Scientists could learn a lot by looking at myths. It is my experience as a student of science, an appreciator of the classics, and something of an expert in the ancient end of history as it relates to how people think and once thought that scientists tend to see mythology as anathema. For many of them it is like a monstrous creature of subjectivity that corrupts and destroys all efforts to be objective and advance modern enlightenment. It is their arch nemesis in their quest to free our minds from superstitions that hold back progress and make us do terrible things. But I think their near repulsion at mythology is just another form of superstition. They have allowed their fears and bad memories to make irrational impressions on their worldviews.
Science and mythology have a great deal in common. I actually suspect, and no doubt many historians would say my suspicion is well founded, that science has grown out of mythology. And like a child would have a lot in common with her parent so science has a great deal in common with mythology.
They both use agreed upon and strictly adhered to methodologies. A priest/storyteller can't just start to make things up any more than a scientist can just declare his new theory to be of merit. Both mythology and science use peer review and communities defined by credentials.
In fact myths and scientific models are extremely similar. They both attempt to explain natural phenomenon. And both are developed as a result of long periods of observation. Sure the methodologies may be radically different in ways but the over-all thought architecture is virtually the same. From observations models are devised and then over time with further observation the models are tested.
Now what happens when believed in myths and scientific models fail to predict contemporary events is also quite similar. Similar enough that scientists who experience such a situation might just gain useful perspective by considering the larger picture that contains both their models and mythology.
In both cases people are extremely hesitant to question the myth or model. They start looking for ways in which they may have some how influenced the "gods" in order to bring about the unexpected result. Whether they suspect sins, poor adherence to scientific methodology, or yet unsolved mysteries that will leave their precious model intact once revealed, it's essentially the same path of reasoning for the ancient priest or modern scientist. Subjective and objective thinking becomes hard to distinguish. It is almost as if square pegs need to be pounded into round holes and the pressure to do so is more than sufficient to achieve the task.
Now anyone who dares to use the occasion to question the myth or model tends to be perceived as motivated by either unbridled ambitions or a lack of respect for the religion or science. Simply allowing the few who dare to question to do so without significant threat could destroy the structure of credentialed peer review that lends credibility to the community. If a few can question the very myth or model without the support of peer review and be right then the very merit of peer review could come into question.
So those who question have their credibility attacked while their actual ideas are either not addressed or misrepresented using the straw-man argument or otherwise set aside using any other logical fallacy that can be slipped by the unsuspecting. They can't give fair consideration to the actual ideas presented in the challenge since to do so would be to give credibility to the challenges that arrived outside the blessings of peer review.
Now with that said allow me to present to you some documented excerpts from authoritative sources on an issue in science that is influencing public policy, global climate change. Go find your best big-word decoder ring and let's go.
Now to attempt to make sense of all of this in light of myths and scientific models. While, as the Science & Public Policy Institute says there are a lot of climatologists questioning the current models that suggest human activity is a significant factor in global climate change, and even the most fundamental science supports cooling and not warming as dominant on the larger scale of time, that is not what most are hearing from those in positions of power. I hope I may have given you a plausible reason why that is. Just like challenging myths, challenging scientific models challenges the importance of peer review and the credibility of the scientific and political communities that invest in these models. They are ruled by their idols created through the inevitably imperfect craftsmanship of human efforts and are unwilling to brave the humble ground of admitting they are in fact just as human as the rest of us.
Science and mythology have a great deal in common. I actually suspect, and no doubt many historians would say my suspicion is well founded, that science has grown out of mythology. And like a child would have a lot in common with her parent so science has a great deal in common with mythology.
They both use agreed upon and strictly adhered to methodologies. A priest/storyteller can't just start to make things up any more than a scientist can just declare his new theory to be of merit. Both mythology and science use peer review and communities defined by credentials.
In fact myths and scientific models are extremely similar. They both attempt to explain natural phenomenon. And both are developed as a result of long periods of observation. Sure the methodologies may be radically different in ways but the over-all thought architecture is virtually the same. From observations models are devised and then over time with further observation the models are tested.
Now what happens when believed in myths and scientific models fail to predict contemporary events is also quite similar. Similar enough that scientists who experience such a situation might just gain useful perspective by considering the larger picture that contains both their models and mythology.
In both cases people are extremely hesitant to question the myth or model. They start looking for ways in which they may have some how influenced the "gods" in order to bring about the unexpected result. Whether they suspect sins, poor adherence to scientific methodology, or yet unsolved mysteries that will leave their precious model intact once revealed, it's essentially the same path of reasoning for the ancient priest or modern scientist. Subjective and objective thinking becomes hard to distinguish. It is almost as if square pegs need to be pounded into round holes and the pressure to do so is more than sufficient to achieve the task.
Now anyone who dares to use the occasion to question the myth or model tends to be perceived as motivated by either unbridled ambitions or a lack of respect for the religion or science. Simply allowing the few who dare to question to do so without significant threat could destroy the structure of credentialed peer review that lends credibility to the community. If a few can question the very myth or model without the support of peer review and be right then the very merit of peer review could come into question.
So those who question have their credibility attacked while their actual ideas are either not addressed or misrepresented using the straw-man argument or otherwise set aside using any other logical fallacy that can be slipped by the unsuspecting. They can't give fair consideration to the actual ideas presented in the challenge since to do so would be to give credibility to the challenges that arrived outside the blessings of peer review.
Now with that said allow me to present to you some documented excerpts from authoritative sources on an issue in science that is influencing public policy, global climate change. Go find your best big-word decoder ring and let's go.
"The last million years on Earth have been one long ice age, interrupted regularly by interglacials, or brief periods of warmth. The warm spells have usually lasted between 10,000 and 20,000 years. We're in one now that began about 12,000 years ago. So any millennium now the temperature will drop, glaciers will grow, and ice sheets thousands of kilometers thick will advance on the continents, devouring a largefraction of the land on the planet."
~ Houghton Mifflin Science
"As a reviewer admitted, "failures to support the Milankovitch theory may only reflect the inadequacies of the models.""
"By the start of the 21st century, it was clear that the connection between global temperature and greenhouse gas levels was a major geological force. All through the Pleistocene, the greenhouse gas feedback had turned the planet's orbital cycles from minor climate variations to grand transformations that affected all life on the planet. The geological record gave a striking verification, with wholly independent methods and data, of the processes that computer models were predicting would bring a rapid and severe global warming — a disruption of climate exceeding anything seen since the emergence of the human species."
~ Past Climate Cycles
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/cycles.htm
The discrepancy between the predicted “signature” of anthropogenic greenhouse
warming and its absence in half a century of observed temperature records is
currently under active discussion among climatologists. A report by the US Climate Change Science Program (CCSP, 2006), says –
“For longer-timescale temperature changes over 1979 to 1999, only one of four observed upper-air data sets has larger tropical warming aloft than in the surface records.” [Even this single dataset does not show enough troposphere warming to match the models’ predictions that justify the UN’s high central estimate of climate sensitivity to anthropogenic greenhouse warming].
“All model runs with surface warming over this period show amplified warming aloft. These results could arise due to errors common to all models; to significant non-climatic influences remaining within some or all of the observational data sets, leading to biased long-term trend estimates; or a combination of these factors. The new evidence in this Report (model-to-model consistency of amplification results, the large uncertainties in observed tropospheric temperature trends, and independent physical evidence supporting substantial tropospheric warming) favors the second explanation. A full resolution of this issue will require reducing the large observational uncertainties that currently exist. These uncertainties make it difficult to determine whether models still have common, fundamental errors in their representation of the vertical structure of atmospheric temperature change.”
Applying Occam’s Razor, the simplest explanation for the discrepancy between theoretical modeling and real-world observation is that the models on which the case for alarm about climate change are based have very substantially overestimating the effect of anthropogenic greenhouse warming on global temperatures. The Climate Change Science Program, however, prefers to assume that it is observation, rather than theory, that is deficient."
~ Science & Public Policy Institute
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/greenhouse_warming_what_greenhouse_warming_.html
Now to attempt to make sense of all of this in light of myths and scientific models. While, as the Science & Public Policy Institute says there are a lot of climatologists questioning the current models that suggest human activity is a significant factor in global climate change, and even the most fundamental science supports cooling and not warming as dominant on the larger scale of time, that is not what most are hearing from those in positions of power. I hope I may have given you a plausible reason why that is. Just like challenging myths, challenging scientific models challenges the importance of peer review and the credibility of the scientific and political communities that invest in these models. They are ruled by their idols created through the inevitably imperfect craftsmanship of human efforts and are unwilling to brave the humble ground of admitting they are in fact just as human as the rest of us.
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