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The nature of scientific truth

In essence “It’s what we think at the moment folks.  Tomorrow it might all be different.”

Physics envy

 

I’m grateful to Will Diver, Archaean geologist at the University of Plymouth, for this insight.  The geology of the young Earth is a fascinating subject that I’d love to go more deeply into.

 

It fascinated Will’s locksmith father too.  But Will’s dad couldn’t get his mind round the way ‘The Truth’ seemed to be different every time his son visited.  In fact Will was only doing what scientists always do.  He was stating ‘as fact’ the current state of play in a rapidly moving field.

 

We ordinary folk must get our minds round this too, if we are not to be seriously misled.

 

We also have to understand the difficulties specialists have with communication. I’ve been a specialist in various different fields in my time.  So I can see this problem from both sides.  It is extremely difficult for a specialist to see beyond his or her own nose.   And we invariably grossly over-estimate the importance of our work in the overall scheme of things.  For example, I once thought that all the world’s problems would be solved if only everybody understood Transfer Functions.

 

And scientists can be wrong.  We know this, because other scientists regularly flatly contradict them.

Physics Envy

You are not going to believe this unless you have met it, but ‘inexact’ scientists are jealous of us physicists.  The phenomenon of physics envy was first described to me by a palaeo-botanist, now eminent in this field.  We’ll preserve his anonymity in case he has changed his views.  But I have also seen scientists accusing each other of it in print.  “This is Physics envy” one scientist thundered, furious at the writings of another.

 

Physics is widely regarded as Top Science, because it is ‘exact’.  Its theories are simple and elegant.  And they are always followed to the letter;  except when they are not (Big Bang).  As an ex-physicist I don’t see anything special in physics at all. 

 

I think engineering is a far better model, for any inexact scientist lacking the self-confidence to do his or her own thing.   We engineers have theories too, some very simple and elegant.  The difference is that we have learned never to trust them until we have checked them out – over their entire envelope of operation.

 

But many inexact scientists have fallen for the physicists’ spin.  For generations they have been trying to raise the status of their respective sciences by attempting to prove that they are exact too.  They devise simple theories for the natural world to obey.  And the natural world fails to oblige.  The result is gargantuan battles between different camps, over which over-simplified theory (sometimes grossly so) is ‘correct’.  And they are still doing it.  One meets the phenomenon of the ‘acrimonious debate’ quite often in the literature.

 

The disinterested reader such as Will’s dad can often leap ten years ahead of both camps, by applying a bit of common sense.  If there’s genuine evidence for both sides of the argument, then both sides are probably partly right.  And the truth of the matter is likely to end up much more complicated than either side can afford to admit.  This sticks out a mile to you, me and Will’s dad.  But it may take ten years until a new generation of scientists comes along with the freshness of mind to see it.

 

So please don’t assume that scientists are always right.  They are as human, and as capable of being wrong, as the rest of us.

 

© C B Pease, February 08