The Way of Science: Finding Truth and Meaning in a Scientific Worldview - Brossura

Trumble, Dennis

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1616147555 ISBN 13: 9781616147556

Casa editrice: G38-Prometheus, 2013

Riassunto

How science can convey a profound sense of wonder, connectedness, and optimism about the human condition.

This book makes a compelling case that now more than ever the public at large needs to appreciate the critical-thinking tools that science has to offer and be educated in basic science literacy. The author emphasizes that the methods and facts of science are accessible to everyone, and that, contrary to popular belief, understanding science does not require extraordinary intelligence. He also notes that scientific rationality and critical thinking are not only good for our physical well-being but also are fully in sync with our highest moral codes. He illustrates the many ways in which the scientific worldview offers a profound sense of wonder, connectedness, and optimism about the human condition, an inspiring perspective that satisfies age-old spiritual aspirations.

At a time of daunting environmental challenges and rampant misinformation, this book provides a welcome corrective and reason to hope for the future.

Su questo libro

Informazioni sull'autore

Dennis R. Trumble (Pittsburgh, PA) is a project scientist in the Circulatory Support Laboratory and an adjunct professor of biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He is the holder of many patents for biomedical devices and has published numerous research articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Estratto. © Ristampato con autorizzazione. Tutti i diritti riservati.

THE WAY OF SCIENCE

Finding TRUTH AND MEANING in a Scientific Worldview

By DENNIS R. TRUMBLE

Prometheus Books

Copyright © 2013 Dennis R. Trumble
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-61614-755-6

Contents

PREFACE....................................................................
9
INTRODUCTION: TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES.......................................
17
PART 1. FROM SO SIMPLE A BEGINNING: EVOLUTION AND THE SCIENTIFIC PROCESS...
Chapter 1. The Dissent of Man..............................................
37
Chapter 2. A Grain in the Balance..........................................
53
Chapter 3. One Longsome Argument...........................................
69
Chapter 4. Grasping at Straws and Coming to Grips: How Science Really 
Works......................................................................
81
PART 2. SCIENCE FOR EVERYONE...............................................
Chapter 5. A Cause for Cerebration.........................................
103
Chapter 6. Canon Fodder....................................................
111
Chapter 7. Like Confessing a Murder........................................
127
Chapter 8. Estranged Bedfellows............................................
141
PART 3. TRANSCENDING FAITH.................................................
Chapter 9. A Crisis of Faith...............................................
155
Chapter 10. Faith: The Good, the Bad, and the Dogmatic.....................
173
Chapter 11. What God Hath Wrought..........................................
191
Chapter 12. Faith, Hope, and Parity........................................
213
PART 4. LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING.................................
Chapter 13. Framing the Big Picture........................................
235
Chapter 14. What Are the Odds?.............................................
253
Chapter 15. A Cause Céleste................................................
267
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION.....................................................
281
NOTES......................................................................
313
INDEX......................................................................
333

CHAPTER 1

THE DISSENT OF MAN

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give upevery preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever or whateverabysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing.

—Thomas H. Huxley, letter of reply toCharles Kingsley (September 23, 1860)

When you stop to think about it, the enormous body of knowledgethat we humans have come to appreciate in our brief stint onthis planet is really quite remarkable. Our species, Homo sapiens,having branched from our hominid lineage a mere two thousand centuries ago,has far outstripped the cognitive capacity of every other earthly life form that hasever existed. We alone have come to understand the immensity of the universe,the workings of the stars and planets, and the forces that drive the seasons andturn night into day. Only humankind has managed to grasp the nature of theelements, the unity of matter and energy, the activities of the cell, and the functionof the heart. These and countless other insights have, through the power ofobservation and reason, all become the exclusive province of the human mind.

Even more impressive is the stunning rapidity with which so many of nature'ssecrets have yielded to the ceaseless probings of humanity. Cave paintings andarchaeological artifacts aside, the whole of recorded human history spans a surprisinglyshort period of time—fewer than five thousand years. And yet thevast majority of human knowledge has accumulated over an era much brieferstill; a nascent epoch measured in mere centuries. Indeed, practically everythingwe've come to know about the natural world can be traced to the Renaissanceand the formal adoption of what is now known as the scientific method. Thisobjective approach to scientific inquiry, freed from the age-old compulsion toreconcile observation with preconceived worldviews, led quickly to the dissolutionof numerous long-established and firmly entrenched beliefs that had effectivelystymied scientific progress for nearly two thousand years. Chief amongthese doctrines were the geocentric astronomical system of Ptolemy and theAristotelian conception of gravity and motion. Once these tenacious tenetswere finally dispatched in the sixteenth century by the likes of Copernicus,Kepler, and Galileo, the flood gates were opened. As suddenly as the droppingof Sir Isaac's apple, the modern era of free scientific inquiry and technologicaladvancement had begun, promising to elevate humankind to heights scarcelyimagined—perhaps even to know the mind of God.

As one discovery led inexorably to the next, however, the underlyingassumptions that had buttressed our ancestors' views of creation since timeimmemorial came increasingly into doubt, creating a surge of societal angst thatlingers to this day. Being plucked from our celebrated position at the center ofthe universe was bad enough, but then to suffer the indignity of evolution! Theirony was piercing. It seemed the more enlightened we became, the more sanctifiedby intellect and reason, the further our status as unique, eternal beingswas undermined. Could it be that man, in truth, was simply the latest in a longline of ephemeral animal species culled from the primordial seas by the forcesof natural selection? Was it really possible that human beings, who had cometo dominate the Earth and its creatures so completely, were actually related tothese beasts?

To most people of the Victorian era this notion seemed perfectly absurdand, as such, was summarily dismissed as the idle ruminations of the academicfringe. To the scientific community, however, the body of evidence unearthed bythe diggings of one Charles Darwin was not so easily ignored. Indeed, the voluminousobservations that Darwin amassed in his 1859 opus The Origin of Specieshad clearly provided the best evidence to date that life in all its complexity hadevolved from simpler forms and that the forces of change were still at work. Butthat was the least of it. What really caused scientists to sit up and take notice wasthat Darwin had for the first time tied the evolutionary process to a scientificallyviable mechanism of biological adaptation—something he called "descent withmodification."

DARWIN'S DANGEROUS IDEA

Though the implications of Darwin's thesis were both provocative and farreaching, The Origin of Species might have emerged largely unnoticed beyondthe cloistered walls of academia had its author not already published a populartome on his Journal of Researches some two decades earlier. As it was, word thatDarwin was finally ready to publish his "big book on species" created somethingof a stir among the English book-buying public ... so much so, in fact, that theoriginal printing of 1,250 copies sold out to booksellers in a single day. Despiteits popular appeal, however—or perhaps because of it—a massive groundswellof resistance had already begun to take shape by the time the second editionwas released just six weeks later. If Darwin had hoped to forestall his detractorswith a surfeit of supporting evidence, he could harbor the fantasy no longer.The theory of evolution by means of natural selection, no matter how logical inconstruct or well supported by physical proof, was not about to go unchallenged.

Predictably, it was the clergy who spearheaded the backlash of opposition.But theirs were not the only voices raised in protest. Joining in the chorus werea goodly number of scientists who, for reasons known only to God, felt obligedto defend the long-standing supposition that all life forms had been created denovo in their present form. But to be fair, even the unchurched had every reasonto be skeptical at first. After all, in the 2,500-year-history of Western philosophicalthought, the fixity of species had scarcely been questioned, much less seriouslychallenged. Like begets like, that was the natural order among all livingthings. People beget people, swine beget swine, and tulips beget tulips—it wasthat obvious. And besides, unlike the ministerial dictates on celestial mechanicsthat had long stood in opposition to astronomical observations, there had neverbeen a compelling reason to doubt the teachings of the church in this regard.No one, for example, had ever witnessed a cow begetting anything but anothercow, and chicken eggs, when they hatched, never yielded anything apart froma chick. But perhaps more importantly, the idea of a perfect and unchangingnatural world had, by Darwin's time, become more than just a provincial beliefborne of cultural norms. It had also gained a large measure of scientific legitimacy,thanks to the 1735 publication of Systema Naturae, a seminal treatise onnatural order in which Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus introduced his schemefor classifying organisms according to their physical similarities, a scientific disciplineknown nowadays as taxonomy.

The Linnaean system, still the basis for most taxonomic classifications usedin biology today, was created under the explicit assumption that each class,order, family, and species of animal and plant in existence had remained unalteredsince the world was new. Although the facts now speak strongly againstthis hypothesis, from a scientific perspective this was a perfectly legitimate placefor the young Linnaeus to start, given the dearth of paleontologic (fossil) evidenceat his disposal and the complete lack of genetic, embryologic, and biochemicalclues available at the time. All in all, it was the kind of mistake thatgood scientists make all the time, and like all good scientists Linnaeus was notopposed to amending his hypotheses in deference to newfound facts. Indeed, asmore information slowly came to light, Carl von Linné (as he would later cometo be known) would ultimately abandon his original contention that specieswere fixed and would conclude instead that some—if not most—species hadarisen after the creation of the world through the process of hybridization. Hewas, after all, the first to propose that whales be grouped with cows, mice, andother quadrupeds. Still, as the son of a Lutheran minister, there were certainideological lines that Linnaeus was not prepared to cross; time-honored beliefsthat would ultimately blind him to the possibility that these changes might, infact, be an open-ended process devoid of divine direction.

But while Linnaeus's work did cast a long shadow over all those who followedin his wake, Darwin's dilemma did not stem from just one man's narrowinterpretation of an incomplete dataset. Linnaeus had simply advanced whatDarwin had reason to believe was a false hypothesis, and the dissolution of falsehypotheses is what ultimately pushes scientific knowledge forward. Linnaeushad done his part and Darwin was doing his, just as scientists were supposedto do. The problem was, the immutability of species was no ordinary hypothesis.This was a scientific paradigm with biblical backing; a theory that peoplevery much wanted to believe. Thus, contrary to the base principles of scientificinquiry, the "fixity of species" hypothesis had in the minds of many come toassume the mantle of essential truth—an unassailable tenet that stood beyondall questioning. As a consequence, Darwin found himself not merely challenginga long-standing scientific conjecture but casting doubt upon a cherishedarticle of faith. Pressing ahead meant that he would have to tread lightly andhave plenty of proof to back his claims.

As Darwin prepared to publish his thesis, he was very much aware of the maelstromhe was about to unleash, this despite the fact that biological evolution wasan idea that had already been bandied about for quite some time. The Greek philosopherAnaximander of Miletus (610–545 BCE) was among the first to broachthe subject, having deduced, quite correctly, that humans had evolved from fishlikeaquatic creatures that had somehow adapted to life on dry land. For reasonslost to history, however, his proposal never grew legs and was all but forgottenuntil the Italian Renaissance when philosopher Lucilio Vanini finally revived thenotion of human evolution in 1616, suggesting that humans descended from apes.Unfortunately, the revival was short-lived, as the outspoken theorist was burnedas a heretic just three years later. Still, despite this discomfiting reception, speculationconcerning the evolution of species persisted and was widely discussed—albeitdiscreetly—in scientific circles even as a young Charles Darwin set sail as anunpaid naturalist on the British survey ship H.M.S. Beagle in December of 1831.

Upon his return to England, Darwin's five years of field work studyingthe flora and fauna of Africa, South America, and the Galápagos archipelagoquickly coalesced into a singular insight of immense importance: namely, thatnatural selection was the driving force behind the evolution of all living things.It finally made sense: a random variant within a population would, in time,become more prevalent if environmental conditions were to favor that particularcharacteristic. An elongation of the beak, a thickening of the fur, a flap ofskin tucked between the toes, a bony protuberance here and there: just aboutany arbitrary nonconformity could do the trick under the right circumstances.Even the slightest competitive advantage might act to enhance survival, yieldmore offspring, and increase the prevalence of a particular trait among individualsof a species. And once a population had changed enough to become reproductivelyisolated from its progenitors, taxonomists would come to recognizethese individuals as members of a new and separate species, similar yet distinct.String enough of these speciation events together and only the faintest similaritieswould survive from one end of the chain to the other; a situation that, in theprescientific era, provided the perfect pretext for humans to distance themselvesfrom their animal kin.

At last, a self-consistent explanation for the evolution of species had beenpieced together from the shards of evidence available to pre-genomic scientists.But was the public ready to hear it? Reaction to the publication of Vestiges ofthe Natural History of Creation in 1844 suggested to Darwin that they mightnot be. Indeed, just as he was putting the finishing touches on a detailed sketchof his thesis, Vestiges author Robert Chambers had unwittingly given Darwin asobering glimpse at the kind of reception his ideas were likely to receive. Andit was quite an eyeful. Darwin could hardly help but notice the vitriol thatChambers had inspired with his suggestion that the Earth and its inhabitantshad not been created all at once but had instead evolved gradually through avast sequence of incremental changes. Although the author had cited evidenceboth copious and credible to support his conclusions, the idea that the creationprocess had taken considerably longer than biblical literalists had assumed didnot play well with traditionalist thinkers. But this was nothing compared to therighteous indignation that greeted Chambers's proposition that humankindhad, on a geological time scale, emerged quite recently as a transmutation ofthe great apes. Many people had taken this final assertion as a personal affrontand were not shy about voicing their displeasure. Fortunately, these were gentlertimes and no one had sought to put the author's feet to the fire—at least not inthe literal sense.

Still, it was easy to see why Chambers had chosen to publish Vestiges anonymously.It had taken more than a dozen generations for people to fully digestthe idea of an itinerant Earth circumnavigating its parent star, and by all indicationsmost folks had little appetite for a second course of scientific revelation,especially one so unpalatable as the evolution of species. So despite having a231-page treatise already in hand—a landmark essay that explained how naturalselection might act to cull new species from existing varieties—Darwin hesitated.For better or worse the stormy politics of evolution had stayed his hand,redoubling his want to test every aspect of natural selection to the greatest possibleextent before releasing his findings to a vexed and volatile public. This combinationof diligence and trepidation had proved so viscous a mix, in fact, that itwould ultimately prevent Darwin from publishing his theory for another fifteenyears. Until, that is, he received a parcel from Alfred Russel Wallace.

GREAT MINDS ...

For ten years prior, Wallace had worked in the Amazon and Malay archipelagoas a collector of exotic specimens for European buyers and in the course of histravels had ample opportunity to study the stunning variety of flora and faunato be found there. He, like Darwin, had harbored a long-standing interest in thecauses of organic evolution and had surmised in a sudden flash of recognitionthat the proliferation of plants and animals might very well operate underprinciples that parallel the economic checks and balances described by ThomasMalthus in his Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). Like a bolt out of theblue, both men were struck by Malthus's observation that plants and animalsnaturally produce far more offspring than can possibly survive and thus createintense competition among siblings for limited resources. This singular insight,in concert with emerging geological evidence that spoke to the immense age ofthe Earth, raised the prospect that the tremendous diversity of modern speciesmight, in fact, be the residue of innumerous varieties struggling over untold eonsto survive amid shifting environmental conditions.

Excited over his breakthrough, which had come to him in dramatic fashionduring a two-week bout with malaria, Wallace wasted little time. As soon as hewas well enough, Wallace penned a brief essay on what he called the "progressionand continued divergence of varieties from their parent species" and sent it offto Darwin, a man he knew through prior correspondence to be interested in"the species question." With it he included a brief note asking Darwin to reviewthe manuscript and, if he thought it worthy, forward it to Charles Lyell, whosePrinciples of Geology had also figured prominently in his thinking.

Darwin was stunned. Wallace had summarized his 1844 essay with suchprecision that he could scarcely imagine writing a better outline himself. Thesimilarities were indeed uncanny, and though on some level Darwin must havebeen pleased to receive so clear an affirmation of his secreted theory, he wasunderstandably pained to surrender ownership of his life's work and agonizedover what to do next. True to his patrician upbringing, Darwin's first impulsewas to stand aside and cede priority to Wallace, who, despite having starteda distant second, was obviously prepared to publish first. On the other hand,Charles Lyell and botanist Joseph Hooker had for years urged Darwin to makepublic a sketch of his original essay and were resolute in their insistence thatDarwin should now issue an abstract of his own to preserve the precedence thatwas rightfully his. Still, Darwin worried that doing so might seem petty andunderhanded given the circumstances, writing to Lyell in a letter dated June 25:"I shd be extremely glad now to publish a sketch of my general views in about adozen pages or so. But I cannot persuade myself that I can do so honorably.... Iwould far rather burn my whole book than that he or any man shd think that I hadbehaved in a paltry spirit."

For Darwin, however, the issue of precedence would soon be eclipsed bymore pressing concerns, as his infant son Charles—not yet nineteen monthsold—had recently taken ill with scarlet fever and was growing sicker by the day.Knowing that several children in the village of Downe had already died in thewake of the contagion, Darwin was consumed with worry and could think oflittle else, confessing to Hooker that under the circumstances it was "miserablein [him] to care at all about priority." Conflicted and heartsick, Darwin soonlost all interest in what now seemed to him a trifling affair and was content tohave his "two best & kindest friends" settle the matter in whatever way theythought fair.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from THE WAY OF SCIENCE by DENNIS R. TRUMBLE. Copyright © 2013 Dennis R. Trumble. Excerpted by permission of Prometheus Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: G38-Prometheus
• Data di pubblicazione: 2013
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1616147555
• ISBN 13: 9781616147556
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 354
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Germania