Higher Foolishness of Science, and of “expertise” in general
In The Higher Foolishness [1], David Starr Jordan lampooned a variety of outlandish ideas that had been quite seriously proposed at one time or another. That book had been published in 1927. Nowadays, mainstream science is discussing quite seriously many things that Jordan might appropriately have included as foolishness of a very high order.
For instance there is what science writer Jim Baggott [2] calls “fairy-tale physics”, outstanding examples of which are “string theory” and “super-string theory”, which postulate any desired number of “dimensions” in hundreds of potential “scenarios”, with not a single possible test of anything that could be proved or disproved by actual observation or experimentation [3].
That is clearly at odds with the common description of the so-called “scientific method” whereby hunches or hypotheses are not granted the status of full-fledged theories until they have survived actual tests. Although “the scientific method” does not describe what scientists actually do [4], it is sheer plain common sense not to believe — or even take seriously — something for which there is no tangible evidence.
However, we humans do characteristically believe all sorts of things in absence of known evidence, simply because we have learned them from parents, teachers, or other authorities [5].
The mass media offer a plenitude of purported knowledge accepted on the authority of scientists and other generally acknowledged experts. So we do not dismiss as science fiction or as fairy-tale physics or as patent nonsense some of the unlikely latest from the frontiers of science, reported for example in the New Scientist: that although our sun will sort of explode in about 5 billion years, some observations of other solar systems suggest that humans might be able to survive by escaping to Jupiter [6]; that “the wonder particle”, the axion [7], could — if only it exists — provide answers to those prime mysteries of modern cosmology, dark matter and dark energy, which are currently postulated to make up more than 90% of the universe, even though we know nothing about them other than that our calculations don't work unless they exist; or that “cosmic threads” — provided once again that they actually exist — could explain all sorts of things, including quantum gravity [8], which the physicists and cosmologists seem to believe in because otherwise they have to treat quantum mechanics and gravity as separate phenomena; and the suggestion that there is no unifying Theory of Everything (TOE) is as unpalatable to the experts of science as is (to most but not all of them) the suggestion that there is a unitary “intelligence” of some sort that is somehow creator of everything — much more palatable to believe, apparently, at least for the experts, is that the “vacuum” has “quantum particles” appearing and disappearing all the time so that at some stage the “nothing-vacuum” created “The Big Bang” and the contemporary universe or “multiverse”.
So there is ample higher foolishness in the physical sciences. When it comes to the social and behavioral sciences, just about everything might be called high-foolishness, or at least without solid substance, by those who happen to have a different point of view. As one sociologist explained to me, that field is “multi-paradigmatic”: there are competing or opposing schools of thought that have failed to merge over very long periods of time.
The same is true over “education”.
On matters of a psychology, the Freudian approach enjoyed something like hegemony for decades, but nowadays it has dropped out of favor and psychology has become almost a branch of neurology, with therapeutic emphasis primarily on medication.
The lack of unanimity on matters having to do with human beings seems virtually inevitable. Unanimity is achievable in parts of the physical sciences only because the fundamental objects of study are identical and their properties do not change over time, so that it has been possible to repeat observations at will and to discover universal laws. By contrast, every human being differs in some way from every other human being, and generalizations are valid in only a general “categorical” manner, unable to predict specific differences between humans as to behavior, or enshrined belief, or personal or social dysfunction.
The higher foolishness in social and behavioral matters displays itself in utterly impractical recommendations, misleading “polls” of opinions or intentions, and abuse of statistics.
A recent example [9] that caught my eye begins with the banally obvious statement that “the cost of the goods and services we buy doesn't reflect the environmental and social damage they cause”.
One obvious reason for that is that any damage occurs as a side effect that may not even be obvious as the goods are produced and services provided. Beyond that, attempts to calculate environmental damage inevitably depend on a host of assumptions; attempts to calculate social damage even more so. For one thing, such calculations require placing a dollar value on health and mortality. Consequently it seems to me a prime instance of the higher foolishness when the pertinent experts follow the banally obvious statement with the sentence, “that may soon change”.
Such a change is supposed to come “soon” because a group of the experts has been developing a system called “true cost accounting” (TCA) to “internalize” these “externalities”, TCA being intended to replace GDP as an economic measure.
That higher foolishness can always attract some followers is illustrated by a pioneering supermarket in Amsterdam that displays two prices for some of the goods, and customers can choose to pay the market price or the “true” price; for bananas the difference was not great, 2.94 vs. 2.79, but for hot chocolate it was considerably more, 3.70 vs. 2.79, “Because of the real price of cocoa and milk”.
I reserve the right to suggest that different assumptions could easily have increased the difference with bananas, and increased or perhaps decreased that for hot chocolate.
At any rate, I trust there are sufficient illustrations here to demonstrate that the higher foolishness is not restricted to the physical sciences but rather is characteristic of experts in general who, being human, are more strongly convinced of the validity of their beliefs than is objectively warranted.
The physicists and cosmologists and their ilk ignore, or simply do not understand that humans cannot acquire objective knowledge of matters outside the domain in which humankind exists. We cannot truly understand things that are in essence different from anything that we experience directly. Quantum mechanics has been a marvelous achievement enabling us to do calculations that are accurate descriptions of objective phenomena; but as Richard Feynman pointed out, the equations are everything — whereas the interpretations that we place on the variables in the equations are at best analogies, metaphors, allegories. We can talk freely about something being a particle some of the time and a wave at other times, but we have no real understanding of what that thing “really” ”is”.
As Alexander Pope advised centuries ago [10]:
“Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.”
When the experts assert, for instance, that “everything” began out of “nothing” in a Big Bang, rather than that the (multi?) universe has always existed, as the distinguished astrophysicist Fred Hoyle maintained (and as many still do), bear in mind that there is absolutely no conceivable way to test which of those views is correct — or for that matter, what either of them could mean for humans.
“Experts” should be queried also about assertions much closer to home, for instance that human activities generating carbon dioxide are causing global warming. On a great number of things, the “accepted” view is only the consensus of a temporarily reigning majority of a research community, very frequently opposed by a smaller cadre of equally expert, equally well-informed other experts [11].
A useful device for identifying overly dogmatic assertions is to ask, “How could that be known with any certainty?”
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[1] David Starr Jordan, The Higher Foolishness, Bobbs-Merrill, 1927
[2] Jim Baggott, Farewell to Reality: How modern physics has betrayed the search for scientific truth, Pegasus Books, 2013
[3] Peter Woit, Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law, Basic Books, 2006
[4] Henry H. Bauer, Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method, University of Illinois Press 1992 (paperback 1994, still in print)
[5] Andy A. West, The Grip of Culture: The Social Psychology of Climate Change Catastrophism, Global Warming Policy Foundation, 2023
[6] Stuart Clark, “Doomsday revisited, New Scientist, 16/23 December 2023, 60-61
[7] Jonathan O’Callaghan, “The wonder particle”, New Scientist, 2 December 2023, 32ff.
[8] Dan Falk, “Cosmic threads, New Scientist, 30 December 2023, 39-43
[9] Graham Lawton, “The hidden cost of everything”, New Scientist, 2 December 2023, 40-43
[10] Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Man: Epistle II”; https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44900/an-essay-on-man-epistle-ii
[11] Henry H. Bauer, Dogmatism in Science and Medicine: How dominant theories monopolize research and stifle the search for truth, McFarland, 2012