A Very Relevant Gift

Yes, I've been busy and not had time to resume our study of the Scientific Method, though my mental note-taking is proceeding. Meanwhile, a few weeks back I had lunch with a friend who is also a doctor, and we discussed some of our topics... as a result he gave me a most relevant gift. It seems funny to think of writing a discourse upon the epistemology of Science by starting from a blank lab notebook, but perhaps in the future I will have some time to make a few comments about it here.

I looked to see whether Father Jaki talked about such things, and found several strangely relevant references - likely there are others, but due to my time constraints, I will limit myself to these:

In his later years, Newton spent much precious time on erasing from his manuscripts and notebooks the name of Descartes, lest posterity learn a thing or two.
[SLJ "God and Man's Science: A View of Creation" in The Absolute Beneath the Relative and other essays, 62]

In the twelve years between 1904 and his sudden death in 1916 at the age of 56 he [Pierre Duhem] not only continued his prodigious series of publications in theoretical physics, but filled 120 large-size notebooks, each 200 pages long, with excerpts from medieval manuscripts which he had to beg from other French libraries. He had no microfilm, no xerox machines, no dictaphones, not even ball point pens at his disposal. Above all, he had no research assistants of any sort.
[SLJ "Science and Censorship: Hélene Duhem and the Publication of the Système du monde" Ibid, 178]


He [Darwin] might have been cured of his illusion about the evolution of his religious beliefs had he reread in his late years his early Notebooks. Available since the early 1970s in easily accessible edition, those Notebooks make it absolutely clear that the Darwin of the late 1830s was a crude and crusading materialist.
[SLJ "Monkeys and Machine-guns: Evolution, Darwinism, and Christianity" Ibid, 190]


To advance science therefore was to break with inherited ways of thought, a break with blatantly careless reasonings, "scientific" prejudices, and self-flattery, or, in short, to initiate a revolution. To this he [Lavoisier] referred as early as 1773 in his laboratory notebook, where he described his program as one that "seemed destined to bring about a revolution in physics and chemistry."
[SLJ The Relevance of Physics 151]

As my friend the doctor wrote, "Remember, it's for Posterity." Let us keep this principle in mind as we work.

P.S. There is an exciting episode about one of SLJ's own notebooks (and another about his exploration of the notebooks of Olbers!) both of which appear in A Mind's Matter, but I will leave these for another time.

If only you had been more careful in your work, you might have discovered a planet!

Last time we heard from Father Jaki about probing into an apparent discrepancy in the third place to the right of the decimal, and how it related to ths discovery of argon.

Today, let's hear from another writer - one of the most wonderful and relevant (and brief) chapters I have ever read in any science text - one on which I hope one day to preach a lecture or three. It deserves to be studied, and ought to be copied and read at the start of every academic year, and proclaimed annually in every laboratory! Yes, really.

Here is just one of its dramatic paragraphs:

In the history of astronomy can be found numerous cautionary tales which illustrate the fatal consequences of messy and muddled observational records, as well as of preconceived ideas regarding what is likely or possible, and of emotional bias - expectation, disappointment, surprise, hope. No fewer than 19 pre-discovery observations of Uranus have been identified, from 1690 (by Flamsteed) onward. It is true that many of these in no way reflect upon the technique of the observers, since a single observation would quite possibly not reveal its planetary character. [*] But that none of theese observations should have led to the discovery of Uranus is incredible. The case that is most relevant to thematter of observational records concerns the French astronomer Lemonnier, who in January 1796 observed Uranus six times over a period of nine days, including observations on four consecutive nights. His records of observations were kept in a particularly untidy and unsystematic fashion (one of the Uranus observations was noted down on a paper bag that had contained hair powder), and this certainly contributed to his failure: in a well-kept record the anomalies between these nine observations cold not have failed to strike him - and he would have anticipated Herschel in the first planetary discovery of historical times by twelve years.

* On the other hand Herschel detected its non-stellar character before its motion had been established.

[J. B. Sidgwick, Amateur Astronomer's Handbook, Section 32: Observational Records]

Please read that again, and ponder this in particular:

...the fatal consequences of messy and muddled observational records, as well as of preconceived ideas regarding what is likely or possible, and of emotional bias - expectation, disappointment, surprise, hope.

Don't be thinking of getting your name into the books. Think of the fact that you may have abandoned your humility - your childlike attitude towards Reality, and substituted Superstition - or belief in Phlogiston, which is the same thing. (If you don't know what that is, I suggest you look it up.) Remember, even the great Maxwell was caught:

For it is one thing to propose an inference as being very plausible and another to assert its reality and in the least uncertain terms at that. In this respect even a Maxwell could not avoid the pitfalls set by an unquestioning faith in mechanism. ... "There can be no doubt," he asserted categorically, that the ether "is certainly the largest body of which we have any knowledge."
[SLJ The Relevance of Physics 80-81 quoting JCM's "Ether" in the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica]

And, no, he was not talking about an organic chemical with an oxygen between two other groups, like (C₂H₅)₂O. (Ahem, a little chemical humor there, hee hee.)

Let us use caution and DILIGENCE! Yes, diligo = "I love"... it is our choice, our selection... and we ought to be fervent in our work. Let us LOVE Reality, our cosmos, our work... and our God Who made it, and our fellow humans for whom we do such work: "Whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you did it for Me" - and that will include even our research as long as we have done it well, and for the sake of our common humanity, rather than out of pride or selfishness.

Yes, to the shock of many professors, and even more administrators, there's a deep truth lurking in "publish or perish" and it is not associated with tenure or professional status. Another day we'll explore where St. Paul spoke on this topic - it's stunning...

Argon - or, are you certain about that error?

This is just a brief posting in aid of our on-going study of "the Scientific Method", about which we are slowly collecting ideas and relations of those ideas in order to more fully grasp the mystery of Science Writ Large. Whether it will aid us in doing better work in our labs, or in our lab write-ups, or just make us feel a greater measure of delight - well, I cannot say. It is useful to collect these items, and eventually we will knit them together into an orderly unity. It may not become a CRC Handbook or even a Dover reprint - indeed, it may be that they will never leave this blogg and the E-cosmos - but at least we will have seen some new things, or (even better) re-seen some old things.

Today, I do not mean to suggest some sort of appeal to Heisenberg. I am speaking several orders of magnitude larger than that. I could take a chapter - or another book in the series - to talk about error, whether it be the formal sort of measurement, or the more formal sort of mis-shapen logic, or the idiosyncratic kind that comes from round-off in calculators and computers - or just plain human sloppiness, which we are all prone to. It is a fascinating study - as fascinating as disease is to a physician, who has in mind his own frailty.

The strange thing about error is that it too deserves to be considered - no, not in the sense that we invert our purpose - I do not mean taking on a heretical view for the sake of achieving a novel viewpoint! I mean error in the more common scientific sense, those little "plus-or-minus" sorts of things we see all the time in the tables and charts of lab reports or journal articles. We have to keep those odd little gaps in mind, lest truth be hiding there.

Note!!! This is where our language gets in the way. "Error" is often (especially in philosophy and theology) understood as "the negation of truth". In science, the sort of error I am speaking of may be more often expressed as the "imprecision in a measurement."

I have selected a most interesting little excerpt for your consideration today - a tale that suggests how important it is that we consider those "imprecisions" as places which deserve fuller exploration:

The instances taken from nineteenth-century physics could be multiplied at some length to illustrate the fundamental importance that increased precision in experiments plays in establishing new laws or theories. Ohm's law, the laws of radiation, the gas laws, to mention only a few, were but triumphs in precision. The establishment of well-equipped physical laboratories, first in German and French and later in British universities, clearly evidenced the general recognition of the extraordinary importance precision has in physics. The rewards were at times spectacular, particularly when unknown entities, such as new elements, were discovered. The case of argon was perhaps the most characteristic, resting as it did on the worries of Ramsay and Rayleigh as to why some samples of nitrogen had a weight of 1.257 grams per liter instead of only 1.256. As it turned out, an unknown element, after its discovery called argon, caused this discrepancy. The identification of other inert gases followed in quick succession.
[SLJ The Relevance of Physics 254-5]

P.S. If any of our chemist readers can give a fuller reference to this interesting work, I would appreciate it.

The Rosary - our Experimental Lab for the Gospels

Yes, this posting is relevant to our on-going (if slow and sporadic) series on the Scientific Method, and to that grand Jaki phrase "Science writ large". Even if it seems to be a rather Catholic thing, or a rather "prayer" thing, and not science at all.

That's because people have begun to have a very narrow view of science, and do not see the lab for the test tubes - or the web pages. They forget WHY there are such things as experiments, and what it is we are doing, and why we are doing it. That's also why there is such a thing as the rosary, as strange as it must sound. As Chesterton liked to point out, it's about vision:

...the object of my school is to show how many extraordinary things even a lazy and ordinary man may see if he can spur himself to the single activity of seeing.
[GKC Tremendous Trifles]

There is a fascinating connection between the words "experience" and "experiment" - and the Latin word "periculum" from which we get the English word "peril" - that is, danger.

This is why I have said the first virtue of a Scientist is humility. He must be willing to submit to dangers - the first and worst is that WE MIGHT HAVE GUESSED WRONG ABOUT REALITY. Hence, we devise a scheme, submitting ourselves (No, emphatically not the things in the lab!) - that is, our mental image of reality - to danger by risking another look at Reality. We do this for many reasons, perhaps most would say it's out of curiousity, but it may be better for our moral health to say that we do it out of humility. We are not building a story. (As fun as that can be, and I can tell you it's REALLY fun! And cheaper than buying toy trains and all that.) We are hoping to know more - to get some clue about Reality, just as a sculptor carefully chisels out the marble, we carefully chisel out our mental constructions and models - but just as the scupltor continually corrects his work by shifting his gaze, his lights, his angles - perhaps on occasion even touching the relevant region - so too we require a continual feedback of data. We must spur ourselves to that single activity of seeing.

The same is true for the Rosary. This convenient hand-held tool - imagine a hand-held lab! - provides us with all the machinery necesary to make ever deeper explorations of the Mystery of the God-Made-Man, Jesus Christ. You may say, why should a religious activity - an activity of prayer - a rather specifically Catholic activity, and perhaps a quarrelsome and argumentative one - why should THAT be an exemplar for Scientists?

Because it reveals the nature of experiment. It is "experiencing" something - yes, the same thing, but my God, how many experiments have been repeated over the course of centuries! In fact, that is one of the signal trademarks (the Signs, if you will) of a good experiment: its repeatability. It begins to answer the question: why do an experiment?

To find out more - even if it's something we've already done before.

We are not "mindlessly repeating" something - no, just the opposite. It is a most mindful repetition: we proceed with care, with diligence, with attention - we check our equipment, we check our references, we see what others (both authorities and other workers on the topic) have to say about the matter... and, as the famous "Sir Henry Merrivale" (the detective in the mystery stories by Carter Dickson, pseudonym of John Dickson Carr) liked to say we do some "sittin' and thinkin'".

That is, we MEDITATE. No, this is not the "eastern" form of meditation, which is a sort of emptying of the mind. This is as opposite as one can be: it is the extreme presence of mind, bringing our complete mental personality to bear upon the matter, hoping, perhaps almost desperately, to find (like that sculptor) that perfect vantage point... and thereby gain a better view of Reality.

So do you mean I pray while I experiment? Or experiment while I pray?

For me, they are interconvertible. I have enough doubts about my abilities to keep reasonably to the task at hand, but there is a sense of Awe about this... that by learning more about That Which Is, I learn more about He Who Made That Which Is.

And which of you, if he ask his father bread, will he give him a stone? Or a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he reach him a scorpion? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father from heaven give the good Spirit to them that ask him? ... But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his justice: and all these things shall be added unto you.
[Luke 11:11-13, 12:31]

Yes, even to the most technical and dull gear and data and equations of the laboratory... All of those things also proclaim the glory of God, creator of heaven and earth:

And every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, I heard all saying: To him that sitteth on the throne and to the Lamb, benediction and honour and glory and power, for ever and ever.
[Apo/Rev 5:13]

==========

P.S. I should add that the reason for calling the rosary the handheld lab of the Gospels is simply that by stepping through the various major episodes of the Life of Our Lord and concentrating on them slowly in a ritual (one might say "according to standard lab protocols) we advance into a greater knowledge and understanding of His life - a real life, in our real world, of which there is always more to See...


P.P.S. Above you will find the word "diligence". This is most often understood as meaning "careful" or something similar. I think it might be good to point out its original meaning is "to love, esteem"... we ought to pray and experiment from Love. This will sound goofy, if not downright silly - but that's because there is very little meaning left in "Love" in our day. What a shame. But don't you love to learn more about Reality? You should...

Let's not forget we have a Foe!

It's the feast day of St. Michael - the day we ought to recall that we have a dangerous Foe working against us...

Speaking of Lucifer, one thinks of Michael, a name which means “who is like God.” It is also a hallowed shorthand, telling perhaps less of God than of Lucifer's daring and downfall. Lucifer wanted to play God. How an angel can do that is a question for which answers, very speculative to be sure, may be found in the writings of an Aquinas or a Maritain. All such answers rest on considering angelic nature, pure intellects, whose cognition has three main features. The mode of that cognition is intuitive, its origin is innate, and its operation is independent of things. The Cartesian theory of errorless human knowledge is expressed in exactly the same terms. It should not be surprising that a man, believing himself to be capable of knowing in such a way, should try to play God. Descartes tried to do this in the only sense in which a poor mortal can do it, namely, to dictate to God how to go about the business of creation.
[Jaki, Angels, Apes, and Men 15-16]

Let the scientific enquirer continue to cultivate the patience of science. Let him linger - at any rate let me linger - in the place of popular entertainment whatever it may be, and take very careful note (if necessary in a note-book) of the way in which ordinary human beings do really talk about each other. As he is a scientific enquirer with a note-book, it is very likely that he never saw any ordinary human beings before. But if he will listen carefully, he will observe a certain tone taken towards friends, foes and acquaintances; a tone which is, on the whole, creditably genial and considerate, though not, without strong likes and dislikes. He will hear abundant if sometimes bewildering allusion to the well-known weaknesses of Old George; but many excuses also, and a certain generous pride in conceding that Old George is quite the gentleman when drunk, or that he told the policeman off proper. Some celebrated idiot, who is always spotting winners that never, win, will be treated with almost tender derision; and, especially among the poorest, there will be a true Christian pathos in the reference to those who have been "in trouble" for habits like burglary and petty larceny. And as all these queer types are called up like ghosts by the incantation of gossip, the enquirer will gradually form the impression that there is one kind of man, probably only one kind of man, perhaps, only one man, who is really disliked. The voices take on quite a different tone in speaking of him; there is a hardening and solidification of disapproval and a new coldness in the air. And this will be all the more curious because, by the current modern theories of social or anti-social action, it will not be at all easy to say why he should be such a monster; or what exactly is the matter with him. It will be hinted at only in singular figures of speech, about a gentleman who is mistakenly convinced that he owns the street; or sometimes that he owns the earth. Then one of the social critics will say, "'E comes in 'ere and 'e thinks 'e's Gawd Almighty." Then the scientific enquirer will shut his note-book with a snap and retire from the scene, possibly after paying for any drinks he may have consumed in the cause of social science. He has got what he wanted. He has been intellectually justified. The man in the pub has precisely repeated, word for word, the theological formula about Satan.
[GKC "If I Only Had One Sermon to Preach" in The Common Man]

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle! Protect us, our families, our countries, and help us do our work well, to the glory of God. Do not let us walk into our labs or classrooms thinking we are God Almighty...

GKC on the Mystery of Observation

I had no time to arrange a posting this week on our topic, so I will just give you this important excerpt from a Chesterton essay.
--Dr. Thursday

I have seen with my own eyes in print all the above explanations of the Sea-Serpent as seen by sailors. They are all perfectly plausible and typically modern; they all only forget one thing: that it would be just as easy to apply this distributive and disruptive process to any other object that had only been momentarily seen on some score of occasions. When first the giraffe was described by travellers it was treated as a lie. Now it is in the Zoological Gardens; but it still looks like a lie. If few save stray travellers had seen the thing, and if the scientists (for some muddle-headed reason of theirs) had decided to doubt it, it would have been quite easy for them to explain every alleged appearance in the same way. There might be a tall python with a stretched neck just behind a horse with a hidden and sunken head: this might give the impression of a quadruped with a dreadfully long neck. There might be an animal with a long nose and pointed ears peering from the top of a lonely and leafless tree: this might give the impression, in certain lights and shades, of a tall vertebral column terminating in an ovine face. There are no limits to these coincidences of illusion on land or at sea; but we have the right to ask two questions of those who actually use them as an argument against the possible existence of giraffes. We have a right to ask, first, why all these coincidences tend to create the image of a giraffe? And we have a right to ask, secondly, why the dickens there should not be such a thing as a giraffe?
[GKC ILN October 21 1911 CW29:176-7]

Yeah - interesting, even if humorous, isn't it?

Now, to help you out - kindly print these out in a nice, fairly large font, and post it somewhere for you and others to read and think about:

When first the giraffe was described by travellers it was treated as a lie.

Now it is in the Zoological Gardens; but it still looks like a lie.

--G. K. Chesterton, 1911



One of the severest tests
of a scientific mind
is to discern the limits
of the legitimate application
of scientific methods.

--J. C. Maxwell, 1878

In order to consider the Scientific Method, we must first consider what Science is

I wrote a lot yesterday, in the tactile sense (pen and paper) and have only just begun to transcribe it... it will come in fragments, just as it is fragmentary in its character. But it helps move us along. And so, let us begin...

In order to examine this topic of the "Scientific Method", we first need to consider what "Science" is. As big as our chosen topic is, as argumentative as it may be, the matter of "science" is even larger and more argumentative.
This is neither a New Thig, nor one which has arisen from the usual issues blamed for "new" things, such as:
1. The Renaissance
2. The Protestant Reformation
3. The "Enlightenment" (which some of us call the Endarkenment)
4. The "rise of science"
5. The Industrial Revolution
6. Quantum Mechanics
7. Modern - that is, 20th and 21st century life.
and so on...

Why? Simply because the question as to What Is Science dates as far back as the 1200s, or even further.

For over 800 years, people have been debating on "science" - its definitions, its divisions and order, its methods... and even more amazing, these were people who
1. were friends
2. were quite orthodox in their belief and behavior, and not in any sense "protestant" (Though I think they were Reformers in the best sense, that is, in the sense of John the Baptist: they not only wished but worked to reform their lives, which we are all called to do.)
3. were authentic believers but at the same time they were "scientists" (if I may be permitted to use the term before we've defined it - we computer scientists do this, and I will talk about that another time.)

That is, these people wished to consider seriously the reality of things and apply their intellects - and indeed their whole energy - to understanding at least a little of that reality.




(to be continued)

note: three references on this topic I have here with me are:

1. The Division and Method of the Sciences - St. Thomas Aquinas' commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius, tr. Armand Maurer
2. Science and Creation inthe Middle Ages by Nicholas Steneck (this considers the work of Henry of Langenstein (d. 1397) on Genesis.
3. The Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor tr. with notes by Jerome Taylor