Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
17 - What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
from Part One - Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2016
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
Summary
I have a colleague who goes around declaring that the laws of physics require consciousness to cease with the death of the body. What he really means is that although he has no idea what underlies the phenomenon of consciousness, he can't imagine it's more than an extremely subtle manifestation of physiological processes that come to a halt when the body does. I'd be inclined to agree if he'd put it that way, but he doesn't. He insists on saying “Science has shown it,” which I take to be shorthand for “Stop thinking and believe me.” He invokes “science” as a blessing to sanctify what he says, or as a club to beat into submission those he disagrees with.
The public should be warned about such abuses of the name of science, and two sociologists, Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, have set out to do that. “What everyone should know about science” is the subtitle of The Golem, their award-winning book of essays. Written “for the general reader who wants to know how science really works and to know how much authority to grant to experts,” it is a central text in a growing controversy between scientists and those who study science. Collins and Pinch take as their image for science the mythical golem, a “lumbering fool who knows neither his own strength nor the extent of his clumsiness and ignorance … not an evil creature, but a little daft.” Their aim is to explain “what actually happens” in science. Prepare, they enjoin the reader, “to learn to love the bumbling giant for what it is.”
This is a fine goal. Scientists who set themselves up as sorcerers are a menace to the public and to science itself. People ought to have a better idea of what science can and cannot do. Unfortunately, however, though there are many fascinating tales about science in The Golem, Collins and Pinch infer from these studies a seriously deficient picture of the scientific enterprise. Here are some typical conclusions:
“Scientists at the research front cannot settle their disagreements through better experimentation, more knowledge, more advanced theories, or clearer thinking.”
“The truth about the natural world [is] what the powerful believe to be the truth about the natural world.” […]
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- Why Quark Rhymes with PorkAnd Other Scientific Diversions, pp. 117 - 123Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016