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The Borderlands Of Science
Michael Shermer's background is psychology and ultra-long-distance cycling; he's written a number of books on cycling and analysis of (and refutation of) Holocaust deniers. He's also president (apparently for life) of the American Skeptics society and a reasonably good writer. In this book, Shermer spends a lot of time talking about the scientific method, its strengths and potential flaws -- and, more importantly, its system for dealing with its flaws (which he claims "sets science apart from all other knowledge systems and intellectual disciplines" -- a heady claim I wish he discussed more).
Since this is supposed to be a review of The Borderlands Of Science and not Weird Things, I'll just say that if you like one, you'll like the other as well. In Borderlands, Shermer analyzes beliefs that are defensible, beliefs that could (or were once thought to) be scientifically accurate. Among these are, for instance, ramifications of cloning, confirmation bias in explaining racial differences in sports (about which Malcolm Gladwell has also written), and a whole, whole lot of discussion of Alfred Wallace. Wallace and Charles Darwin were both responsible for the theory of evolution. Wallace is not remembered as widely for a number of reasons, which are explored in frightening detail in roughly three and a half of the 16 chapters of this book. Not coincidentally, Shermer did his doctoral thesis on Wallace. The ratio of stuff-about-Wallace-or-Evolution to everything-else, by chapter, is 3:7; Shermer is pretty focussed on this specific discussion.
The book has four sections: a short introduction (which is quite heavy in skeptical theory, exactly what I wanted) and the main body, discussing borderlands theories, people, and history. In "Theories," Shermer tends to stray a little from 'why people believe weird things' into 'why stupid people believe weird things' (as he did in the book of the same title) and that's fun. He covers a lot of quite current topics (like cloning, Wacky Unified Field Theories, and the importance of Punctured Equilibrium in the evolution of evolutionary theory).
In section two, "People," he discusses the Copernican revolution and its effects, then goes off about Alfred Wallace. Here, he does something weird that needs more discussion. In analyzing Wallace, he constructs a psychological profile, which he derived by having a large number of Wallace experts fill out a survey of the "strongly agree, 9, 8,.. 3, 2, strongly disagree" sort, and then uses the results of these surveys to fill in his discussion of why Wallace became a scientific spiritualist, for instance. It's an interesting technique that he also uses with Steven Jay Gould and Carl Sagan. It is tempting to ask how much confirmation bias exists in a survey of this sort, though. Since I've already let the spoiler out of the bag, Shermer discusses Gould and Sagan, spends some time doing a statistical analysis of Sagan's greatness as a scientist (by comparing published papers by topic with a number of other contemporary, canonically great scientists) and pauses briefly to smack Freud upside the head in a somewhat snarky comparison of Freud and Darwin.
Finally, in section three, "Histories," he does a lovely discussion of the myth of pastoral tranquillity, including a quick summary of four ancient civilizations that probably managed to destroy themselves through environmental stupidity without (as he puts it) any need of Dead White European Males coming in and inflicting devastation from outside. Shermer then analyzes (and debunks) the theory of transcendent genius, the Mozart Myth, as he calls it, and goes back to two more chapters on Wallace and evolution, in a discussion of the Piltdown Man hoax and why that should have (but doesn't seem to have) supported the idea that science can be self-correcting and learn from its mistakes.
I like what Shermer is doing, and he writes well and readably. If I sound a bit impatient, it's because I want him to be writing about the application of critical thinking rather than case studies, and when he starts out writing just what I want to read, then goes off in a different direction, he leaves me standing at the intersection saying "hey, wait, this isn't the bus I wanted." The book could stand to be either edited down into two books (a Wallace analysis, and a case-studies book on how science inspects itself), or edited up with a clearer discussion of the math involved in his statistical analysis of Sagan or his psychological profiling of people.
In the end, I liked this book, I learned a fair bit from it, and I would recommend it to people who want to learn more about both critical thinking and science history.
You can purchase The Borderlands of Science from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Jee-e-e-bus. Seriously. Let me add that they would have also not believed in dragons, griffins, or Invisible Pink Unicorns.
As a self-professed Skeptic, I have to say that the thing that I utter the most often is "I don't know. And you know what? Neither do you." So many people believe in so many things without any sort of examination, it boggles the mind.
Sure there are cranks, but there are cranks everywhere, with everything. Don't turn into a sheep simply because you disagree with the hardliners.
RinkRat
As a self-professed Skeptic, I have to say that the thing that I utter the most often is "I don't know. And you know what? Neither do you." So many people believe in so many things without any sort of examination, it boggles the mind.
Certainly! I agree 100%. Now, I must admit, Im a member of a rather large religion. So Faith has a good amount of sway in my life. But what it boils down to is proof.. what I consider proof may not be what you consider proof. So it is *still* rather subjective.
A lot of my opinions on this sort of thing have been formed in a sort of reverse way. I belong (and have for 10 years) to a group that does medieval recreation.. and in just 10 years, the amount of things "discovered" (re-discovered, really) from that period has changed the way a lot of people look at it. Things that 10 years ago "did not exist" have been found, mostly intact, and have changed some of the theories about life back then (tm) and how people went about it.
This, of course, doesnt stop school textbooks from claiming that "castles didnt have windows" and "houses were drafty all the time because they didnt have glass" (both of which are untrue for most of the middle ages.. just because they didnt have glass doesnt mean they didnt have wooden shutters or thick paper or a number of other solutions, and they also _did_ have glass for a pretty good amount of the later period.)
But any time someone states something as "concrete" either A) exists or B) doesnt exist
without having some form of proof one way or the other, (and absence of proof does not neccesarily mean absense of existance.. which seems to be the rule a lot of the "debunkers" run on, at least the hard line ones), I tend to take exactly the same attitude you stated above. "I dont know and neither do you."
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
>> 1000 years ago, they probably would not have believed in Lions or a round earth or some magical force that cannot be explained like gravity.. but they all exist.
Skeptics in history like Gallileo and Copernicus who didn't want to believe in a flat Earth, around which the Sun revolved, just because thats what religion told them to do.
Most of what we know was only learned because someone said "prove it"
The skeptic is once again playing an increasingly important role in the TV age.
Watch any of the 'educational' commercial channels (Discovery, TLC, Science) and see the 'documentaries' on complete horse-pooey like ghost-hunting, bigfoot, loch ness monsters, ufos. The amount of air-time this stuff gets is enormous, because it's entertaining. But people are buying it - people think this is science.
Having someone pop up and remind us that it's all fantasy, theory and unproven is healthy for our society.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Fear of mortality makes people believe in all sorts of things. God; Satan; reincarnation; spaceships that want you to take off your sneakers, drink the kool-aid and lie still, etc.
But then, he could be considered the skeptic. A skeptic IMO is just someone who doubts the veracity of a popular opinion just because it's a popular opinion, and sets about disproving it.
The popular opinion is that bigfoot doesn't exist. If your great uncle spent years searching for concrete evidence that it does exist - then I'd say he was the skeptic looking to debunk a popular theory.
Is it possible there's another large ape that we haven't discovered? Sure. The lowland gorilla was a fable not too long ago - until someone found it noone believed it existed.
Myself I tend to believe it doesnt exist, though it's possible, until someone proves otherwise. This is just because it's nearly impossible to prove a negative. You could prove it does exist easily - by showing me one, but how do you prove it doesnt? You can only really say it's doubtful because we haven't seen one.
I only brought up Bigfoot because of the ridiculous show I watched on Discovery last night.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
If this were true, only stupid or unreflective people would believe in and all smart people would believe the same things about stuff like UFOs and a lot of other "debatable" issues.
And the problem is that is just patently not true. The list of people far more intelligent than me and (I'll intuit from your ill-considered response) you, BoomerBuddy, who also believe in some aspect of spirituality, goes on and on. Great writers, politicians, mathematicians, logicians, and scientists can be found among the ranks of believers of various creeds.
What's more, there is tons of (sometimes very acrimonious) discord in the hallowed ranks of science over what is true and what is not true, what is possible and what is not possible. I am not slagging science here - I am a believer in, and fan of, and a former student of science - and I probably know more about it than 90% of people (and believe me, that's not pride talking because it really isn't saying a hell of a lot).
But I'm sick of people that treat science like the end-all be-all of human reason with a dogmatism that would do the least reflective religious zealot they despise proud and seem incapable of grasping that there are wider philosophical issues (like consciousness, free will and morality) that science has little or no grasp on - and which metaphysical and spiritual disciplines provide sophisticated and elegant treatments of.
So yeah, big deal, your parents dragged you to church every Sunday for fifteen years and then you went to college and "got over it" because your intellect is so superior to all the schmucks. "Sad really." Spare me, pal - I don't need your sympathy for my beliefs, which I maintain and practice with my eyes wide open, and with my intellect, doubt, skepticism, spirit of inquiry and open mind intact. It's an attitude you would do well to work on, because if the history of science is any indication, a whole bunch of the stuff you believe in is wrong.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
From Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit (linked above), your question "Why the else would anyone believe in god?" falls under the category of "begging the question, or assuming the answer". What evidence do you have that all adults that believe in God only do so because of childhood teachings?
"metaphysical and spiritual disciplines"
What a crock of shit. This very statement is a contradiction in terms. Neither metaphysics or spirituality are disciplines of any kind, as neither has to adhere to any set of logical rules which can be tested in the real world.
Metaphysics, spirituality, whatever you want to call it, is just another way of believing in the Tooth Fairy. Only you sound slightly less like an idiot doing so.
Slightly less.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Classic debunker examples include:
-
Nobody saw that rock fall out of the sky,
therefore your claim that rocks (ice balls,
frogs) fall out of the sky is false.
-
Your airplane prototype crashed, therefore
men will never fly.
-
You haven't produced a half-man/half-ape
fossil, therefore Man is a special creation.
The pattern is that incomplete evidence or faulty reasoning is taken to disprove the conclusion, instead of the correct result: that the status of the conclusion is (was) unknown. Rocks might or might not fall, Man might or might not fly, humans and modern apes might or might not have evolved from a common ancestor. We don't know if life originated "elsewhere", We don't know if antimatter repels matter gravitationally, we don't know if some people can sense the death of relatives from afar. We might never know.Scientists are prone to this fallacy, perhaps because they are temperamentally uncomfortable with uncertainty. That's why they became scientists in the first place. That's also why saying "I don't know" is considered, among scientists, so virtuous; it's hard to bring themselves to say it.
Among scientists, the fallacy manifests most harmfully when the conventional theory for a phenomenon is no better supported than the alternatives. Careers are blighted. Recent examples from biology that suffered "debunking" for decades include:
Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World is a much better read than this book. The whole idea of comparing the greatness of scientists made me want to puke.
A skeptic IMO is just someone who doubts the veracity of a popular opinion just because it's a popular opinion, and sets about disproving it.
Wrong, completely wrong. A skeptic is the very definition of an open mind. Many laugh, but that's just because they don't understand the difference between an open mind and an uncritical mind.
I will explain:
A skeptic is one who accepts no statment without reason (evidence, backing, logic) to support it. The skeptic never needs to disprove anything, because the burden of proof lies with the person making the claim. Once the claim is demonstrated or proven to the skeptics' satisfaction, then the skeptic has no choice to accept it.
The person with a close mind might appear to be a skeptic at first glance, but after the claims and closed-minded person's objections have all been addressed, the closed minded person will still refuse to accept something. Think of it like an issues list on a project. After the work is done and the issues are resolved, the project should be done. When proving your claim to a skeptic, all the issues have to be resolved and closed. If your debate partner acknowleges that all his questions have been answered, yet still refuses to believe, that's a signal that the person might be closed minded.
Never confuse a closed mind with a skeptical one. And never confuse an open mind with a credulous one.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
The "paranormal": big foot, lochness monster, vampire rodent beasts in Puerto Rico, ghosts, monkey men with claws, and religion is basically adults playing pretend. You might be too detached from reality to just say "my great uncle whatever was chasing phantoms because he lacked a basic foundation of scientific knowledge, and therefore was prone to buying into psuedo-science and superstition", but I am not.
So, your great uncle whatever was chasing phantoms because he lacked a basic foundation of scientific knowledge, and therefore was prone to buying into psuedo-science and superstition.
I see a lot of posts talking about how you need absolute proof to believe something.
I've seen many theories postulated that are based on inductive reasoning (i.e. the Sun has risen every day in history, so it will rise again tomorrow) or a building of theories based on proof of other theories.
A lot of science is based on things we can't prove or haven't proved yet, but are are given credibility by the accepted theories on which they are based.
However, I do agree that when I hear someone say "Foo happens because of Bar, and that's a fact!", I tend to cast a skeptic's eye until I can see why they believe this to be the case.
The revolution will be televised. Blackout restrictions apply.
Those are the hardest words for many people to say. For many (a majority, I believe) of, the place where "I Don't Know" is kept is a very scary place. Most people will grasp any idea that comes along just so they can cram it into that empty place.
Witness the common "Well, do you have a better explanation?" argument. Amazingly, this argument is convincing to many otherwise reasonable people!
"I Don't Know". Cherish it. Consider your understanding of your world a project. "I Don't Know" is your TODO list.
Here's a couple of my favorites. The first is from Indiana Jones The Last Crusade. I don't know where the second is from:
Indy: ... the search for fact. Not truth.
If it's truth you're interested
in, Doctor Tyree's Philosophy
class is right down the hall.
The man who knows and knows he knows is wise. Follow him.
The man who knows not and knows he knows not is ignorant. Teach him.
The man who knows not and knows not he knows not is a fool. Shun him.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
They've done that for years just by letting such people exist. Seriously- if anyone else told you to give them money because it gratifies an invisible, all-powerful being, would you consider that a reasonable request? It's a scam from one end to the other. The use of a small radio to enhance the scam is only a matter of how complex the scam is.
1. To sustain a population of organisms a decent gene pool must be available. This means that there must be a sufficient number of these animals in the wilds to continue fostering the species, and a sufficient number must have existed in the recent past. Populations of animals leave behind obvious evidence. The larger the organism and it's population, the more evidence it leaves behind. Even the rarest forest mouse can be detected and revealed by a week-end naturalist. Why in all of the history of the world has not a single piece of verifiable evidence been found? Bones, waste, etc, etc. Here is a hint: Aliens don't leave evidence, either ;)
2. In addition to obvious physical evidence that should be available is the lack of evolutionary evidence. Scientists haved exhaustively catalogued much of the life that has evolved up to this point in North America and Asia. Why is there nothing, not one single shred of evidence, that would in any way conclucde that such a primate ever existed in the earth's recent past. Heres a hint: the same reason that no scientist can find any physical proof or evolutionary justification that a beast that exists solely on goat's blood resides in Puerto Rico. (Especially considering that goats were introduced recently to that island, but I digress)
I could go on, but you get the point. It will take a lot more then the stock "a thousand years ago scientists said that we would never bla bla bla" or "just because we haven't found one bla bla bla" arguements to make a valid point against a seasoned pupil of Shermer and Sagan. You might do better disproving the existance of Santa to a 10 year old. Go give it a try, you will see how I feel in this circumstance. :)
Perhaps. But then why did Madeleine Murray O'Hare's son become a Baptist preacher? Why did Dr. Robert Funk go on to found the anti-Christian Jesus Seminar after being raised as a "born again" believer?
I'll grant that statistically speaking, the majority of people will continue to believe what they are raised to believe by their parents. However, there is a significant number of people that convert to other belief systems for one reason or the other.
Perhaps you should ask one of the the Babis, Christians, Gabars, Manicheas, or Sikhs that live in Iran.
There are three problems with this line of reasoning.
First, it ignores the fact that there are other reasons for believing in a given system than being raised to believe that system. If this were the only reason to believe in any given system, there would only be one world-wide religion and new religions would never develop and if they did they would never spread faster the the growth of their original consituents.
Second, not believing falls to the same sword. If one is raised to not believe in any religion, why should one accept not believing in any religion?
Third, it ignores that in absence of evidence to the contrary, it is eminently reasonable to trust that which has been taught by a trustworthy source. Honestly, if a tribal member is taught how to farm, how to hunt, how to store meat for the winter and that "God was a giant turtle holding the world on its back" by the same people (tribal parents and elders), what reason is there for a person to disbelieve the last of these when the source of information has proved to be reliable on the other items?
It seems to me that such disbelief is only warranted in light of evidence of one sort or the other that "God is NOT a giant turtle holding the world on its back." So the important issue is what that evidence would consist of.
Perhaps better questions would be:
By all means, we should think critically about what we would believe. Many belief systems have excellent reasons for which we should disbelieve them. But thus far, the reasons you've given to not believe don't really stand up to scrutiny.
> there is tons of (sometimes very acrimonious)
> discord in the hallowed ranks of science over
> what is true and what is not true, what is
> possible and what is not possible.
Welcome to Science 101! That's what science is all about: a continuous debate about the nature of things. It seems that you did not learn much about science when you were a student thereof.
> if the history of science is any indication, a
> whole bunch of the stuff you believe in is
> wrong.
Bzzt! Wrong again! In science you don't have to believe. You just make your hypotheses, build your theories and subject them to the judgment of experimental confirmation (or axiomatic logical proof, in the case of mathematics.)
As long as your theories are not rejected by experiments, you heuristically accept them as true. Even when rejected by experimental evidence, and obsoleted by more refined ones, scientific theories can remain useful - the best example being Newtonian gravity, still used on a daily basis world over, and with excellent results.
That's the core issue: in science, you don't have to believe. In religion, that's all you have.
I, for one, do not care about people having their own set of religious beliefs - as long as such beliefs do not encroach the scientific realm. That's the tragedy with religion, for it has seen its domain consistently eroded by science, especially during the last 1,000 years, making it look more and more ridiculous.
Hence the fear and defensive attitude all too frequently seen among religious believers everywhere for, more and more, religion is being exposed as a collection of unsubstantiated myths, all too often used to subjugate and enslave millions - witness the history of Europe during the Middle Ages, or the moslem world today.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
That is a rather romantic depiction of a skeptic. However, as skeptics tend to be humans they tend not to live up to that idealized depiction.
Not to mention that the skeptic bears as much onus to prove the foundations of the skeptical worldview as a constituent of any other belief system has for his or hers. Unfortunately for the consistent skeptic, many of the axioms of the skeptical worldview are improvable.
Bad example. Water is a polar molecule. Opposite poles of different molecules attract.
A better question would be why like charges repel, and opposite charges attract. But then a physics wise-ass would describe the electroweak theory...
Eventually, all theories boil down to physics, and physics boils down to "we don't know; that's just the best fit with the experimental data".
One rule of thumb that I have come to believe is: given a sufficient lack of evidence on a given subject, people will invent beliefs.
A simple example: imagine a small village next to a large mountain. The mountain is steep and treacherous so no one has ever climbed the mountain. Telescopes don't exist so no one can see the mountain in detail and there exist parts of the mountain that are completely out of view. Given time you can bet that various dreams/imaginings of the nature of the mountain would turn into stories which would become myths and eventually some people would believe that these well aged stories are true. We would look at this and say "No, believing those stories are silly. The real answer to What is on the mountain? is I don't know." but given an absense of answers people would rather invent answers than face the troubling prospect that they don't know the answer.
Which is a shame since admiting I don't know is a necessary precondition for learning.
what is a dragon but a dinosaur?
Did you forget the big wings, breathes fire, coexisted with humans part?
Might griffins and unicorns be extinct species?
Griffins? There's no way you could have a flying lion. Simple lift calculations prohibit it (the same lift calculations that get thousands of airplanes in the air everyday.)
Is it possible that unicorns are extinct species? Sure. But it's possible the pushme-pullme is an extinct species. In either case, it'd be nice to see just the least bit of hard evidence.
In 1799, the platypus was first described by a British scientist, Dr George Shaw.
Why was he a fool? Come on, he probably got a dozen of these type of things a week. Was he supposed to believe in every furred fish and other bizzare creature that went across his desk? He responded in exactly the correct way - he took the time to investigate the reality of what he was faced with when faced with doubts, instead of trumpeting it to the stars everytime someone tossed a hoax across his desk.