Brian Cox on Scientific Thinking

[foxymoron]

Weirdly ageless ex-D:REAM keyboard player and ubiquitous TV science boffin Brian Cox has an offering in the Guardian's recent "Ten Questions Science Must Answer" article:

www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/nov/30/10-big-questions-science-must-answer

I think he's coming out as a New Atheist:

Can we make a scientific way of thinking all pervasive?

Brian Cox

This would be the greatest achievement for science over the coming centuries. I say this because I do not believe that we currently run our world according to evidence-based principles. If we did, we would be investing in an energy Manhattan project to quickly develop and deploy clean energy technologies. We would be investing far larger amounts of our GDP in the eradication of diseases such as malaria, and we would be learning to live and work in space – not as an interesting and extravagant sideline, but as an essential part of our long-term survival strategy.

One only has to look at the so-called controversies in areas such as climate science or the vaccination of our children to see that the rationalist project is far from triumphant at the turn of the 21st century – indeed, it is possible to argue that it is under threat. I believe that we will only be able to build a safer, fairer, more prosperous and more peaceful world when a majority of the population understand the methods of science and accept the guidance offered by an evidence-based investigation of the challenges ahead. Scientific education must therefore be the foundation upon which our future rests.

Brian Cox is a physicist at the University of Manchester and Cern, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, in Geneva.

'All-pervasive' scientific thinking sounds a little Orwellian to me. It's also unclear that the problem of short-termism as regards energy and the environment is down to irrational thinking as such. It's more plausibly down to apathy, a feeling of powerlessness, selfishness, or an unwillingness to bear a greater burden than others perceived to be doing less - or all of the above. I suppose ignoring a problem in the hope that it will go away is irrational, but it’s not caused by a failure to grasp the scientific facts, more a failure of nerve or responsibility.

Seems to me he's shoe-horning all kinds of unspoken utopian values into his notion of “scientific thinking”.

[himself]

Reminds me of when a commitment to eugenics was the mark of the science-oriented utopian. Anyone who resisted eugenics was anti-science.

The comment seems replete with the short-sightedness and essential irrationalism of the self-conscious rationalist. One works with materials the way they are, and not the way we wish they were. That includes working with people and society. Not everything is reducible to the measurable properties of physical bodies, which is what science is all about. The absurd premise that science must one day become the Only Right Way of Thinking is called "scientism." It doesn't even work that well in so-called "social science", let alone in art, history, sport, literature, and other fields of human endeavor.

Behind resistance to "scientific truths" you will almost always find not irrationalism, but a quite rational resistance to a subtext that is piggy-backing on the science.

[unkleE]

Dec 10, 2010 16:24:19 GMT foxymoron said:

It's also unclear that the problem of short-termism as regards energy and the environment is down to irrational thinking as such. It's more plausibly down to apathy, a feeling of powerlessness, selfishness, or an unwillingness to bear a greater burden than others perceived to be doing less - or all of the above

Yes, you could argue that maximising my pleasure and wellbeing now, and leaving the next generations to pay is quite rational, in a self-centred way. It's the old question of whether altruism is rational, or whether it is "right" - which is an ethical question, not so much a scientific one.