(3089/898) Science and society

2151) It is simply a logical fallacy to go from the observation that science is a social process to the conclusion that the final product, our scientific theories, is what it is because because of the social and historical forces acting in this process. A party of mountain climbers may argue over the best path to the peak, and those arguments may be conditioned by the history and social structure of the expedition, but in the end either they find a good path to the peak or they do not, and when they get there they know it. (No one would give a book about mountain climbing the title Constructing Everest.)

Steven Weinberg
Dreams of A Final Theory (1992)
quoted by Martin Gardner in
"Notes of A Fringe Watcher: Physicist
Alan Sokal's Hilarious Hoax" in
Skeptical Inquirer (Nov/Dec 1996)

2152) [Are] the rules of baseball [...] similar to or radically different from the rules of science[?] Clearly they are radically different. Like the rules of chess and bridge, the rules of baseball are made by humans. But the rules of science are not. They are discovered by observation, reason, and experiment. Newton didn't invent his laws of gravity except in the obvious sense that he thought of them and wrote them down. Biologists didn't "construct" the DNA helix; they observed it. The orbit of Mars is not a social construction. Einstein did not make up E=mc² the way games rules are made up. To see the rules of science as similar to baseball rules, traffic rules, or fashions in dress is to make a false analogy that leads nowhere.

[...] [I]t goes without saying that [...] culture influences science. To cite a familiar example, culture can determine to a large extent what sort of research should be funded. And there are indeed fashions in science. [...] But that science moves inexorably closer to finding objective truth can only be denied be peculiar philosophers, naive literary critics, and misguided social scientists. The fantastic success of science in explaining and predicting, above all in making incredible advances in technology, is proof that scientists are steadily learning more and more about how the universe behaves.

The claims of science lie on a continuum between a probability of 1 (certainty) and a probability of 0 (certainly false), but thousands of its discoveries have been confirmed to a degree expressed by a decimal point followed by a string of nines. When theories become this strongly confirmed they turn into "facts," such as the fact that the earth is round and circles the sun, or that life evolved on a planet older than a million years.

Martin Gardner
"Notes of A Fringe Watcher: Physicist
Alan Sokal's Hilarious Hoax"
Skeptical Inquirer (Nov/Dec 1996)

2153) Antiscience includes fundamentalists, creationists, cultists, the Religious Wrong [sic] - people who have a desperate need to believe; that's okay, but they have a equally desperate need to have you believe, too.

[...] If, as our experts tell us, the U.S. public is 93.8 percent scientifically illiterate (or 97.3 percent, depending on how one measures), then small wonder that our population is helpless before the onslaught of antiscience. Look at its advantages: antiscience is positive, authoritative, a haven for people who need safety and assurance, whereas science is hesitant, skeptical, even on -especially of - its own heritage. Not too much comfort there. And science demands some effort, a thought process. Antiscience says: Don't think! Believe! Trust us! We know! Science says: This is the best we can do here, the most we can say, note the error bars in our statement. [...] Not a fair fight. [...]

Science has a four-hundred year track record of progress, and this is measured in many ways: by the ever-widening domain in space, time, and conditions over which we can describe nature and make predictions. All the Antiscience armies combined could not tell you the date of arrival of Halley's comet, whereas, science can give you the year, day, hour, and minute. [...]

It is science that has converted night to day, extended human longevity, cured many dread diseases, enabled people of very modest means to drive across continents, fly over oceans, and surf webs. Following the rules of antiscience (collectively) would condemn the vast majority of humans to extremes of poverty, starvation, and early death, allowing the priests and kings to inhabit their drafty castles, monasteries, and rectories. [...]

But of course there are [...] serious tensions between science, with its associated technology, and society; and these problems are [...] well known: the distribution of scientific knowledge is uneven, and the benefits are far from uniformly spread.

Leon M. Lederman
"A Strategy for Saving Science"
Skeptical Inquirer (Nov/Dec 1996)

2154) Education must be the antidote to superstition, victimization, totalitarianism, bigotry. If it fails here and there we must make it better. We must work together - scientists, educators, psychologists, neuroscientists, linguists, anthropologists - to make it better. [...] The strategic vision is that of an ever-increasing number of our citizens could be taught to think scientifically, to understand the critical methods that have allowed scientists and engineers to create so much wealth, these citizens, in the democratic context, would be intolerant of sound bites and baloney, would insist on the proper allocation of national resources, would insist that the products of science and technology be deployed for the long term benefit of the many, and would understand the role of knowledge in social, economic, and cultural contexts. They would be shielded from the philosophical con men and women and snake-oil purveyors. They would surely understand that education must count almost as much as deficit reduction in the future well-being of their children. Whereas in an earlier time, public understanding of science and technology was a cultural plus, in today's and tomorrow's world the stakes are much higher - nothing less than the preservation of our four-hundred-year-old commitment to a rational worldview.

Leon M. Lederman
"A Strategy for Saving Science"
Skeptical Inquirer (Nov/Dec 1996)