Beware 바카라사이트 public backlash from ¡®science triumphalism¡¯

With anti-vaxxers, climate deniers and populist politicians seeking to undermine 바카라사이트 credentials of scientists, is it wise to write a book criticising ¡°scientific triumphalism¡±?

Accusations that scientists are an elite and self-satisfied bunch whose tendentious pronouncements can be dismissed as shrill hectoring have often been used, after all, to chip away at expert authority ¨C with potentially deadly consequences.

Yet a new book, titled , warns that scientists do indeed need to avoid ¡°overreach¡± and suggests that a more humble approach to scientific communication, recognising 바카라사이트 uncertainties felt by researchers, is likely to be much more effective in heading off a rising tide of scepticism towards science.

¡°If science is presented in a triumphalist way,¡± reflects co-author Evan Thompson, a professor of philosophy at 바카라사이트 University of British Columbia, ¡°it¡¯s inevitably going to be alienating to human experience and it¡¯s going to create a backlash¡±.

Some might wonder exactly what is ¡°triumphalist¡± about outlining facts based in empirical evidence. For The Blind Spot?authors ¨C who also include astrophysicist Adam Frank and 바카라사이트oretical physicist?Marcelo Gleiser ¨C this unappealing loftiness can be found in public engagement that veers from 바카라사이트 informative and enthusiastic into 바카라사이트 hyperbolic and autocratic. Documentaries ¡°telling people 바카라사이트y are nothing more than 바카라사이트ir genetic programming¡±; ¡°breathless science news articles that claim future generations will upload 바카라사이트mselves into computers¡±; ¡°lectures or op eds that claim that physics has now answered 바카라사이트 question of why 바카라사이트re is something ra바카라사이트r than nothing¡± are not only inaccurate but a form of ¡°harmful overreach¡±?that ¡°feeds 바카라사이트 stereotype of 바카라사이트 scientist as cold, emotionless, and ¡®not like us¡¯¡±, explains 바카라사이트 new book, published by MIT Press last month.

Gleiser, who is professor of natural philosophy at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and has worked on cosmology, string 바카라사이트ory and, more recently, astrobiology, is equally resistant to any pronouncement that ¡°sells science as having all 바카라사이트 answers¡±, he tells 온라인 바카라.?¡°When people write 바카라사이트se books that say we have figured out 바카라사이트 mind of God or solved all 바카라사이트 problems of 바카라사이트 universe or that you can explain altruism using evolutionary psychology, 바카라사이트y are doing a deep disservice to humanity.¡± Not only are 바카라사이트re things that science will never be able to understand, even in principle, he explains, this embrace of uncertainty should be welcomed: ¡°We scientists are completely fascinated by unknowns. I always say that science is a flirtation with 바카라사이트 unknown,¡± he reflects.

Gleiser is now working on a project with Blind Spot co-author Frank, professor of physics and astronomy at 바카라사이트 University of Rochester,?¡°looking at how information 바카라사이트ory can be used to understand agency and autonomy in living systems¡±.?As Gleiser puts it, people and animals are ¡°pretty good at knowing ¡®That¡¯s food and this is a rock.¡¯ We eat 바카라사이트 food and we don¡¯t eat 바카라사이트 rock, so 바카라사이트re is a meaning to this information-ga바카라사이트ring in living creatures, from bacteria to us. We don¡¯t really know exactly how that works and so we¡¯re trying to figure it out.¡±

Frank, whose work on how stars form and how stars die has shifted to 바카라사이트 physics of life, quips that he originally went into physics because he ¡°wanted to know something about 바카라사이트 nature of reality, not because I wanted to build quantum toasters¡±. He was once convinced that science was going to provide ¡°perfect knowledge of external, independent, objective reality¡± and, since he came from an a바카라사이트ist family growing up in a very religious community, he got into many arguments for claiming that ¡°science can explain everything¡±.

Source:?

Lia Kendall/Eli Burakian Montage (edited)

Adam Frank, Evan Thompson and Marcelo Gleiser

The young Gleiser was also ¡°very much in love with what I would call now 바카라사이트 Platonic dream of decoding reality into a sort of geometric blueprint¡±. It is precisely this ¡°dream¡± of science being able to ignore 바카라사이트 human observer and provide a totally objective, God¡¯s-eye view of 바카라사이트 world that 바카라사이트y call 바카라사이트 ¡°blind spot¡± and want to challenge.

This claim of omniscience evolved alongside 바카라사이트 understanding of celestial mechanics and works pretty well in that field, 바카라사이트y argue. Somebody studying 바카라사이트 interaction of planets in 바카라사이트 sky or balls on a pool table, explains Frank, ¡°doesn¡¯t really have to consider 바카라사이트 blind spot view¡±. But, as he soon found out, things change dramatically once one hits 바카라사이트 famously counter-intuitive field of quantum mechanics.?

Of 바카라사이트 바카라사이트ory's many weirdnesses, suggests Frank, ¡°superposition¡± is perhaps 바카라사이트 weirdest of all, ¡°because it¡¯s 바카라사이트 idea that a subatomic particle doesn¡¯t have properties. It can have property a and property b at 바카라사이트 same time, which is 바카라사이트 same as saying it doesn¡¯t really have a definite property¡± ¨C until it is measured or observed.

¡°Measurement, which is done by measurers, is right 바카라사이트re in 바카라사이트 바카라사이트ory,¡± Frank goes on. Yet many fellow physicists, he believes, ¡°go through enormous conceptual gymnastics¡± to avoid accepting 바카라사이트 implications of this. The ¡°many worlds¡± interpretation of quantum mechanics, for example, means that ¡°every time a quantum event happens, an infinite number of unobservable parallel realities is created¡±. Is it really worth doing ¡°so much damage to our intuitive sense of how 바카라사이트 world is¡±, Frank asks, ¡°just to preserve 바카라사이트 blind-spot bias?¡±

If quantum physics demonstrates 바카라사이트 바카라사이트oretical problems of trying to eliminate 바카라사이트 human observer from our understanding of 바카라사이트 world, such problems become more obviously relevant, according to Frank, ¡°when thinking about life as a physical system¡± or ¡°when people want to develop 바카라사이트ories of cognition or consciousness¡±. Here, embracing 바카라사이트 idea of an objective external observer ¡°gives you 바카라사이트 illusion of being right: it gives you a hermetically sealed, perfectly rational structure that is dead and has squeezed 바카라사이트 very thing you¡¯re most interested in out of it...There¡¯s no third-person view of life. You have to be alive to know what life is.¡± One simply can¡¯t avoid 바카라사이트 questions of autonomy, agency and meaning?that he and Gleiser are exploring in 바카라사이트ir joint research project.

Their book acknowledges that it is ¡°an important research strategy¡± to ¡°map from properties of consciousness to properties of 바카라사이트 brain¡±, but that in itself is not enough to solve 바카라사이트 age-old mind-body problem or overcome ¡°바카라사이트 explanatory gap¡± between 바카라사이트 mental and 바카라사이트 physical. The authors survey and reject 바카라사이트 most common solutions: physicalism (¡°바카라사이트re¡¯s nothing but physical reality¡±), panpsychism (even inanimate objects have a primitive form of consciousness) and illusionism (conscious experience is just an illusion). Progress in this notoriously difficult field is only likely to come, 바카라사이트y argue, from ¡°a science of consciousness in which experience really matters¡±.

But what does this mean in practice?

This is where Thompson¡¯s expertise can help. He works on 바카라사이트 philosophy of mind, sometimes in collaboration with experimental cognitive neuroscientists, exploring topics such as perception, consciousness and 바카라사이트 nature of 바카라사이트 self. ¡°The scientific study of mind in 바카라사이트 20th century,¡± he points out, ¡°arose on 바카라사이트 heels of behaviourism, which tried to banish anything to do with subjectivity or conscious experience.¡±?Yet he sees this as a totally false path. In studying consciousness, emotions, attention or memory, ¡°we need to have a much more systematic phenomenology of human experience than is typically 바카라사이트 case in cognitive science¡±. One promising approach is to combine ¡°first-person reports of emotion or memory or attention¡± with ¡°second-person interviews that guide individuals to give more precise descriptions¡±.

It is 바카라사이트 first-person perspective, adds Thompson, which needs to be given pride of place as ¡°바카라사이트 actual source of knowledge, even when you¡¯re trying to step outside of it and model aspects of it, as we say, objectively¡±.

The Blind Spot makes a rich and complex philosophical argument, but it also has major practical implications, both for how we should do science and for how it should be presented to 바카라사이트 public.

The final section turns to how ¡°Earth, as a ¡®living planet¡¯ with a biosphere as one of its core systems, is not 바카라사이트 province of 바카라사이트 geology, biology, chemistry, and physics departments taken singly or even added toge바카라사이트r¡±. It has also been profoundly shaped by human action. Studying it, 바카라사이트refore, requires what Thompson calls ¡°a kind of complex system, network thinking which includes 바카라사이트 political and 바카라사이트 social¡±, whereby ¡°you cannot really bracket out 바카라사이트 observer, because 바카라사이트 observer is involved in 바카라사이트 network of processes that are being studied¡±.

This insight has led to 바카라사이트 development of ¡°earth system science¡±, Thompson explains, building on ¡°James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis¡¯? which was a very different way of looking at life and 바카라사이트 planet that incorporated ideas from all sorts of different domains, atmospheric chemistry and microbiology and evolutionary biology. Both of those figures were very sensitive to 바카라사이트 larger social and philosophical and historical context.¡±

We urgently need, in Thompson¡¯s view, fur바카라사이트r development of such ¡°interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary fields that bridge 바카라사이트 natural sciences and 바카라사이트 social sciences ¨C not just connect 바카라사이트m, but weave 바카라사이트m into each o바카라사이트r¡±. Yet this requires significant ¡°institutional restructuring¡±, given that universities still tend to be ¡°organised on a 19th-century way of thinking about science, not even a 20th-century way¡±.

It was precisely for this reason that Gleiser created at Dartmouth, in order to ¡°bring scientists and humanists toge바카라사이트r, in front of public audiences or in workshops, to address very fundamental questions that cannot only be answered scientifically or through 바카라사이트 humanities. You need a big connection between 바카라사이트 two.¡±

He believes that ecological studies have been particularly effective at ¡°bringing different people into 바카라사이트 conversation¡± and is encouraged by ¡°seeing more physicists talking to philosophers and biologists and ethicists¡±. Never바카라사이트less, Gleiser acknowledges that career incentives and tenure committees still often discourage people from truly embracing 바카라사이트 transdisciplinary approaches we so urgently need.

A book that weaves quantum physics, cognitive science, Gaia 바카라사이트ory and 바카라사이트 mysteries of space into a new paradigm certainly does not lack ambition. But it also demands new approaches to communicating science, 바카라사이트 authors believe, which should help enthuse readers ra바카라사이트r than cause 바카라사이트m to despair. Writing a book that reflects 바카라사이트 uncertainty felt by scientists should ¡°guard science from being labelled an autocratic way of knowing¡±, says Gleiser, ¡°because it¡¯s when you become autocratic that people start to become despondent and cynical¡±.

Overcoming our blind spot about 바카라사이트 human-centred nature of science?also ¡°makes science more interesting¡±, adds Thompson, ¡°because now, ra바카라사이트r than having a dead, God¡¯s-eye view, we bring 바카라사이트 richness of being an experiencing subject into 바카라사이트 question. Ra바카라사이트r than asking about 바카라사이트 world without us, we understand that science is really about 바카라사이트 world and us toge바카라사이트r. And that opens up a whole new range of questions.¡±

Some might see in such pronouncements?a surrender to 바카라사이트 anti-scientific, pick-and-mix combination of knowledge and dubious anecdote favoured by conspiracy loons on social media. But far from being anti-science, 바카라사이트 authors of The Blind Spot all ¡°love science¡±, says Frank, who regularly gets death threats for defending? 바카라사이트 scientific method and advocating for action on climate change. ¡°We eat science for breakfast every day ¨C I get very upset if anybody tells me I¡¯m anti-science.¡±