Every year we look forward to the Edge Annual Question, and as usual it’s a provocative one: “What scientific idea is ready for retirement?” Part of me agrees with Ian McEwan’s answer, which is to unask the question, and argue that nothing should be retired. Unasking is almost always the right response to questions that beg other questions, but there’s also an argument to be made in favor of playing along, so that’s what I did.
My answer was “Falsifiability.” More of a philosophical idea than a scientific one, but an idea that is bandied about by lazy scientists far more than it is invoked by careful philosophers. Thinking sensibly about the demarcation problem between science and non-science, especially these days, requires a bit more nuance than that.
Modern physics stretches into realms far removed from everyday experience, and sometimes the connection to experiment becomes tenuous at best. String theory and other approaches to quantum gravity involve phenomena that are likely to manifest themselves only at energies enormously higher than anything we have access to here on Earth. The cosmological multiverse and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics posit other realms that are impossible for us to access directly. Some scientists, leaning on Popper, have suggested that these theories are non-scientific because they are not falsifiable.
The truth is the opposite. Whether or not we can observe them directly, the entities involved in these theories are either real or they are not. Refusing to contemplate their possible existence on the grounds of some a priori principle, even though they might play a crucial role in how the world works, is as non-scientific as it gets.
I’m also partial to Alan Guth’s answer: “The universe began in a low-entropy state.” Of course we all know that our observable universe had a relatively low entropy at the Big Bang; Alan is making the point that the observable universe might not be the whole thing, and the Big Bang might not have been the beginning, so it’s completely possible that the universe as a whole was never in what one might call a “low-entropy” state. Instead, starting from a generic state, entropy could increase in both directions, leading to a two-sided arrow of time. This has been one of my favorite ideas for a while now, and Alan and I are writing a paper with Chien-Yao Tseng that examines toy models with such behavior.
Here are some other interesting/provocative answers, picked unsystematically out of over 100,000 words overall. Remember that the titles are what the person wants to retire, not something they’re in favor of.
- Danny Hillis, Cause and Effect.
- Daniel Dennett, The Hard Problem of Consciousness.
- Nina Jablonski, Race.
- Gary Marcus, Big Data.
- Steve Giddings, Spacetime.
- Buddhini Samarasinghe, Scientists Should Stick to Science.
- David Deutsch, Quantum Jumps.
- Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Science Makes Philosophy Obsolete.
- Scott Atran, IQ.
- Amanda Gefter, Andrei Linde, and Seth Lloyd all suggest that we get rid of the idea of a unique universe, each from a slightly different perspective. Sorry, universe: the tide is turning against you.
mpc755: you are exhausting everybody’s patience. Call it a day, please.
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“Myth and Metaphysics.
In his books Objective Knowledge and Conjectures and Refutations, Popper demonstrates brilliantly the roles of myth and metaphysics in the scientific enterprise. Myths represent our human need to expand the horizon of explanation and to find our place in the vast scheme of things. Emphasizing the importance of boldness of imagination in fulfilling this need, Popper suggests that Democritus’ early theory of atoms began as a myth born of a daring imagination.
Myths sometimes graduate to the status of metaphysics when subjected to sustained and rigorous criticism. Metaphysics is the work we do when we carry out comparative analysis of our cosmological myths and theories. It is our drive to eliminate inconsistencies, to broaden the scope of our explanations, and to provide depth of detail. If there are priests of myth who insist on perpetuating the myths without correction or revision, there are others among us who both subject the myths to criticism and offer rival theoretical explanations. Of late, the term metaphysics has been adopted and used to propagate the uncritical and highly anthropomorphic notions of pop culture. This is not the tradition of rigorous metaphysics of which Popper speaks.
Far from being meaningless, critical metaphysics and cosmology provide the cognitive background for the growth of scientific theory. Logical positivists failed to see that, without metaphysics to work upon and to refine, science would stagnate. In some ways, science is the metaphysics that succeeded in spawning bold theories which are not only well articulated and critically debated but also observably testable–and by testable, Popper means falsifiable.”
Joe Barnhart, American humanist (1920-1993)
http://www.evernote.com/shard/s3/sh/b69aec25-7693-413a-99cc-7a3b2abaae2d/724f6b3eddbd9968a4ff5fdd2fa0534b
As much as I admire Popper, let us not forget that he was a dualist “a la Cartessiane.” He did not believe that mind could be the product of matter. Let us keep Popper’s vision of how Science develops and the workings of scientists. His metaphysics have no scientific value, as they are not falsifiable. (Last comment is tongue in cheek.)
@Marcos
One theme of Popper’s output is evolutionary epistemology. Evolution is trial and error. From this perspective, mind emerges from matter but can hardly be reduced to matter. He is an interactionist.
I have returned to Popper’s name in my comments because falsifiability is one of his themes that has often been distorted in philosophy of science textbooks.
It is usually overlooked that there were at least six themes in his work. These are succinctly summarized in Rafe Champion’s “A Guide to the Logic of Scientific Discovery” (Kindle).
Yes, I notice the irony in your last sentence.
I’m reminded of Richard Feynman,” For those who want some proof that physicists are human, the proof is in the idiocy of all the different units which they use for measuring energy.”