From The Demon-Haunted World: Alan Cromer is a physics professor at Northeastern University in Boston who was surprised to find so many students unable to grasp the most elementary concepts in his physics class. In Uncommon Sense: The Heretical Nature of Science (1993), Cromer proposes that science is difficult because its new. We, a species thats a few hundred thousand years old, discovered the method of science only a few centuries ago, he says. Like writing, which is only a few millennia old, we havent gotten the hang of it yet - or at least not without very serious and attentive study. Except for an unlikely concatenation of historical events, he suggests, we would never have invented science: This hostility to science, in the face of its obvious triumphs and benefits, is . . . evidence that it is something outside the mainstream of human development, perhaps a fluke. Chinese civilization invented movable type, gunpowder, the rocket, the magnetic compass, the seismograph, and systematic observations and chronicles of the heavens. Indian mathemati- cians invented the zero, the key to comfortable arithmetic and therefore to quantitative science. Aztec civilization developed a far better calendar than that of the European civilization that inundated and destroyed it; they were better able, and for longer periods into the future, to predict where the planets would be. But none of these civilizations, Cromer argues, had developed the sceptical, inquiring, experimental method of science. All of that came out of ancient Greece: The development of objective thinking by the Greeks appears to have required a number of specific cultural factors. First was the assembly, where men first learned to persuade one another by means of rational debate. Second was a maritime economy that prevented isolation and paro- chialism. Third was the existence of a widespread Greek- speaking world around which travelers and scholars could wander. Fourth was the existence of an independent mer- chant class that could hire its own teachers. Fifth was the Iliad and the Odyssey, literary masterpieces that are themselves the epitome of liberal rational thinking. Sixth was a literary religion not dominated by priests. And seventh was the 291 THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD persistence of these factors for 1,000 years. That all these factors came together in one great civiliza- tion is quite fortuitous; it didnt happen twice. Im sympathetic to part of this thesis. The ancient Ionians were the first we know of to argue systematically that laws and forces of Nature, rather than gods, are responsible for the order and even the existence of the world. As Lucretius summarized their views, Nature free at once and rid of her haughty lords is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself without the meddling of the gods. Except for the first week of introductory philosophy courses, though, the names and notions of the early Ionians are almost never mentioned in our society. Those who dismiss the gods tend to be forgotten. We are not anxious to preserve the memory of such sceptics, much less their ideas. Heroes who try to explain the world in terms of matter and energy may have arisen many times in many cultures, only to be obliterated by the priests and philosophers in charge of the conventional wisdom, as the Ionian approach was almost wholly lost after the time of Plato and Aristotle. With many cultures and many experiments of this sort, it may be that only on rare occasions does the idea take root. Plants and animals were domesticated and civilization began only ten or twelve thousand years ago. The Ionian experiment is 2,500 years old. It was almost entirely expunged. We can see steps towards science in ancient China, India and elsewhere, even though faltering, incomplete, and bearing less fruit. But suppose the Ionians had never existed, and Greek science and mathemat- ics never flourished. Is it possible that never again in the history of the human species would science have emerged? Or, given many cultures and many alternative historical skeins, isnt it likely that the right combination of factors would come into play somewhere else, sooner or later - in the islands of Indonesia, say, or in the Caribbean on the outskirts of a Mesoamerican civilization untouched by Conquistadores, or in Norse colonies on the shores of the Black Sea? The impediment to scientific thinking is not, I think, the difficulty of the subject. Complex intellectual feats have been mainstays even of oppressed cultures. Shamans, magicians and 292 The Wind Makes Dust theologians are highly skilled in their intricate and arcane arts. No, the impediment is political and hierarchical. In those cultures lacking unfamiliar challenges, external or internal, where funda- mental change is unneeded, novel ideas need not be encouraged. Indeed, heresies can be declared dangerous; thinking can be rigidified; and sanctions against impermissible ideas can be enforced - all without much harm. But under varied and changing environmental or biological or political circumstances, simply copying the old ways no longer works. Then, a premium awaits those who, instead of blandly following tradition, or trying to foist their preferences on to the physical or social Universe, are open to what the Universe teaches. Each society must decide where in the continuum between openness and rigidity safety lies. Greek mathematics was a brilliant step forward. Greek science, on the other hand - its first steps rudimentary and often unin- formed by experiment - was riddled with error. Despite the fact that we cannot see in pitch darkness, they believed that vision depends on a kind of radar that emanates from the eye, bounces off what were seeing, and returns to the eye. (Nevertheless, they made substantial progress in optics.) Despite the obvious resem- blance of children to their mothers, they believed that heredity was carried by semen alone, the woman a mere passive receptacle. They believed that the horizontal motion of a thrown rock somehow lifts it up, so that it takes longer to reach the ground than a rock dropped from the same height at the same moment. Enamoured of simple geometry, they believed the circle to be perfect; despite the Man in the Moon and sunspots (occasion- ally visible to the naked eye at sunset), they held the heavens also to be perfect; therefore, planetary orbits had to be circular. Being freed from superstition isnt enough for science to grow. One must also have the idea of interrogating Nature, of doing experiments. There were some brilliant examples - Eratostheness measurement of the Earths diameter, say, or Empedocless clepsydra experiment demonstrating the material nature of air. But in a society in which manual labour is demeaned and thought fit only for slaves, as in the classical Graeco-Roman world, the experimental method does not thrive. Science requires us to be freed of gross superstition and 293 THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD gross injustice both. Often, superstition and injustice are imposed by the same ecclesiastical and secular authorities, working hand in glove. It is no surprise that political revolutions, scepticism about religion, and the rise of science might go together. Liberation from superstition is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for science.
Posted on: Sat, 12 Oct 2013 06:06:13 +0000
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