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Is it wise to write a book criticizing “scientific triumphalism” as anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers and populist politicians seek to undermine the credentials of scientists?
The charge that scientists are an elite, self-satisfied group whose tendentious statements can be dismissed as shrill rebukes is, after all, often used to undermine the authority of the profession. In some cases, this can lead to fatal consequences.
It’s called a new book, Blind spots: Why science can’t ignore human experience, He cautions that scientists do need to avoid “overreach,” and that a more humble approach to science communication, recognizing the uncertainty felt by researchers, could help stem the rise in skepticism about science. suggests it is likely to be far more effective at stopping them.
Co-author Evan Thompson, a philosophy professor at the University of British Columbia, says, “If science is presented in a triumphalist way, it will inevitably distance itself from human experience and create a backlash.” .
One may wonder what is “triumphalistic” about outlining facts based on empirical evidence.for blind spot The authors also include astrophysicist Adam Frank and theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser, but this unglamorous loftiness ranges from informative and enthusiastic to hyperbolic and authoritarian. It is found in public engagement that reorients itself. The documentary “tells people that they are nothing more than genetic programs.” “A breathtaking science news article that claims future generations will upload themselves to computers.” “Lectures and editorials that claim that physics has answered the question of why something exists rather than nothing” are not only inaccurate, but also “a callous and unfeeling approach to scientists.” It is a kind of “harmful excess” that instills a stereotype of people as ruthless. Not like us,” explains a new book published last month by MIT Press.
Gleiser, a professor of natural philosophy at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire who works on cosmology, string theory and, more recently, astrobiology, is wary of any statement that “sells science has all the answers.” He says he is similarly resistant. times higher education. “Anyone who writes books that claim that humans have understood the mind of God, that we have solved all the problems in the universe, or that we can explain altruism using evolutionary psychology, is doing humanity a grave disservice. He explains that not only are there things that science will never understand, even in principle, but that this acceptance of uncertainty should be welcomed. “We scientists are completely fascinated by the unknown. I always say science is a play with the unknown,” he reflects.
Gleiser is currently working on his next project. blind spot Co-author Frank, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester, says the study is “examining how information theory can be used to understand agency and autonomy in living systems.” As Gleiser says, humans and animals “know very well: ‘That’s food and this is stone.'” We eat food, but we don’t eat stones. From bacteria to us, this information-gathering of living organisms has implications. We don’t know exactly how it works, so we’re still trying to figure it out. ”
FrankHe quipped that the study of how stars form and die has moved into the physics of life.Strictly speaking, he decided to pursue physics not because he wanted to build a quantum toaster, but because he wanted to learn something about the nature of reality. He was once convinced that science provides “complete knowledge of external, independent, objective reality,” but he was raised in an atheist family in a highly religious community. Because he was from the United States, he became embroiled in many debates by claiming that “science can explain things.” all”.
The young Gleiser was also “very much in love with what we would now call a Platonic dream of deciphering reality into a kind of geometric blueprint.” This is precisely science’s “dream” of being able to ignore human observers and provide a completely objective God’s-eye view of the world, which science calls “blind spots” and which it wants to challenge. is.
They argue that this claim of omniscience evolved with an understanding of celestial mechanics and works very well in that field. Those studying the interactions of planets in the sky or balls on a pool table “don’t really have to consider blind spot vision,” Frank explains. But, as he quickly discovered, things change dramatically when you enter the notoriously counterintuitive field of quantum mechanics.
Of the many oddities of this theory, Frank suggests that “superposition” is perhaps the strangest.can have property be and property b At the same time, it is the same as saying that it does not really have a definite property until it is measured or observed.
“Measurements made by the measurer are in theory,” Frank continues. But he believes that many fellow physicists “go through enormous conceptual gymnastics” to avoid accepting this effect. For example, the “many worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics means that “every time a quantum event occurs, an infinite number of unobservable parallel realities are created.” Is it really worth it, Frank asks, to “do so much damage to our intuitive sense of how the world is just to maintain blind spot bias”?
According to Frank, if quantum physics demonstrates theoretical problems that seek to exclude human observers from understanding the world, such problems arise “when we think of life as a physical system” or “when people It becomes more clearly relevant when one wants to develop a theory. Perception or consciousness. ” Here, accepting the idea of an objective external observer “gives you the illusion that you are right. It gives you a hermetically sealed, completely rational structure, but it It’s dead and you’re squeezing out of it the very thing that interests you the most… There’s no third-person perspective on life. You have to be alive to know what life is.” There is no escaping the questions of autonomy, agency, and meaning that Gleiser explores in her collaborative research project.
Their book acknowledges that “mapping properties of consciousness to properties of the brain” is an “important research strategy,” but it is not enough to solve age-old mind-body problems or to “explain them.” It is not enough to overcome the gap. between the spiritual and the physical. The authors argue that physicalism (“only physical reality exists”), panpsychism (even inanimate objects have primitive forms of consciousness), and illusionism (that conscious experience is just an illusion) Investigate and reject the most common solutions, such as Progress in this notoriously difficult field, they argue, is only likely to come from “a science of consciousness where experience really matters.”
But what does this actually mean?
This is where Thompson’s expertise comes in handy. He works on the philosophy of mind, sometimes in collaboration with experimental cognitive neuroscientists, exploring topics such as perception, consciousness, and the nature of the self. “The scientific study of the mind in the 20th century followed behaviorism, which sought to eliminate anything that had to do with subjectivity or conscious experience,” he points out. However, he considers this to be a completely wrong path. Studying consciousness, emotion, attention, and memory “requires a much more systematic phenomenology of human experience than is the case in general cognitive science.” One promising approach, he says, is to combine “first-person reports of emotion, memory, and attention” with “second-person interviews that guide individuals to more accurate descriptions.”
This is a first-person perspective, Thompson adds, and needs to be taken pride of place as “a real source of knowledge, even if you’re trying to step outside of it and model aspects of it objectively.” he added. .
blind spot presents a rich and complex philosophical argument, but it also has significant practical implications for how we should do science and how we should present it to the public. I am.
The final section states that “Earth, as a ‘living planet’ with the biosphere as one of its core systems, is not a collection of the departments of geology, biology, chemistry, and physics in isolation; , or even a combination of them.” It has also been deeply shaped by human action. Studying it therefore requires what Thompson calls “a kind of complex system, network thinking that includes the political and the social,” which “doesn’t really enclose the observer. Because the observer is involved in a network of ongoing processes “studyed”.
This insight led to the development of “Earth System Science,” based on “James Lovelock and Lynne Margulis’s Gaia theory was a very different way of looking at life and Earth, incorporating all kinds of different ideas.” This is explained. areas, atmospheric chemistry, microbiology, evolutionary biology. Both figures were highly sensitive to larger social, philosophical, and historical contexts. ”
In Thompson’s view, there is an urgent need for further development of such “interdisciplinary and interdisciplinary fields that bridge the natural and social sciences, that is, not only connect them but also interweave them.” However, given that universities still tend to be “organized around 19th-century rather than 20th-century ideas about science,” this would require significant “institutional restructuring.”
It was precisely for this reason that Gleiser founded the Institute for Interdisciplinary Collaboration at Dartmouth, whose purpose was to “bring together scientists and humanists in public or in workshops to “To address very fundamental questions that cannot be answered” through the humanities. There needs to be a great connection between the two. ”
He believes that research in ecology is particularly effective in “bringing different people into the conversation,” adding that “more physicists are talking to philosophers, biologists, and ethicists. is encouraged by ‘seeing’. Nevertheless, Gleiser admits that his career incentives and tenure committees still prevent people from truly embracing the interdisciplinary approach they urgently need.
The book is certainly not lacking in ambition, as it weaves quantum physics, cognitive science, Gaia theory, and the mysteries of the universe into a new paradigm. But the authors believe that new approaches to communicating science are also needed, and should help engage readers rather than despair. Writing a book that reflects the uncertainty scientists feel is “necessary to avoid labeling science as an autocratic way of knowing,” Gleiser says. “Because it’s when people become authoritarian that they start to get discouraged and cynical.”
Overcoming blind spots about the human-centered nature of science can also be called “enabling science.” more It’s interesting,” Thompson added. “Because we now bring to the problem the richness of being an experiencing subject, rather than having a dead god perspective. Instead of asking questions about, we understand that it is actually what brings us together with the world. And that brings with it a whole new range of questions.”
Some may see such statements as a capitulation to the mishmash of anti-scientific wisdom and dubious anecdotes favored by conspiracy theorists on social media. However, far from being anti-science, the authors of this book blind spot Frank, who regularly receives death threats for defending the scientific method and advocating action on climate change, says he’s all about “the love of science.” “We eat science for breakfast every day. If someone says I’m anti-science, I get very angry.”
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