Category Archives: model-centrism

Emptiness

05 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by in Inquiry, Logic, model-centrism, Philosophy of Science, Whitehead

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A recent interview on NPR, in their “Short Answers to Big Questions” segment, went to special extremes to demonstrate how monumentally bad science journalism is these days. My discussion here will come in two parts, one short, and one a great deal more detailed. The short part will be a quick debunking of supposedly scientific claims from a conventionally scientific standpoint. In particular, statements are made in this interview with absolute confidence that cannot possibly stand up to even the most basic grasp of physical science. The longer discussion will have to do with philosophical criticisms that run beyond most of contemporary science. This is because so much of that science has degenerated into pure model centrism, and consequently fails to ask any of the fundamental questions that need to be raised. The motivating idea behind all of this is the idea of “empty” space.Empty Bottle

The offending NPR piece opened with a question about how empty a volume of space would be were there only (say) three atoms or molecules within a volume of about one cubic meter. After a few moments discussion about the volume of molecules of air in a cubic meter at sea level (a discussion that appears to contain an unimportant typographical error), the discussion moves out into space, into deep, deep space. The conversation leads to the following (slightly edited) highly problematic exchange:

if there are points in space with only three atoms per square meter, what fills in the rest? The answer is nothing…

for a physicist, the absence of matter is nothing. I mean there is still space and time there, but you know, there – the absence of matter we consider to be a state of, you know, zero matter, zero energy density, is a way of putting it.

The problems here come at two levels, one of fairly ordinary physics and the other at a deeper philosophical level. I’ll deal with both in turn. Continue reading →

Halfway Around The World.

16 Tuesday Feb 2016

Posted by in Critical Thinking, Logic, model-centrism, Philosophy of Science

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“A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.” This well known saying is variously and unreliably attributed to a number of persons, from Mark Twain to Winston Churchill. But as long as one is not trying to steal the words for one’s self, it is less important who said a true thing, than that the thing said be true. Credit should be given, of course, when credit is due, and identifiable. But just because, say, Abraham Lincoln said a thing, that thing is not automatically true, any more than if Richard Nixon said something, it is automatically false. Now, it is not an ad hominem to call a liar a liar, nor is it a fallacy to question the credibility of a person whose credibility has been shredded by repeated abuses of the truth. Still, one must be very careful when it comes to either accepting or dismissing a statement merely on account of its source. If you dismiss an alcoholic’s statement that drinking is bad for you, on account of the fact that the person making the statement is an alcoholic (who is still drinking), you’ve committed the tu quoque version of the argumentum ad hominem. If anything, the alcoholic is better situated to speak with genuine expertise on the damage of alcoholism than, say, a more sober member of society.

Muddy Hiking Boots

But to return to our original point, there is an intransigence to falsehoods that is not easily dislodged by anything so inconsequential as reason and truth. There are many psychological studies (I’ll not link to any – they are easy to find) that point out that, for example, climate change denialism – devoid as it is of any shred of valid or scientific justification – nevertheless becomes more stubborn when it is confronted with logic and facts that admit of no rational dispute. The lie, as it were, digs in its boots. I’ll skip over any discussion of those rhetorical techniques that do seem to work, because such methods are not my interest here and it pisses me off that I’d ever have to resort to them. Rather, I want to look at those factors that let the lie out of the starting gate before the truth even knows that there is a race today. In particular, what is it that makes the lie so easy, and the truth so hard? Continue reading →

Model-Centrism 1: A Scientific Controversy

20 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by in Logic, model-centrism, Philosophy of Science

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It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.

– Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet

There are scientific disciplines out there that are in a state of fundamental crisis. But unless you’ve a moderate degree of expertise in those fields, it is unlikely you know about such crises. I want to examine one such crisis here, and touch on its relation to a way of approaching the world that I’ve taken to calling “model-centrism.”

BrokenThe Holmesian dicta quoted above is hideously simplistic (one must already have significant theoretical commitments in play before any evidence can make its appearance AS evidence. To decline to theorize entirely would not make one open to the facts and evidence, it would make one completely incapable of recognizing anything as a fact or as evidence.) Nevertheless, it touches upon an important issue with model-centrism, and model-centric thinking, namely the impatience for gathering data that leads some people to favor abstract theories without any regard for how such theories might be tested or validated.

Continue reading →