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Re: "Horganism"???? Perfect!!



On Tue, 14 Sep 1999, William Beaty wrote:

The sad (and twisted) thing is that Horgan, in "The End of Science",
debunks the above idea, and says that physicists DID NOT think science was
at an end in 1900. (This makes it OK for him to repeat the mistake, since
the original mistake has been made to un-happen? What then will future
closemindedness-apologist historical-revisionists say about Horgan's book?
Will they claim that everyone of the present decade immediately rejected
it, and that there were no reputable supporters at all?)

Yes, the "Patent Office President" story is mythical; the one where the
head of the USPTO is going to quit, since there are no more good
inventions to patent. But other evidence is not so easily ridiculed away.
Here's a bit I found later:

"When I began my physical studies [in Munich in 1874] and sought advice
from my venerable teacher Philipp von Jolly... he portrayed to me
physics as a highly developed, almost fully matured science... Possibly
in one or another nook there would perhaps be a dust particle or a small
bubble to be examined and classified, but the system as a whole stood
there fairly secured, and theoretical physics approached visibly that
degree of perfection which, for example, geometry has had already for
centuries."
- from a 1924 lecture by Max Planck (Sci. Am, Feb 1996 p.10)


"We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy."
- Simon Newcomb, major US astronomer, 1888


"The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have
all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the
possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new
discoveries is exceedingly remote.... Our future discoveries must be
looked for in the sixth place of decimals." Albert. A. Michelson,
speech at the dedication of Ryerson Physics Lab, U. of Chicago 1894

These are not meant to be humerous. These are meant to illustrate a
sickness which is at the core of Science: Horganism. If this sickness did
not exist, then Kuhnian paradigm shifts could not occur, because there
would be no historical "sticking" forces, and there would be no
"stick-and-slip" revolution phenomena in the history of science.

As has already happened here, the typical response is to dismiss such
quotes as having come from a minority of crazy people. If we tell
ourselves that the MAJORITY of physicists of the past were openminded and
knew that scientific revolutions were at hand, then we can convince
ourselves that closed-mindedness was never a factor in scientific
progress. In hindsight we can revise history so that science is a bold
striding forwards, and not a shameful and foolish tussel between a
majority who wants to sit still, and a maverick minority who drags it
forwards screaming, as it desparately tries to cling to lampposts and
small cracks in the sidewalk.

From a bit earlier (might be apocryphal):

"So many centuries after the Creation, it is unlikely that anyone could
find hitherto unknown lands of any value."

- Spanish Royal Commission, rejecting Christopher Columbus' proposal
to sail west.

My own contribution:

Progress in science is something like climbing a mountain. Only most
mountaineers don't set up a new basecamp every ten feet, then leap
out and attack anyone who tries to climb past them.

Bill, I think you are making too much of the supposed epidemic of
"Horganism." Of course there are scientists afflicted with it,
including some very good ones, but they are a minority. And of course
Horgan may be right, although I seriously doubt it. But even Feynman
entertained the possibility.

The reason the Kuhnian analysis rings true is not because of an
innate Horganism among scientists, but a well reasoned conservatism,
coupled with a small amount of not wanting to be made too
uncomfortable by new things (In this light, "Night Thoughts of a
Classical Physicist" is really relevant). This means that most of us
will remain skeptical of radical new ideas (or even radical old ones)
until a solid basis of evidence and a credible and coherent theory
are available in support of the new idea. And if the idea flies too
much in the face of the accepted theories, then it may be some time
before it gets accepted if it happens to be valid. Of course most of
the time these ideas prove not to be valid, and the conservatism was
well-founded. I submit that the story of the Gravitational fifth
force from around 1985 (I think) is a good case in point of a radical
new idea that didn't pan out but was handled exactly correctly by all
concerned. As a result of everyone doing things correctly, when it
was over, the original proponents could announce that their
suggestion was wrong, and everyone happily went back to whatever they
were doing before the storm broke. Nobody's career or reputation was
ruined, and there were no recriminations or derisive laughter when
the idea died. I think this is a textbook example of how science
should be done. Compare it to the cold fusion fiasco.

So I argue that new ideas aren't as actively resisted as you claim.
In a mature science like physics, new phenomena frequently occur near
the signal to noise limit, which often makes them difficult to
distinguish from cases of pathological science, which invariably
occur near that limit (a good example: N-rays). But if the findings
fit in with what is possible in accordance with current
understanding, the new ideas are quickly accepted and incorporated
into the general body of knowledge. It when they don't fit that the
gears start to grind. What happens next is usually complex, depending
on the stature of the proponents of both sides, the difficulty of the
experiments, the general tenor of the times, and many other reasons,
most of them psychological rather than scientific. Horganism
certainly plays a role here. But when the old paradigm has gotten too
creaky and everyone realizes it, a new idea is often quickly accepted
even if it is radical (sorry, at this late hour, I can't think of a
good example offhand, but there are such, and I'm sure others on this
list can provide several).

For what it's worth, I always enjoy the comment of Maxwell regarding
the nature of light, quoted, I believe, by William Kingdon Clifford:
(not necessarily word-for-word, I'm reproducing it from memory) "We
used to believe in the corpuscular theory of light, but now we
believe in the wave theory. Not because the evidence for waves was so
compelling, but because all the proponents of the corpuscular theory
have died." Of course, we've come full circle now on this topic.
Although on the surface it seems to support your thesis, at a deeper
level I think it supports what I am trying to say.

Make of it what you will.

Hugh


Hugh Haskell
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
have to..
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