Philosophy of Science Archives

Category: Philosophy of Science

What’s a scientific controversy…

2011-04-15
by Josh Rosenau

…Or “What I’ve been up to for the last week or so.”

Last week was a busy travel week. I was in West Virginia for the first half of the week, on a whirlwind tour of the Morgantown area, speaking in the geology department at West Virginia University, then twice at a symposium on science communication, and then at a local freethought group (meeting in a beautiful Unitarian church with a view of the valley).

The video above is a slidecast from a talk NCSE’s Steve Newton and I gave about the Process of Science and Scientific Controversy. Steve didn’t record his talk, so you miss the lead-in, alas, but a good introduction to issues in the nature of science can be found at UCMP’s Understanding Evolution website.

In the afternoon, Steve and I did a session on outreach to the media, and I hope to post a slidecast from that event, too. It was a smallish group, but we had the chief of staff to the president of the university and Skeptoid’s Brian Dunning in the group, which kept things lively.

And let it be said that the WVU Free Thinking Inquiring Secular Humanists (FISH) were a charming and thoughtful gang. We (Steve, me, and Brian Dunning) had a good time with them, and there’s a tape of the event somewhere out there that may make its way to Youtube some day. After that, we saw Sheril Kirshenbaum speak about science communication, and then crashed.

The next day, I traveled down to Orlando, to catch the tail end of the National Association for Research on Science Teaching conference, and to take part in a working group on tools for assessing evolution understanding and acceptance. It was a fascinating couple days of conversation, with some interesting research and publications that should emerge from it (but mum’s the word until then).

While I was somewhat incommunicado, Templeton gave its award to Martin Rees, the gnu atheists pitched six sorts of fits, and various other inane things happened in the world. The tremendous opportunities for science outreach and education that I saw last week made all the petty BS that goes on between gnus and “accommodationists” (whatever that term means) look especially silly, so blogging has taken a back seat.

But it will return to its usual schedule, and with exciting news to report, including a session I’m organizing at Netroots Nation (this June in Minneapolis). Meanwhile, enjoy the video, and I look forward to your thoughts in the comments. FWIW, here are the slides on their own:

Controversies, scientific and otherwise

View more presentations from Joshua Rosenau

Biology

Hughes asks the Question of the Year?

2010-12-29
by Josh Rosenau

Virginia Hughes, once the benevolent overlord here at Scienceblogs, asks the Question of the Year: What is Life, Anyway? She notes that many of the major scientific discoveries or advances of the year hinged on that question, and this month’s Astrobiology has a series of essays on the state of our understanding. She explains:

Is life simply the ability to reproduce? Well, no. If that were true, as one scientist famously noted, then âTwo rabbitsâa male and femaleâare alive but either one alone is dead.â In 1994, a NASA committee deemed that life is âa self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution.â Thatâs not quite right, either: certain non-living crystals, for example, can seed the growth of new crystals and even pass down traits such as molecular orientation. Some scientists have much broader definitions: life as a triad of a program, a metabolism and a container (the PMC model), for example, or life as a series of negative feedback loops.

It’s remarkable how hard it is to nail down the definition of life, and fascinating to see folks trying to work through the issue. A big part of the problem is that we only have one example to work from. It’s easy to say that life has to involve nucleic acids and proteins and lipids and a cell membrane and so forth, because life on earth works that way. But it doesn’t have to. Life elsewhere might not even have cells, and life on earth might not have started that way. If that first life still exists on earth, we probably couldn’t even recognize it.

So whether we’re looking on other planets or on earth, it matters a lot what we think life means. It also matters in thinking about synthetic biology, bioethics, and a range of other issues. And if nothing else, it matters because biology is the study of life, and it’d be nice to define what that means.

This is, by the way, another reason that philosophy of science is really important. John Wilkins has a nice post exploring the general importance of philosophy for scientists.

Academia

Who is a scientist?

2010-08-02
by Josh Rosenau

T. Ryan Gregory asks this important question: Who is a scientist? It’s a followup to a post titled: “Graduate students are not professional scientists. Discuss,” which â briefly â argued that grad students are scientists in training, not yet scientists-full-stop. In the later post, he explains:

Here are the criteria I threw out off-handedly for the purpose of discussing the NYT story about science blogs [this one ‑Josh]:

- Does scientific research for a living,
— Publishes research in peer-reviewed journals,
— Is funded by granting agencies to do it,
— Does not just write about it, or study it, or do some of it as a grad student, or only teach it.

This wasnât an official or proposed definition, as indicated by the qualifier âFor the purpose of this postâ. Others have raised objections to one or more of these. I donât think they are all necessary and certainly none is sufficient. So, letâs go through the exercise and think of some criteria that would distinguish a âprofessional scientistâ. Nowhere in here is there an implication that graduate students, industry scientists, government scientists, postdocs, or anyone else doesnât âdo scienceâ when they are engaged in research, so letâs get beyond that straw man if we can.

As I noted in the last post, lots of people want to be called âscientistâ, presumably because it carries some prestige. But if anyone who does an experiment is a âscientistâ, then the term isnât meaningful at all.

So, assuming that we want the term to mean something, what makes someone a scientist?

I disagree with his means of distinguishing grad students from “professional scientists.” To my mind, a professional scientist is someone who is paid to do science. Grad students are usually paid to do science (either directly, as research assistants, or through teaching assistantships awarded to support them while they conduct their research), and are therefore professional scientists.

Publication in peer-reviewed literature is an important step in the process of science, but it is a lagging indicator and does not belong on the list in that form. Doing work one intends to publish, and which one presents to legitimate scientific peers for review (even through informal channels) should suffice. And I don’t know why Gregory insists that the research must be funded by granting agencies. Scientists in industry or working for a government agency and supporting their research out of an operating budget are still professional scientists if they are doing legitimate science and being paid to do it. People getting funds from a granting agency but not doing legitimate science are still not scientists (e.g., homeopaths, cold fusion, astrology, woo of other sorts).

But saying that a professional scientist is someone who gets paid to be a scientist just brings us back to the closing question from that quotation: “what makes someone a scientist?”

It’s helpful to consider some examples: Charles Darwin did not get paid to conduct scientific research. He had no academic degrees in science (or natural philosophy). But he was, by calling and by mindset, a scientist. He lived in an age where science was shifting from a gentleman’s pursuit to a professional career option (like doctor or lawyer or parson), which makes the comparison somewhat illegitimate. Yet it also emphasizes that “professional scientist” is not an age-old category, and this debate is one that has a relatively brief and as-yet-unresolved history.

A slightly more modern example, Albert Einstein, did impressive scientific work while working as a patent clerk. The scientists who built the first atomic weapons were not grant-funded, but certainly advanced our understanding of fundamental physics as they were hurtling the world toward a fearsome future. The datasets generated by volunteer birders through Breeding Bird Surveys and Christmas Bird Counts are invaluable resources for ornithologists and ecologists. David Attenborough’s films have captured new animal behaviors and brought many people to a deeper interest in science and natural history. He and his production crew have become expert in natural history and biology, and have developed new tools to investigate and record that behavior. A whole field of hobbyist biotechnology is taking off in rented lab spaces around the world. A web software developer spends his spare time tinkering with what may turn into the future of nuclear fusion. Then again, many of the professors who get grants and publish papers spend so much time administering their lab and writing grants and advising students and preparing lectures that they may not conduct any actual experiments (though they do observe and supervise the students and postdocs who are performing the research funded by those grants). Which of these folks are scientists?

An auto mechanic or a plumber might apply the scientific method to fixing your car or your toilet, but neither they nor anyone else thinks that makes them scientists. They aren’t trying to increase our knowledge of the world, to derive general truths from their experimentation, and that’s the goal of science.

This also eliminates some but not all of the birders who contribute to CBC and BBS bird occurrence datasets. Being able to recognize a birdcall and check a bird off your life list is not doing science. Making systematic observations about the world is a key part of science, but if the goal is not to test hypotheses and to use that to generate some sort of synthesis, it isn’t science. But some birders, and some hunters and anglers, do make observations. They notice shifts in coloration or migration, and try to catalog and explain those shifts. They may lack the formal training and structure necessary to present their results at conferences or in journals, but I’m unwilling to say that they are not doing science, to say that they are not scientists in those moments. We’ll call this science as an activity. It’s something someone can do or not do, not a defining personality trait. It does not label the person, only the activity.

Darwin and Einstein were scientists wherever they went, whatever they did. Their mind were inexorably wired to constantly strive after organizing principles, and to find ways in the most mundane observations to test those principles. This is science as a mindset â science as avocation/vocation. I think David Attenborough shares that mindset, as does Richard Dawkins, though neither is currently pursuing a career in science. Dawkins shifted from employment as a biologist to become Professor for Public Understanding of Science in 1995, and has since retired to run a nonprofit foundation devoted to public advocacy on behalf of skepticism, atheism, science, and rationalism; all valid goals but not inherently scientific actions.

A successful grad student must be someone who pursues science in that latter sense. Some people leave graduate school because they do not pursue science in that sense (they are not scientists in that sense and do not want to become scientists in that sense), and others leave because they don’t want to pursue science as a profession (they are not interested in science as a career, though they have the mindset). Senior professors, the ones spending all their time administering a lab and serving on panels and so forth, are scientists in the sense that science is their calling, even though they spend little time doing the hands-on part of the scientific work.

Some people with no scientific training still manage to gain the knowledge necessary to participate actively in the scientific enterprise. The amateur fusion researcher is taking ideas that had been kicked around by professionals in the field, and is slowly testing those ideas in his own time. A fusion scientist of my acquaintance responded to the article linked above about a web developer building and testing a new fusion reactor:

He’s probably not achieving anything significant scientifically — but what a great hobby and learning experience for him, and what a great plug for fusion in general! Science, the olde fashioned way.

He’s doing science. Not huge science, perhaps, but breaking new ground. To say he isn’t a scientist because he isn’t grant-funded or hasn’t got a doctorate or is unlikely to publish in major journals seems to trivialize what science is, to make a PhD into a license to perform science rather than certificate of scientific accomplishment. And that impoverishes those with PhDs, those seeking PhDs, and those without PhDs who still want to and do contribute to the scientific effort.

So who is a scientist? I’d say: someone who seeks to expand the collective limits of knowledge about the natural world by developing generalized claims and testing them against empirical evidence. Science is an aspiration as much as an accomplishment, hence “seeks.” Expanding our “collective” limits means that it is necessary to communicate results to other relevant experts, and that those experts agree that new findings are interesting and correct. I don’t think a new occurrence record for a bird constitutes “science” in and of itself (though discovering a new species does), because new occurrence records to not, on their own, test some generalized principle (some such observations do test a hypothesis, and that’s a different story). Some scientists do that with thought experiments and observation, others through meticulous lab work, and others by watching stones sink into the sward of a country estate.

Philosophy of Science

Deserving of special attention

2010-06-20
by Josh Rosenau

John Fleck, a superstar science journalist whose work on water in the southwest is consistently brilliant, has some sage thoughts on the Problem With Science Journalism:

In the newspaper this week, I took a whack at what I think is one of the fundamental public misunderstandings about the nature of science. I like to call it âthe textbook problemâ, but one might also characterize it as âthe science journalism problem.â

Lay exposure to science comes in two fundamental ways. The first is academic learning, in which non-scientists are exposed to textbook explanation of things scientists have already figured out, knowledge with sufficient stability to make it into textbooks. Much of science journalism involves a similar domain â stories about papers scientists have published as a result of figuring something out.

This creates, I believe, a public impression of science â that it is about Stuff Thatâs Been Figured Out. But in fact much of the activity of scientists, even in the practice of what Kuhn called ânormal scienceâ, involves poking around in Stuff That Hasnât Been Figured Out.

He goes on to explain why it’s hard to write stories about how science actually works, the nitty-gritty work of repeated failures that result in brilliant successes. The article itself appears to be hidden behind a paywall, but the questions he raises go beyond the specifics of covering the southwestern monsoon.

There’s no particular reason that students in high school and college science classes shouldn’t be presented with unanswered questions and taught that it’s OK to suggest a wrong answer if they can also propose a feasible experiment which allows that wrong answer to be tested. In practice, most scientists don’t experience that part of the scientific enterprise until they are upper-level undergraduates, or perhaps grad students. And that’s a shame, because it means science educators are holding back the most exciting part of science until after most of their audience has decided science is boring and they tune out forever.

This is a triple-failure. First, we lose some fraction of potential science teachers, scientists, and other science fans. Second, we fail to prepare people for new scientific results as they come along, especially those which contradict previous findings, because we haven’t given people a tool for evaluating scientific uncertainty.

Third, we’re failing to instill techniques for scientific testing of ideas in the public consciousness, preferring rote memorization to conceptual understanding. And that’s a problem that only perpetuates itself. At the end of the day, I’d rather have people know how to conduct a proper experiment than know that lasers focus light, rather than sound waves. But in science classes and science journalism, their more likely to have the latter fact emphasized than the former process.

It’s good to see journalists asking what they can do differently. I know educators in colleges and high schools are thinking about this also, but there’s a lot that the academy could do to improve things.

Creationism

Creation/evolution continuum, or NCSE is too nice to theists … and…

2009-05-21
by Josh Rosenau

There are those who say “Not only does the NCSE not criticize religion, but it cuddles up to it, kisses it, and tells it that everything will be all right.” There are others who say:

The continuum [between creationism and evolution] as described on the NCSE site strongly implies that “atheist science is better science”. Even though the objective of the continuum is to counter the belief that “evolutionists must be atheists”, it indirectly implies that evolutionists should be atheists. For this fact alone, I think the model needs to be replaced.

A simpler person than I would take this to mean that NCSE is in the happy middle, with theists and atheists both claiming we’re giving too much away philosophically to the other side. I’m on the record opposing that approach, which leaves me a chance to be long-winded.

I happen to think this disagreement means that NCSE’s critics on both sides are right about some things and wrong about others (and do recall that my comments on this blog don’t reflect NCSE policy, and I’m not speaking for NCSE or anyone but myself here). For instance, Jerry Coyne is right that “[NCSE] are the good guys,” and Steve Martin is right that NCSE’s “Creationism/Evolution Continuum is a useful starting point for understanding the origins controversy and for engaging in dialogue.” Coyne may or may not be right that NCSE’s website is occasionally too favorable to religion (some of his critiques are surely wrong), and Martin is right “that there are … significant problems with” the Continuum.

For those of you unfamiliar with the continuum, check out NCSE’s page on The Creation/Evolution Continuum. Genie Scott observes there that:

Many — if not most — Americans think of the creation and evolution controversy as a dichotomy with “creationists” on one side, and “evolutionists” on the other. This assumption all too often leads to the unfortunate conclusion that because creationists are believers in God, that evolutionists must be atheists. The true situation is much more complicated: creationism comes in many forms, and not all of them reject evolution.

This continuum of belief ranges from absolute rejection of scientific evidence to absolute rejection of anything unsupported by science – from flat-earthism to atheism. In the middle of that continuum are people who believe in the doctrine of creation, that a deity created the universe and life in it, and who accept that science can explain how the natural aspects of that process worked. Deists, theistic evolutionists, and evolutionary creationists (as pro-evolution evangelicals call themselves) all fall into this middle area.

Steve Martin, an evangelical Christian and an evolutionary biologist who writes eloquently about how he reconciles the two, rightly notes that this oversimplifies a complex situation. Peter Hess, NCSE’s Faith Project Director, uses a much more complex graphical analogy in his talks, in which there are at least two dimensions, not a straight line between creation and evolution. This allows one to get around some of the complexities that Martin raises, such as that the continuum conflates factors, where “many Progressive Creationists … would be comfortable with relatively ‘non-literal’ interpretations of scripture, whereas some [theistic evolutionist]s would advocate ‘more literal’ interpretations of scripture.”

Furthermore, Martin is probably correct that none of the evolution-accepting groups on the continuum “differ in their science,” and the differences are all philosophical and theological.” One could probably find small differences on some points, but there is a large discontinuity at that point in what is meant to be a continuum. Because the continuum mixes a range of issues as far as someone’s acceptance of science, someone’s theology, and his or her philosophy of science, things get tricky. Martin argues, and I don’t necessarily disagree, that “the middle of this continuum is a mid-point only if you ignore other important parameters.” Certainly the middle of the continuum ought to be wider than the endpoints.

Martin then offers a different model, which is not linear but cyclical:

This captures some truths, but obscures others. I don’t think I’ll be adopting this, nor do I imagine other NCSErs will.

The nice thing about the continuum graphic is that, regardless of its faults, it emphasizes an easily obscured point: one need not set evolution against belief in a deity who acts in the world, and it is possible to move toward acceptance of evolution without moving out of the realm of theistic belief. The continuum oversimplifies by making it seem like there’s just one path one might take in doing so, but NCSE is not in the business of endorsing particular religious philosophies, and making an exhaustive list is beyond the scope of the continuum. Martin’s graphic breaks apart some essential continuities, and treats groups of different size and nature as if they were coequal.

More significantly, the continuum is helpful as a way to reach out to folks who have simply never thought about the issue before, and naively assume there are two camps: one for creationism and the other for evolution. So when forced to choose (as, for instance, by a pollster) they glom onto whichever camp they think best fits them. If the question is asked in a way that frames the decision in terms of science, they’ll tend to favor evolution, if framed around religion or morality, they tend to choose creationism (at least in the US). Pointing out that there is a broad and diverse middle ground, that the choice is not nearly so stark, can help people get comfortable accepting evolution before confronting religious issues. Martin’s graphic certainly elevates that middle ground, but obscures the range of options people have within it, making it harder for people to comfortably locate themselves in that group.

Martin’s model presents three camps: one favoring materialist evolution, one favoring non-evolutionary creationism, and one collecting the various pro-evolution religious views. All that diversity and complexity gets squashed into a single cluster.

His model does have some interesting features. It’s true that many people in his group C (materialist evolution) find evolution and theism incompatible, as he writes on the line between them. However, others find that the two might be compatible, but reject theism on other grounds. In terms of literalism (which is one of the variables the continuum is supposed to represent), Martin is right to note that some atheists adopt the evangelical’s “literal” reading, an odd convergence. But many people in group C do not accept that reading. I’m not a theistic evolutionist, but I don’t find the inerrantist/literalist readings to be at all plausible, either from a perspective of historical Biblical reading or based on standard approaches to literary interpretation. As Martin notes, too, some people in his group B adopt a more inerrantist interpretation than others, and even moreso than some members of his group C.

The continuum is a tool, and a useful one. It helps introduce the complexities of the interplay between science and religion to audiences who may simply think that everyone has to choose one or the other. It often surprises audiences to learn that many people do not see a need to choose, do not find an inherent conflict. (Standard disclaimer/troll repellent: Those people might be wrong, and I take no position on that topic.)

As such, the simple tactic of drawing a bridge between what people think of as two mutually exclusive beliefs is pedagogically powerful. Martin’s cyclical model is less clear on that essential point.

It also obscures the relationship between his three groups. He links belief in non-evolutionary creation with evolutionary materialism, but I’m not aware of anyone who made that transition without at least a brief layover in theistic evolution. I’ve heard lots of creationists testify about how they grew up as atheists who “believed in” evolution, who then became Christian, and then suddenly found evolution flawed. I don’t know of people who can credibly claim that they first rejected evolution and then changed their religious views. Similarly, I don’t know of formerly religious atheists who first rejected religion and then came to accept evolution. They tend to describe first learning more about evolution, then rejecting some form of creationism, and ultimately drifting away from religion entirely. Thus, the link between Martin’s group B (creationists) and group C (evolutionary materialists) is much weaker than the link between A (theistic evolutionists) and C or A and B. Group A is thus some sort of reasonable middle ground. But his model sets it off of the line between B and C, obscuring that point.

Martin is right that his model does a better job of separating two factors; but I’d rather present them as continuous variables than as dichotomous. I suspect, though I’ll have to ask Genie about this, that the continuum is on a slope precisely because it really encompasses two axes (or it could be a matter of graphical convenience). On one axis, you have a measure of someone’s understanding of science, on the other a measure of belief in the role some deity plays in the world. The continuum is a simplification, a line drawn through a scatter graph of individual people’s places in that plane.

That diversity is a key point of the graph, and Martin’s model looses that diversity. He writes that “Placing all the positions that do not accept evolution in a single ‘Non-evolutionary Creation’ group means the model is easier to understand,” but it actually obscures a key pedagogical value. When I use the continuum in talks, I make the point that as you progress from flat earthers to geocentrists to young earthers to old earthers, each group claims to be interpreting the Bible in an inerrant manner, yet there is a progression of greater acceptance of scientific evidence. Thus, even people who regard themselves as fully creationist are, in fact, almost surely rejecting some set of beliefs that someone at some point has regarded as necessary for an inerrant (or literal, if you prefer) reading of the Bible. One can progress along that axis of scientific acceptance without even venturing past the line between belief in “special creation.” And so one can emphasize that acceptance of science is almost never entirely at odds with religious faith, and urge people to be more catholic in one’s acceptance of science.

That same approach isn’t possible with Martin’s model of nodes in a cycle. He captures some useful truths, but as a pedagogical tool, I can’t see myself adopting it.

Nor, if presented carefully, does it imply that atheism is more scientific than theism. When I use the continuum, I present it as a graph of how much one thinks must be explained by invoking a deity, or conversely how much one is willing to explain through only testable, natural (i.e., scientific) means. Atheists reject all explanations involving a deity, agnostics find such claims unhelpful and set them aside, and theists explain more and more as a direct result of divine will as one moves up and to the left on the continuum. This is imperfect in many ways, and the correlation between that continuum and various others Martin and I have mentioned is not perfect, but it is quite good, and serves as a good starting point.

Martin promises more discussion of his model, and I look forward to his suggestions.

Culture Wars

Setbacks in Science

2007-07-21
by Josh Rosenau

Denyse O’Leary uses Bill Dembski’s blog (and a dozen other ID blogs) to report a comment from a friend about the mission statement for Nature. The mission statement reads:

First, to serve scientists through prompt publication of significant advances in any branch of science, and to provide a forum for the reporting and discussion of news and issues concerning science. Second, to ensure that the results of science are rapidly disseminated to the public throughout the world, in a fashion that conveys their significance for knowledge, culture and daily life.

Her friend replies:

To report advances and serve scientists means not to report setbacks, or the exposure of fallacies in widely-held theories that would tend to put mainstream science in a bad light.

The press and public operate under the impression that Nature and Science magazines report any significant developments in science, whether positive or negative, and that both serve the public; but both publications are very up-front that they only report advances and successes because they exist to serve scientists.

This reflects a dramatic misunderstanding of what an advance in science looks like. A negative result is not a “setback,” it is an advance, because it improves our state of knowledge. A setback is when your fly colony develops parasites and dies off, or when you realize that you put fertilizer on your control plot, and don’t even know how much. That means you have to start over, so the time invested in that experiment was wasted.

But any experiment that goes through to completion is an advance, even especially when it overturns some existing set of ideas.

What we know and what we believe

2007-06-11
by Josh Rosenau

“Truth,” the late philosopher Richard Rorty explained, “is what your contemporaries let you get away with.” It has been observed that his contemporaries did not, as a general proposition, let him get away with that understanding of truth.

This comment came to mind not just because Rorty passed away last Friday, but because of the spat going on over agnosticism and atheism. John Wilkins quoted Bertrand Russell saying that “An agnostic thinks it impossible to know the truth in matters such as God and the future life with which Christianity and other religions are concerned. Or, if not impossible, at least impossible at the present time.” An atheist, on the other hand “holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is a God; the atheist, that we can know there is not.”

Larry Moran objects:

This is not correct. There are many people who have decided not to believe in Gods and they live their lives as if there were no Gods. However, they do not maintain that the nonexistence of Gods is known for certain. They believe that that it’s impossible to prove a negative. These people call themselves atheists

Culture Wars

Framing and the invisible college

2007-04-09
by Josh Rosenau

Larry Moran criticizes Coturnix (and by implication Chris Mooney and Matt Nisbett) for their focus on “framing,” as described in Chris and Matt’s paper in Science (behind a paywall, alas):

the top three requirements for good science writing are scientific accuracy, scientific accuracy, and scientific accuracy. As soon as you sacrifice the attempt to convey good accurate science to the general public then you’re not doing science writing. You’re doing something else.

He presents this as a compelling argument against framing, but I think it argues for very careful thought about how we frame arguments. Misframing an argument can leave the audience with a sense of the data exactly contrary to what you actually presented. Accurate framing is a part of scientific accuracy.

Part of the problem is that scientists are trained not to trust language. A journal article is not meant to make an argument through the text, the text is supposed to be a gauzy veil through which your colleagues can see the data itself. We all know that the actual practice is a little trickier, but that is how we are taught. Metaphor, literary allusions and other attempts at textual massaging of stories that the data tell is frowned upon in the scientific community.

Unfortunately, that style carries over into the way we present scientists to nonspecialists in popular magazines, blogs, news stories and even classrooms. My experiment with the Invisible College has taught me a lot about what works and what doesn’t. Part of what I’ve learned is that you are always framing, whether you intend it or not. As a corollary scientists who don’t intend to frame things, and as a result are frequently doing it badly, to their own detriment.

What is “framing” anyway? It centers on the simple point that Bora makes in his summary: “There is no such thing as emotion-free language.” However you express yourself in words, math, or graphics, you are going to evoke some emotional response in your subject. The same concept expressed in different ways will produce different subconscious responses, and that will mean that your audience learns something different, depending how you express an idea.

Philosophy of Science

This statement is not a tautology

2007-04-04
by Josh Rosenau

In honor of MarkCC’s latest effort to explain to the deeply egnorant Michael Egnor why the fact that any inferentially true set of statements – including scientific theories – can be reformulated as a tautology, I thought I’d crack open Elliot Sober’s excellent Philosophy of Biology, in which he discusses the relevance of the “tautology” objection to evolution. But before doing that, I have to take exception to something Egnor said. I actually take exception to nearly everything he says, but I’d rather not bog down in the details. Egnor tries to summarize natural selection as “survivors survive,” but that is not at all the issue.

Just as Newton’s first law states that an object at motion tends to stay in motion (all else being equal), natural selection states that the offspring of survivors will tend to survive (all else being equal). This statement, on its own, is not any sort of tautology. Even “survival of the fittest,” is not tautological in the strict sense of the term.

Philosophy of Science

Defining Science

2007-03-06
by Josh Rosenau

Misogynistic authoritarian Vox Day requests a definition of science. His commenter suggests:

Science — sci·ence (sī’əns) n. — The organized attempt to disprove the existence of God so we can do whatever we want without feeling bad about it.

Anyone involved in the arguments over creationism will recognize this sentiment that science is about morality and theology, but it really and truly isn’t.

Dr. Myers offers a much better tripartite definition. He puts science-as-encyclopedia first, which I think is unfortunate. People tend to think of science as a collection of facts, which ignores the important role that uncertainty plays in science. I would argue that science-as-process is the least understood but most important aspect. Science is a process, refined through historical practice, which tests claims against evidence, rejecting those claims which make bad predictions, conditionally accepting those which make good, ideally unexpected, predictions and ignoring those which make no prediction.