Psybertron Asks

One article of faith in science is that dinosaurs became extinct 60-odd million years ago and couldn’t have been around at the same time as early hominids. Article of faith in the sense that evidence for it refutes any possible young-earth creationism. Herewith a current story pointing out the elements of chance in evolutionary progress, if anyone needed reminding.

However here also a couple of stories [CSUN Story] [Smithsonian Story] that show why it really is an article of faith amongst scientists, rather than good science. When evidence of (potentially) shorter lifecycle occurs in the fossil record, (potentially) supporting young-earth creationism arguments – actions to reject and suppress the evidence (rather than find better explanations) are anti-religious and far from scientific. [Hat tip to Rick on Facebook for the CSUN Story.]

Maybe some pockets of population did survive longer, niche-habitats are crucial to many evolutionary stories. Maybe there are mechanisms of soft-tissue preservation and /or substitution that do occur protected inside older fossils of larger bones. Maybe the original interpretation of having found preserved soft tissue is misguided or wishful thinking. Maybe a hundred and one other hypotheses – one rule of scientific method is that potential hypotheses are infinite. Who knows, without the science, but failing that, let’s bash the perceived “enemy” of science anyway (*).

Anyway, I can’t research all the circumstances and motives of all the people in the linked stories – some individuals clearly do have creationist religious views – but the scientific community response to evidence is far from scientific. My call is for neurotic science to wake up from turning itself into its own religion in order to counter the kinds of religion of which its consensus doesn’t approve.

[(*) Post Note ; Following up more “Speculative Realism” sources – ones I can read and understand. Recently bought, but found too turgid after the excellent introductory chapters Quentin Meillassoux’s “After Finitude“, so went back to my previous reading of Levi Bryant’s “Democracy of Objects“ to restore faith. In the context of this post, and the previous post on democratic “consensus” in science, I found this previously quoted passage spot on the mark:

On the one hand we have the pro-science crowd that vigorously argues that science gives us the true representation of reality. It is not difficult to detect, lurking in the background, a protracted battle against the role that superstition and religion play in the political sphere. Society, at all costs, must be protected from the superstitious and religious irrationalities that threaten to plunge us back into the Dark Ages.

Where “at all costs” includes the unwise corruption of science itself. Anyway, faith restored, I’ve now also ordered Levi Bryant’s (ed) “The Speculative Turn“:

… the new currents of continental [including UK] philosophy depart from the text-centered hermeneutic models of the [PoMo] past and engage in daring speculations about the nature of reality itself.

What I’ve been refering to as PoPoMo. More later.]

Science is an appeal to authority, but where does that authority come from? An interesting Guardian piece by Graham Redfearn on Naomi Oreskes (with a TED Talk of hers at the bottom)

There really is no scientific method.

• Inductive of hypotheses and predictions, true, but actually a rare case
• Deductive of observed evidence, true, but much judgement and interpretation of evidence and experience and of correlation and causation, and with varying faith and trust in people and reports – very little evidence is direct observation causally related to any hypothesis or law.
• And, both confirmation and falsification logic can be flawed by unrecognised assumptions in your model.
• So in practice, almost “anything goes” (Feyerabend), there is much creativity and imagination involved.
• Ultimately science is the emergent and evolving collective consensus (of scientists).

Paradox of modern science:

• Science IS an appeal to authority (albeit the authority of a collective consensus).

This is the root of a large part of the agenda here – where the topic is at the boundaries of accepted science, even questioning the accepted boundaries of science, the consensus cannot come entirely from those who are scientists or with declared interests in science.

Fact: The quality of thinking and questioning required to achieve such consensus cannot be derived entirely the received wisdom of the existing scientific consensus.

The Building Blog is one I’ve linked to individual posts before, usually when pointed out by BifRiv. Added the home page to my blogroll, but here a current example “Buy a Lighthouse”.

There have been debates before about the validity of “peer review” and alternative publishing authority models – seem to recall some hoo-ha around arxiv.org a few years back. These here are technical articles rather than pure science, but show how systems are manipulated. (Hat tip to BifRiv for the link.)