Science Friction_ Where the Known Meets the Unknown - Michael Shermer [142]
Even more important than the history of science in Gould’s writings is his philosophy of science, as evidenced in five thematic pairs representing some of the deepest themes in Western thought that appear in every one of the three hundred essays. Classifying Gould’s essays into one of five different thematic pairs reveals how inseparable are history, theory, philosophy, and science. The five themata are displayed in figure 14.8, in order of their importance in Gould’s writings as shown by the number of essays classified in each:30
Figure 14.8. Gould’s Five Themata.
Frank Sulloway identified the second theme, Time’s Arrow—Times Cycle, as an important element in Gould’s work: ‘The more one reviews his writing over the years, the more one sees just how central this and another thematic pair of ideas—continuity and discontinuity—are in his thinking. If time’s cycle stands for the immanence of law and time’s arrow for the uniqueness of history, then Gould’s dual career as a scientist and as a historian of science represents perhaps his greatest commitment to these two ways of understanding time.”31 Indeed, as Gerald Holton has so well explicated the principle, such themata are integral to the scientific process. Sulloway adds that such thematic pairs illuminate not only how science works but how the history of science operates, particularly in the works of Gould in his dual role as historian of science and scientific historian:
Gould is one of those rare scientists who fully appreciates that the past is not always “just history” and that many problems in science cannot be conceptualized correctly unless one escapes the intellectual straitjacket of prevailing scientific mythologies. In this sense scientists are actually influenced by history all the time, even though they often disdain the subject as a waste of time. The textbook legends they fashion around their scientific heroes are value-laden visions of the world that often limit “the possibility of weighing reasonable alternatives,” as Gould has emphasized about the history of geology. Thus doing the history of science is, for Gould at least, an essential part of doing good science.32
Doing good science is also an essential part of doing good history. The following excerpts from the essays provide an examplar for each of the five thematic dichotomies, demonstrating how Gould draws generalities out of minutiae.
Theory—Data. In an essay entitled “Bathybius and Eozoon,” Gould explores the interaction between culture and science, and the relationship of concepts to percepts, in the context of a nineteenth-century debate over the nature of these two microscopic creatures that in time were revealed to be nothing more than geochemical by-products and thus were an embarrassing error to scientists. But historians know better, Gould explains: “They made sense in their own time; that they don’t in ours is irrelevant. Our century is no standard for all ages; science is always an interaction of prevailing culture, individual eccentricity, and empirical constraint.” The thematic lesson lies in the proper balance between theory and data, and how they play themselves out over time.
Science contains few outright fools. Errors usually have their good reasons once we penetrate their context properly and avoid judgment according to our current perception of “truth.” They are usually more enlightening than embarrassing, for they are signs of changing contexts. The best thinkers have the imagination to create organizing visions, and they are sufficiently adventurous (or egotistical) to float them in a complex world that can never answer “yes” in all detail. The study of inspired error should not engender a homily about the sin of pride; it should lead us to a recognition that the capacity for great insight and great error are opposite sides of the same coin—and that the currency of both is brilliance.33
Time’s Arrow—Time’s Cycle. In an essay entitled “Spin Doctoring Darwin,” Gould pushes