I came across a "Guest Blog" in Scientific American that fully exposes a certain utter foolishness about science and facts that I have been thinking about lately. The blog is titled "I'm a Scientist, and I Don't Believe in Facts", written by Julia Shaw, December 16, 2016. Dr. Shaw is (or was?) a Research Associate at University College London. She has written a book called The Memory Illusion about how unreliable our memories really are. Fair enough - my memory is terrible! But, anyway, her blog is about how, as she says, "facts are so last-century." Here are a few comments - condensed a bit from the blog:
"I’m a factual relativist. I abandoned the idea of
facts and “the truth"... much like Santa Claus and unicorns, facts don’t
actually exist."
"We think of a fact as an irrefutable truth.
According to the Oxford dictionary, a fact is “a thing that is known or proved
to be true.” And where does proof come from? Science?"
"...science [is] inherently self-critical and
self-correcting. ... Scientists want to know more, always. And, lucky for them,
there is always more to know."
"...let’s make it our job as a society to encourage
each other to find replicable and falsifiable evidence to support our views,
and to logically argue our positions. In the process, please stop saying
“because, science” to justify your argument, and using “FACT” as a preface to
your statements. These are just the grown-up versions of “because I said so.” "
First, I
think one point that she is making, which is that science doesn't deal in facts
but rather probabilities (because everything is science is subject to testing
and refutation), is something I basically agree with. If you accept the concept that the critical
aspect of scientific theories is that they must be falsifiable, then you can't
ever achieve 100% certainty. Something
that is 100% certain is no longer falsifiable.
Of course, there are theories in science that have so much evidence that
even skeptical scientists treat them as if they were certain. But, if you cornered them, they'd admit that
they are just "99.9% certain" of any particular theory. If that was the only point that Dr. Shaw was
trying to make, then that would be fine - boring but fine.
However,
she does not stop with the simple principle that science is falsifiable. Instead she makes statements such as
"facts don't actually exist."
To me, that is embarrassingly sophomoric. Yet another example of scientists thinking
that, since they are trained in the "hard sciences", they are allowed
to declare themselves experts in all things.
Philosophy? History? Ethics? Apparently a PhD in neuroscience qualifies
you as an expert in all fields. But, ok,
that's really not that big of a deal. We
all do that. I write a blog about things
I shouldn't be qualified to write about.
But it's my personal
blog. This was published in Scientific American, as if it had some quality to
it. That's what is embarrassing, in my
opinion.
OK, so
first let's quickly state and move past the obvious fundamental act of foolishness: is she really claiming that the statement
"facts don't actually exist" is a fact? Really?
Let's move on, though.
A second
point to observe but move on from is how Dr. Shaw acts as if science is the
only possible arbiter of anything worth knowing. She asks the rhetorical question
"...where does proof come from?"
I say rhetorical because she treats it as rhetorical and gives the
"obvious" answer:
science. She is essentially
saying that, of course, everyone knows that the only place you'd turn to for
proof of anything is science. What else
could there be? Well...um...that is so
shockingly bigoted that it is hard to know where to start! There is more to human experience than just
science. Even scientists have lives that
are lived outside of science, whether they admit it or not. There are whole fields of study that just
might have something to say about truth - like philosophy and sociology and ethics
and so on. And that's ignoring religion,
which has a lot to say about truth.
Humans have all sorts of experiences, such as love and grief, joy and
sorrow, irony and irony, that are not grounded in science. Is it certain that truth is not to be found
in those experiences? Ask the poets and
songwriters. I guess it would be one
thing if Dr. Shaw acknowledged that there might be other fields that would have
something to say about truth, but then discuss the reasons she rejects them
all. But she does not do that. She poses a rhetorical question with a single
clear answer. The audacity and pride
and, frankly, complete blindness of scientists to think that science is the
only real field of study, and that all other fields are irrelevant to any
discussion on truth, is shocking. Except
that it is common. Even non-scientists
are taken in by it. But...even this
issue is not the main problem with this blog!
The
fundamental foolishness perpetrated in this blog is the main point: there is no such thing as a fact. There is no such thing as truth. You can't know anything for certain.
She seems
rather certain about that!
It is
reasonable to argue that statements about the natural world made in the realm
of science might not be considered "facts" in the sense that, if
everything in science must be falsifiable, then we can't know it with 100% certainty. That's a very robot-like definition of
facts. But it's not unreasonable to
consider that line of reasoning if the discussion is confined to science. But I know lots of facts that sit outside of
science. And I know them with 100%
certainty. You do to.
I will
take one example of a fact I know:
It is morally wrong to kill a one-year-old
child just because you're tired of the child being around.
I know
this with 100% certainty. It is a
fact. And it's not just a fact for
me. It is a fact for every human being
that is living now, has lived in the past, or ever will live in the
future. It was a fact even for societies
that practiced child sacrifice. In fact,
even if some society in the future passes a law saying it is "legal",
it still remains a fact that it is morally wrong.
That's one
fact. So facts do exist. There's a second fact!
There are,
of course, an infinite set of such statements.
Some we would all agree on (like the statement above, I hope!) and some
we would disagree on. But even with the
statements we disagree on, we would all accept that our view is a fact, not an
opinion. Take abortion, for
example. We don't say to ourselves
"there's probably a middle ground that we will figure out in the
future." No - to some,
"abortion is wrong", is a fact.
To some, "abortion is a woman's right", is a fact. Of course we call the other side's view an
"opinion." But we also say
that their opinion is false. But just
because we disagree on something does not mean that there is not a morally
right answer that is a fact. Slavery was
wrong and it doesn't matter if some in the past thought it was acceptable. Even if a majority of people thought it was
right, it does not change the fact that it was, and is, wrong to enslave other
human beings against their will.
There are
more facts that I know. Justice is
good. Injustice is wrong. It is wrong to make fun of someone because of
their appearance. It is good to try to
help people in need. Everything is not
relative. There are absolutes, and they
are absolute truths in every sense of the word absolute.
No, Dr.
Shaw, facts are not at all like Santa Claus and unicorns. Facts do exist. We encounter them constantly in our everyday
lives. By the way, is the statement
"unicorns do not exist" a fact?
If you are
such a relativist that you cannot bring yourself to admit that the statement about
the immorality of killing a one-year-old is a fact, then just consider the
corner you have painted yourself into.
Do you seriously believe that, sometime in the future, we might realize
that it is actually fine to kill one-year-old children so they aren't a bother
anymore? If you find yourself defending
such an indefensible position, I suggest re-thinking your life philosophy. Somewhere you've gone off the tracks. That's also a fact.
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