This Idea Must Die -- great idea for both science and religion

Browsing through Portland's amazing bookstore, Powell's, I came across "This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progress" in the new non-fiction area.

Couldn't resist it. The back cover said:

Few truly great ideas are developed without first abandoning old ones. In the past, discoveries often had to wait for the rise of the next generation to see questions in a new light and let go of old truisms. Today, in a world that is defined by a rapid rate of change, staying on the cutting edge has as much to do with shedding outdated notions as adopting new ones.

In this spirit, John Brockman, publisher of the online salon Edge.org, asked 175 of the world's most influential scientists, economists, artists, and philosophers: What scientific idea is ready for retirement?

Just asking this question, and getting so many thoughtful responses, is a big reason why I love science so much. 

It is open-minded, receptive to change, embracing of new ideas. Sure, scientists become wedded to outmoded ideas just as everybody does. But science recognizes this as something to be avoided, whereas religion, by and large, sees steadfast faith in unproven ideas as a virtue.

How often do leaders of a religion ask, "What theological idea of ours is ready for retirement?" Rarely.

And usually these aren't core ideas, but peripheral ones. Like whether women should be able to become ministers, or same-sex couples should be able to marry. Yet in science, vigorous debates occur over important questions.

Some of the Amazon reader reviews of "This Idea Must Die" criticize the many short essays for being shallow. Well, I like the pithy nature of them. Refreshing in a science book, which tend to be wordy. 

Plus, these aren't intended to be sophisticated critiques of outdated notions. They're zingers, short and sweet, concise hard-hitting calls for this or that idea to be revisited and possibly replaced by a better one. 

I haven't gotten very far into the book. So far I've liked all the essays, with these four being especially noteworthy for me. Here's the title and author, along with a brief excerpt.

Infinity, by physicist Max Tegmark
Let's face it: Despite their seductive allure, we have no direct observational evidence for either the infinitely big or the infinitely small.

The laws of physics are predetermined, by physicist Lawrence Kraus
We've come to accept the notion that life is not preordained; we also need to give up the quaint notion that the laws of physics are. Cosmic accidents are everywhere -- it's possible that our entire universe is just another accident.

Essentialism, by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins
But I mainly want to call attention to our society's essentialist determination to dragoon a person into one discrete category or another. We seem ill equipped to deal mentally with a continuous spectrum of intermediates. We are still infected with the plague of Plato's essentialism.

Human nature, by environmental scientist Peter Richardson
Human nature implies that our species is characterized by a common core of features that define us. Evolutionary biology teaches us that this sort of essentialist concept of species is wrong.

Whether or not these scientific ideas are worth disposing of, I think everybody can benefit on a personal level from examining their own cherished viewpoints.

This isn't easy, I readily admit. Science uses peer review, open discussion of findings, and such to subject scientific notions -- even long-established ones -- to a Truth Test. 

Individuals can do something roughly similar. It just takes more effort and determination. Some of our ideas are simply so damn enticing! Partly because, as Dawkins notes in his essay, we like to categorize everybody, including ourselves, into discrete categories.

Such as: Good guys and bad guys. Right guys and wrong guys. Moral guys and immoral guys. (Pretty easy to guess which categories we usually put ourselves in.)

It's impossible to look at ourselves, or at our beliefs about the world, from an objective standpoint. After all, we look out at things from our inner subjective consciousness, not as a detached observer. 

Still, pondering what ideas we hold that could profitably be discarded strikes me as a good thing to do. Especially when it comes to religious, mystical, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs. Just as science progresses by letting go of less-desirable ideas and grabbing on to more-desirable ideas, so should we.

Throughout our lives, not just when we are young. Most people tend to try out many kinds of belief systems when they are adolescents and young adults, then settle in to steady ways of believing as they get older.

Nothing wrong with this. Except when there is.

If some idea isn't working well for us; if some idea no longer fits with how the world actually seems to be; if we begin to feel uncomfortable with an idea that used to satisfy -- maybe it is time to let go of it.

Comments

[Spence Tepper]

The most recent myth parading as science is the notion that anything can actually be random.

Random, as in, without specific cause.

Every event has a causal precedent.

"Random" is a mathematical construct to explain variations that cannot be measured precisely.

But "Random" doesn't actually exists in the physical world. It's a notion that science actually disproves continuously.

"Random" has taken a popular meaning 'to be without cause'. But in the real world it is only without precise prediction. That reflects the measurement, and does not infer lack of causality.

But people use "Random" to suggest without cause.

And that is a myth.

[Brian Hines]

Well, Spence, if you can back up your claim about randomness, a lot of quantum physicists are eager to listen to you. But countless solid experiments have demonstrated that what you say is at odds with observation..

Einstein couldn't believe that "God played dice with the universe," yet in the end his belief couldn't be backed up by evidence.

Hidden variable theories in quantum physics, which support determinism, are still favored by some scientists. They remain just that, though: unproven theories.

Good try. But simply saying something doesn't make it true.

[Spence Tepper]

From Wikipedia
"In this view, randomness is a measure of uncertainty of an outcome, rather than haphazardness, and applies to concepts of chance, probability, and information entropy."

Random is only defined by what we don't know, patterns we can't see. That's on us, not reality.

All science is based on the belief that scientific investigation will identify causes. Actually, will confirm hypothesized causal forces, often invisible.

Gravity waves still have never been found.

We still don't really know why two objects at a distance in space, entirely unconnected, move towards one another. It's a mystery.

All scientific data, once obtained, supports that principle of cause and effect. The very principle behind Science itself.

No hypothesis can be proven or disproven by lack of evidence. All you can say is there is no evidence to support that.

For thousands of years there was no detectable evidence to support sub-atomic particles. (Except for the testimony of mystics).

But we now know they exist. Because we have the instrumentation to detect it.

If I'd claimed 200 years ago all material objects are largely empty space, scientists would laugh. All their data showed something else.

Until about 150 years ago.

Now we know that claim is actually true.

You cannot say "it's disproven."

Hypotheses are tested against a null hypothesis, using probabilities. What is the likely chance that this result in our experimental condition is the result of our hypothesized force, which we controlled through our operationalized independent variable?

And that likelihood is established often in a controlled experiment where the results of two groups are measured. Or in a sequenced design, where variables are applied then withdrawn from the same test units repeatedly to note the effects.

Is the difference between the mean of these groups (or the effects measured with and without the applied variable) large enough to say that the chance is very small (less than 5%) that this difference would have occurred from the existing variation among individual test units?

Random, Brian, is a concept. It is a way to deal mathematically with variation we can't yet fully measure or understand. It is just a measure of lack of focus, lack of measurement accuracy, in a universe where things tend to vary in a roughly predictable way. Random doesn't actually exist.

Popular urban myth gets it wrong all the time.

[Spence Tepper]

Brian, one more point, to address your specific identification of quantum mechanics.

Firstly, as explained earlier, measures of variation and "random" behavior are really science's resignation from areas they can't actually fully measure. Even forces we inadvertently apply in order to conduct our experiment and measure results....The uncertainty of our own effect on the experiment. That's an issue in many scientific fields.

Calculations and forecasts of "random variation" are work arounds so that the things we can measure can be tested in a background of variation we don't understand and can't entirely control, but which is systematic enough to account for and remove its effects on our test results.

And that is also the case with how Quantum Mechanics have been handled. The same probability that has served so well to mathematically identify invisible particles and forces, runs aground when a force applied to particle A, but not to B, happens to produce the same effect on both! Even when B is fully isolated from A. The only common variable is that they happen to exist at the same time.

This has led some theorists to simply hypthothesize that randomness must be part of the universe. That the effect must be the experiment itself, and the inability to eliminate that effect as we tighten down the measurement screws, must be some true randomness to the universe. It's just a resignation from areas we can't fully measure. It's calling the universe random because we can't get at it accurately enough. I call that "projection"!:)

But if you will examine the actual test results, you will see that in fact an effect is being produced on both particles by something in a way we cannot understand yet. Even when scientists attempt to force each particle to behave differently, but they don't! Heisenberg's uncertainty principle now becomes the basis for a model of the universe: Bell's Theorem extended to things way beyond its practical use.

So how do those particles change course, speed, and spin in the identical way under entirely isolated conditions? How do two objects in space approach each other all on their own without any known connection? Regardless of intervening barriers?

Just like Gravity!

And Time.

Hawking finally concluded there could be no big bang because, as you know, space and time are logarithmically correlated. The bigger the universe, the older. As space expands ever faster, like light spreading outward, expanding known space exponentially, time speeds up.

Therefore time could not have existed at the beginning, in a big bang scenario...How could there be a beginning without time?

So now Hawking proposes that events can occur without a cause, because there would have to be something before. And nothing can exist before time, right? It's a linear logic, Brian, that's all. Not yet informed.

One day science will learn that time exists and doesn't exist all in the same instance. One leaks in to the other. And when they do, they will have fresh support for Big Bang.

Superdeterminism? You bet!
All the evidence of science supports it.

[Brian Hines]

Spence, I used to consider that determinism ruled in the quantum world. It just made more sense to me. Now, though, I'm more open to the possibility that randomness rules.

Of course, as you implied, seemingly there has to be some meta-law that makes randomness rule. Which makes reality less random.

Regarding the big bang, several books I've read recently make the valid point that the supposed "singularity" of infinite energy/matter in zero space-time actually represents a breakdown of current scientific understanding.

Meaning, relativity theory can't handle the first instant of the big bang, so it pops up with infinities. However, in reality, the big bang might have been a moment of the very small, and within time, not the beginning of time.

So yes, science has a lot to learn about the beginning of our universe. The notion that the big bang repeats in a cyclic manner over a trillion years or so per cycle is gaining more appeal. This, of course, is akin to some Hindu ideas, which is interesting.

[777]

-
The big bang is an entity amongst many
Galaxies etc as well
nothing is without life

It exists because jeevas ( we ) wanted it
needed it

It offers some degenerated low vibration, un-pure , easy to pollute time_space environment

Any low IQ soul in human form really seeing that without a supervisor
would fall insane, collapse in a second
His IQ cells would just collaps

It amazingly offers the 7 Chakras structure, flabbergasting many higher IQ species around us

777