Chris Zell wrote:
I am NOT being critical of your efforts or anyone else in trying to
promote acceptance.
I got that. I knew you were not.
My point is, why should you be "nauseated by the fact that such is
deemed necessary"? Public relations ploys have always been a
necessary part of science. Right from the very start, when Galileo
botched the "sale" of telescope and then blamed the "customer" (the
Cardinals). Actually, he soon got it right, and scored a big public
relations coup, and was rewarded with a lavish government defense
contract to provide an instrument that was obsolete a few years
later, and worthless. (It was to provide a telescope for the
military, for harbor defense.)
Public relations and politics are human nature. We cannot transcend
them. Why should you be "nauseated" by something that has always has
been an integral part of life. It is a bit like being nauseated by
sex, if you don't mind me saying. Icky it may be, this is what people
and other primates do.
. . . things have drifted into a sterile orthodoxy dominated by
scientific hierarchs.
Well, it is rather depressing, but there was never a time in the
history of science when it was not dominated by sterile orthodoxy
dominated by scientific hierarchy. You should not look back at some
mythical golden era when this was not the case.
I will grant, the problem is probably somewhat worse today than it
has been on average. We are at a low ebb. But this has always been
the situation in science, and in other institutions such as
education, banking, fine arts, computer programming, warfare and
others. There are short periods when novelty and unorthodox methods
flourish, but stasis then returns. For example, in fine arts the
Impressionist period lasted from the 1860s to the 1880s. Before and
after that lie decades of Sterile Boring Uninspired Imitative
Paintings. In physics, Newton introduced a revolution of course, but
it was soon converted to orthodoxy and remained unquestioned until
the late 19th century. A revolution then came, but the fundamentals
were settled by the late 1930s. Within the bounds of these settled
orthodoxies tremendous progress was made. But people such as
Arrhenius or Fleischmann, who wanted to introduce fundamental new
ideas and disruptive discoveries invariably get the bum's rush.
Scientists imagine that they are open minded and more willing to look
at novel ideas than other people, but history shows that is untrue.
It is a shame, but that's how things are. They muddle through anyway.
The institution might work better if they would try living up to the
open-minded ideals they endorse in the textbooks. Maybe. Who knows?
It might actually cause more problems. It has never been tried. There
is not 1 in 100 scientists who actually do what they are supposed to
do, for example, by honoring the replicated experiment above theory.
Scientists who do this are so rare they are called out and made
examples of, cited in textbooks, and approved of with tearful
acclamation (seriously!). They are treated as heros if they manage to
survive, that is. First, as we all know, they are treated as
villains, bums and lunatics. Read biographies or an honestly written
history of science, and you will see that pattern repeated over and
over again, in every era, in every field.
- Jed
