It is not easy to convey, unless one has experienced it, the dramatic feeling of sudden enlightenment that floods the mind when the right idea finally clicks into place. One immediately sees how many previously puzzling facts are neatly explained by the new hypothesis. One could kick oneself for not having the idea earlier, it now seems so obvious. Yet before, everything was in a fog.
Francis CrickTags: enlightenment hypothesis idea eureka scientific-discovery
I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.
Tags: majority minority science global-warming evolution 9-11 scientific-method darwinism intelligent-design consensus scientific-process macro-evolution macroevolution scientific-theory scientific-research id september-11-attacks scientific-discovery excitotoxins msg fluoride scientific-inquiry scientific-revolution bisphenol-a bpa dr-jack-cohen-podiatrist majority-view man-made-global-warming manmade-global-warming minority-view monosodium-glutamate
I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.
Michael CrichtonTags: majority minority science global-warming evolution 9-11 scientific-method darwinism intelligent-design consensus scientific-process macro-evolution macroevolution scientific-theory scientific-research id september-11-attacks scientific-discovery excitotoxins msg fluoride scientific-inquiry scientific-revolution bisphenol-a bpa majority-view man-made-global-warming manmade-global-warming minority-view monosodium-glutamate
Today, nothing is unusual about a scientific discovery's being followed soon after by a technical application: The discovery of electrons led to electronics; fission led to nuclear energy. But before the 1880's, science played almost no role in the advances of technology. For example, James Watt developed the first efficient steam engine long before science established the equivalence between mechanical heat and energy.
Edward TellerTags: science future technology discovery fission futurism scientific-discovery electronics james-watt electrons practical-applications applications-of-science nuclear-energy
In some strange way, any new fact or insight that I may have found has not seemed to me as a “discovery” of mine, but rather something that had always been there and that I had chanced to pick up.
Subrahmanyan ChandrasekharTags: science knowledge lost strange fact information insight discovery found nobel-laureate scientist scientific-discovery
Page 1 of 1.
Data privacy
Imprint
Contact
Diese Website verwendet Cookies, um Ihnen die bestmögliche Funktionalität bieten zu können.