The Unforgiving Nature of Objective Reality
Yesterday, an astonishing assemblage of scientific influentials, Science Debate 2008, publicly supported a debate next year between the presidential candidates focusing solely on nationally critical science-and-technology issues. (Disclosure: I helped out on the margins.) I'm launching this blog, prematurely, but launching it, to help explain why science and technology transcends right and left, rich and poor, old and young. Blogs are supposed to be organic (one about carbon, I suppose, by definition). My cousin Penelope tells me that no one discovers your blog for six months anyway, so it doesn't matter how you start.
Several months before Dwight D. Eisenhower's death, in 1969, the 34th president's former top science adviser saw him for the last time. James Killian later recalled that meeting, at Walter Reed Hospital, in which Ike said something remarkable about his science advisers, and by extension, something pitiless about everyone else in Washington, DC:
Two qualities made this the case, qualities that all too often become muddied and lost in Washington: 1) professionalism and 2) the unforgiving nature of objective reality. Let's take each in turn.
Much of America had a nice century last century. The nation as an aggregate prospered beyond the imagination of any previous globe-trotting civilization. The view from Main Street might attribute part of this success to the stability of professionals and the communities they served. Doctors, lawyers, teachers and journalists received training in school, honed it at jobs, and built up careers, sometimes spent at a single institution. Scientists are professionals, too. At its core, science is a professional endeavor, requiring heavy-duty training and, ideally, like all the other professions, mature and dispassionate judgment about the problem at hand.
The notion of objectivity took a well-deserved beating last century, from the eternally debatable cause(s) of World War I, to Akira Kurasawa's Rashomon, to the U.S. right-wing's and left-wing's simultaneous and identically worded attacks on the popular press. Consequently, journalists' stature has eroded (even as they have become more influential--a complicated topic). Teachers' stature has eroded. It used to be that when a kid got in trouble it was the kid's fault. These days, it's more often the teacher who parents get mad at (perhaps rightfully). Professionalism in general has taken a beating with objectivity.
Science suffers the most from this trend because of 2) the unforgiving nature of objective reality. Scientists are problem-solvers, like other professionals. Doctors treat patients. Lawyers represent clients. But scientists focus their critical reasoning on the physical world rather than on patients or clients. Most important, and this distinguishes science from the other professions, is that it is not a solitary activity. A fact isn't a fact until other scientists have tried and failed to disprove it, repeatedly, over a long period of time. "A scientific statement is an act of communication," the head of Norway's Academy of Science said at the Carnegie Institution for Science several weeks ago. No one says "Hanes" in science until other people, having performed physical experiments, say they can say Hanes.
The unforgiving nature of objective reality makes science an ever-humbled, self-correcting enterprise. Atoms and molecules do not pay attention to what U.S. political parties stand for, or say they stand for, at any point in history. If you burn a diamond in the presence of oxygen, you're going to make carbon dioxide, whether you are a Republican or Democrat, old or young, human or monkey. That's objectivity.
It's very difficult at this point in time to convince people that there is such a thing as this unforgiving nature of objective reality. It's well-past time our politicans faced up to it, across a spectrum of issues. Science can't tell them how to choose. But it gives them the best picture we have of how the world works.
Perhaps the thought behind this entry, my apologetic first "real" one, is best summed up by a short but complete conversation I had once with an advertising-sales rep who burst into my office:
SHE: "Perception is reality!"
ME: "No it's not!"
Several months before Dwight D. Eisenhower's death, in 1969, the 34th president's former top science adviser saw him for the last time. James Killian later recalled that meeting, at Walter Reed Hospital, in which Ike said something remarkable about his science advisers, and by extension, something pitiless about everyone else in Washington, DC:
You know, Jim, this bunch of scientists was one of the few groups that I encountered in Washington who seemed to be there to help the country and not to help themselves.
Two qualities made this the case, qualities that all too often become muddied and lost in Washington: 1) professionalism and 2) the unforgiving nature of objective reality. Let's take each in turn.
Much of America had a nice century last century. The nation as an aggregate prospered beyond the imagination of any previous globe-trotting civilization. The view from Main Street might attribute part of this success to the stability of professionals and the communities they served. Doctors, lawyers, teachers and journalists received training in school, honed it at jobs, and built up careers, sometimes spent at a single institution. Scientists are professionals, too. At its core, science is a professional endeavor, requiring heavy-duty training and, ideally, like all the other professions, mature and dispassionate judgment about the problem at hand.
The notion of objectivity took a well-deserved beating last century, from the eternally debatable cause(s) of World War I, to Akira Kurasawa's Rashomon, to the U.S. right-wing's and left-wing's simultaneous and identically worded attacks on the popular press. Consequently, journalists' stature has eroded (even as they have become more influential--a complicated topic). Teachers' stature has eroded. It used to be that when a kid got in trouble it was the kid's fault. These days, it's more often the teacher who parents get mad at (perhaps rightfully). Professionalism in general has taken a beating with objectivity.
Science suffers the most from this trend because of 2) the unforgiving nature of objective reality. Scientists are problem-solvers, like other professionals. Doctors treat patients. Lawyers represent clients. But scientists focus their critical reasoning on the physical world rather than on patients or clients. Most important, and this distinguishes science from the other professions, is that it is not a solitary activity. A fact isn't a fact until other scientists have tried and failed to disprove it, repeatedly, over a long period of time. "A scientific statement is an act of communication," the head of Norway's Academy of Science said at the Carnegie Institution for Science several weeks ago. No one says "Hanes" in science until other people, having performed physical experiments, say they can say Hanes.
The unforgiving nature of objective reality makes science an ever-humbled, self-correcting enterprise. Atoms and molecules do not pay attention to what U.S. political parties stand for, or say they stand for, at any point in history. If you burn a diamond in the presence of oxygen, you're going to make carbon dioxide, whether you are a Republican or Democrat, old or young, human or monkey. That's objectivity.
It's very difficult at this point in time to convince people that there is such a thing as this unforgiving nature of objective reality. It's well-past time our politicans faced up to it, across a spectrum of issues. Science can't tell them how to choose. But it gives them the best picture we have of how the world works.
Perhaps the thought behind this entry, my apologetic first "real" one, is best summed up by a short but complete conversation I had once with an advertising-sales rep who burst into my office:
SHE: "Perception is reality!"
ME: "No it's not!"
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12/11/2007 11:41 PM
A Blog Around The Clock wrote:
Sheril Kirshenbaum and Chris Mooney have been promising something for a week, teasing us with tantalizing hints about something big. We were told to read Chris' article Dr.President, and then this morning another article, Science and the Candidates by Lawrence... -
12/11/2007 9:48 AM
A Blog Around The Clock wrote:
Sheril Kirshenbaum and Chris Mooney have been promising something for a week, teasing us with tantalizing hints about something big. We were told to read Chris' article Dr.President, and then this morning another article, Science and the Candidates by Lawrence... -
12/11/2007 9:47 AM
A Blog Around The Clock wrote:
Sheril Kirshenbaum and Chris Mooney have been promising something for a week, teasing us with tantalizing hints about something big. We were told to read Chris' article Dr.President, and then this morning another article, Science and the Candidates by Lawrence... -
12/11/2007 2:36 PM
A Blog Around The Clock wrote:
Sheril Kirshenbaum and Chris Mooney have been promising something for a week, teasing us with tantalizing hints about something big. We were told to read Chris' article Dr.President, and then this morning another article, Science and the Candidates by Lawrence... -
12/11/2007 2:32 PM
A Blog Around The Clock wrote:
Sheril Kirshenbaum and Chris Mooney have been promising something for a week, teasing us with tantalizing hints about something big. We were told to read Chris' article Dr.President, and then this morning another article, Science and the Candidates by Lawrence... -
12/11/2007 1:57 AM
A Blog Around The Clock wrote:
Sheril Kirshenbaum and Chris Mooney have been promising something for a week, teasing us with tantalizing hints about something big. We were told to read Chris' article Dr.President, and then this morning another article, Science and the Candidates by Lawrence...
congratulations on the new blog! may your blog be discovered by all the right people at all the right times
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