SCIENCE IS NOT JUST ANOTHER 'STORY'
15th November 2001
We are obliged to assume that argument by induction - the drawing of a dependable general rule from an accumulation of instances - is sound. Everyday life would be impossible if we did not act upon this assumption; without it, knowhow collapses into chance and superstition.
Nonetheless, induction cannot be justified a priori and it cannot be validated merely on the ground that it often works. To offer such validation is to fall into circularity - to trust that induction validates induction. It would wouldn't it!
In spite of this difficulty there are philosophers who base their positions absolutely on induction. One school of thought has coined the acronym NIAT - Nothing Is Absolutely True. The only basis for this assertion is the induction that since many factual statements can be shown, after all, to be not so factual but are subjectively laden with the perceptions of the authors ..... therefore all factual statements are like that (viz NIAT). Some philosophers have asserted, as a matter of objective truth, that there is no objective truth. Their mantra is 'We make our own truth'.
If you can't beat 'em then join 'em! On that principle, I make my own truth that there is such a thing as objective truth but it is elusive and that therefore, claims as to objective truth must be viewed cautiously.
The strongest claims of the NIAT party include assertions that, actually, we know nothing and indeed cannot know anything. All we can do, they say, is to tell stories that are culturally generated and, more or less, voluntarily accepted.
These people will say that, for example, the creation stories in Genesis (there are two different ones in that remarkable book) are simply stories that people have believed, and can still believe, literally. These same people will say that the Big Bang, Thermodynamic Laws, Evolution, Natural Selection ...... are simply chapters in 'the science story' and that this is merely a favourite contemporary story of optional acceptability.
There is some substance in this notion that 'it is all stories'. Science works by encapsulating data into conceptual models - stories showing that the data can be fitted together coherently. Repeatedly it happens that, as new data accumulate, and as new thought is given to the data, then the 'science story' changes and, as new thought is given to the stories, the targeted search for new data is stimulated. The 'it is all stories' party might go as far as to say that the data themselves are also stories. If you are intent upon upon denying that there is objective reality then, of course, you can make any hypothesis required to enable you to do so.
But the 'it is all stories' view has less in it than meets the eye. Consider two rather typical 'science stories' - the story of human anatomy physiology and related matters and the story of atomic structure, nuclear reactions and related matters.
Basing ourselves on these stories we can, respectively, diagnose, and treat successfully, an inflamed appendix and we can construct nuclear reactors that actually work. Many other examples of 'stories' underpinning knowhow can be cited. Is it plausible that we can perform appendectomy by merely thrashing around with a scalpel and hoping for the best? Is it plausible that we can make a functioning nuclear reactor simply by trying things out in a workshop and stumbling upon how to do it merely by brain wave and trial and error?
The answers to these questions must surely be NO. We know how to do these things, and many others, because the 'science stories' we tell about them are objectively true. But before being hastily over confident about this we have to remind ourselves of the courtroom formula "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth". The truths of science, validated by knowhow that is based upon the objective dependability of the relevant 'stories', is rarely, if ever, the whole truth and rarely, if ever, nothing but the truth. Models, and associated knowhow, rest upon incomplete knowledge - perhaps incomplete in ways that are, at any given moment, quite unsuspected. Moreover models, and associated knowhow, can contain elements of falsity that come to be exposed only after those models have already proved to be useful. The exposure does not undermine the knowhow; it merely reminds us of the provisional status of our claimed knowledge about it - the provisional status of our claimed knowthat..
Of course not all models envisaged by science have, at any given moment, generated knowhow. It is hard to identify knowhow that has emerged from Big Bang Theory. But, at the time of writing, there is an area of knowhow that is closed to people who are (wilfully?) ignorant of Natural Selection - ignorant of how rapidly evolving species of micro-organisms can come to be resistant to antibiotics. To distribute antibiotics, without due caution, can cause, say, the anthrax organism to develop, by NS, strains that are resistant to those antibiotics - strains that are more virulent than the ones currently reaching unoffending people by way of the (snail)mail. When we consider that there is a huge propaganda effort in the USA to discredit NS, we can foresee how anti-knowhow can flow from ignorance of the relevant known science. We hope the naive 'creationists' will not shirk part responsibility if the anthrax of 2021 turns out to be more virulent than the anthrax of 2001.
Other disciplines 'tell stories' that are not, in general, susceptible to corroboration by knowhow. Historians can tell stories about the past but they cannot tell us how to predict the future. Economists can chart the route whereby the national economy has arrived at its current state but they cannot tell us whether there is about to be a major depression or merely a temporary blip and they cannot tell us, reliably, what to do about either of these possible scenarios. Literary critics can tell a credible story of what we mean by the phrase 'a good novel' but they cannot specify in advance how to write one. It is only the 'science stories' that generate knowhow for immediate and future use. Science stories, while not being the whole truth and not being error-free, are in a limited sense true; they are very often true enough for the purposes in hand. That is why the title of this article is defensible.
The next issue, Number 66, will appear on 15 December 2001.
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