th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
The skeptics will embrace his questions as confirmation and the adherents should welcome the challenge as a needed exercise. At this time, the skeptics have the easier job.
August 20th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Is it our destiny, our duty, or our mere intention, to be misunderstood?
Let’s take the word “prediction.” To have successfully predicted* is to have done science. That is, the science itself is in the past - the coming up with a way to do the prediction. This is my interpretation of Dyson’s crack.
(So-called) skeptics who won’t do the work shouldn’t be respected. To say “I disagree,” then claim there is controversy when the knowledgeable person takes time to try to educate the interruptor is an easy job. The misperception of what constitutes controversy is the driving force behind, among other issues, debates regarding evolution and the anthropogenic forcing of biogeochemical cycles.
Separating issues into binary, trinary, quaternary? Each mode can be informative. Systems biology, whose conceit is to abandon such reductionist modes, hasn’t made any useful predictions yet, though its adherents persevere in optimizing their generation of elaborate Venn diagrams and trees (not that I don’t believe that there is something to their idea; it’s just that you really do have to numerically integrate the whole damn thing at femtosecond resolution).
*code word alert: this means, when unpacked, “to have developed a model that successfully predicts outcomes well beyond the initial tests that the model underwent, is to have developed a fairly mature theory”.
August 20th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Dean, I can’t believe you doubt the skeptics.
August 21st, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Heresy is great - well argued different interpretations of established results. Fantasy is deprecated - just so stories that make non-credible assumptions.
(This is to paraphrase my boss’s Dad, who is recently deceased)