Science Friction_ Where the Known Meets the Unknown - Michael Shermer [147]
The quotation is a favorite of Gould’s, cited often in defense of his own philosophy of science that closely parallels that of Darwin. Gould’s history of science, as well as his popular science expositions, is driven by this philosophy. In a two-part essay entitled “The Sharp-Eyed Lynx, Outfoxed by Nature,”51 Gould shows how Galileo (the sixth member of the Academy of the Lynxes, a seventeenth-century organization dedicated to “reading this great, true, and universal book of the world,” in the words of its founder Prince Federico Cesi) was outfoxed by the rings of Saturn for two reasons that tap directly into the Theory—Data theme: (1) Galileo’s telescope was not powerful enough to clearly discern the structure of the rings; (2) Galileo had no model in his astronomy (or in his thoughts in general) for planetary rings. Given these conditions Galileo reported Altissimum planetam tergeminum observavi, “I have observed that the farthest planet is threefold” (in Gould’s translation). Whenever the data of observation are unclear, the mind fills in the gaps. But if the mind has no model from which to work, imagination takes over, leading directly and powerfully to errors generated by expectation. Galileo could not “see” the rings of Saturn, either directly or theoretically, but he thought he could, and herein lies the problem, as Gould notes in Galileo’s choice of words in his report: “He does not advocate his solution by stating 1 conjecture,’1 hypothesize,’ 1 infer,’ or It seems to me that the best interpretation . . .’ Instead, he boldly writes ‘observavi’—I have observed. No other word could capture, with such terseness and accuracy, the major change in concept and procedure (not to mention ethical valuation) that marked the transition to what we call ‘modern’ science.”52 But this still is not Gould’s deepest message in this essay, as it is still in the realm of a disconnected observation about the history of science. Gould brings it home to the reader:
The idea that observation can be pure and unsullied (and therefore beyond dispute)—and that great scientists are, by implication, people who can free their minds from the constraints of surrounding culture and reach conclusions strictly by untrammeled experiment and observation, joined with clear and universal logical reasoning—has often harmed science by turning the empiricist method into a shibboleth. The irony of this situation fills me with a mixture of pain for a derailed (if impossible) ideal and amusement for human foibles—as a method devised to undermine proof by authority becomes, in its turn, a species of dogma itself. Thus, if only to honor the truism that liberty requires eternal vigilance, we must also act as watchdogs to debunk the authoritarian form of the empiricist myth—and to reassert the quintessentially human theme that scientists can work only within their social and psychological contexts. Such an assertion does not debase the institution of science, but rather enriches our view of the greatest dialectic in human history: the transformation of society by scientific progress, which can only arise within a matrix set, constrained, and facilitated by society53
Gould’s purpose is Darwin’s Dictum, presented in a popular genre for public and professional consumption and modified grandly to incorporate the greatest themata into this view of science as history and history as science.
Notes
5. Spin-Doctoring Science
1. Patrick Tierney, Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000).
2. Personal correspondence with Frank Miele, November 29, 2000.
3. Personal correspondence with Louise Brocket from W. W. Norton, November 20, 2000.
4. In defense of this statement see Michael Shermer, How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1999), chapter 7.
5. I coined “Darwin’s Dictum” in my inaugural column for Scientific American (May 2001) from a letter Darwin wrote to a friend on September