14 DAY TRIAL // The basic idea behind the scientific method is to make a distinction between a real correlation, one that exists independently of what you think, and an imaginary correlation that exists only in your head. While many philosophers argue that the senses are deceiving us, scientists are more accustomed with imagination's ability to deceive. Sometimes you can just "see" how everything falls exactly in place and you just know that that's how things must be, and then, again and again you find out that things are not like that after all. It was just in your head. It's fairly easy to invent a great bulk of nonsense explanations about what happens in the world and about why things happen. Most people do it without even realizing it: when they come up with a fairly coherent explanation for something they just stop the inquiry, unaware that they have reached that particular explanation more or less by chance. It's nothing particularly special about the first explanation that happens to cross your head. The number of fairly coherent imaginable explanations is usually humongous, and if you simply let your mind wonder around at random it will inescapably stumble upon one explanation or another. But what makes one explanation correct setting it apart from the herd?
One has to check somehow which of all these explanations "contains" more truth. The solution, called the "scientific method" is rather simple: each explanation (or 'theory') has to make predictions or estimations about what will be observed in other, yet unchecked, situations. These other situations can either happen at a different moment in time (usually later) or can happen in other places (e.g. you create a theory of how revolutions work using data from one place in the world and test the theory in other places). The point is you come up with your correlations from one set of data and you test it on another set of data.
The scientific method is essentially a betting contest. The explanation that succeeds making good predictions must be in some way better that all the others that have made bad predictions. It cannot be just a mere coincidence. That's just too unlikely. In other words, a theory that makes good predictions is better at dividing the world into what's likely and what's not likely to happen ? i.e. it "contains" more truth.
But as science advances more and more it makes many things increasingly predictable ? at least for some people. Is this really desirable? Don't we have enough of that already? Why go any further? And doesn't this enterprise destroy the beauty of nature, a beauty that maybe depends on our feelings of mystery and unpredictability? And what about the scientific study of the human mind? Doesn't that threaten our free will? What if science finds out that our souls are made of nothing more than a network of tiny stupid robots? (Read about the invasion of the dumb homunculi.) And finally, if this knowledge is so hard to comprehend and you need concerted effort to get it, doesn't this empower a small group of people over the rest of us? For example if the scientists tell you that you should buy a different car because the one you have helps global warming and that's a great menace, how can you tell they're not lying? Can you really develop a knowledgeable opinion of all the issues?
Don't we have enough science already?
Most of fundamental science today is funded by taxes so, at least in principle, the scientific development could be reduced dramatically. However, for most of the history of science the funding was private, so it is unlikely science could be stopped even if all state funding would be cut. Maybe giant projects such as the particle accelerators would have to wait, but not indefinitely. And the hot potatoes of science, such as the research concerning the evolution of life and the human mind, are not that expensive.
More importantly however are the reasons why this enterprise should not be hampered. A simple statistic reveals the basic reason: In the 18th century, the British Islands were able to support only about 6 or 7 million people, of which 1 or 2 million lived in incredibly awful conditions. Today, the same islands (UK and Ireland) sustain almost 65 million people having one of the highest standards of living in the world. How is this possible? It is made possible by a combination of the economic system and technology. Today it is simply possible to extract much more from the same resources ? such as arable land ? and it is possible to trade much more efficiently.
Moreover, we cannot just stop and say we have gone far enough because the available resources would end rather quickly. For example if we would have still used today the same technology for extracting oil as we did in, say 1940s, we wouldn't probably have had any oil left today. But, besides the discovery of new oil reserves, today's technology allows the extraction of oil from places where it wasn't previously possible.
This is an instance of the so-called Red Queen principle (based on the story in Alice in Wonderland) ? the idea that you have to make efforts just to stay in place. In other words, our prosperity can be preserved only if new innovations and discoveries are constantly made. If innovations would be halted our entire civilization would gradually fade out.
Destroying beauty
Does science destroy the beauty of nature? This is certainly possible. This is what Keats famously accused Newton of doing. Keats felt that the knowledge of the mechanism behind the rainbow's colors, uncovered by Newton, destroyed the feeling and prevented its esthetic contemplation. This type of reaction seems to be quite common.
But what most people don't realize is that they have a great deal of control over the feeling of beauty (as well as on other esthetic feelings). It is an error to think that esthetic "happenings" are a sort of causal, mechanic, phenomena ? it's deeply wrong to think that esthetics is just a matter of how the organism reacts to stimuli. The stimulus produces some reaction. But an esthetic feeling is an attitude toward that reaction. For example some music or a natural landscape etc. may make you feel relaxed; but you like that music/landscape/etc. only if you also want to be relaxed. Esthetics is matter of desires and not just of cause-and-effect. Paradoxically, Keats didn't really understand the nature of poetry and of esthetics in general. He was thinking about it in mechanical, cause-and-effect, terms, instead of thinking about it in intentional terms. This is why the beauty of the rainbow was destroyed for him.
Thus, I would say that when science had destroyed the beauty of the rainbow it wasn't really science's fault, but Keats' fault. He didn't know how to use that scientific knowledge properly.
There is an interesting thing said by Richard Feynman, one of the creators of the quantum theory of electromagnetism (the thing that covers everything except for gravitation and nuclear reactions). He wondered why should beauty exist only at the macroscopic level? What's so special about that?! Why shouldn't one also find beauty at smaller levels? From his point of view, knowledge can only add new things, new chapters to the same story. If properly used, the scientific discoveries only provide more things to wonder about and one gets, besides the classical beauty, additional layers of beauty. "I don't understand how you can subtract from beauty," he said.
This concept of beauty is different from the one usually employed by artists. Feynman himself realized it ? he said that artists take known stuff and mix them to create novel things, while scientists mix novel, newly imagined, stuff to create the known things. These are two different types of enterprises with different types of constraints. But many artists think that beauty stems from the mystery itself or maybe that it is even caused by the mystery. Consequently, their job, as they see it, is to enhance the mystery, to reveal it or even to create it out of nothing.
"My mind does not kill the mysteries I met on my way in flowers, eyes, on lips or in tombs," wrote Lucian Blaga. "I with my light increase the secret of the world - as the moon with her white rays does not diminish, but shimmering intensifies night's mystery. I enrich the dark horizon with shivers, great shivers of sainted secret, and what's not comprehended becomes even more incomprehensible under my own watching - because I love flowers and eyes, and lips and tombs."
This type of mystery enhancing enterprise can often be not only beautiful but also useful because it is important to "get out of the box", to be able to look at normal things in such a way that they no longer appear normal, to take what everybody takes for granted and to make it look odd or ridiculous. In fact, such artistic endeavors are an intrinsic part of the scientific discoveries as well. For example, when Einstein developed the general theory of relativity he picked on the obvious concept of the straight line and showed that it is not so obvious after all, that it is quite a challenge to define it or to measure it.
But this focus on mystery enhancement shouldn't be mistaken for beauty itself. Mystery and beauty are two very different things. I think that when somebody considers that beauty or esthetic feelings in general are caused by mystery, he or she is actually downgrading the human being and soiling the concept of beauty. This is because our esthetic feelings are not the mechanic effect of something (the mystery) but they are the consequence of our attitudes. What makes esthetics important and relevant is precisely the fact that it reveals our desires in a special, although rather cryptic, way. If properly understood it can give you access to something deep within yourself or within other people, something that can hardly be accessed by other means.
So, if it has ever happened to you that the knowledge of something has destroyed the beauty of that thing, it means that you haven't used that knowledge properly and that you are also missing some important point about what esthetics is all about ? and about what esthetics can do for you. (For more on this see the limits of human cognition.)
Destroying free will
Even more of a concern than the destruction of beauty is the possible destruction of free will. As science makes everything more and more predictable it makes us more predictable as well. Maybe we should stop, it is said. Maybe we should draw a line. Let's define some restricted area.
There are people who argue that more predictability means less free will and less free will means less happiness. People like me, on the other hand, argue that more predictability means more free will and thus more happiness. It seems that I'm not holding the most intuitive opinion. It seems pretty obvious that predictability and freedom contradict each other: if I can tell relatively accurately what you're going to do, it seems to imply that, although you might delude yourself about the multitude of your options, in reality you have fewer options (how else could I predict your actions?).
Scientists have even conducted simple but quite disturbing experiments. For example by measuring the neuronal activity in certain areas of the brain they managed to predict when some actions would happen even before the subject himself knew he wanted to do the actions. The participant to the study had to move his finger whenever he wanted without giving anyone any notice. But the scientists monitoring the brain activity managed to say when the finger was going to be moved even before the participant himself knew that he had decided to move his finger. So much for the fundamental privacy of desires! (See more on such issues concerning the idea of the first person authority in this article.)
But prediction has other effects as well: If I can predict your actions then I can plan better my own actions (that have something to do with you)! So my freedom increases. Before having that brain scanning equipment the experimenters couldn't, for instance, prevent the motion of the subject's finger just before it happens ? now this option has become available to them. If they wanted they could use it ? previously such a desire would have been pointless and the means to achieve it were inexistent.
In other words, it doesn't seem to hold that predictability per se contradicts freedom ? the danger to your freedom is that somebody else has it and you don't. I.e. prediction is a tool worth having. And one should not think that one is the slave of his own tools.
But the nasty sensation that something is nonetheless wrong with freedom if predictability is possible still persists. I think that it comes from a certain understanding of how the supposed "laws of nature" work. It is assumed the all things in nature happen the way they do (and not in other ways) because the "laws of nature" are giving certain "orders" to matter ? these "laws" are supposed to tell each atom and molecule where to go and when. So people are concerned that science will eventually show that everything, including all our most cherished spiritual stuff, is in fact "directed" by these "laws" ? thus free will might turn out to be an illusion.
But this view of what the "laws of nature" do is nothing but a myth ? it is not how (modern) science itself treats them. This presumed clockwork universe has little to do with the universe uncovered by science (since the second half of the 19th century). The "laws" are more like a bunch of traffic signs ? they don't have any active participation, they just impose a set of constraints and prevent total random chaos. In the same way as the traffic signs don't dictate your destination around the city, the "laws of nature" don't dictate to the atoms or molecules what to do. An atom or a molecule moves in a certain direction at random, without any express "cause".
Moreover, these "laws" are now seen to arise from the fact that, at the most fundamental microscopic level, nature really is totally random ? these "laws", the traffic signs, are only the average result. It's not like some careful city planner came and created all the traffic signs, but more like a situation in which all the cars are going in all directions without any predetermined restrictions and are constraining each other and, as a result, there is an average behavior of all cars. This resultant average behavior looks as if there are some sort of traffic signs present ? but in reality there aren't any. I.e. the "laws of nature" are a way of describing how things behave, but they are not the active cause that determines this behavior. What happens further on higher levels of organization is that these average behaviors interact with each other and then all sorts of more complex types of self-organization occur.
There is a funny thing about randomness which offers a sort of metaphysical reason for why things start from there. When one mentions any type of "fundamental law" one can always ask the question "Why is this law like that and not in some other way?". Even if one assumes that this "law" comes from God one can still ask "Why is God like that and not in some other way? Why did he want things to be like that?". The only thing that can be in only one single way is randomness. One cannot ask "why is randomness this way and not in some other way?" There is only one way of being random.
Let me return to this idea: "if I can tell relatively accurately what you're going to do, it seems to imply that you have fewer options." There is a hidden assumption here: the assumption that I will make the prediction in a certain way, not in any way, but by using causality ? i.e. that I will infer what you're going to do from, and only from, the external factors influencing you. But suppose I say: "You will most certainly go to the theatre next week because I know you wanted to see this play for a long time." Well, this makes you a pretty predictable person. But does it make you a person without free will? Does this mean that your behavior is determined by the existence of the play? Of course not ? the very act of prediction depends here on the assumption that you want to see it.
Even the finger experiment is not that clear cut: one needs to ask further why did that that relevant brain area light up when it did? The fact that the finger has moved after that brain area has been activated doesn't contradict the idea that the finger has moved as a consequence of one wanting to move it (that brain area is just an intrinsic part of the desire).
So, I don't think that this paranoia about science destroying free will is really substantiated by anything. If anything, science is only increasing our freedom by making more options available (via technology) and by detecting otherwise obscure dangers (such as health hazards or global warming). But in order for that paranoia to wither away entirely one needs to better understand how exactly one gets from the causal phenomena of physics to the intentionality of our "spirit" and to understand why it is very unlikely that one (some future scientist) could predict somebody's behavior in any other way but by attributing desires to that person (the future scientist might discover some improved method for uncovering what a person's true desires are, but not that there are no desires). In the same way as one could say that it is pretty certain that perpetual motion machines are impossible we can also say that the causal prediction of human (or, for that matter, animal) behavior is also very unlikely. (For more on this, see the articles on the concept of information, on how intentionality appears from causality, and on how consciousness comes to being.)
The new priesthood
Some philosophers, most notably Paul Feyerabend, argued that the scientists are gradually becoming a new type of priesthood. By this it is meant that the discussions about truth have become increasingly authoritarian. Something is claimed to be true because some scientist "said so". Few people are sufficiently specialized to be able to challenge a position on factual, evidence based, grounds and to interpret the data for themselves. In most debates people just throw with quotations from different "sources" to one another. This bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the way theological debates were conducted during the Middle Ages.
In a famous essay on what it means to be enlightened Immanuel Kant wrote that "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! [dare to know] 'Have courage to use your own understanding!' ? that is the motto of enlightenment."
"Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men, long after nature has released them from alien guidance, nonetheless gladly remain in lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish themselves as their guardians. It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me.
"The guardians who have so benevolently taken over the supervision of men have carefully seen to it that the far greatest part of them (including the entire fair sex) regard taking the step to maturity as very dangerous, not to mention difficult. Having first made their domestic livestock dumb, and having carefully made sure that these docile creatures will not take a single step without the go-cart to which they are harnessed, these guardians then show them the danger that threatens them, should they attempt to walk alone. Now this danger is not actually so great, for after falling a few times they would in the end certainly learn to walk; but an example of this kind makes men timid and usually frightens them out of all further attempts."
I think that one of the greatest scare tactics employed today, and which is used to ridicule the enlightenment ideal of universal knowledge, is that of the necessity of being specialized. People are bullied into thinking that they cannot know everything and are tricked by incompetent high school teachers into thinking that things are more complicated than they really are. And the argument goes that if you cannot know everything than you have to obey and you have to accept what various "experts" tell you ? although you don't understand their reasoning.
However, I think that the specialization of knowledge is highly overrated. One needs specialization to do things but doesn't need it for understanding them. And you need to understand things in order to decide what particular expert to hire for doing them (in order to decide where to put your money, what governmental policy to favor etc.).
You don't need to know all the details in order to get the point. It's the other way around: you need to get the point in order to be able to understand the details. For example in physics most ideas are very simple, even the famously complicated ones (read for instance Feynman's popularization book on quantum mechanics), what's complicated is the problem of actually solving the equations explicitly. But the real physics concerns the issue of deducing what the equations are and understanding why they are like that and not in some other way. The issue of solving the equations is just a technical detail that can be left to the experts. I think that anyone can get the points in a fairly small amount of time and without employing any super-human efforts or intelligence.
"One of the biggest problems for society in general is synthesizing knowledge," J. Doyne Farmer said. "Society is a very complex organism, and the need for increasing specialization has driven everyone to levels of specialization that have created enormous information barriers."
And the issue isn't just how to take everything and to put it in one place or in one book, the issue is how to make that place your own head. A book that is not read and understood doesn't really contain information, it is just a piece of material. Similarly, an encyclopedia that gathers all the knowledge but from which everyone only reads and understands small pieces doesn't really contain all knowledge. It is like the story of the elephant and the people groping in the dark, each getting a hold only of a small different part of that huge animal. But does the elephant of all knowledge really exist if there's no one to see it from a sufficient distance so he or she could perceive it in its entirety?
A key concept at work here is that of approximation. You can know something without knowing all the details. And this approximate knowledge is sufficient for most purposes. It lets you understand what's going on and, most importantly, it let's you understand the connections between various pieces of knowledge. And this also allows you to have a different, less parochial, perspective on what you do know in detail.
Moreover, this is the only thing that allows you to contemplate how little we actually know. If one succumbs under the illusion of the necessary specialization one can very easily imagine or fantasize that if the entire puzzle of the human knowledge would be pieced together one would obtain a fairly complete picture of the entire world. However, in reality, this puzzle is very far from being complete and it's useful to get a feeling of its modern limits.