I trust science. But when I say that, I know I will be misunderstood by almost everyone. Science is an open, shared enterprise which is the best current understanding of the world around us shared by those trained in the field.
Which means the best science at any time and place could and has been wrong or incomplete and can be changed, refined and improved by the latest research. But science, unlike religion and other beliefs, is self correcting. When a scientific theory is wrong, subsequent discoveries will change it or make it obsolete. Since the corrections are in the hands of people not deities, the discoveries happen slowly or rapidly. But when the change happens, the previous understanding is discarded.
The story of the discovery that atoms are the basic unit of matter shows how convoluted the path to knowledge can be.
Atoms were first proposed as the fundamental unit of matter in Ancient Greece by Democritus and others. But Aristotle did not believe in atoms, so reverence for Aristotle held kept alchemy in place as the central understanding of what is now chemistry for two millennia.
Then in 1803 after meticulous experiments John Dalton proposed that each chemical element was a unique particle, an atom. Molecules were compounds of different atoms in fixed ratios. This understanding was refined and expanded for a century until science could begin to "see" inside atoms.
When scientists began to see inside atoms, when it became clear that atoms were composed of different particles with different charges, the picture of the inside of the atom evolved rapidly. A century after Dalton, J.J. Thompson believed the atom had negative particles, electrons, embedded in a positively charged sphere.
Seven years later Ernst Rutherford created the model of an atom with a positively charged nucleus and electrons orbiting: a tiny solar system. Neils Bohr refined the model to fix levels or orbitals for the electrons circling the atom.
In 1926 Erwin Schroedinger applied the new discoveries of quantum mechanics to the atom model which is now seen as a positive nucleus that usually includes neutral particles surrounded by a cloud of electrons. And with many small refinements, that is the current atomic model.
For those who see science as fixed, this timeline shows that in the past three centuries atoms:
Did not exist (until 1803)
Were indivisible spheres (until 1904)
Were positively charged spheres with electrons inside (until 1911)
Were little solar systems held together by electrical forces (until 1926)
Are a nucleus of many types of particles surrounded by a cloud of electrons (1926 and following)
The leading edge of understanding in any field can always change. If something radical changes in the current understanding of atoms and molecules it will be particle physicists and theoretical chemists who find the new wrinkle in the fabric of the universe. And their colleagues around the world will challenge their insights.
The alternative is the chaos of people sharing ignorance on the internet and turning our understanding of the world into an opinion poll. Or worse, shutting down research by experts.
The best book I have read on this consensus of science is The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth by Jonathan Rauch. I'm sure I will re-read it soon as we descend further into ignorance and chaos.
You have to understand that most Americans simply do not understand science. Moreover, that they have no desire to understand science. Most of them love their 'smart' phones and tech gadgets, love to stream mind-numbing sports and entertainment, love to fly to their vacation destination, yet give not a thought to how any of that works. Most Americans live in what amounts to a Cargo Cult, where all that is just invented based on the research and discoveries of scientists, developed by engineers, and delivered to them by entrepreneurs and marketers who get all the credit.
ReplyDeleteJim eager
ReplyDeleteNeil--and Jim: First, thank you, Neil, first for laying out the terms and parameters. Jim: when you say "most Americans," it tends to close down a very necessary response that would open debate, discussion. This response from me, as Neil knows, comes from 39 years of teaching from 7th grade to PhD students--in what I'd refer to as an "open" manner: getting them to do the thinking work.
ReplyDeleteSo--if far too many Americans (data? 50%, more or less) are not concerned with certain aspects or kinds of science, then what are the reasons for this woeful situation (in a scientific revolutionary time) and what can be reasonably done (given school budgets in American communities) & the catering mentality of colleges & universities where administrators and even many faculty members must be (or choose to be) ultimately and even foundationally concerned first with the Bottom Line?
I have some ideas that could become proposals. I'm nearly positive that Neil dies, ad well. What would yours be?