#ScienceIsNeverSettled #AlwaysQuestion

 From Walter E. Williams March 10, 2015 article "Global Warming":

"The most disgusting aspect of the climate change debate is the statements by many that it’s settled science. There is nothing more anti-scientific than the idea that any science is settled. Very often we find that the half-life of many scientific ideas is about 50 years. For academics to not criticize their colleagues and politicians for suggesting that scientific ideas are not subject to challenge is the height of academic dishonesty."

Indeed, standard elementary school science text books, such as Barnard, J., Stendler, C., Spock, B., and Atkin, J. (1966). Science for Tomorrow's World 5. New York: The MacMillan Company, used to emphasize that main pillar of scientific method was skepticism and constant questioning:

Can't emphasize last two sentences enough:

"Science is never finished with a problem. Science is not a book full of facts, but a way of using facts and testing ideas."

There is obviously a lazy curriculum developing where teachers are presenting output of science like a modern catechism to be rote memorized and "scientists" are portrayed as modern priests not to be questioned or blasphemed, which is itself a blasphemy.

A common fallacious meme is to conflate the concept of "fact"

with that of "theory"

when "fact" and "theory" are not only NOT synonyms, but are antonyms:

Leftists then assert that their "facts", their "theories", and methodologies for arriving at both never may be questioned or challenged, which is patently absurd. Usually, leftists take this tact when pontificating on global warming, or evolution, or any other socialist cause célèbre:

@Londonjakka Evolution is an established fact, Theory in scientific terms means fact.
— King (@LilLeebe) April 26, 2015

 I agree w/fine print caveats on following slides; however, it annoys me when people present science as religion

@Cville_Swagg @burneyjayden you don't know what a theory means in science you are dumb. http://t.co/DgsJg1TVHg pic.twitter.com/Oh5xv48vW6
— Britton Stackman (@PopuliAtheist) April 17, 2015

Science is never settled - there are no absolute truths in science -  theories can always be questioned and refined.

@Krauthammer masterfully debunks the myth of ‘settled science’ http://t.co/RhhIQlAiR9 via @washingtonpost #ScienceisNeverSettled
— Philip Ballard (@PhillyBinNYC) February 22, 2014

Einstein "Science is Never Finished"

I was reading a Marianne Moore's poem "The Student"and ran across a quote from Einstein:

by asking ‘when will your experiment be finished, Doctor Einstein?’/ and is pleased when Doctor Einstein smiles and says politely/‘science is never finished.’

Conveniently, Moore footnoted her poems, though, inconveniently, only sparsely.


From Stubbs, Marcia, and Sylvan Barnet. The Little, Brown Reader. 3rd ed. Boston: Little, Brown, 1983. Print.

Some questions the editors want you to ponder after reading this poem:

Moore cites simply the New York Times as her source, so doing an archive search, I found the Einstein quote in this December 18, 1931 article, but the entire article is behind an evil greedy 1% firewall:

"EINSTEINS IN COLON ON WAY TO COAST; Scientist Hopes to Spend Nine Weeks, Continuing Studies at Mt. Wilson Observatory. IS SILENT ON RETURN PLANS But Frau Einstein Says They Will Not Cross United States on Account of Newspaper Men"

Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES;
   
December 18, 1931, [ DISPLAYING ABSTRACT ] COLON, Dec. 17.--Professor Albert Einstein and Frau Einstein, darkly tanned and smiling after a long sea voyage, are en route to California, where Dr. Einstein will continue his studies at Mount Wilson Observatory....

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00714FF345D1B7A93CAA81789D95F458385F9

"Professor Albert Einstein and Frau Einstein, darkly tanned and smiling after a long ... when it would be finished he smiled and replied, 'Science is never finished.'"

Apparently, Moore liked to ask and answer he own questions during interviews, from Rachel Buxton's June 7, 2007 "The Review of English Studies" article "MARIANNE MOORE AND THE POETICS OF PRAGMATISM"

"Moore saw scientific thought and poetry-writing as having much in common. Both, she believed, were types of encounter with a universe in flux. In an interview with Donald Hall in 1960 she asks:

'Do the poet and the scientist not work analogously? They are willing to waste effort. Bronowski says in the new 'Post' that science is not a mere collection of discoveries, but that science is the process of discovering. In any case it’s not a thing established once and for all, it’s evolving.'"

So, all of this is in sharp contrast to former Obama spokesperson, Gibbs, who believes that the "science is settled" wrt global warming/climate change.






 If I have to choose between Einstein and Gibbs, I'm going with Einstein.

Bart Kosko "Fuzzy Thinking" and Theory of Man Made Global Warming

Digging through more cardboard boxes to find books to donate to BetterWorldBooks I ran across Bart Kosko's "Fuzzy Thinking: The New Science of Fuzzy Logic"



 

 

 

 

 

Kosko on pp 8-9 validated sentiments Peter Sterne and I expressed on twitter:

 

 



#SaySomethingLiberalIn4Words The science is settled.
— Peter Sterne, Sr (@p_w_sterne) March 9, 2014

@p_w_sterne Conversely #SaySomethingConservativeIn4Words Science Is Never Settled http://t.co/dJnnbDSydm
— adagioforstrings (@adagioforstring) March 9, 2014

Laws of science are not laws at all. They are not laws in the sense of logical laws like two plus two equals four.  Logic does not legislate them. Laws of science state tendencies we have recently observed in our corner of the universe. The best you can say about them is so far, so good. In the next instant every "law" of science may change.  Their truth is a matter of degree and is always up for grabs.
 

Specifically, some cognitive dissonance data for the believers in the cult of man made global warming:

Mars atmosphere 95% CO2 planet trapped in Ice Age Where's the martian Global Warming? http://t.co/AmCNzeRGXB cc @makiwa @_cromcruach #AGW
— Carlos Santillán (@Carlos_S01) June 24, 2013