Metaphors Bewitch You

Do these statements sound familiar to you?

·       “An atom is like a little solar system, where the nucleus is the sun, and the electrons are the planets.”

·       “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field.”

·       “Working memory is a conveyor belt.”

During the last few years, as I spent time listening to Great Courses, learning about disparate disciplines like writing, philosophy, physics, history and theology, I have been struck with one recurring method used by the many teachers I’ve heard, and it occurred to me that every teacher I could remember used that same method.  What is the method?  Comparison as explanation.  Simile, metaphor, models: all of these are ways to explain one concept in terms of another, and they all depend on the ability to compare something you already know to something you want to learn more about.

When you’re learning something new, you’re standing on what you can think of as an island of existing knowledge, and you want to cross over to some new island of knowledge.  To get from one island to another you can walk over a bridge of metaphor.  That is, you can base your understanding of the new, by comparing it to something you already know. 

This is not simply an effective teaching technique, it’s also both something our minds seem programmed to do and a method we apply to our own lives without even thinking about it.  Often, when we learn about something for the first time, especially if the new topic is complex, we can get a basic understanding by comparing one thing to another.  For example, the first statement above compares atoms to planets.  By the time we start learning about atoms in school, we have typically been exposed to the solar system in previous science classes.  The comparison, then, makes sense.  It gives us a mental picture on which we can scribble mental notes.  This is very, very helpful.

But as we drive over the bridge of simile, we need to be careful that it does not collapse and drop us to our doom.  Why would that happen?  Well, the comparison can only be as good as the underlying structure of the known thing is similar to the underlying structure of the new thing.  If the two things are not extremely similar, we might make a generalizing assumption which gets us in trouble.  For example, two primates are very similar, whereas a primate and a jellyfish are not.  So, while you might deduce some similarities between a jellyfish and an ape, based on them both turning food into energy, for example, you probably don’t want to generalize a similarity when it comes to how they will react to a mirror introduced into their environment.

And, in the case of the atomic structure being like a solar system, you might picture electrons being solid objects, similar to planets.  This would be carrying the analogy, perhaps, too far – depending on the degree of detail you need.  Electrons, as explained by current quantum theory anyway, don’t “really” travel in circles (or some other relatively “flat” closed-loop paths) but sometimes it helps to think of them that way, especially when first learning about them.  Once you get to a point, as an engineer or physicist, to require a deeper understanding of subatomic structure, however, you need to know quantum theory, and that is not much like a solar system at all.

The trouble with using these comparisons, you see, is noticing when you have fallen off the bridge.  If the bridge were a real thing, instead of a metaphor, it would be obvious.  You’d be falling, or submerged in water, or smashed to a pulp.  But, as this bridge is metaphorical, it can be more like a wrong turn, which seems to be making progress towards your goal, but which is really taking you somewhere you didn’t intend to go.

Many years ago, for example, scientists thought that light was a wave.  This caused them to posit a material through which the wave traveled.  They called it “ether.”  Why did they think ether existed?  Well, the waves they knew about all had some substance through which the wave transmitted itself.  Waves in the ocean have, at their basis, water.  Without the water, there is no wave, so clearly light – because it was a wave – must have some “stuff” in which to carry itself. 

Of course, ultimately, scientists proved this was nottrue.  They had been using the metaphor of a fluid wave, and it had led them down an incorrect path.  Light might have some properties of “physical” waves, but not the requirement to have a transmitting material.

None of the above is meant to discourage anyone from using comparisons!  Far from it!  As I said before, our minds seem to look for similarities, and those similarities help us learn.  My point today is about being aware of the metaphors you are using, so that if you need a more thorough understanding of something, you can use more than the model. 

Of course, even when you do, you’re probably going to just encounter another model – those scientists who care about electrons need to understand mathematical probability – because true understanding of many topics might just be beyond what you need, or what we can accomplish.  But if an additional metaphor helps you comprehend the thing more completely, then, by all means, use it!  Just be aware, it’s still just a model.

==========================================

[I have been wanting to write about this topic for well over a year, but I’ve been avoiding it because I feel it’s very expansive, which makes it hard to cover properly in a blog, which I feel is a medium typically more conducive to taking a concise approach.  So, what changed my mind?  Well, I recently bought another Great Course, and as I looked at the list of lectures, it appears I will be hearing 30 minutes on this very topic.  I decided that I want to get my thoughts captured before being exposed to those of the professor.  I will be happy to revisit the whole idea later.  Meanwhile, I remain abashed proud of the silly pun in the title.  So I like Star Wars; so sue me. ]

Laws of Nature - "Is" vs "Must Be" and Counterfactuals

I am revisiting the Great Course on the Philosophy of Science.  It is so long, and packed with so much to learn and consider, I could not hear it just once.  Dr. Kasser explains the facets of this topic quite well, so most of what I am saying below comes from his lectures, but I also need to react a bit.

I recently heard the pair of lectures which deal most specifically with the idea of Laws of Nature (or scientific laws.)  I'm not sure I can do this topic justice without laying a lot of groundwork, but I am going to write a bit, because I want to get some thoughts down while the lessons are still pretty fresh in my head.
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Preface:  The Philosophy of Science, like the philosophy of pretty much anything, asks questions which challenge us to examine our base assumptions about the subject.  This is part of what I enjoy about philosophy. 

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Let's suppose there are Laws of Nature.  Most of us have learned about them as we took science courses in junior high and high school.  When I am talking about Laws of Nature, think of things like Newton's Laws of Motion, or the laws of thermodynamics or something.  I'll use a specific example below, and by the end, we'll abstract things a bit.

One of the big topics in Philosophy of Science is how much science should claim.  One group of scientists, and philosophers about science, promote the idea that science should describe what does happen, and only that.   These are the Empiricists, and the thrust of their argument is that, in order to avoid metaphysical claims, science needs to make claims only about things which have been observed.

In this viewpoint, then, a Law of Nature, or a Scientific Law, only describes the way things ARE.  The Law contains a set of statements which describe how one interprets all observation into a coherent description of how the observed phenomena fit together.  This version of Laws tells you how to predict future observations based on patterns or relationships.  (It's very reliant on induction, which has its own logical issues, but that's something outside the scope of this post.)  A Law might even claim that there will never be a counter-example to the law.  "All copper conducts electricity" is an example of such a law, used extensively in the course, and in the Empiricist view it describes every piece of copper ever seen, plus every piece of copper we will ever see. 

However, most of us want to give science more power than that.   Most of us want science, and in particular scientific laws, to not only claim what the observations are and will be, but also to claim that they MUST BE what they are.  We want the Law to also say that, for example, every piece of copper MUST be conductive.  The supporters of this view are Necessitarians.  Their statement of the law above would be "Being made of copper necessitates conducting electricity."

In the former view people create laws.  In the latter view, the laws are out there for us to find, and we discover them.

The point about the differences in these approaches is subtle. I grant you that.  But the empiricist view does not deal well with what are called "counterfactuals."  A counterfactual is a statement which conflicts with known facts, but makes a prediction.  To use the example from the lesson, imagine you have a pen.  You could say "If this pen were made of copper, it would conduct electricity."  The known fact is that the pen is NOT made of copper.  But a claim is being made about a world in which the pen were.  Does that make logical sense based on each view of laws?

I think it's clear that the Necessitarian version of the law logically leads to the truth of "If this pen were made of copper, it would conduct electricity." Why?  Because "copper-ness" embues conductivity.  It's right there in the definition of the law.

The empiricist view, though, is not so clear.  Empiricist laws describe how things work in this world. Not in a world where things are different. Counterfactuals deal with a world which does not exist.  That's metaphysics, and not something empiricists think science should address.

Why do counterfactuals matter?  Because, when we examine many of the Laws we were taught in school, they are counterfactual.  The premises of the Laws never happen in reality.

For example, Newton's Laws of Motion tell us how bodies would react in the absence of any other forces.  But such a world does not exist.  All bodies we have ever seen have more than one force acting on them (in the Newtonian sense.)  This means that Newton's Laws never, ever have an observed instance.  Never.  The laws are, in their nature, counterfactual.   And yet we can use those laws to correctly predict motion (within certain limits; outside those limits we need Relativity or Quantum theory.)   

Personally, I believe that Laws are out there to be found.  I'm a necessitarian, I guess. When trying to discover those laws, the intellectual difficulty stems from only having observations from which to work.  From there, if we want to get to counterfactual laws, we have to apply imagination and reason.  Reason can only carry us so far, and once we're into imagination, we're definitely into the "meta" realm.

This is already long, so I will deal with related questions another time:  If the Premise is never True, what good is the Law?  If a Law is False, was it ever a Law?

Mars Rover Year 1 in 2 Minutes - video

So, this is cool.

More Internet Things

I think I did this sort of post once before, but whether I did or not here it is:

Some things I've shared on Facebook which were worth my time and which I might want to see again in the future.


Serious and Cool

AIDS-Related Problem solved by gamers
 
Funny and Cool

Laser Grid game

Quote Quiz - Shakespeare or Batman?

To be a Kid again


Musical and Cool

Billy Joel sings with student accompaniment

Great Course: Albert Einstein

I have just finished the Great Course called "Albert Einstein: Physicist, Philosopher, Humanitarian" taught by Professor Don Howard from the University of Notre Dame.  It was a great course for me to take (pardon the pun) for several reasons.

First, as I mentioned on this blog a couple of months ago, I have been mulling over the intersection of philosophy and science as work through my own understanding of the power of science and its place in the creation of knowledge.  In my mind, I can only appreciate science fully when I understand its roots, its strengths and limitations, its relationship to truth and knowledge.  Well, as it turns out, my whole attempt to understand science in this way is a part of what's known as Philosophy of Science, and while Albert Einstein was definitely a scientist, he was also a philosopher of science.  The Great Course, being biographical, did not merely focus on Einstein's work as a scientist, but also on how he approached science -- which turns out to have been influenced greatly by philosophy.  He, himself, thought and wrote frequently on the topic of the philosophy of science, and was a proponent of requiring physicists to study philosophy.

The second reason this was a good course to take right now is that it was not as heavy as several of my more recent courses.  Yes, it described Einstein's theories, but not in as much depth as did Einstein's Relativity and the Quantum Revolution: Modern Physics for Non-Scientists, 2nd Edition.  And yes, it covered some philosophy of science, but only insofar as it related directly to Einstein, not as deeply as is necessary in Philosophy of Science.    Being biographical, this course had periods of historical description -- both of Einstein's life and of the world in which he lived -- which are easier to absorb.  It was, in some sense, a "break."   Like the flat part of a long run, it was still work, but not nearly the work represented by "hills" of other courses.

A third reason is quite personal - in the sense that it relates to me as a person.  When I was in grade school, I remember reading a lot, but there are only a few things I remember reading specifically.  I got into "The Boxcar Children" and "The Hardy Boys" and I still appreciate the fourth-grade substitute teacher who introduced me to Tolkein's "The Hobbit."  But, thinking back to those days, I realize that while my penchant for fiction was clearly established, I had one non-fiction fascination -- biographies of Albert Einstein.  I read two or three which were stocked in my grade school library, and I remember getting help from the librarian to borrow some more from other libraries, through school.  It's funny -- I can't say I remember many facts which I read back then, but I certainly remember reading the books.  I can even picture what one of the covers looked like.  In any case, this Great Course was like going back to childhood again, in one sense, as I re-learned about one of the heroes of science.

Of course, in a blog, I can't relate even a meaningful fraction of what I learned in 24 lectures.  Let me give you a few tidbits:

• Contrary to popular myth, Albert Einstein was not bad at math.  This myth arose from sloppy work by  early biographers.  Einstein spent a year in Aarau which had a grading system which was the opposite of what we might expect.  A cursory look at his grades made it appear he did poorly, but in fact, his grades put him near the top of the class.
• Thought experiments - a staple for Galileo centuries earlier - were an early tool for Einstein, and one which he continued to use throughout his life.  Picturing tough problems through simplified scenarios focused his mind, and also allowed him to explain difficult theories in a more accessible way.
• His dislike of nationalism, which put him immediately and consistently against facism, was part of a firm belief that a world government would be better -- even necessary -- for the advancement of humankind.  This belief sounded too much like anti-democracy for some powerful people, causing Einstein to be left out of the Manhattan Project.  We'll never know exactly what his response would have been, had he been invited to join.   Despite strong warnings against the use of nuclear weapons after the war, and despite working for pacifist causes throughout his life, he pointedly agreed that war against Hitler was necessary.

This Great Course is an excellent mix of science, history, biography and philosophy, and it reacquainted me with the life and work of one of the most influential people who ever lived.

Statistics about Christianity and their relation to Science and Evolution

Gathered these facts in 2013.  Never posted.  Not sure why, but as they are still valid (for the time they were gathered -- unlikely to have changed since 2013)  and pertinent to a discussion I was having, I'll post now.

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There are 2.2 billion Christians in the world.  [Sources: Washington Post, Pew Forum]

Of those, 1.2 billion are Catholic. [Sources: Catholic Culture, Pew Forum]

Pope John Paul II reaffirmed the Catholic stance that the theory (or theories) of evolution are not in conflict with scriptural truth (see Message to the Ponfical Academy if Sciences: On Evolution) and in fact, the centuries-old recognition that "We know that the truth cannot contradict the truth. (Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus)"

Here are two important things for people involved in the "Church vs. Science" false debate to take from the above:

Christians -- you are not the minority.  Many Christians speak, act, and even stand in pulpits and preach as if they were somehow the minority.  While it is true that there are more non-Christians in the world than there are Christians, of people professing a religion, you are the largest group.

People who claim "Christians are opposed to science and particularly the Theory of Evolution": The numbers above demonstrate that a majority of Christians in the world profess a type of Christianity which supports the Theory of Evolution, and has done so for decades.  And that's only the Catholics.  There are plenty of Christian denominations which are not Catholic, but which also acknowledge that "truth cannot contradict the truth" and that, to the best knowledge humans have today, Evolution is scientific truth.

While researching this, I came across an essay by Doug Linder: The Vatican's View of Evolution: The Story of Two Popes, which I found very interesting.  It selected some of the key quotes from two Popes, which show the progression of acceptance of evolution in that branch of Christianity.

Theology, Reason and Science - Some History

In my previous Knowledge Series post, I discussed how Faith -- holding something to be True without the need to prove it -- is the basis for Reason.  Most of my discussion at that time was about how science uses Reason, together with Faith in a few things, to make Truth claims.  So, last time, the primary focus was on Science as a path to Truth.

This time, I want to discuss Religion and its relationship to Reason, and briefly to Science.  To do so, I need to get into a little history and introduce the idea of Theology.


In what we think of as Western culture, the search for Knowledge and Truth go back to the beginning of recorded thought. What we now think of as religions certainly had, as one of their functions, the delivery of Knowledge -- the explanation of how and why things happened and a description of what things Really were.  However, until the rise of what we now call Philosophy, Reason -- by our current definition --  was not required to support the Truth being described by those belief systems.

Around the time of Socrates (born in 469 BC) it is clear, however, that the Greek world had given rise to the idea of a "philosophy" -- a "love of knowledge" or "love of truth" -- and that philosophy in its nascent form said that Reason had to be applied in order to arrive at Truth.  This method of seeking Truth is probably the key inheritance we have received from Socrates and those who followed him.

Of course, at the time, the idea of "science" did not exist yet.  It would not exist for more than 2000 years, in fact.  What we might have thought of as "science" was more correctly called "natural philosophy" because it dealt with trying to find truths about the natural world.  Socrates, apparently, tried his hand at this sort of philosophy early in his life, failed at it, and moved on to a different branch.  Still, there were people at the time trying to apply reason to the study of the natural world, and then there were people like Socrates who were applying reason to less substantial things - truth, love, honor -- that sort of human endeavor.

OK, the first part of the history lesson is almost over.  I apologize that this is a very abbreviated and necessarily simplified history, but I need to tie it to the next part.  Because the next part deals with Christianity.

By the time Christianity came into existence, this approach of applying Reason to reach Truth was pretty well entrenched in the learned culture of the West.  I am not saying it wasn't at all in existence before Socrates, but certainly Socrates and his followers had tremendous influence by the time the first Christian churches were founded.

This meant that a reliance on Reason to support Truth statements was already inherent in the culture in which Christianity spread.  Thus was born, as part of the Christian belief system, Theology.

Theology, you see, is not simply a list of the things people of a particular Christian denomination hold to be true.  That, unfortunately, is how the word is quite commonly misused these days.  No, Theology is something quite different.

Theology is the application of reason to explain truth, given the faith statements which form the basis of Christianity, together with the theological material which has come before.

Compare this to today's view of science, modified to include my last post's view of faith statements:

Science is the application of reason to explain truth, given the faith statements which form the basis of science, together with the established science which has come before.

Undoubtedly you can see the parallels there.  Of course they are there.  Clearly, I was leading to this point.  Why was I doing this?

Long before the first professional scientist lived, there were professional theologians.  The early church was built by them.  The most famous and influential Christian who ever lived (perhaps excluding the Apostle Paul; let's not argue that point now) was Augustine of Hippo.  He deserves his own post or two, but for now I will merely talk about him as he relates to Theology.

Augustine was born to a Christian mother and a pagan mother, and for a very long time he rejected Christianity.  But he was determined that Reason would guide his path to the Truth.  Once he became a Christian, he applied his Reason very thoroughly.  Augustine laid down many of the theological doctrines which exist in Christianity today, by applying Reason to all manner of issues.

One key teaching of Augustine is that there were two "Books" of Truth.  The Book of Scripture, and the Book of Nature.  Both books, he said, demonstrated the Truth of God's Creation.  And, very importantly, whenever a conflict appeared to exist between the two, it was because people were not applying Reason properly.  In order to reconcile the two, we needed to examine, and find the flaw in, how we were reading the books.

This was obvious to him, by the way, even without considering what we'd call "science."  Augustine recognized the apparent contradictions in the stories of the scripture, and reasoned that there would be Truths explained when we understood them properly.  But when natural philosophy -- remember, the forerunner of science -- proved something to be true, Augustine was not opposed to the idea that the reading of Scripture would have to change to accommodate it.

And Augustine was not alone.  Almost 900 years later, Thomas Aquinas carried very similar beliefs about reason (as did many along the way, but Aquinas is historically and theologically very influential.)

This, friends, is the heritage of the Christian faith.  However, along the way, Theology got lost -- at least among many Christians.  Once the Reformation happened, many new branches of Christianity were so opposed to what became known as the Catholic church that they seemed willing to dismiss the centuries of reasoned thought which had grown up with the Church, in order to separate themselves from the abuses of that Church.

This was not "the fault" of the Reformation.  The Reformation and the Protestant movement did push a large segment of Christianity towards an idea that they could just read Scripture for themselves and be brought to an understanding of the Truth thereby.  While that may be true for the key teachings of the Gospel (again, let's not argue that point now) it most certainly is not true for the relationship between Augustine's Book of Scripture and Book of Nature.

Throwing out the theological baby with the corrupt bathwater allowed for the growth of denominations which do not take advantage of the benefit of theology.  They do not build on the foundation of Reason applied to Scripture which was meticulously built over time.

This leads to some interesting, and frustrating things. For example, something that might come as a surprise to many Christians and non-Christians alike:

A majority of Christians in the world belong to denominations which profess that the theory of evolution is consistent with Christian teachings.

Don't believe me?

There are 2.2 billion Christians in the world.  [Sources: Washington Post, Pew Forum]

Of those, 1.2 billion are Catholic. [Sources: Catholic Culture, Pew Forum]

Pope John Paul II reaffirmed the Catholic stance that the theory (or theories) of evolution are not in conflict with scriptural truth (see Message to the Ponfical Academy if Sciences: On Evolution).  In fact, he also supports the centuries-old recognition that "We know that the truth cannot contradict the truth. (Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus)"   (Sound like Augustine to you?  It should.)

It must be said: while Catholics alone are a majority of Christians, there are other large Christian denominations which are not Catholic, but which also acknowledge that "truth cannot contradict the truth."  These people individually (and I am one) and these denominations corporately, agree that Evolution is scientific truth, to the best knowledge humans have today.

To me, one of the sad parts about the way Christians are perceived in the world today, and particularly in the modern American culture, is due to the fact that a very vocal minority of Christians has turned away from the historical underpinnings of applying reason to religion: they have tuned away from Theology.  Certainly, they apply reason to their arguments; they are Western, after all.  But they start with a set of base assumptions which was discarded by Christianity in the distant past -- the literal interpretation of scripture for one; the weighting of scripture above nature for another -- and then apply their reason from those assumptions.

In conclusion, let me say this.  It took me a long time to learn the facts which went into this post.  It seems as if it has taken me almost as long to write these few down. Of necessity, I have had to summarize large sections of very important information.  I have probably forgotten some details.  If I took another four months to revise this, it would get longer and more accurate, but at this point I think it has the key points I wanted to make.

Hopefully those of you who are currently inclined away from Christianity (and perhaps religion in general) because of its supposed opposition to Reason and Science will give it a bit more benefit of the doubt as the Knowledge Series continues.  Hopefully those of you who are Christians will recognize how tightly the two sources for Truth -- Theology and Science -- are actually connected, as well.

And hopefully, it won't take me quite so long to formulate my next post, so that the Knowledge Series can continue.

How NASA might build its very first warp drive

Yet another item I don't want to lose which I posted to Facebook.  And which I think is actually quite cool.

Here's the lead -- see if it doesn't intrigue you.

"A few months ago, physicist Harold White stunned the aeronautics world when he announced that he and his team at NASA had begun work on the development of a faster-than-light warp drive. His proposed design, an ingenious re-imagining of an Alcubierre Drive, may eventually result in an engine that can transport a spacecraft to the nearest star in a matter of weeks — and all without violating Einstein's law of relativity."

http://io9.com/5963263/how-nasa-will-build-its-very-first-warp-drive?utm_source=io9.com&utm_medium=recirculation&utm_campaign=recirculation

Now we just need the "Immortal Jellyfish" to lead to something useful so I can still be around by the time the Warp Drive is commercially available....

Oh, you missed the "Immortal Jellyfish?"  Here it is, discussed at the National Geographic website.  After that, use Google, you can read more.

Truth, Knowledge and Learning; Faith, Reason and Authority

What do you know?  How do you know it?  

Is what you know actually true?  If you are told that something you thought you knew is not true, what will convince you that you were mistaken, so you will then claim to know something else?

Are there things which we cannot truly know, but which we nevertheless believe?  How do we learn these things?  Or is there a better description than learning for acquiring these ideas? How do these things which are believed relate to the things which we know.

Do you feel a responsibility to state the truth?  If you feel a responsibility to tell the truth, do you also feel a responsibility to examine your knowledge to determine if you do, in fact, know the truth?

And, very importantly, how are reason and authority involved in, and related to, what you know and what is true?

In my life, I am continually interested in learning.  If you've been following my blog, you will have read my discussions of the Great Courses series, for example.  But while it is the most frequent means by which I have deliberately gained knowledge over the past couple of years, it is not the only way I learn today, and it is certainly not the only way I have ever learned -- not even close.

Lately, I've been extremely interested in the relationship between several related concepts, and how their interaction -- and the value we place on them -- greatly influences our world.  These concepts are listed in the title of this entry today, and they represent a theme I'd like to explore with a series of essays.  They are:

• Truth
• Knowledge
• Learning
• Faith
• Reason
• Authority

As I sit down to write this introduction, the idea of writing a series of essays has been growing in my mind for many months, and I still don't have what I'd call a "plan" for them.  I have been tempted to wait until they are entirely written before posting even this introduction, but I have convinced myself that this delay will likely mean an unacceptable procrastination.

There are many different fields of knowledge involved in this discussion, and I am not a professional in any of them: philosophy, psychology, theology, history, science, ethics.  Those of you who read this blog for my comments on games, movies and TV shows such as Castle, Survivor and Star Trek will probably just skip the essays -- but I'm happy if I'm proven wrong.  At this point, while I certainly hope someone will read the thoughts I have on these topics, I simply feel a need to write them.

If you would like to follow along, I will be using the label "Knowledge Series" to gather them in the blog.  (I will tweet with #KnowledgeSeries as the hashtag.) And, for the time being at least, I have created a "logo" photo.  When you see that photo, you will know whether to read or avoid the blog that day, depending on your interests.

Rise of the Planet of the Worms

From the BBC - but I bet you can find it other places:

Animal's genetic code redesigned

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14492948

Again with the Relativity

Sixteen months ago, I completed the Great Course Einstein's Relativity and the Quantum Revolution: Modern Physics for Non-Scientists and if you've been reading this blog for the past couple of months, you know that I started listening to it again. I have finished my second pass through the course, and I am amazed at the ability of Dr. Wolfson to explain complex topics so that people can understand them.  The definition of relativity is pretty easy to describe, when you get down to the basics, but it takes a good teacher like Wolfson to explain how the history of science (astronomy & physics) made it difficult for people to accept it as a likely description of reality.  And, while it is experimentally one of the most tested and proven concepts in the history of science, some of its implications are so counter-intuitive, it's also easy to see why people have trouble grasping it.

Another part of this course, though, is the description of Quantum Physics, and I believe I learned more about this sub-atomic science this second time around.  It, too, has some strange concepts.  For example, the idea that (at a micro level) you cannot know both the velocity and position of a particle implies an uncertainty which explains the world in ways classical (Newtonian) physics cannot, but it also forces particles to be waves, and waves to be particles -- at one and the same time -- this is strange stuff.  It's no wonder that even Einstein disbelieved some of its core concepts.

Sorry, readers -- I just made it sound complicated.  Dr. Wolfson does not.  By the time you are done with this Great Course, you will be amazed at what you've learned.

Michelson-Morley - Science proves itself wrong

I am revisiting (re-listening to) the first Great Course I heard: "Einstein's Relativity and the Quantum Revolution: Modern Physics for Non-Scientists, 2nd Edition" and I am learning even more the second time through it.  One of the recent points which impressed me again was the "Michelson-Morley Experiment."  You can follow one of the links to read about it, but here are the salient points:

In the latter part of the 19th century, scientists believed that light must be transmitted through a medium.  Since it had been shown that light (all electo-magnetism, really, but light in particular) moves as a wave, it was supposed that there must be some medium through which it traveled.  Think about the kinds of waves we usually encounter -- sound waves travel through the medium of air, ocean waves through the medium of water.  Without the medium, the wave does not exist.  Light was a wave, so it should have a medium. This medium was called "ether" (sometimes spelled "aether.")

For very good reasons which I won't get into, scientists were convinced that the Earth must be moving through the ether -- it was not at rest in the ether, as a ball floating on a still pond is at rest in the water, but more like a boat being pushed under power through water that has a current pushing against it somehow.  This meant that there must be a "wind" -- a movement of ether past the Earth that was analogous to wind.


So, convinced that the Earth was moving through the ether, Michelson and Morley designed a very clever experiment to prove this, and to attempt to measure the speed at which the Earth was moving in the ether.

Their experiment, pictured at the left, was ingenious, and became one of the most well-known experiments in history.

Because it failed.

The experiment clearly showed that the Earth was not moving, relative to the ether, and so science was faced with a (seeming) contradiction.  It was proven that the Earth was not at rest with respect to the ether, and it was also proven that the Earth was not in motion with respect to the ether.  How could this be?

Einstein would give the answer with his theory of special relativity in 1905, and one of the results would be the (now obvious) answer: there is no such thing as "ether" - no "medium" which transmits electro-magnetic waves such as light.

This is such a great example of how scientists work.  They build experiments which are influenced by their beliefs/knowledge.  After all, Michelson and Morley were convinced that they would find the ether wind.  They were "biased" in the sense that they expected something, so they built an experiment based on their beliefs. But scientists also publish their results, even when those results do not support the current the theories.  By doing so, they put the scientific world to work trying to reconcile the results with science's view of reality, and science moves forward.

No scientist ever gets "the final answer" because no theory has yet explained everything.  But throughout history, science has gotten closer and closer to being able to describe more and more of reality by constantly looking for contradictions, anomalies and points of divergence and trying to find theories which explain them all -- or at least more than the theories which are known at the time.

It's a darn good thing Michelson and Morley were willing to show that they were wrong.  Great scientists.

Evolution of the Eye

This is just so cool.  When media tries to cover science, it often over-simplifies, or sensationalizes.  That's why it's great to have media which is specifically trying to explain bits of science in ways we can understand.




This is another thing I saw because I follow Roger Ebert (@ebertchicago) on Twitter. I can't possibly read or view everything he recommends, but when something catches my eye -- and the connection to the Great Courses I've taken which talk about evolution was so strong (here and here), this one did -- I read/listen/view and am never disappointed.

Great Course - Darwinian Revolution

My latest Great Course was Darwinian Revolution, with lectures by Professor Frederick Gregory (Ph.D. Harvard) from the University of Florida.

This was an excellent course, but it's important to understand that it is not a science course -- it is a history course. I had initially thought I would be learning the scientific details which have convinced scientists of the foundational position of evolution. Well, while I did learn some of the core facts, I also learned that my initial understanding was wrong.

Darwin was certainly instrumental in getting evolution to be accepted as the means by which species developed, but it was not his central novel idea. Evolution, as a concept, had been around for a long time before Darwin. It is natural selection of small variations that was Darwin's seminal idea. Now, while I had understood that natural selection was Darwin's, I hadn't realized how much evolutionary theory existed before Darwin, nor how the "small variations" part of the theory was so controversial.

Before Darwin, Jean-Baptise Lamarck had a theory of evolution by use and disuse, which was far more acceptable to the populace of the time, which wanted to see evolution as a process towards progress, and wanted evolution to fit the ideals of work being able to overcome nature. The idea that chance was integral to evolution rubbed the Victorians the wrong way, and large variations seemed to fit the science of the time which had the Earth being much younger than current science does (though still much older than the biblical 10,000 years.)

I enjoyed hearing the history of the Origin of Species: how Darwin was pushed to publish earlier than he wanted by having someone come up with a similar idea; how he counted on his understanding of the physics of the day to set the age of the earth to allow him time for his natural selection, but was told he was wrong by the physics expert of the age; how the physics of the age was so wrong because radioactivity had not been discovered yet; how Darwin was a strong defender of his work, but was congenial and respectful of his critics, and didn't even go as far as current Darwinians in upholding the sufficiency of natural selection of small variations. He was willing to consider Lamarck's theories as a contributing factor, and it's interesting that recent cellular evolutionary theory has brought some support for a version of "use/disuse" in its ideas of symbiotic evolution.

I also finally got a good description of Intelligent Design, along with its history, and the differences between I.D. and creationism. Perhaps the most unexpected message, though, was the clear discussion of nature of the "Evolution vs. Intelligent Design" debate as a metaphysical debate -- that is, that each of these propositions is based on a belief system about how truth is to be discovered. It is metaphysical naturalism vs. metaphysical supernaturalism. I can appreciate the philosophical assertions of I.D. though I still believe it is not ultimately the basis for "science."

I appreciated how up front Dr. Gregory was about stating that he was giving his own slant, especially in the wrap-up lecture. He gave me plenty of information, pointed me to good references, and let me draw my own conclusions. This is a great educator.