I make it a point of watching this small section of that old miniseries by Jacob Bronowski at least once a year. This time it hit me with the Climate Fanatics and their absolutism.
By Miguel.GFZ
Semi-retired like Vito Corleone before the heart attack. Consiglieri to J.Kb and AWA. I lived in a Gun Control Paradise: It sucked and got people killed. I do believe that Freedom scares the political elites.
Thanks for the Bronowski clip (sounds funny to write “clip,” from the old days of film). I had not seen the clip before. His wisdom is lost on at least half of modern society.
Short and excellent.
The statement that shows up in the clip image “every judgment in science stands on the edge of error” is the essence of the scientific method. A theory (or “law”) is a summary of what we know about some particular aspect of nature, a shorthand for all the known observations or experiments. Its usefulness is not as a shorthand of the past, but as a forecast for what we expect to observe in the future. For example, not just “I let go of an apple and it fell to the ground” but “if I let go of the apple I’m holding right now, it will fall to the ground”.
All laws are “falsifiable” — you can describe an observation or experiment that contradicts it, and if one would appear, it means your law is wrong and needs to be revised. The revision may be a small tweak or a wholesale rewrite. For example, Newton’s law of gravitation is a good approximation but it’s known to be incorrect. Einstein’s general relativity replaced it, and the two don’t look at all alike.
If something isn’t falsifiable, it isn’t science. If the validity or merit of some statement is measured by how many people agree with it, it may be a religion or a referendum, but it certainly isn’t science. If you’re told you’re not allowed to disagree, or aren’t allowed to propose alternate theories, it isn’t science, it is the Inquisition.