The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World Read Online Free PDF

Aim of Science
(1983)
    Experimental testing involves many prior explanations in addition to the ones being tested, such as theories of how measuring instruments work. The refutation of a scientific theory has, from the point of view of someone who expected it to be true, the same logic as a conjuring trick – the only difference being that a conjurer does not normally have access to unknown laws of nature to make a trick work.
    Since theories can contradict each other, but there are no contradictions in reality, every problem signals that our knowledge must be flawed or inadequate. Our misconception could be about the reality we are observing, or about how our perceptions are related to it, or both. For instance, a conjuring trick presents us with a problem only because we have misconceptions about what ‘must’ be happening – which implies that the knowledge that we used to interpret what we were seeing is defective. To an expert steeped in conjuring lore, it may be obvious what is happening – even if the expert did not observe the trick at all but merely heard a misleading account of it from a person who was fooled by it. This is another general fact about scientific explanation: if one has a misconception, observations that conflict with one’s expectations may (or may not) spur one into making further conjectures, but no amount of observing will
correct
the misconception until after one has thought of a better idea; in contrast, if one has the right idea one can explain the phenomenon even if there are large errors in the data. Again, the very term ‘data’ (‘givens’) is misleading. Amending the ‘data’, or rejecting some as erroneous, is a frequent concomitant of scientific discovery, and the crucial ‘data’ cannot even be obtained until theory tells us what to look for and how and why.
    A new conjuring trick is never totally unrelated to existing tricks. Like a new scientific theory, it is formed by creatively modifying, rearranging and combining the ideas from existing tricks. It requirespre-existing knowledge of how objects work and how audiences work, as well as how existing tricks work. So where did the earliest conjuring tricks come from? They must have been modifications of ideas that were not originally conjuring tricks – for instance, ideas for hiding objects in earnest. Similarly, where did the first scientific ideas come from? Before there was science there were rules of thumb, and explanatory assumptions, and myths. So there was plenty of raw material for criticism, conjecture and experiment to work with. Before that, there were our inborn assumptions and expectations: we are born with ideas, and with the ability to make progress by changing them. And there were patterns of cultural behaviour – about which I shall say more in Chapter 15 .
    But even
testable, explanatory theories
cannot be the crucial ingredient that made the difference between no-progress and progress. For they, too, have always been common. Consider, for example, the ancient Greek myth for explaining the annual onset of winter. Long ago, Hades, god of the underworld, kidnapped and raped Persephone, goddess of spring. Then Persephone’s mother, Demeter, goddess of the earth and agriculture, negotiated a contract for her daughter’s release, which specified that Persephone would marry Hades and eat a magic seed that would compel her to visit him once a year thereafter. Whenever Persephone was away fulfilling this obligation, Demeter became sad and would command the world to become cold and bleak so that nothing could grow.
    That myth, though comprehensively false, does constitute an explanation of seasons: it is a claim about the reality that brings about our experience of winter. It is also eminently testable: if the cause of winter is Demeter’s periodic sadness, then winter must happen everywhere on Earth at the same time. Therefore, if the ancient Greeks had known that a warm growing season occurs in Australia at