Mar 22, 2021 09:29 PM
REVIEW: On The Fringe, by Michael D. Gordin
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/why-...mplicated/
EXCERPTS: . . . It can be very tempting, from our contemporary vantage point, to try to tease apart the commendable from the seemingly absurd results above; to applaud the realization that oranges could work against scurvy while condemning the thought that sparkling water might; to sort, in short, the scientific silver from the seemingly unscientific dross. And yet, as the contemporary plaudits and awards indicate, “experts” at the time would not have made the same decisions.
Nor is it likely that methodological distinctions will help us much. Precisely the same methods, and precisely the same leaps of brilliance and faith that led in some cases to science that has withstood the test of centuries, led also to results that were rapidly cast into oblivion. Wish as we might, little more than the passage of time and thus hindsight tells us what was “good science” as opposed to a poor guess, based on faulty inferences and deep misunderstandings.
[...] How to demarcate science from pseudoscience? Was Sigmund Freud a scientist? What of Karl Marx? It is to the Viennese philosopher Karl Popper that we are indebted for the term “the demarcation problem.” His response — the falsifiability criterion — is most often given as its solution. For a field to be scientific, Popper argued, it must make predictions that could be proven wrong. Were they indeed proven wrong, he further insisted, then we should celebrate rather than lament, for science proceeds not by becoming more true but instead by becoming less false.
However, as Michael Gordin, professor of the history of science at Princeton University, notes early on [...] falsification invariably fails almost before it starts. How do you know that you’ve actually falsified a theory? ... It is very, very rare for scientists to abandon a long-held and powerful theory on the basis of a single apparent refutation.
More broadly, Popper’s criterion works like an inattentive bouncer: it lets in too many of those we might like to exclude and excludes too many of those we might like to welcome. Clearly, it is not enough for a claim to be falsified for it to be scientific. [...] For some time, Popper himself worried that Darwinian evolution, which largely explains the past rather than predicting the future, was not a “testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme.”
In the United States, the zombie-like persistence of the falsifiability criterion can be tied, in part, to a court case that sought to determine whether creationism could be taught in school science classes. [...] Philosophers, in general, have given up on the idea that there could be a “bright line,” a clear and straightforward set of criteria, that separates science from its nefarious mirror image, although arguments are still made about somewhat softer modes of demarcation. Part of the problem, of course, is that no one calls themselves a pseudoscientist, any more than they call themselves a quack. Both terms are only ever insults, and the unfortunate fact is that some non-zero percentage of those derided as frauds and humbugs turn out to be right.
On the Fringe therefore works not by defining pseudoscience in advance but by exploring a multitude of areas that could or have been called pseudoscientific. The result is often entertaining, but the purpose is ever serious. By studying those areas at or beyond the fringe — and the ways the boundary moves according to changes of time and place — we can gain a good deal of knowledge about the science on the other side of the line.
Gordin groups the almost impossibly wide array of possibly shifty sciences into four areas.
The first includes what he terms “vestigial sciences,” those fields or ideas that were once deemed perfectly reasonable but have been rejected since...
[....] Second are “hyperpoliticized sciences” intimately associated with particular political regimes...
[...] Third are those fields that cast themselves as warriors against the establishment, mimicking the forms and logics of mainstream science by funding not only research, but journals, doctoral programs, and institutes...
[...] The final category includes a cast of characters ranging from hucksters and frauds to professors at Ivy League universities exploring the possibilities of mesmeric healing, extra-sensory perception, and telekinesis...
The taxonomy is useful. It is easier to think through what is bothersome about a new, questionable area if one can note its family resemblance to previously categorized cases. [...] We are constantly told to “trust the science,” but what does that mean if we cannot quite tell where or what the science is?
It is not quite sufficient, in answering this question, to point to a near-consensus on the part of the scientific community, thus in effect arguing that science is what the vast majority of scientists say it is [...] But there are broad guidelines that could help... (MORE - details)
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/why-...mplicated/
EXCERPTS: . . . It can be very tempting, from our contemporary vantage point, to try to tease apart the commendable from the seemingly absurd results above; to applaud the realization that oranges could work against scurvy while condemning the thought that sparkling water might; to sort, in short, the scientific silver from the seemingly unscientific dross. And yet, as the contemporary plaudits and awards indicate, “experts” at the time would not have made the same decisions.
Nor is it likely that methodological distinctions will help us much. Precisely the same methods, and precisely the same leaps of brilliance and faith that led in some cases to science that has withstood the test of centuries, led also to results that were rapidly cast into oblivion. Wish as we might, little more than the passage of time and thus hindsight tells us what was “good science” as opposed to a poor guess, based on faulty inferences and deep misunderstandings.
[...] How to demarcate science from pseudoscience? Was Sigmund Freud a scientist? What of Karl Marx? It is to the Viennese philosopher Karl Popper that we are indebted for the term “the demarcation problem.” His response — the falsifiability criterion — is most often given as its solution. For a field to be scientific, Popper argued, it must make predictions that could be proven wrong. Were they indeed proven wrong, he further insisted, then we should celebrate rather than lament, for science proceeds not by becoming more true but instead by becoming less false.
However, as Michael Gordin, professor of the history of science at Princeton University, notes early on [...] falsification invariably fails almost before it starts. How do you know that you’ve actually falsified a theory? ... It is very, very rare for scientists to abandon a long-held and powerful theory on the basis of a single apparent refutation.
More broadly, Popper’s criterion works like an inattentive bouncer: it lets in too many of those we might like to exclude and excludes too many of those we might like to welcome. Clearly, it is not enough for a claim to be falsified for it to be scientific. [...] For some time, Popper himself worried that Darwinian evolution, which largely explains the past rather than predicting the future, was not a “testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme.”
In the United States, the zombie-like persistence of the falsifiability criterion can be tied, in part, to a court case that sought to determine whether creationism could be taught in school science classes. [...] Philosophers, in general, have given up on the idea that there could be a “bright line,” a clear and straightforward set of criteria, that separates science from its nefarious mirror image, although arguments are still made about somewhat softer modes of demarcation. Part of the problem, of course, is that no one calls themselves a pseudoscientist, any more than they call themselves a quack. Both terms are only ever insults, and the unfortunate fact is that some non-zero percentage of those derided as frauds and humbugs turn out to be right.
On the Fringe therefore works not by defining pseudoscience in advance but by exploring a multitude of areas that could or have been called pseudoscientific. The result is often entertaining, but the purpose is ever serious. By studying those areas at or beyond the fringe — and the ways the boundary moves according to changes of time and place — we can gain a good deal of knowledge about the science on the other side of the line.
Gordin groups the almost impossibly wide array of possibly shifty sciences into four areas.
The first includes what he terms “vestigial sciences,” those fields or ideas that were once deemed perfectly reasonable but have been rejected since...
[....] Second are “hyperpoliticized sciences” intimately associated with particular political regimes...
[...] Third are those fields that cast themselves as warriors against the establishment, mimicking the forms and logics of mainstream science by funding not only research, but journals, doctoral programs, and institutes...
[...] The final category includes a cast of characters ranging from hucksters and frauds to professors at Ivy League universities exploring the possibilities of mesmeric healing, extra-sensory perception, and telekinesis...
The taxonomy is useful. It is easier to think through what is bothersome about a new, questionable area if one can note its family resemblance to previously categorized cases. [...] We are constantly told to “trust the science,” but what does that mean if we cannot quite tell where or what the science is?
It is not quite sufficient, in answering this question, to point to a near-consensus on the part of the scientific community, thus in effect arguing that science is what the vast majority of scientists say it is [...] But there are broad guidelines that could help... (MORE - details)