William James (see below) noted, for example, that while science declares allegiance to dispassionate evaluation of facts, the history of science shows that it has often been the passionate pursuit of hopes that has propelled it forward: scientists who believed in a hypothesis before there was sufficient evidence for it, and whose hopes that such evidence could be found motivated their researches.
Let me differentiate between scientific method and the neurology of the individual scientist. Scientific method has always depended on feedback [or flip-flopping as the Tsarists call it]; I therefore consider it the highest form of group intelligence thus far evolved on this backward planet. The individual scientist seems a different animal entirely. The ones I’ve met seem as passionate, and hence as egotistic and prejudiced, as painters, ballerinas or even, God save the mark, novelists. My hope lies in the feedback system itself, not in any alleged saintliness of the individuals in the system.
Although I prefer the colorful way Peter Watts put it:
Science doesn’t work despite scientists being asses. Science works, to at least some extent, because scientists are asses. Bickering and backstabbing are essential elements of the process. Haven’t any of these guys ever heard of “peer review”?
There’s this myth in wide circulation: rational, emotionless Vulcans in white coats, plumbing the secrets of the universe, their Scientific Methods unsullied by bias or emotionalism. Most people know it’s a myth, of course; they subscribe to a more nuanced view in which scientists are as petty and vain and human as anyone (and as egotistical as any therapist or financier), people who use scientific methodology to tamp down their human imperfections and manage some approximation of objectivity.
But that’s a myth too. The fact is, we are all humans; and humans come with dogma as standard equipment. We can no more shake off our biases than Liz Cheney could pay a compliment to Barack Obama. The best we can do— the best science can do— is make sure that at least, we get to choose among competing biases.
That’s how science works. It’s not a hippie love-in; it’s rugby. Every time you put out a paper, the guy you pissed off at last year’s Houston conference is gonna be laying in wait. Every time you think you’ve made a breakthrough, that asshole supervisor who told you you needed more data will be standing ready to shoot it down. You want to know how the Human Genome Project finished so far ahead of schedule? Because it was the Human Genome projects, two competing teams locked in bitter rivalry, one led by J. Craig Venter, one by Francis Collins — and from what I hear, those guys did not like each other at all.
This is how it works: you put your model out there in the coliseum, and a bunch of guys in white coats kick the shit out of it. If it’s still alive when the dust clears, your brainchild receives conditional acceptance. It does not get rejected. This time. …
Science is so powerful that it drags us kicking and screaming towards the truth despite our best efforts to avoid it. And it does that at least partly fueled by our pettiness and our rivalries. Science is alchemy: it turns shit into gold.
I think you missed the point, a hope for something can be more or less bayes optimal, the fact that you’re able to isolate a hypothesis in the total space of hypothesis after much prior evidence and research is itself a strong evidence to consider it seriously. Like yes the scientist feels that way, but that doesn’t change the fact that science progresses, and scientists regularly hit the mark, in updating their beliefs.
Einstein’s Arrogance seems like a better explanation of the phenomena to me
Not really. Robert Anton Wilson’s description is more on-point:
Although I prefer the colorful way Peter Watts put it:
I think you missed the point, a hope for something can be more or less bayes optimal, the fact that you’re able to isolate a hypothesis in the total space of hypothesis after much prior evidence and research is itself a strong evidence to consider it seriously. Like yes the scientist feels that way, but that doesn’t change the fact that science progresses, and scientists regularly hit the mark, in updating their beliefs.
I see, I stand corrected then.