I know what I’m going to write today but it’s stored in my external memory, my ideas bin. Hey, I remembered without looking. My mind is in too much of a fog to write about it now; that means coffee before writing. I’ll meet you back here after breakfast. I’m back from breakfast and I still remember! Let’s consider this a miracle.
Last night I planned on seeing Miss Tess at Skinny Dennis in Williamsburg. Tess was one of the performers I saw the most often till she moved from civilization (i.e. Brooklyn) to Nashville. Nashville, stop stealing my friends and favorite musicians. As I hadn’t seen her in ages I put it on my calendar as soon as I heard about it. She went on at 9 PM and had three sets until midnight. That’s late. No way I could stay to the end, I’d miss the last bus home. Still I planned on going even though I’d spend twice as much time traveling as hearing music. I had my day planned. I’d go food shopping, head home, then head right back out to eat dinner and see Tess. As the time approached for me to go shopping I self-evaluated and saw I didn’t have the energy for it. I went shopping I could still change my mind when I got back. I got back and was tempted to go. I really wanted to see Tess but if you can hear your body you should heed what it says. I’m very good at hearing my body. I grit my teeth and decided to not go. It hurt.
As I got off the bus I spied Bernie and Jane; they were going to the Snug for half-priced burgers. I haven’t done that in ages. I decided to join them. I went home, put the perishables in the fridge or freezer and headed back to the Snug. I love their burgers, fries, waitstaff, and prices. That was a good decision.
Sometime after 9 PM, I got very sleepy. I fell asleep. I’m glad my body gave me notice, so I didn’t travel for two hour and then fight to stay awake. I don’t know if’s my meds or current lifestyle, or just getting older, but I must work around that there are times I’m going to get sleepy outside my bedtime hours. It’s hard to accept frailties but it’s stupid to ignore them. I’m often an idiot but I don’t accept being stupid.
I’m going to go back to one of my favorite themes, science vs pseudoscience. If we were to order sciences by how accurate the predictions are it would look approximately like this.
Physics>Chemistry>Biology>Social Sciences
This isn’t exact; It overlooks that there are lots of subfields in each of these each with their own ordering. We know a lot more about Economics than Sociology. I have no idea where to put Psychology. Some parts are well founded, other parts not so much.
This is not because physicists are smart than all the other scientists or sociologists stupider; the ranking is just the inverse of how difficult the sciences are. Physics deals with simpler things than chemistry and chemistry with simpler things than biology. A ball bearing is simpler than an amino acid which is simpler than amoeba which is simpler than a human brain.
I went through the hierarchy to give you the background for the point I’m trying to make. While there is pseudoscience in every field there is far more at the right end of the spectrum, the most difficult subjects, the ones where science often has no answers. But that’s now, in the past there was no science. All knowledge was up for grabs. That didn’t stop the Greeks from writing down their theories. Aristotle and others wrote extensively on what we now think of as science using pre-scientific measures. They basic method was using intuition and working out the consequences with logic. How’d that do? Pretty poorly. They were wrong about almost everything. They thought that for an object to move a force had to be continually applied to it. This led to Rube Goldberg explanations of how an arrow can keep moving after it leaves the bow. Thinking that the sun revolved around the earth was not such a ridiculous idea, it was based on observation. Where they went off the rails was thinking that planets, they thought of the sun and moon as planets, had to move in perfect circles. That’s what fit their philosophy. That mind set continued until Galileo established the scientific paradigm. We consider Copernicus a scientist, but he came before Galileo and continued to think planets had to move in circles. Kepler, Galileo’s contemporary is the one that was able to break free from philosophy and replace it with observation.
They made up elaborate theories of four (or five) elements earth, water, air, fire, and (aether) whose properties were based on their shapes. They had a theory of medicine base on the four humors, blood, phlegm, bile, and black bile. They tried to explain all disease on the basis of imbalance of the fluids.
When I started learning physics I was annoyed that in high school we had a section on Aristotelian physics. Why did we have to learn things that we know are wrong? I don’t think my teacher knew. In college my freshman physics teacher gave me the reason. “Aristotle was smarter than anyone you’ve ever met. He was a great genius.” Why did he get everything so wrong? The answer is because science hadn’t been invented yet. He based belief on theories that sounded reasonable without testing them against reality.
There is one other element to this; it’s that most theories are wrong. Even those proposed by modern scientists. Most experiments have negative results. This is clearest in medicine where they test thousands of drugs for each one that is found effective. What makes is science is the testing. But it’s true in all fields. People made beautiful theories, that didn’t work. Descartes had his vortices. Newton had his corpuscular theory of light. Fred Hoyle had his steady-state model of the universe. Today there’s string theory and supersymmetry and nobody knows if either is correct. Great theories that each deserve their own universe, but it might not be ours.
Despite this people will still accept “ancient wisdom” and traditional medicine if it isn’t from the Greeks. Cultures around the world had theories akin to the four humors based on what sounded good to them. Then people follow them. “But they work?” you might say. The Greeks thought their medicine worked too. If you don’t do double blind experiments all you know is what you want to believe. Every notice how these cures are good for many totally unrelated conditions? If you aren’t testing, you might as well claim big things. It’s what Trump calls “Truthful Hyperbole.” Only one of those two words is accurate.
I’m an idiot. I know I’m restating the obvious. I was almost finished with this when I had to leave to catch my bus as I was meeting someone. As I said the other day I hate to break tryst. I meant to finish it as soon as I got home. I remembered as I was about to go to sleep. I’m posting it now and I’ll repost it in the morning. Diaryland isn’t working. I guess this is waiting for tomorrow.
Wise Madness 