Scientific mythology
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
There are many stories that inform our understanding of the history of science and technology. Some of these are perfectly true, some are questionable, and some are known to be false. Our understanding, appreciation and commitment to science is supported by ritual and stories. Science itself can be studied through the lens of mythology.
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[edit] Myths within the history of science
[edit] The limitations of using dramatic historical stories to teach science
Commentators on the history of science, such as James Burke, Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend have pointed out the limitations of using dramatic historical stories to teach science. In the attempt to fit the history of science into a tale with a moral lesson, there is a tendency to simplify complex historical realities, and this tends to give the general public a misimpression about what scientists do and how the process of science works.
For example, historians of science and scientific educators often point out that scientific myths often contain an inspired "heroic" genius, and this obscures the role of social communication and collaboration in the scientific process as well as contributes to the perception that science is too hard for mere mortals to undertake. Also, scientific myths often contain an "evil" establishment, and this obscures the fact that there are often good reasons why the establishment believes what it does and that in many cases, the established view turns out to be correct. Scientific myths also tend to either overstate or understate the role of chance in scientific discovery, and the tendency to emphasize the dramatic tends to understate the incremental progress that constitutes most scientific advancement.
Also in the effort to create a dramatic story, scientific myths tend to reduce theory verification to one dramatic experiment which is claimed to prove a theory (for example, the Michelson-Morley experiment, disproving luminiferous aether). This leads to the misperception that scientific theories are fragile in that they are based on a few crucial facts, when in fact most scientific theories are robust in that they are based on many independent lines of evidence and can withstand cases in which some interpretations of data later turn out to be incorrect.
[edit] A listing of some major myths of science
Some of the stories told about science and scientific discovery are:
- Isaac Newton's apple, making him understand gravitation
- Galileo Galilei's cannonballs off the leaning tower of Pisa, and some stories about his persecution by the Catholic Church. The leaning-tower story originated with Galileo's own student Vincenzo Viviani but is not generally accepted.
- Archimedes' "Eureka", upon discovering a measuring method for volumes of irregular bodies
- Christopher Columbus's "discovery" of The Americas, or the round Earth (it was well known to be round, though the exact size was a subject of debate).
- That Copernicus's theory drastically simplified the Ptolemaic system, and many other details about his theory. Much of what has been attributed to Copernicus was in fact developed by later scholars advocating views which diverged sharply from his relatively conservative changes. In particular:
- That Copernicus's universe was infinite, unlike Ptolemy's (Copernicus's was larger, but still finite)
- That Copernicus put the sun in the center of universe (he put it in the center with respect to the planets, but located it near the center of the universe, not precisely in the center)
- That Copernicus abolished the Ptolemaic celestial spheres (he was ambiguous as to their nature, however)
- That Copernicus drastically simplified the Ptolemaic system (Copernicus eliminated some epicycles, but needed to add new ones in order to compensate for getting rid of Ptolemy's "equant". Whether it was simpler or not was a matter of debate).
- That Copernicus's theory provided a strong and immediately compelling alternative to Ptolemy's system (it did not, in his formulation of it, provide any new observations or predictions)
- Medieval stained glass windows as "proof" that glass is really a liquid, not a true solid, since the fact that the bottom edges of the glass pieces are thicker than the tops "proves" that the glass has flowed (albeit slowly) over the centuries. The truth most likely is that 1) medieval glass-making techniques did not produce glass with uniform thickness (this is known), and 2) the window artisans installed the glass pieces with the thicker edge toward the bottom. However, glass is properly referred to as a non-crystalline solid, because it has the characteristic of solids that its atoms or molecules vibrate about a mean position rather than having the translational freedom they have in a liquid.
- That people used to believe the Earth is flat. While during some periods in history, certain groups have advocated theories of a "flat earth," the knowledge that the Earth is likely a sphere of some sort dates back at least to Aristotle. According to historian Jeffrey Burton Russell, this myth has been used to encourage the dichotomy of science and religion. (An extension of the mythology, invented by Washington Irving, helps to glorify the achievement of Christopher Columbus.)
- That Sigmund Freud discovered the unconscious, when many philosophers preceding Sigmund Freud, such as Leibniz, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, in the West, as well a the Vedic and Sufi Traditions predating Freud by millenia, had similar concepts. This myth has been used to allocate modern psychology a special place in understanding human action marking it's beginning with Freud or Wilhelm Wunt, and dismiss 'pre-modern' or non-Western psychological models as mythology.
- Some claims about religious opposition to the use of lightning rods. Historians do cite evidence of widespread religious objections among the people of Boston, as well as the continuing practice in Catholic countries of ringing church bells during storms to ward off lightning. But some writers suggest that Catholic dogma condemned Franklin's invention, when in fact it did not. For both points, see IB Cohen "Popular Prejudice against the Introduction of lightning Rods" (Journal of the Franklin Institute, vol. 253, pp. 393 - 440, 1952). This and other 'conflict between science and religion' myths come from the work of the nineteenth century historian Andrew Dickson White who was a master at finding unrepresentative quotations and then stringing them together to create a false picture. Others claim that a lawsuit by Robespierre gave M. de St. Omer the right to have a lightning rod on top of his house despite the religious objections of his neighbors. J Riskin mentions no such religious motives in "The Lawyer and the Lightning Rod" (Science in Context, vol. 12, pp. 61-99, 1999).
- That the Church attempted to ban human dissection and that Vesalius was persecuted by the Inquisition. In fact dissection had occurred, even under Church auspices, for many centuries before Vesalius. Attitudes towards dissection varied regionally throughout the medieval period.
- Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz understanding the ring shape of the benzene molecule after a dream of a snake seizing its own tail (the mythic symbol known as the Ouroboros).
[edit] Myths about science itself
Given the increasing prominence of science and scientific results onto the world stage, it is perhaps inevitable that myths and misconceptions should have grown up around the entire institution of science (see also: pseudoscience). Some examples of such myths include the following:
- Science as a monolithic enterprise: There has been a tendency among some writers to portray "science" as if those practicing science by and large worked toward a set of common goals. In actuality, any study is "scientific" which adheres to the scientific method or similar means of verification through measurable evidence. As a result, science cannot be said to "work toward" any end in itself; rather, the process of science is used by scientists to discover and verify useful models, which are then applied to whatever goals that scientist may have.
[edit] Related mythologies
Today scientific knowledge has such a high status that it is easy to forget that there are other mythologies that confront the mystery of reality. For example, the Far Eastern philosophy of the Tao suggests a non-intrusive approach to fact finding. Here the world around us must be examined undisturbed, in its natural habitat. Any attempt to shape events would make the results somehow less real. Knowledge derived from experiment then seems contrived.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Feyerabend, Paul. 1975. Against Method. London: Verso.
