4 posts tagged “science”
That's right, I'm here with the funny... or not.
Here, have a link to a nifty blog article I rather enjoyed by Greta Christina. There's some sex stuff on the page, so be aware of where you are if you go take a peek... I haven't spoken overmuch about being an atheist here so far, but I think this piece sums up nicely something I've tried to articulate in my head from time to time. There doesn't have to be a plan or a purpose or an end game for this life for it to be a joyous experience, at least for some of us. Just the mere existence of the universe is amazing enough.
I think my first moment of "atheist transcendence" came while listening to the audio book of Richard Dawkin's God Delusion. It's in the section "Why there almost certainly is no god" regarding the anthropic principle. (From Wikipedia: "In other words, the only universe we can see is one that supports life. If it were a different type of universe, we would not exist to see it.") Page 138, here's the bit that struck and filled me with a sense of joy and awe that we, that anyone, that the entire universe exists... (emphasis mine).
"If the odds of life originating spontaneously on a planet were a billion to one against, nevertheless that stupefyingly improbable event would still happen on a billion planets. The chance of finding any one of those billion life-bearing planets recalls the proverbial needle in a haystack. But we don't have to go out of our way to find a needle because (back to the anthropic principle) any beings capable of looking must necessarily be sitting on one of those prodigiously rare needles before they even start the search."
And here we are. :)
Woo hoo! The new Florida education standards passed with evolution intact. There was a last minute compromise between the ID's and the people with sense... the schools must teach "the scientific theory of evolution" rather than just "evolution." Good! Great! It's about time we spent some serious time explaining to our students what a theory actually is. The irony... it tickles.
Linkage:
Pharyngula
Wired Magazine
They was "tricked"
I didn't think the DI ID's actually believed the crap they were pushing to their own followers, and now their followers' lack of knowledge has bit them in the proverbial bum. I wonder if this is the last time they'll let the local yokels handle these fights all by themselves?
I love words. It's one of the main reasons I'm a writer. I love finding out what words mean, how they are pronounced, and where they came from, their history - how they used to be pronounced or spelled and how their meaning has changed over time. Would you believe that there is an entire class of words in which the same word has two very different and nearly opposite meanings? They are called autoantonyms or contranyms, among other things.
Autoantonyms are more common than you would think; I found a list of 50 pretty common ones recently. This happens for a number of reasons. English, for instance, has borrowed heavily from every language it has come in contact with over the centuries, and sometimes it picked up multiple meanings for similar sounds. For a while, Americans attempted to distance American English from its parent by changing everything from spelling and pronunciation to some meanings. Beyond that, language simply changes over time, of course. A word can begin to diverge in meaning and the word simply retains both meanings for a time, until the older form is forgotten by most.
Sometimes, though, a word retains its old meaning for a long time because it is used by a particular group of people for a particular purpose, while its new meaning grows more popular and well known in the public world. For example, most people know that the word "sanction" means to approve of an action or behavior. But there are cases, generally in law or business, where "sanction" still means a punishment or a judgment - being sanctioned could mean a fine or a jail term. Both meanings are perfectly legitimate and relevant in our society, only one is a bit less recognized, less used in common speech.
Now lately I have heard a good many people using the phrase, "It's just a theory." As it turns out, theory is also an autoantonym. In everyday use "theory" does indeed mean "a best guess." Random House Webster's College Dictionary's sixth definition is "a guess or conjecture." But its first definition is quite different: "A coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena." Just as sanction has a completely different meaning in the world of law, theory has a completely different meaning in the world of science. A theory is not by any means "just a theory."
People are often confused because science calls some things laws and some things theories. This isn't because laws are fact and theories are guesses. Law and theory are both the best explanation of two quite different areas. The National Academy Press, who advises our government on scientific matters, says, "Laws are generalizations that describe phenomena, whereas theories explain phenomena. For example, the laws of thermodynamics describe what will happen under certain circumstances; thermodynamics theories explain why these events occur. Laws, like facts and theories, can change with better data. But theories do not develop into laws with the accumulation of evidence. Rather, theories are the goal of science.”
Newton's Laws of Motion, for example, are only true under certain, very normal circumstances. They do not hold at the speed of light; that requires Relativity - also a theory, by the way, though thousands of scientists depend on it being true every single day. Neither do they hold at the subatomic level; that requires quantum mechanics - also a theory, and an autoantonym, while we're at it (in science, quantum means "very small" while in daily life it means "very big" - a quantum leap).
Oh, and atoms are just a theory, as are cells. And germs - that's the so-called Germ Theory of Disease. Which basically means that if you really believe that "just a theory" stuff, well, you can quite taking your vitamin C, washing your hands, and using all that anti-bacterial, anti-germ spray, soap, hand wash, and other cleaners. Because that nasty cold your coworker had can't "evolve" its way over to you - those germs are just a theory!
The Double Helix, by James Watson
Below is the introduction and other bits of an essay I wrote on The Double Helix for a class called Literature of Science and Technology. When I first realized that I had to read the memoir I was afraid that it would be very dry and boring. However, it was written not very long after Watson and Crick got their Nobel, and young James Watson turned out to be very a very amusing memoir writer. Of course, now, as even back then, there's a bit of unpleasantness in Mr. Watson's personality, but putting that aside, the tale of the discovery of the structure of DNA is a very good tale.
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With his memoir, The Double Helix, James Watson tells not only the story of the discovery of the structure of DNA, but also gives non-scientists a look at how science is truly done. He says, “As I hope this book will show, science seldom proceeds in the straightforward logical manner imagined by outsiders” (7). Contrary to what most of us learn in high school science classes, the scientific method is not the whole of science. Research and intuition play a large part in the process well before the scientific method is even brought to bear, while the people behind the science are important in bringing all of these elements together at the proper time and place. Watson shows us that, though not all scientists are brilliant – or perhaps, because of this – much more than lab work is behind scientific advancement.
Watson devotes a great deal of his short tome to ruining the idea that all scientists are great geniuses, with a full interest in and knowledge of every possible scientific subject. He states this bluntly early on: “...a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid” (13). He even relates his own science shortcomings from time to time. Watson, for instance, was a poor chemist and also made it a point to avoid subjects which required difficult math (17). It is for this reason that the research stage of scientific discovery is vitally important. It goes far beyond simply reading a few textbooks or scholarly papers. As Watson shows throughout The Double Helix, research also involves attending seminars, consulting with experts in fields one does not fully comprehend, and even casual conversations with other scientists at pubs and dinner parties. He shows that, though a scientist might not know a particular thing, they ought to be acquainted with someone who does.
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Watson felt it was important to describe not only the bare facts about the science of DNA, but of the surrounding factors and personalities which helped move the science along. In his preface he says, “[Science's] steps forward (and sometimes backward) are often very human events in which personalities and cultural traditions play major roles.” (7). Watson shows that cooperation among the personalities was just as important as competition. Cooperation is even more important after the science is done, as well. A hypothesis is not widely accepted as true just because one laboratory says it is; many other scientists must delve into the matter, offer opinions, verify or deny the claim, as Pauling, Wilkins, and Franklin did with the Watson-Crick DNA structure at the end of Watson's tale. In the end, neither the personality quirks nor the conflicts which arose were more important than finding out the truth.
