Certainty as the Nemesis of science
Keith S. Taber
My library is in desperate need of some sorting and tidying, but I have a tendency, when entering in there and picking up a book I've not looked at for while, to dip into it rather than get organising.
So it was that I found myself re-reading the Introduction to Richard Muller's (1988) book 'Nemesis: The Death Star'. I presumably do not need to describe the book as it is so widely read (😉 see below) 1, but the Introduction was by Muller's colleague and former research supervisor Luis Alverez – a Nobel Prize winning physicist. He died the same year that Nemesis was published, so this was probably one of his last pieces of writing about science.
A claim that cannot be taken at face vlaue
In the introduction, Alverez suggests that,
"I am convinced that every student of physics will read and reread Nemesis several times, learning important lessons on each occasion, as well as having a wonderful time."
Alverez, 1988, p.xi
Now I struggle with this kind of claim.
Richard Muller's book 'Nemesis The Death Star' – has this been read and reread by every student of physics since 1988?
I have admitted here before to being rather pedantic, and although it's never been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, I recognise I do share some of the common traits – including a tendency to focus on literal meanings. (Perhaps that explains my regular exploration of scientific metaphors and the like on this site).
Clearly, Alverez thinks very highly of Muller, and the work reported is related to some of his own research, so there might be some quite understandable personal bias here. I am also prepared to be charitable, and read 'every student of physics' to only refer to those majoring in physics at university level rather than anyone taking a physics course.
Even so, I find this an extraordinary thing to write.
Now, I was recently asked to write something about a book I had been sent in manuscript and was quite happy to suggest that the book (on a critical but generally under-examined theme) should be required reading for all future science educators. But that is surely different: the kind of difference to be drawn between the claims:
- all good citizens should pay their due taxes
- all citizens do pay their due taxes
Alverez was not only suggesting that he thought all physics students would benefit from the book, but was apparently making a prediction, moreover a 'confident' prediction, that all future physics students would read the book (at least twice!) and enjoy it. The likelihood of that must have surely seemed infinitesimally small!
Had this been part of the cover blurb, I might have suspected the publisher had taken liberties with the text (which should not surprise me as publishers now seem to regularly issue contracts asking authors for the right to change their scholarly text in any way that suits them). I had wondered if that had happened, for example, when I read on the cover of a book on evolution the author's claim that today everyone accepts Darwin's theory.2 But Alverez was not writing an endorsement, but a part of the book itself. (This was not even a Foreword – but the actual Introduction to the book.)
I can only understand Alverez's claim if I understand it as a piece of rhetoric, indeed hyperbole – surely the author could not possibly really think that henceforth every physics student was going to read and reread this book about one specialised programme of research (and which was very unlikely to be directly relevant to the assignments and examinations that would given them course credit) no mater how interesting it might be? Surely, rather, he was just communicating via rhetoric that the book was so worthy of attention that in his view it would justify such a broad readership.
What's wrong with rhetoric?
I see this as an issue worth raising because (a) the statement is a knowledge claim and (b) the claim was made by a scientist in the context of part of a book reporting scientific work.
Yet it is in the nature of scientific knowledge that it is theoretical, and, strictly, provisional (always open to be revisited in the light of new evidence or ways of interpreting evidence) – and therefore scientific knowledge claims should reflect this, and not be absolute.
Read about the nature of scientific knowledge
This is one way that some accounts of science that appear in the news and other media distort the nature of science (and usually the original reports of that science as presented in research journals) by suggesting scientists have made discoveries that definitively prove some idea or other and reflect certain, absolute, knowledge
Read about scientific certainty in the media
Alverez's claim is absolute: all physics students WILL read and re-read this book.
I am not suggesting that there is no place for rhetoric in science. Scientific claims are presented in formal research reports which are organised to make an argument for the claims being presented. They are rhetorical.
Read about rhetoric in science writing
But, even if scientific claims are structured rhetorically in order to make a case, they still need to be measured, and honest, and – if they are to be considered scientific – suitably provisional.
This was perhaps [sic] exemplified when Crick and Watson, reporting what was arguably [sic] one of the most important scientific discoveries of the twentieth, if not all, centuries, pointed out that
"It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material."
Watson & Crick, 1953
They did not suggest that
"our model of D.N.A. structure definitely provides the mechanism by which genetic material IS copied and is without doubt the basis of heredity".
Counterfactual: what Crick and Watson did not publish in Nature
So, rhetoric is important in science – scientists need the ability to present a best case for the argument being made so that other scientists can readily appreciate the logic of, and strength of, some new claim. However, hyperbole involves making such extreme exaggerations that they are not expected to be taken literally, and surely has no place in scientific writing. When a scientist make an absolutist claim (e.g., "every student of physics will read and reread Nemesis several times [and have a] wonderful time") other scientists know this cannot be seen as an authentic scientific claim, and so are likely to simply disregard it as something which cannot be interpreted sensibly within the context of scientific discourse.
Sources cited
- Alvarez, L. W. (1988). Introduction. In Nemesis: The Death Star. The story of a scientific revolution (pp. xi-xiii). Guild Publishing.
- Watson, J. D., & Crick, F. H. C. (1953). Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid. Nature, 171(4356), 737-738.
- Muller, R. (1988). Nemesis: The Death Star. The story of a scientific revolution. Guild Publishing.
- Eldredge, N. (1995). Reinventing Darwin: The great evolutionary debate. Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Note:
1 Just in case anyone has not read the book, it describes a theory that the earth is subject to regular mass extinction events due to the effect of a planet (Nemesis) with such a large and eccentric orbit that it only comes near the sun once every 26 million years. The publisher tells readers that
"…the Nemesis hypothesis has established itself as the only viable scientific theory to explain a bewildering variety of phenomena in fields ranging from geology to astronomy to palaeontology…"
but then the editor responsible for this claim has presumably NOT won a physics Nobel prize.
(Image by Bela Geletneky from Pixabay)
2 The back cover of 'Reinventing Darwin' (Eldredge, 1995) tells potential readers that,
"No one doubts that Darwin's theory of Evolution by Natural Selection is correct."
No matter how much one recognises natural selection and Neodarwinism as the consensus view, the present paradigm, in the scientific community, it is difficult to believe that any person on earth who has taken any interest in the matter is not aware that there are large numbers of people (albeit, only a small proportion of practising scientists) who not only 'doubt' Darwin was correct but, in many cases, are strongly committed to the idea that he was completely wrong!