Mao House Science
How science fails to live up to its own hype.
Geoffrey Hamilton
Blog, May 23, 2006
Two situations help explain the folly of science as its
'reality' is claimed to be. A new TV show called House and an historical era during Mao's reign
offer two aspects on the same hype regarding the norms in science.
House is a Fox TV drama on
how doctoring is really just about using educated guess work.
In last week's episode every treatment failed (again) so Dr. House concluded (in effect (from my memory)), 'We use
sound scientific premises, make reasonable hypothesis, rational diagnosis, test every
theory with experiments and properly treat the proven disease and we still put the
patient on the verge of death. There must be something wrong with the scientific method.' (Great writers.)
As is usual in this character's dialogue he hits on something left unquestioned in the
real world : why is science so often wrong and simian trial
and error always so necessary?
Then there are those like Mao Tse-tung who not only trust science and scientists
to answer every problem and treat every ill, but they do so by faith in 'scientific logic'.
Mao, on the recommendations of 'science' took his
Great Leap Forward
and killed not just one patient but thirty million. He did this even though Stalin reaped horrible
results during his own similar, earlier experiment, and other Soviet leaders warned
Mao it was a mistake even to attempt it.
What is it about science that misses so much about reality? There could be
a couple of related reasons. The abuse of logic is one.
As many others have noted over the centuries logic has no relation to reality.
Logic is a set of rules superimposed on any situation. Math is a special kind
of logic that is an extreme formalism. It is far from being the language of the
universe, but, if you decide to measure the universe with
math, your game may satisfy your mind. That's all math does. It is there to fit into the games
we need and want to play.
But what happens when any logic, math included, is taken as some absolute universal hidden
code is that we forget what game we are playing at that moment and we see much more in our results then is
organically there. Such is the case with our two curmudgeons.
Both Mao and House are pursuing a game of saving the patient, both
see an avenue that could work, both look for justification to take that avenue, both find
justification to go on that avenue despite impediments, and finally both fail miserably in the stated
goal of saving the patient. Both are logical, scientific and right, so why do they fail?
There is never a correct path, even in science. The path taken is always arbitrary. No
math formula can change that. There are thousands of paths to
success and even more to failure and there are no
organic goals that define success in the first place, so every decision can be nothing but
completley arbitrary. No reasoning or logic can get around this. Mao and House didn't realize this
so were surprised when they failed.
Another abuse of science is the distancing some practitioners do from failures. They calls scientists
who make mistakes 'quacks' as though fraud was the goal. Most times these 'quacks' are using the same intelligence,
techniques and methods and are as honest as their colleagues. What is more important
here is that the abusive term
is meant to create the impression that real science finds absolute objective logical truths
and failures must be therefore unscientific - by definition almost. The result is that those scientists
who do tread down the primrose path of failure, but who maintain the us (scientists) versus them (quacks) mentality,
will treat their own logical stupidities as illuminations and useful because they themselves are the scientific
ones and that is enough.
Mao and his backers in the scientific community are called quacks and murderers now
because they failed, but they were essentially no different than any successful team you wish to mention
except that they played the same game differently in time and place. House played his game exactly as most scientists
would have and he failed too and that kind of thing happens everyday.
Trial and error saved the day though, for both House
and Mao. Eventually, the most rudimentary method is the best one. From parrot, to fish, to monkey,
to scientist, trial and error is what gets the job done.
Gh
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