If it disagrees with experience, it's wrong

Dr. Neville Thomas Jones, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005 Dr. N.T. Jones. Permission is granted to print or otherwise reproduce this page on condition that the content is not changed in any way.

The following quotation, taken from Germar Rudolph's web site, highlights a disturbing modern trend, "Natural sciences [and other disciplines as well] are an extremely conservative and dogmatic matter. Any corroboration of a paradigm is welcome, whereas any innovation or revision will long meet with resistance; the instinct for preservation (including self-preservation!) is stronger than the search for truth. Therefore, new findings usually gain acceptance only when sufficient numbers of researchers stand up for them: then the dogmatic status quo topples, a 'scientific revolution' occurs, a new paradigm replaces the old ... The bottom line is that no student, no researcher and no layman should believe any facts to be 'conclusively proven', even if the textbooks present them as such...." - Prof. Walter Nagl, Ph.D., Gentechnologie und Grenzen der Biologie, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1987, p. 126f.

Science is a methodology the conclusions of which influence our perceptions of real objects that we encounter within the universe around us. Objects that form as a result of our imaginations, or from some mathematical exercise, are the domain of science fiction. A little bedtime reading may be alright in its place, but to know how to distinguish between reality and fantasy we need to understand how true science operates.

In our daily lives, we observe things going on around us, whether it be creatures or man-made objects, sunshine, rainfall, light and shadow, the stars at night, or whatever. Being able to think and to reason leads us to try and explain in some sort of rational way, how these phenomena behave and why.

The scientific method is :

1. There exists a desire to explain our surroundings, such that we might understand those surroundings better and be able to make predictions as to future behaviour;

2. In order to satisfy this desire, we use our creative ability to formulate a new idea as to how and why something behaves as it does;

3. Once we have an idea, we can investigate the consequences of our idea, as well as thinking up tests by which we can examine the idea;

4. If the tests and experiments show up a fatal error in our initial guess, or if the predictions turn out to be false, then the idea has to be thrown into the bin (and we must revert back to step 2), but if the guess satisfies the tests that we have pitted against it, then the idea is elevated to the level of an hypothesis;

5. Eventually, therefore, we should obtain an hypothesis. This hypothesis then has to be subjected to further, and more elaborate, tests.

6. If the hypothesis fails to satisfy observational experience, then the hypothesis, together with the guess that it was originally based upon, has to be thrown into the bin, but if the hypothesis survives these more extensive tests, then it is elevated to the level of a theory;

7. Eventually, therefore, we should obtain a theory of how something works or behaves. This theory cannot be left, though, and must itself undergo even more detailed examination and experimentation;

8. If the theory fails to account for, or to correctly predict, some aspect of the natural phenomenon we are studying, then the theory has to be thrown into the bin, together with the hypothesis that it was based upon, and the guesswork that the hypothesis was based upon;

9. In this way, a theory must, by definition, be potentially falsifiable;

10. Finally, if after some significant period of time has elapsed, the theory has not been demonstrated to be wrong in its ability to accurately describe the specific thing in question, then the theory is elevated to what we call a ‘law’. This is not the same thing as absolute truth.

These ten steps are the very essence of science. They may be summarized as:

Guess (or idea) → (test) → Hypothesis → (test) → Theory → (test) → Law.

In the words of Nobel laureate, Prof. Richard Feynman, lecturing his students on how to look for a new law in physics, “First you guess. Don't laugh, this is the most important step. Then you compute the consequences. Compare the consequences to experience. If it disagrees with experience, the guess is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn't matter how beautiful your guess is or how smart you are or what your name is. If it disagrees with experience, it's wrong. That's all there is to it.” (Boldface type conveys the emphasis that he himself attached to those words on the video clip of his lecture.)

As an example, let us say that I want to explain why the sky is blue. I make a guess and postulate that the blue colour of the sky is caused by some form of interaction with the green grass. The sky is blue because the grass is green. I then set about testing this idea, and I note that whenever I sit in the garden, surrounded by green grass, the sky is indeed blue. Furthermore, I feel that no change can have occurred in the sky after sunset, because when I shine a bright torch on the ground, the grass is still green. This satisfies my feeling, even though I have to assume that the sky is still blue when not illuminated by the Sun. This feeling (and associated assumption) can be either right or wrong and needs to be examined.

I then perform another experiment; I go and sit in someone else’s garden. They have no lawn at all, only concrete and rockeries, but still the sky is blue. I fear the worst, but have become quite attached to my idea and therefore look around for a way of saving it from the dustbin. Glancing over the fence to the next-door neighbour, I see that they have a beautiful lawn. Relief. The idea is confirmed again (in my eyes), because the neighbour’s green grass is interacting with the blue sky above our heads.

However, just when I feel that the time is right to promote the guess into an hypothesis, I have an assignment come up in Timbuktu. Standing in the middle of the Sahara Desert, with nothing but yellow sand all around me, I behold a beautifully blue sky. Oh well, I suppose you could all see where that guess was destined to end up, but I quite liked the idea and tried my best to hang on to it.

What would happen if it were the other way around, that you were trying to retain a guess that I saw was flawed? If I could demonstrate where the guess, or even hypothesis, theory or law, failed to account for experience, then surely you would agree that the guess, and every edifice built upon it, must be tossed into the bin, right? That is how science ought to operate, and is why I qualified it with the word ‘true’, above. But consistently now, the ruling paradigm dictates that its self-supporting ideas must be maintained, despite any and all evidence to the contrary (see, for example, the letter of Eric Lerner et al. to New Scientist regarding the big bang paradigm - www.cosmologystatement.org).

In this regard, I would make just one alteration to Prof. Feynman’s statement, as follows: “First you guess. Don't laugh, this is the most important step. Then you compute the consequences. Compare the consequences to experience. If it disagrees with experience, the guess is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn't matter how beautiful your guess is or how smart you are or what your name is” or how many people currently believe in your guess. “If it disagrees with experience, it's wrong.”

The problem is that so few people question what they are told and taught that we have a situation similar to the Emperor and his new set of ‘clothes’. Science can then be acclaimed as wearing the finest attire, when in reality it may not be wearing anything at all.