To the Damnation of Science

This is a tirade against science. It has been inspired by a review in the Radio Times of a TV programme, HORIZON, scheduled for tonight. The review reads:
"Techno guru Ray Kurtzweil.....wants to be alive for the 'singularity'. That's the name hip scientists have given to the moment in history when computers will match the power of the human brain......'and they (computers) will become a billion times more powerful than they are today in a quarter of a century'. At which point, these fantastically clever machines .... will take over the world --- and perhaps stop crashing."

This has me aghast and spluttering with outrage! I have not had my ghast so spluttered since Ronald Reagan conned the American people with the 'Stars Wars' fantasy.

OK, hands up, how many of you out there believe this nonsense? My word, scientists have done a wonderful job in selling themselves. I am reminded of a scene from Disney's JUNGLE BOOK: Kaa, the snake, has got hold of Mowgli, and, under guise of being his friend, is preparing to eat him. He transfixes Mowgli with his hypnotic eye, and sings:

Trust in me

Just in me

Close your eyes

Trust in me.

Slip into silent slumber

.......

Slowly and surely your senses will cease to exist!

Mowgli managed to escape Kaa; so far, the general public remains hypnotised by the beady eye of science.

Let me be quite clear:
'Star Wars' is a fantasy. Not possible.
Computers are stupid. They could not compete with an insect, never mind a human being. I've explained elsewhere that biology is the answer to complexity. Just take the last remark from the review: and perhaps stop crashing. Biological machines are designed TO BE ABLE TO CRASH, pick themselves up, repair themselves, and get on with life agian. That is the kind of complexity you have to have to support 'life'.

By the way, I think it is time I should mention that I was a scientist, a physicist. I graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a B.Sc. in 1974, and an M.Phil. in 1978. I then spent 8 years doing research in industry and university before packing it in.

Time for a little history lesson:
Natural Philosophy, as science used to be known, probably really came into its own around the 17th century, when some interesting philosophical questions were shelved on the basis that no-one could think of a way of dealing with them. (ref: Rene Descartes) These questions were of extreme importance to science: depending on what answer you arrive at, science goes off down some very different roads.

Well, faced with questions they could not answer, scientists did what scientists do to this day: they pulled the most science-affirming answer out of the hat, and engraved it into the annuls of science where it has since become TRUTH.

The 'big questions' I'm talking about are the likes of these: is the world real, or virtual, ie a dream? There is ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE that the world is real, but it benefits science to have us believe so.

Then there is: are we accidents of nature, or was the world created FOR us? The answer here PROFOUNDLY affects science, so, naturally, scientists chose to believe in the 'accident of nature' idea.

Notice that I am using the word BELIEF a lot in connection with science. Yes, as that would imply, science IS a religion! The dead give-away is the way science and religion are, and have always been, always locking horns --- animals that lock horns are of the same species, not different!

Now, let us home in specifically on physics, my home territory:
A major tenet of physics is that 'the universe is the same everywhere'. So, we've been to the other side of the universe to find out, have we? NO! Any evidence at all? NO! But, my word, it does sound grand to talk of the BIG BANG, and how BIG the universe is, and to build and play with big, very expensive telescopes, and big, very expensive mathematical equations, and to join the hunt for the THEORY OF EVERYTHING (TOE to those in the knoe!), and to pontificate on whether or not it might be possible to travel backwards in time in view of the fact that you might kill your own parents before you are born ----!!! BOLLOCKS! All the wonderful, DAZZLING science is ABSOLUTELY RIDDLED with ASSUMPTIONS, ie, things scientists have CHOSEN TO BELIEVE.

Talking of time travel, lets go back to the turn of the 20th century, to a time of revolution in physics: it was the time when the relatively simple world of what has come to be known as 'classical physics', gave way to the new, more complex worlds of 'quantum theory' and 'General Relativity' (Einstien's baby)

I have a personal aquaintance with quantum theory, on two counts.

First, when, as a student, I read Heisenberg's (one of the gods!) words of wisdom: "anyone who is not shocked by it has not understood quantum theory", I lost all confidence in my understanding of my subject. Why? Because I found the 'uncertainty principle' liberating, and 'wave/particle duality' enticingly mysterious. No, I was not shocked, ergo, I must be failing to understand!

Second, my own post-graduate research took me into the classical physics versus quantum theory arena. There was a fight, then? Yes. Physicists split, in the early 20th century, into classicists and quantum theorists. Sometime around 1930 or so, at the Solway Conference, quantum theory WON BY A VOTE! Evidence? None. And that is where I come in, more than 40 years later, when there was still no evidence one way or the other. (most of the 'big names' had gone with quantum theory, but some, de Broglie, for instance, remained true to classical theory).

I had the opportunity to carry out the FIRST EXPERIMENT EVER that could have provided the evidence that the conference had decided to do without. (it turned out that that the experiment was not feasible, though someone else found a successful alternative just a few years later --- and it did back quantum theory --- but this does not excuse the fact that physicists chose guesswork and belief over evidence 50 years before.)

Then, let us consider one of the voters at the Solway Conference: Albert Einstein, famous for the theory of relativity, another example of a theory lacking all evidence. Einstien is, of course, another who has achieved divine status! Now, I do not deny that it is a clever bit of work, and elegant to boot, General Relativity. BUT, THERE ARE MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM, LOTS MORE! So how come all the other profered theories have been forgotten? I guess Einstien (is it i before e, or the other way about) got in with the right people. You see, IT IS NOT, AND NEVER HAS BEEN, about TRUTH.

In my own, lesser, sphere, I saw science, and, more importantly, scientists, in action. It is not, as I say, and never has been, about truth. Every scientist is fighting for HIS theory, because it IS his theory, and be damned with truth!

A scientists reputation (and thus earning power and all the rest) rests on two things:

1) how many publications he/she has to his/her name.

2) how many times his work has been referenced by other scientists in their publications.

This is a recipe for consuming rain-forests to generate mountains of rubbish. It is not a recipe for generating truth.

It would be true to say that some scientists are consuming rain-forests to 'prove' the 'truth' of their theory about the need to conserve rain-forests!