On Science Concepts, Cultures and Limits
A new book by senior Principia Scientific fellow, Dr Urmie Ray “On Science: Concepts, Cultures, and Limits” (Tuhina Ray and Urmie Ray) is being published today by Routledge. It is my honor and privilege to be able to share this with our international readers and members.
Dr Ray provides this introduction:
The aim of the book is to analyse how and why in the modern context of a wealth-driven technological orientation, science has been gradually distorted into its exact opposite, a dogmatic faith, i.e. a set of tenets which claim to be science, yet do not display its characteristics, in particular which do not rest on sufficiently reproduced and reproducible observation-based reasoning.
Current events make it essential to distinguish one of our noblest pursuits from this creed. God, if there be one, might or might not “play dice”, but by trying to play at being gods, we are certainly playing dice with our own fate.
But before the issue of science’s distortion can be addressed, it is necessary to understand what science and its practice consist in. The actual shape given to science at a particular time and place has always been heavily dependent on the metaphysical underpinnings of individual schools.
Indeed, science rests on how we relate to the universe. Hence the book begins with a discussion, of what science is through an overview of some of the forms it has adopted so far, notably with the purpose of contributing to a much needed synthesis of Western and Eastern thoughts. The particular roles of mathematics, on the one hand, and of the knowledge of materials, on the other, are highlighted.
Still the best way to get a feel for science is to look at examples. The second part illustrates the preceding theoretical discourse through multiple examples ranging from the physical to the life sciences. It aims to convey the continuity of science over the ages, and the awe-inspiring beauty of both the scientific theories and of the human minds who have painstakingly devoted their lives to fathom the universe, often at great risk to themselves.
Only then, in the third part, can we analyze the weaknesses inherent to science, how these have been conducive to its gradual distortion, and suggest solutions so that we can peacefully saunter along our scientific pathway, at- tempting to understand, searching but never finding, every time ‘the’ truth that seems within reach, fading away, every time having to settle for less; wisely proclaiming like Socrates that we know that we know nothing, that what we feel we know today might be proved wrong tomorrow, yet proudly persevering, incessantly hoping. Science is the realisation of this most profoundly human truth, if any truth exists.
Note that this book is intended for anyone who wishes to gain a better understanding of science, of the issues surrounding the subject today. It does not require any prior technical knowledge, nor is its content technical.
P.S. I did complain to Routledge about the pricing of the book. Their usual policy is to bring out a paperback 18 months after the hardback’s publication. Consequent to our discussions, they have proposed something which they claim is exceptional: that if there is a buyback of 100 copies of the hardback at the author’s discount, which brings the price substantially down, copies on which I would have to forego royalties (which is ok under the circumstances: its now urgent that people get to understand what science is and is not about), then they will immediately bring out a much cheaper paperback. The ebook version is more reasonable. But, if any of you wish to acquire a hard copy, please feel free to get in touch with me by email. (The Routledge site is by the way giving a discount at the moment).
About the author, Urmie Ray: Dr Ray read mathematics at the University of Cambridge, where she obtained her B.A. (M.A.), Mmath, and PhD. After 23 years as an academic, several articles and a book in the field of algebra, she resigned her professorship in France – the country of her childhood – to dedicate herself to her lifelong interests in current issues, notably those related to science. Her second non-mathematical book “On Science: Concepts, Cultures, and Limits” (Routledge, Dec. 2020) in particular examines why and how science has been increasingly transformed into its exact opposite, a dogma which claims to speak in its name.
Dr Ray’s new book is available to order online at www.routledge.com
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Urmie and PSI Readers,
Urmie, you have written a book which clearly needed to be written, which I was only planning to write. Only planning to write because I never could even get, what I judged to be a ‘good’ first page, written. And, judging by your introduction, I consider you have written more than 250 good pages.
However, I require a hard cop,y to study so I will wait 18 months for the paperback copy. Instead I will imagine what you maybe did not write and take the opportunity to write brief comments here at PSI. For I have an example almost ready to go. Some years ago I wrote two PSI postings ‘Feynman’s Blunder Part 1 and Feynman’s Blunder Part 2.’ Hopefully, John O’ will soon have PSI up and fully operational so you can use PSI’s search function and read these postings For previously I had not yet seen that which I now see.
Richard Feynman, had focused his Caltech physic’s students’ attentions upon the science of which would follow in the well known ’The Feynman Lectures On Physics Vol. I, 1963’ with: “If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms—little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.”
Urmie, you just wrote: “searching but never finding, every time ‘the’ truth that seems within reach, fading away, every time having to settle for less; wisely proclaiming like Socrates that we know that we know nothing.”
I now see, as I begin to compose this sentence, that you have made a mistake. Socrates never claimed that ‘we’ know nothing. He claimed that HE knew nothing. Which his reason that he only asked questions and never agreed or disagreed with anyone’s answer. Socrates knew (had learned), that which Galileo had learned, as I read (as translated by someone) that Galileo stated: “We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.”
Obviously, Feynman had not learned what Socrates and Galileo had learned. For immediately after suggesting that [in his single sentence] “there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.”; he began doing the imagination and thinking for his students as he spooned feed his ‘knowledge’ by lecturing to them.
I have pondered what Feynman could have done. He could have simply stated: scientists have generally concluded “that all things are made of atoms—little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.” And then had given his students the assignment: Come to the next lecture prepared to offer simple, common observations which would support such scientific ideas. With the warning, if no one came up with a proposed observation to discuss, we (you and I) will just set and look at each other.
And if one reads the history of why there was The Feynman Lectures On Physics, he could have prefaced this assignment with the challenge: Since you consider you know all about the boring classical physics, you should be able to come to the next lecture with many simple, common observations which supports these ideas..
Have a good day, Jerry
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Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Readers,
Because Urmie , nor any of you, has responded to my comment and her posting, I am going to try to take advantage of her book’s title. I do this by writing short comments similar to the one I have already made. For my initial comment was based more on the title than on what Urmie had written about her book.
“This is not a textbook on meteorology, neither a general introduction nor a formal course, but it has a serious purpose and that is to explain to the general reader what it is that meteorologists are doing and trying to do. Much is heard of the two cultures and of science and technology becoming intolerably specialized and sophisticated with concepts often unintelligent to the non-scientist.” (Preface of ‘Weather and Climate’ by R.C. Sutcliffe, 1966)
Science, concepts, culture; words in the title of Urmie’s book but not the word limitations unless specialized is a synonym for limitation. Which is will consider it is; especially to a specialized scientist who is aware of little science outside of his/her speciality.
For Sutcliffe, the meteorologist, on the 3rd page of his introduction wrote: “Meteorology is not a fundamental physical science, that is to say it is not concerned to develop the basic laws of nature or the fundamental truths of space, time, and matter, but it is evidently a pure science properly to be studied in its own right as a branch of knowledge and will in this book be presented in that light.”
Now, back to Sutcliffe’s preface. He continued: “And yet of necessity they exist, as indeed do literature, art and music, in an economic and political environment where the most far-reaching decisions affecting them rightly rest in the hands of non-specialists who unfortunately may not adequately understand the issues before them. For my own part experience in presenting scientific considerations to non-scientists, civil and military, has rarely left an impression of great difficulty in communication and it could be that the gravity of the present situation has, in this respect, been much exaggerated, but it is still the duty of all specialist groups, which in a democracy draw their resources ultimately from the public purse, to avoid the arrogance of specialized knowledge and to try to present a fair account of their achievements, objectives and requirements in terms intelligible to a large proportion of educated citizens.”
Now, if one understands what Sutcliffe has written and are curious of what else he may have written, I suggest you go to Amazon and find you can purchase a new paperback copy of his 1966 book for $18.95 plus shipping. And if you go to Abe Books, you might find used copies available for even less.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Readers,
‘Weather & Climate’ 1966, Contents: 1 Introduction; 2 Troposphere, Stratosphere and Beyond; 3 Exploring the Free Atmosphere; 4 The Classification of Clouds … “
“The steady decrease of density with height, more or less as described, is the inevitable result of hydrostatic compression by the force of gravity but the variation of temperature with height, far from being steady is altogether remarkable. When it became firmly established from observations on mountains and in manned and free balloons that the air became steadily colder as the altitude increased, scientists were very ready to generalize and to assume that the cooling went on indefinitely to the limit of the atmosphere. This was the general belief until in 1899 the Frenchman Teisserene de Boot, announced to an astonished and even incredulous world that his sounding balloons had reached heights above which the temperature decreased no further.”
Hence, ‘weather’ is a very infant science about which this fundamental ‘observation’ has only been known to scientists for little more than a century.
“No small part of the attractiveness of the earth sciences, including geology and geography as well as what we call geophysics, lies in meeting the challenge of exploration, by expeditions of discovery to all parts of our planet and by devising methods of obtaining information from the inaccessible interior of the solid earth, the depths of the oceans or the heights of the atmosphere.”
And finally the 4th Chapter: The Classification of Clouds’. Classification is an essential tool of SCIENCE. And I consider this where Sutcliffe’s consideration of the science of ‘Weather and Climate’ actually begins.
“It would be difficult to overstress the importance of clouds as the necessary intermediary between invisible vapor and falling precipitation in the water cycle upon which all land-life depends, but their importance3 by no means ends here. Clouds which do not give rain, which never even threaten to give rain but which dissolve again into vapor before the precipitation stage is ever reached, have a profound effect on our climate. This is obvious enough if we only think of the difference between a cloudy and a sunny day in summer or between an overcast and a clear frosty night in winter. Taking an overall average, about 50 per cent of the earth’s surface is covered with cloud at any time whereas precipitation is falling over no more than say 3 per cent. Non-precipitating clouds are thus the common variety, rain clouds are the exception.”
Have you, a PSI Reader, ever read anything close to what Sutcliffe wrote in 1966?
Have a good day, Jerry
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Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Readers,
Sutcliffe, chapter 4, continued: “The climatic importance of clouds lies in their effectiveness in reflecting, absorbing, transmitting, and emitting radiation, to which further reference will be made in a later chapter. The effects are complicated because clouds are neither ‘black’ nor ‘grey’ but react to different parts of the spectrum quite differently. To the sun’s visible radiation they are efficient reflectors, throwing up to as much as 80 per cent back to space, and so shining white in the eyes of the space traveller. What is not reflected mostly penetrates and is absorbed in clouds of sufficient vertical depth so that the amount of light reaching the earth is then quite small, as every photographer knows. Long-wave radiation from the earth, the invisible heat rays, is by contrast totally absorbed by quite a thin layer of clouds and, by the same token, the clouds themselves emit heat continuously according to their temperatures, almost as though they were black bodies. In this way clouds by day keep much of the sun’s heat away, but at the same time and in the nighttime too they return to the earth much of the heat that would have been lost. A completely cloudy day may be close and humid but never exceptionally hot, whereas during a cloudy night the temperature may hardly fall from its day-time value.”
While I will later attempt to correct Sutcliffe’s suggestion that clouds reflect the sun’s visible radiation, that and a few other details will be a topic for a future comment. For I must remind you that Sutcliffe wrote in his preface that his book had a serious purpose. Which was “to explain to the general reader what it is that meteorologists are doing and trying to do.” And that which I just reviewed accurately described what meteorologists generally understood in 1966.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Urmie and PSI Readers,
Sutcliffe wrote that clouds reflect solar radiations and I stated I would correct this. This morning (December 28, 2020) I observed a near full moon setting and it was not white; it was orange, or copper-colored, before it disappeared behind the western horizon.
Now one can Google ‘The Feynman Lectures On Physics’ and read what Feynman simply taught his Caltech physics students about atmospheric scattering and about cloud droplet scattering of solar radiation in Lecture (Chapter) 32.
Now, for whatever reason,, I have not found any evidence that physicists, or other authors, whose comments are posted here at PSI, have read that which Feynman taught about these phenomena of atmospheric radiation scattering and cloud radiation scattering, than I have found any evidence that anyone has read my comments to Urmie’s posting.
Seeing the orange moon just before it set, I finally remembered viewing one or two total lunar eclipses. During which.the moon, when in the shadow of the earth, did not disappear. It could be seen as an orange moon. The simple explanation of this was, and is, that the earth’s atmosphere, beyond the shadow of the earth, was ‘refracting’ the direct solar solar radiation so this orange, refracted radiation was illuminating the surface of the moon.
Now, as I just wrote ‘refracted’, I see that the refracted phenomenon is no better than the reflected phenomenon was. For both of these phenomena require a clearly defined smooth surface between two types of matter. And the atmosphere, a gas, has no surface. So it must be, given an apparently cloudless atmosphere, the atmospheric scattering phenomenon which produces the twilight we see well before sunrise and after sunset and the orange moon.
Regardless of the possibly that many PSI Readers are not familiar with the ideas I have just reviewed, I urge you to read what Feynman taught because even I can understand the qualitative features of what he taught at the same time I could not, and still do not, understand any of the quantitative, mathematical reasoning involved.
So I understand that both atmospheric molecules and cloud droplets scatter, not reflect, solar radiation (UV. Visible, and the invisible infrared (IR) radiations) by two different scattering mechanisms. And I understand that the cloud droplets should also scatter the invisible terrestrial (longer-wavelength) IR radiation being emitted from the earth’s surface (because of the surface’s temperatures) even more strongly than it scatters the solar IR radiation.
So, I believe most PSI Readers, could understand this if they would only read what Feynman taught his students in his 32nd Lecture.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Readers,
Have you noticed that much I call to your attentions is not what I think or reason. It is about what others have written. While I do not consider whom these others are to be of critical importance, for what is important to me is what they write. Some times I agree with what they wrote and sometimes I question what they wrote.
Probably the least known of the authors I have quoted here is R.C.Sutcliffe, F..R.S.. I had to look up what F.R.S. means and you might do so yourself. To me it is not important. What is important that Sutcliffe was invited to write his book as part of W.W. Norton & Company’s, notable publisher of scientific literature, as part of their ‘Advancement of Science Series’. Which the describe: “Under the general editorship of Richard Carrington, this new series, initiated with the cooperation and advice of the British and American Association for the Advancement of Science, aims to inform the intelligent general reader about new developments in science and their relevance to everyday life. The emphasis will be on subjects of broad general interest that vitally affect the future of man in this scientific age. Each book will be written by a leading scientist, thus insuring completely authoritative information, but the presentations will be lively and as far as possible, nontechnical. As well as giving-up-to-the-minute account of research in each field, the books will relate new developments to the history of the subject so that present problems can be seen in historical perspective.”
R.C. Sutcliffe they wrote: “[he] was recently appointed Professor and head of a new Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading, England. Previously he was Director of Research in the Meteorological Office. Professor Sutcliffe combines scientific eminence with an exceptionally wide experience of the practical applications of meteorology. At the end of World War II, he was Chief Meteorological Officer for the British Forces in Europe.”
I write this so, if you disagree with what Sutcliffe wrote, you will know with whom you are disagreeing.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Readers,
I do not know if this is true for you, but I cannot directly access Page 2. So I access postings which are no longer part of Page 1 by using Urmie on the PSI search function when my comments to her postings is no longer on the ‘Recent Comments’ list. For if one clicks the posting of the comment, one can access her posting. Thereby keeping it ‘alive’. So, whenever my comment no longer appears on the list, make another comment that brings her posting to life again. For I believe her book is quite important as I believe that R.C. Sutcliffe’s book is also quite important.
Chapter 1, Sutcliffe began his ‘Introduction’: “When we begin to write about weather and climate we embark upon the story of our natural home, which has been our dwelling in one continuous stream of life these thousand million years, and for the last million or so has been explored and exploited by the conscious mind of man. It is then not unreasonable to suppose, indeed it could hardly be otherwise, that the problems presented by weather, by wind and rain and warmth, were amongst the earliest to force themselves on consciousness and that in a historical sense meteorology lay at the foundation of physical science. It was, and is, a difficult science to reduce to tis basic principles and so to present as a deductive structure, and it was another of the environmental sciences, astronomy, the very limited positional.astronomy of the solar system, which was first illuminated by the light of Newton’s genius. But throughout the history of modern science dating from that time it was significant that ‘natural philosophy’ was almost a synonym for physical science. The dual interest of the scientist in the natural world of phenomena and in the basic principles which explain them, which identify the natural with the rational, was accepted generally and did not begin to lose its validity until—with the tremendous success of experimental laboratory physics of the late nineteenth century—the applications of basic physical theory were largely diverted from the natural macro-environment of man to the essentially simpler physical systems physical system he invented for himself and learned to construct and control.”
I ask you (PSI Reader): What is wrong with Sutcliffe’s brief review of the history of ‘modern’ science? This is not a rhetorical question which does not need to be answered.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Urmie and PSI Readers,
I have waited for some one to answer the question I had just asked.
So to make your posting a current event, my simple answer is: Sutcliffe did not first consider the Galileo Galilei who was under house arrest after lying that he believed that the ‘earth did stand still’ as the Pope demanded and then forbid that Galileo not write any more books.
Which demand he did not obey. However, I doubt if ’Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences’ has been read by any more scientists currently living today than your (Urmie’s) posting has. Which censorship and threat of life Newton did not face.
And I cannot point to any wrong scientific idea which Newton absolutely refuted by doing an experiment or pointing to common observations that simply refuted an absolutely wrong scientific ideas.
But from Galileo’s forbidden book I read. “Salv. I greatly doubt that Aristotle ever tested by experiment whether it be true that two stones, one weighing ten times as much as the other, if allowed to fall, as the same time instant, from a height of, say, 100 cubits, would do differ in speed that when the heavier had reached the ground, the other would not have fallen more than 10 cubits.
“Simp. His language would seem to in indicate that he had tried the experiment, because he says: “We see the heavier; now the word see shows that he had made the experiment.”
“Sagr. But I, Simplicio, who have made the test can assure you that a cannon ball weighing one or two hundred pounds, or even more, will not reach the ground by as much as a span ahead of a musket ball weighing only half a pound, provided both are dropped from a height of 200 cubits.”
This dialogue continued and later Salviati states: “But, Simplico, I trust you will not follow the example of many others who divert the discussion from its main intent and fasten upon some statement of mine which lacks a hair’s-breadth fo the truth and, under this hair, hide the fault of another which is as big as a ship’s cable. Aristotle says the “an iron ball of one hundred pounds falling from a height of one hundred cubits reaches the ground before a one-pound ball has fallen a single cubit.” I say that they arrive at the same time. You find, on making the experiment, that the larger outstrips the smaller by two finger-breadths, that is, when the larger has reached the ground, the other is short of it by two finger-breadths; now you would not hide behind these two fingers the ninety-nine cubits of Aristotle, nor would you mention my small error and as the same time pass over in silence his very large one. Aristotle declares that bodies of different weights, in the same medium, travel (in so far as their motion depends upon gravity) with speeds which are proportional to their weights … “
Hopefully any reader of what Galileo writes sees the picture that Galileo is painting with words.
Now consider this generalization of something what has measured thousands of times at many location and times. The measured temperature of the natural atmosphere has never been found to be less than the measured dew point temperature of the same atmosphere at the same time.
The only prediction, of which I am aware, of the scientific idea commonly known as the Greenhouse Effect of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (GHE) is that the temperature of the natural atmosphere would be about 33C (58F) less if not for the presence of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Does not the above observed generalization absolutely refute this GHE prediction? Just as Salviati’s repeated experimental results absolutely refuted Aristotle’s claimed idea.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Readers,
I have been making a terrible mistake as I have tried to inform you, who have little background with the activity called SCIENCE, about what this SCIENCE is.
I should have been urging you to go and buy Richard Feynman’s book: “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”. And to read it.
And in particular to read his 8 page story: The 7 Percent Solution.
Have a good day, Jerry
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