Painting in a cave
I wrote these lines longhand, in an old tattered journal, as I do most of my blog pieces. It’s a hopelessly anachronistic practice, and rather inefficient: I still have to type my piece into the computer, of course. I suppose I stick to writing longhand because it slows my brain down, makes me think through each word. Besides, there’s something pleasant about the slowness- most sensual things are slow. Bright Eyes once compared writing on a typewriter to painting in a cave, which I suppose means I’m fingerprinting in a cave.
This curious conservatism of mine is mirrored by a methodological conservatism that all scientists share. We all believe that there are objective facts that describe a world that really exists, and that careful study of that world can teach us them. There is a hodgepodge of techniques called the scientific method that are useful rules of thumb for defining “careful study,” but the methods we use do change slowly over time. Interestingly, scientists tend to distrust skillful rhetoric- what matters is the truth content of a particular scientific theory. To be a scientist, in the ideal sense, is to be willing to abandon a theory if the evidence suggests it is necessary. Theories come and go, but the belief in an objective world and the scientific method continues.
It struck me recently that much current political debate in the US has just the opposite sort of conservatism. Certain important theories are held to always be true. Witness, for example, some conservatives’ insistence that the invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do. Similarly, some liberals continue to insist that democracy is necessary for economic growth (the empirical evidence suggests that the contrary is true). No amount of facts will convince people to abandon these sorts of theories. This sort of thing has always been around society. Still, it seems to have gotten measurable worse recently: witness a Bush administration officials statement that “We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality,” and the popularity of the satirical word “truthiness.” Through it all we scientists dream of a return to rationality, to some basic Enlightenment ideals. We are modernists, through and through, and find ourselves uncomfortably old-fashioned for being modern.
This curious conservatism of mine is mirrored by a methodological conservatism that all scientists share. We all believe that there are objective facts that describe a world that really exists, and that careful study of that world can teach us them. There is a hodgepodge of techniques called the scientific method that are useful rules of thumb for defining “careful study,” but the methods we use do change slowly over time. Interestingly, scientists tend to distrust skillful rhetoric- what matters is the truth content of a particular scientific theory. To be a scientist, in the ideal sense, is to be willing to abandon a theory if the evidence suggests it is necessary. Theories come and go, but the belief in an objective world and the scientific method continues.
It struck me recently that much current political debate in the US has just the opposite sort of conservatism. Certain important theories are held to always be true. Witness, for example, some conservatives’ insistence that the invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do. Similarly, some liberals continue to insist that democracy is necessary for economic growth (the empirical evidence suggests that the contrary is true). No amount of facts will convince people to abandon these sorts of theories. This sort of thing has always been around society. Still, it seems to have gotten measurable worse recently: witness a Bush administration officials statement that “We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality,” and the popularity of the satirical word “truthiness.” Through it all we scientists dream of a return to rationality, to some basic Enlightenment ideals. We are modernists, through and through, and find ourselves uncomfortably old-fashioned for being modern.
