Colleagues,
Bob Carr notes the potential for failure of science. I recently posted a
list of 8 different ways that any experiment and subsequent reporting could
contain bias.
No argument, Bob. The best we can do is rarely actual truth. It simply
establishes a snapshot of our best estimate of truth. And we (humanity)
keep working on it.
Still, most scientists actively work to produce unbiased results. The
fact that they can't see their own biases means their work is always subject
to critique. On that basis, however, we humans have resolved lots of
paradoxes.
(That includes, of course, the disciplines of management, marketing,
government, warfare, finance, economics, relationships, etc., when
scientific methods are applied.)
Steve Henderson questions science as a deparadoxer because it has recently
discovered a paradox. Accelerating expansion of the universe where we
expected deceleration. We can hardly conceive of a way to explain
acceleration, so we call it dark matter.
That's no different than the development by every (every!) human society
of a creation myth. Early on, we had no answers, so we solved a wide range
of paradoxes by inventing gods.
500 years ago, Copernicus resolved a paradox by moving the earth out of
the center of the universe, and he was ridiculed. As Kuhn notes in The
Structure of Scientific Revolution, there is a natural cognitive delay
between finding and answer and getting the world to accept that answer. (To
change its paradigm) It took 100 years to gain broad acceptance of the
Copernican model.
So, Steve, the fact that we are working at the edge of our abilities
today doesn't mean our toolkits are not powerful ways to identify and
resolve mysteries, myths, and paradoxes.
If we want to understand anything, we need to learn about it.
If we can reduce the impact of bias and paradigms, we stand a better
chance of gaining accurate insight.
Science isn't perfect, but it is a damn sight better than the next
thing.
Best to all,
Gary
PS: The most fascinating paradox today may be this. To put the theories of
electromagnetism, relativity, and quantum mechanics into a single
mathematical framework, we must postulate that the universe is made of 10
special dimensions plus time.
----------------------------
Innovation and Branding - done Strategically
Gary Lundquist - The Accelerator
Market Engineering International
303-840-9929
www.market-engineering.com
garyl@market-engineering.com
Making and keeping satisfied customers,
at a profit, over time,
in a competitive environment.