Turning off the Enlightenment at the End of the Tunnel
A sneak peek at my upcoming book
This is the first excerpt from my coming book, The Myth of Science: A Winemaker Recommends Repairs. I’ve done quite a bit of noodling why trust of scientists is today at an all-time low. I believe there are three reasons:
1. Rather than to improve their people skills and explain their positions, many scientists tend toward the arrogant position that the average lay person is too stupid or ignorant to follow their arguments and should simply take their word for it. Doctors are the worst.
2. Despite their cockiness, modern science is built on an edifice of error and dysfunction which the book will explore.
3. Though I wish it were not so, it is impossible simultaneously to be a disinterested observer reporting what is and also an advocate for what should be. The minute you cross this line, you make enemies. America is jam-packed with billionaire oil and coal magnates and many millions of miners and roughnecks that work for them, that will passionately hate your guts.
This combination of arrogance, error, and advocacy is directly responsible for the anti-science regime in which we dwell today.
In his penetrating review of the manuscript of Postmodern Winemaking, Ravenswood Winery founder Joel Peterson asked me an excellent question: “Do we really have to give up the Enlightenment to move ahead?” My answer was yes, I’m afraid we do.
When Francis Bacon declared that knowledge is power and Descartes proposed his idealized vision of the rational skeptic, essentially today’s trained scientist, the Age of Reason ushered in revolutions in government, chemistry, physics, astronomy, philosophy and religion.
The guiding principle was reliance on human intelligence to fashion a better world. Armed with generalized laws such as Newton’s mechanics, a dispassionate and unbiased superhero is charged with uncovering Nature’s secrets and exercising dominion over her. Four hundred years later, we are beginning to sense that this plan is not working out so well for us.
I do not advocate abandoning the tools of skeptical inquiry, experimentation, and hypothesis verification. We’ve gotten ourselves in a hell of a fix on this planet, but I don’t expect mob rule to lead us out of it in one piece. We do, however, need to foster an awareness of the limitations of our technical tools.
We now have every reason to be suspicious of the capacity of the human mind to comprehend and conquer nature. In the coming pages, I will disclose the many reasons for modern scientists to be less cocky and more humble by the spectacular failures of modern scientific methodology. Continuing embrace of frequentist statistics has led to the crisis of non-reproducibility. The peer review hurdle for publication inevitably bars inventive model revision except within the circled wagons of academia. Hyper-specialization has siloed generations of experts with ever-narrowing personal experience until they know nearly everything about almost nothing. relying on conventional wisdom for the rest and with little time or inclination for the social consequences of their work.
Worse still are the unintended consequences of technical innovations unheard of a century ago: toxic microplastics, lead poisoning, rampant diabetes, mercury pollution, nuclear plant meltdowns, runaway species extinctions – you can make your own list. No wonder the general public now see scientists less as benevolent overlords and more as loose cannons.
Yet this is good news. The more frustratingly aware scientists become, the greater can thrive the humility vital for regaining respect for their disciplines. No phrase is more powerfully engaging than “I don’t really know.”
Particle physicist Sean Carroll has proposed a new direction for science that he calls “poetic naturalism.” Carroll maintains that there is a “core theory” of fundamental physics (like quantum fields) that explains everything we encounter, but only at the level of the inanimate. Concepts like consciousness, emotions, and moral values are not fundamental to the universe’s physics but are emergent properties of complex systems (humans). This is what Alexander Pope was talking about when he said, “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; / The proper study of mankind is man”.
By staying in its own lane, sciences such as climatology can eschew activism and simply report the facts. If you’re a scientist wondering how nearly half of American adults believe climate change is not caused by human activities, have a look in the mirror. There be none so blind as those that will not see, and that applies to both sides of this pointless argument. Ultimately, who cares who shot John? Let’s roll up our sleeves and solve this problem together. Even if that means sucking it up and kissing some right-wing asses.
Climate change is an issue that raises issues of the nature of modern science. It is a thing, right? I knew a contrarian. His name was Dr. Jerry Pournelle. He was famous in the computer business. He was a polymath. He thought global warming was a giant load of codswallop. He wondered how it was even possible to determine the average temperature of the Earth on either land or sea in a scientifically valid way. He pointed out that if you melted every piece of waterborne ice in the world, it would scarcely raise the water level a centimeter and that if you melt all the ice on land, because it’s freshwater going into seawater, the raising ocean height is also relatively small. He liked to point out that nature is self correcting. Increased CO2 produces increased vegetation which reduces the increase in CO2. He was also fond of saying that science isn’t a popularity contest. We agreed that weather and climate are not synonymous.
TL/DR Almost certainly the longest comment you have ever seen. Clark and I began a discussion of this essay which he said should be moved to comments. I am not sure he was being literal, but here is our email exchange--inspiring at the least, albeit slightly long.