In Suspect Terrain

According to most geologists, plate tectonics explains the major features of Earth’s surface. Continental land masses floating on the magma mantel crash into each other over hundreds of millions of years. This forms mountains, and therefore valleys, of course. The mountains wear down. Their rocks are ground fine, mixed with vegetation and animal remains, and become topsoil. Several times, oscillations of glaciers moved forward and retreated, carving valleys, forming rivers and lakes, and then melting. In their reversals, they left behind huge boulders and other “exotic” materials.  Geologist Anita Harris used to believe that, also. Over the course of her career, she came to doubt that the story is so simple.  Plate tectonics has a place. It does explain some facts. It does not explain everything.

Like medieval astronomers adding epicycles to fit their ever-better measurements with astrolabes, the modern geologists posit smaller, localized land masses that bump into continents in order to explain mountain ranges and other features that would contradict plate tectonics.

I confess that my geology is weak. I do not have it in my head. I rely on websites such as this one from the University of California at Berkeley to remind me which came first, the Silurian, Ordovician, or Cambrian.

It did not detract from the book. I read through almost all of it with only a few stops.  The bigger picture is easy to perceive.

John McPhee’s biography of Anita G. Harris is also a geological travelogue through the eastern United States. Harris was born in Brooklyn. The sands of Coney Island have garnet in them. McPhee and Harris travel through the Alleghenies, down into Ohio, across into Illinois.  The book opens with an eastward journey and then treks back.  That meandering narrative has islands of detail about  Harris’s career, and her marriages to other geologists.

(You can find a list of her 32 papers in 25 years papers here.) 

Like Irons in the Fire, about modern cattle rustlers, and The Curve of Binding Energy, a biography of John Wheeler, In Suspect Terrain immerses the reader in McPhee’s experience of a new subject.  He is an able student, and an engaging teacher.

Geology is not easy. One of my criminal justice instructors said that cops at a crime scene do not spend enough time with dirt and glass.  So, I took a geology class. It was a “local lab” course with a lot of outside work in our own neighborhood. For the semester project, we went to a quarry and assembled collections of fossils.  (Someone gave me a trilobite. I never found one on my own.)  I thought that I would learn the local rocks and minerals like the stars in constellations. Nope. Geologists keep tons of rocks labeled in cases because of the enormous inventory of types and kinds.  You can learn the easy ones: igneous, metamorphic, sedimentary… obsidian, marble, limestone, granite, flint, … After that, you have to love categorizing and cataloguing. It is as bad as biology. Contrary to physics and mathematics, geology is a study that rewards maturity, rather than intuition. Anita Harris’s woe is the armies of young geologists lured by the Siren song of plate tectonics.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

The Map that Changed the World

Circumference 

Anthropocene: Bad Name for a Good Thing  

From Texas to the Moon with John Leonard Riddell  

ELI THE ICE MAN: Science and Technology

In this Presidential election year, the major party candidates drop hints about creating jobs by fostering technology and innovation.  Sociologist Anthony Giddens defines and delimits their thinking when he cites “innovation centers” near universities such as Cambridge.  Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice even mentioned Austin as a magnet for people from around the world with advanced university degrees.  But it is at once more complicated and simpler than that.  Basically, the nature of innovation defies planning, a harsh reality for all the planners running for political office.

Electrical technicians know the mnemonic ELI the ICE man.  In an inductive (L) circuit the measured voltage (E) sine wave precedes the measured current (I): E Leads I.  In a Capacitive circuit, the sine wave of current (I) precedes the measured sine wave of voltage (E): ICE.  Thus, Eli the Iceman.  So, too, with technology and science, does one or the other lead to simplify the analysis.  In fact – in reality for both non-trivial circuits, as for economic systems – isolating one or the other is a convenience of analysis.  No formula exists for creating innovation centers or every town with a college or university could boast of having one. 

It is a principle of Austrian economic theory that entrepreneurship is ineffable.  Yes, it helps to know accounting, and marketing, and organizational development, and to have motivation, being willing to work hard for 18 hours a day, and to know how and when to delegate responsibility, and all that and more.  Ultimately, the pieces do not add up.  The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  Case studies show people who fail despite having all of these, and others who succeed despite lacking one or more of them.

“Laissez nous faire!”  According to historical legend, the phrase stems from a meeting in about 1680 between the powerful French finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert and a group of French businessmen led by a certain M. Le Gendre. When the eager mercantilist minister asked how the French state could be of service to the merchants, and help to promote their commerce, Le Gendre replied simply "Laissez-nous faire."  Wikipedia here. 

If you examine the broad history of science and technology from the steam engine and thermodynamics through electricity and its opening up the physics of quantum mechanics, to the atomic age, the space age, the post-industrial revolution of the information age, and the immediate promise of 3-D printing and nanotechnology, it is obvious that government programs to “create” high-technology centers can only (at best) replicate the successes of the previous generation.  Note that according to Moore’s Law a “generation” in technology is 18 months, not 30 years. 

Sometimes, so-called “pure science” does lead to new inventions. The theories do not grow out on their own, but only explain known facts.  From the medieval siege weapons and clock towers that were explained with the theory of “impetus” through Galileo, to Newton, Watt, Henry, Marconi, Einstein, and to our own time each invention made possible a better understanding which was expressed as a theory.  But the “theory” that was accepted was only a replacement for a paradigm.  Each paradigm at first suggested new inventions and then was discarded when further discoveries could not be explained in those terms.

Previously on "Necessary Facts"
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Great Scientific Experiments
Browne on Kuhn
Is Physics a Science?

Is Physics a Science?

In sociology, students at all levels are presented with some discussion about whether and how sociology is a science. Physics – especially Newtonian physics – is taken as a kind of standard against which sociology is measured. Actually, a scientific investigation of college textbooks revealed that physics education is deficient in presenting students with the methods and limits of experiment and theory. 

Since the Renaissance, the term experiment has been used in diverse ways to describe a variety of procedures such as a trial, a diagnosis, or a dissection … To examine changes in the textbook construction of experimental method, introductory texts in psychology, sociology, biology, and physics were surveyed during three time periods: 1930-1939, 1950-59, and 1970-79. […] … the percentage of texts with discussions of research methods increased from 50%-90% in psychology, from 25%-70% in sociology, from 20%-45% in biology, and from 16%-30% in physics. Even in the 1970s, such discussions were absent from the majority of biology and physics texts.
"What Counts as an Experiment?: A Transdisciplinary Analysis of Textbooks, 1930-1970," Andrew S. Winston and Daniel J. Blais. The American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 109, No. 4 (Winter, 1996), pp. 599-616.

Visiting the University of Texas Kuehne Library for Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy, I found that this is still true.

Another concept is missing, paradigm. Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions was published in 1962. (See Necessary Facts here.) I was assigned it in a philosophy class at Lansing Community College in 1975. My last undergraduate class in physics was in 1982. Paradigm and experiment were never explicitly discussed.
  

At the UT Kuehne Library (honoring John Matthias Kuehne, 1872-1960), I checked nine recent physics textbooks, both for freshmen and for classes in modern physics, typically the second year for majors, seeking index entries for experiment and paradigm. The results were disappointing. Neither term appeared in these:

• Bernstein, Fishbone, Gasiorowicz, Modern Physics (2000).
• Benson University Physics, (1996)
• Giancoli, Physics for Scientists and Engineers (2000)
• Halliday, Resnick, Walker, Fundamentals of Physics (2005)
• Hech, Physics: Calculus (2000)
• Learner, Physics for Scientists and Engineers (1996)
• Tipler, Physics for Scientists and Engineers (1991)
• Young and Freedman, Sears and Zemansky’s University Physics (2004). 

Of those, the last was most disappointing being the 11^th edition of the standard textbook that served the first post-war generation in the 1950s and 1960s. Tipler was one of the books we had at Lansing Community College because it was newly written in 1976 and because Paul Tipler taught at the University of Michigan. He, too, ignored Kuhn.

M31: Andromeda Galaxy, at first a "cloud"
then a spiral within our galaxy,
then an "island universe" like our
own Milky Way.

Better treatment appeared in Lea and Burke, Physics: the Nature of Things (1997). And this speaks to the validity of critical sociology: It is Susan M. Lea who made the effort to present students with discussions of experiment, including the nature of experiment, thought experiment (first Galileo, then Einstein: pp 11, 132, 445), and experiment and theory. As a woman in a man’s world, Dr. Lea easily adopted the sociological perspective of considering the accepted from a different point of view.

However, even Lea and Burke fall into positivist fallacies that plague science with “the problem of induction.”  (See Necessary Facts on David Harriman’s Logical Leap here and here.)  

They say (page 12): “Physics is an experimental science that prides itself in getting close to reality through laboratory testing of theory. … How can we be certain that the experimental process of dissecting nature into component part is ultimately correct? We can’t! Belief in experimental science depends on one’s worldview.” Again (page 14): “Consistency with experiment and usefulness in understanding nature are the properties of a good physical theory. The word truth is conspicuously absent. Aristotle… Kepler and Galileo… Newtonian physics, thought absolutely true for 250 years. In the twentieth century, we have learned that Newtonian physics is not exact but stands as an excellent approximation. Absolute truth is elusive. We continue to seek greater depth in our understanding, greater elegance in our theories, and greater precision in our experiments. Whether truth can be achieved in some approximate sense by this process is unanswerable. We believe in physics because we know we can organize our knowledge and employ it to describe the behavior of nature with greater accuracy using only a small number of fundamental ideas.”

 The objectivist answer is that rational-empiricism works. The physicists who are not sure about reality never think twice about getting into an elevator and expecting it to operate. And if it fails – despite the failsafe which was designed by the same laws – then some cause must be and can be found. In a lecture on “The Primacy of Existence,” Objectivist philosopher David Kelley notes that these doubters do not drive their cars according to the theory that we can never know anything for certain.

(Note the two words, lower case o-objectivist, and upper case. The first is the general rational-empirical method, the scientific method. Capital-O Objectivism derives explicitly from the published works of Ayn Rand and is a modern school of thought based on the objectivism of pre-Kantian Enlightenment )

Also, Lea and Burke gloss over the key problem with doubt: “Physics is an experimental science that prides itself in getting close to reality through laboratory testing of theory.”  What is this reality to which we can get close, but never discover?

To know that we are closer, not farther, requires some test. That test is reality.

In the history of science, few inventions came from engineering applications of scientific principles. Rather, engineering achievements provided data for theoretical explanation. The telegraphs of the world transmitted our ideas across continents, each click creating a magnetic field that collapsed, inductively broadcasting evidence of our existence into the Galaxy, all a generation before Maxwell.

The best sociology discovers facts, creates theories, identifies causes, and tests hypotheses. As passive description, ethnography is not highly regarded, though it is passionately defended. Passive description is good science – and good description is not passive. We bring our expectations to our observations. A scientist knows to be ware of preconceived notions and to be open to new perceptions. At the same time, the scientific observer often has good reason to seek exactly the phenomenon under investigation. It is not really passive. If only implicitly, certain factors are held constant, while others change. Aristotle’s description of the chick embryo is a paradigmatic example cited as one of the greatest scientific experiments in history. (See Necessary Facts here.)  

But sociology knows these facts. Sir Anthony Giddens’s international standard undergraduate textbook, Sociology, has an entire chapter (number 20) on Research Methods with three explicit discussions of experiment. It begins with two discussions of sociology as a science (pp 7-8; and 12-14).

Moreover, in sociology, we enjoy some self-criticism in examining the historical development of our field, from Comte (I prefer Spencer), Weber, Durkheim, and Marx, through to Parsons, Merton, and your choice of pop stars of the current generation. Physics students do not understand their science as a historical development. As Kuhn pointed out fifty years ago, physics is presented whole and complete, without development. No wonder they are surprised by a new explanation of a previously unperceived fact.

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David Harriman's Logical Leap
David Harriman's Logical Leap Almost Makes It
"Big Bang Theory" and Modern Philosophy

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

“Everyone” knows this book, even those who have not read it.  “Paradigm shift” is an idea within our common culture. This month, I made the time to read it (third edition) cover-to-cover and make notes, both marginalia and on eight pages from a notepad.  The Wikipedia summary (here)  is accurate.  What I took away – and what you find – is necessarily different. 

In the Postscript answering his critics (and supporters), Kuhn points out that his thesis resonates with similar ideas from other fields, such as art and politics.  Those other fields informed his view of science.  That thesis may appear to have been assimilated broadly considering the common understanding of paradigms today. But having completed classes in sciences several times since I first read the book for a community college seminar in 1976, we still do not learn about science this way. 

Standard textbooks in physics – Sears and Zemansky (and the successors), Tipler, Halliday and Resnick – and the professors who lecture from them, do not admit to the existence of paradigm shifts. They deliver the intellectual development of electricity and other topics in the traditional mode.  In the freshman lab, we have the electroscope, but not as a Leyden jar to collect electric fluid.  Kuhn’s claim that Maxwell’s Equations and even Ohm’s Law were not accepted on their merits finds no voice in the typical college classroom. 

Kuhn cites "Resistance to Ohm's Law" by Morton L. Schagrin (American Journal of Physics, July 1963, Volume 31, Issue 7, pp. 536. ) The abstract at American Association of Physics Teachers here  says:

“It is argued that the usual account of the discovery and subsequent rejection, or criticism, of Ohm's law is both a misleading and an inadequate explanation. A close logical examination of Ohm's experimental work reveals a conceptual structure quite different from that of the electrical science of his time. As a result of this analysis, it is claimed that the conceptual shift in Ohm's experimental work was the basis for the reaction of his contemporaries.”

Kuhn also points out that while art evolved past representation, painters today still create realistic portraits, still lifes, and landscapes.  No physicist or chemist investigates phlogiston.  Kuhn also identifies the fact that debates in social science are rooted in incommensurable paradigms.  Here on Necessary Facts is a list of about 30 different theories of crime. 

Some can be reconciled to each other, especially in context.  Most cannot. Also here on Necessary Facts is Rom Harre's Great Scientific Experiments. Some reflect paradigm shifts; others reinforce Kuhn's suggestions about "normal science." Some of them - Robert Norman on the dip of the magnetic field; and Konrad Lorenz on imprinting - offer contrary evidence that does not decide between rival paradigms.

Those cannot invalidate the facts cited here.  Kuhn is clear about his commitment to objective reality.  He argues against interpreters who accuse (or praise) him for subjectivism and relativism.  We do perceive differently, but we do perceive something, not just anything.  Moreover, the supposed weakness in circularity and tautology, are only identifications: A is A, as another philosopher put it.  Kuhn is clear that not just anything can be an identification. Between the perceptions, he says, are gaps, or lacunae, or nothing: conceptual and perceptual voids against which or contrasted with which we perceive.

Last night coming home from work on the bus, I sat next to a man reading The Iliad.  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is that kind of book: if you have not read it (for some years passed) you deserve the opportunity.

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Astronomical Symbols on Ancient and Medieval Coins
The Economic Value in a Liberal Education
ELI the ICE man: Science and Technology
Asterisms