Jim Devine wrote:
>
>
> One of the reasons for the attachment to the paradigm -- and thus the
> arrogance of many or most official scientists -- is the arrogance of
> some unofficial or fringe scientists ("cranks" or "pseudoscientists").
> The latter can involve rejecting the whole paradigm -- provoking a
> "foundational crisis" -- because of some small empirical or logical
> hole, often without presenting a coherent alternative, even though the
> official scientists think it's still possible to fill the holes by
> adding epicycles.This is going to be sloppy because I lost the anthology which contained the article I'm using, & I can remember neither the author's name nor the title of the book the text was taken from. He was a biologist and historian of science. I found the article in a freshman comp anth published in the '50s. He had submitted a paper on some experiments to a biology journal, and they rejected his paper because the results didn't fit currently available theory. About a decade later it was discovered that his results had been correct: in the meantime theory to use those results had develope. His point: the journal was correct to reject his article, because at the time he submitted it nothing could have been done with the results, and publishing them would have been a barrier not an aid to the theory that eventually came in to make sense of them. In other words, at least in the physical and biological sciences, the road to _new_ knowledge lies through first rejecting evidence that contradicts the "paradigm" _until_ the community of researchers can do something useful with the new evidence. So even correct "fringe" experiments -- those that turn out to be correct later on -- dont' necessarily help science at the time they are first performed. I think this provides a useful guide in other fields also. Pope had it just exactly right: Be not the _first_ by whom the _New_ are try'd, Nor yet the _last_ to lay the _Old_ aside. That is the correct formula for advance in human thought and knowledge. Carrol Carrol
