by John Horgan, The Scientific Curmudgeon
A few years ago, a radio talk-show based in Houston called me for a chat about the relationship between science and religion. On the air, I said I wasn’t religious, but I also distrusted science when it pretended to have all the answers to our deepest questions about who we are, where we came from, where we’re going.
The host, a devout Christian, became annoyed with me. “You don’t believe in Jesus or God,” he said, “and you have doubts about science, too. So what do you believe in, Mr. Horgan?” For an awkward moment, the question left me stumped, then I said I believed in skepticism. “Well,” the host replied, “I’m skeptical, Mr. Horgan, skeptical of you and your ideas.”
It’s not always easy being a skeptic. Sometimes I think of my skepticism as a disorder, perhaps caused by a mutant gene, like being color blind or tone deaf. I’m missing the belief gene, and that’s why I can’t embrace Christianity, parapsychology, superstring theory, evolutionary psychology or psychopharmacology. I also occasionally envy believers, because after all science has demonstrated that faith has the power to heal, through the placebo effect. But then I remind myself of all the harm done throughout history by people with faith, whether in a religion or in pseudo-scientific theories such as Marxism, Social Darwinism or eugenics.
I was once an evangelical believer in scientific progress; in fact, that’s why I became a science journalist almost 25 years ago. Fields such as physics, artificial intelligence and genetics seemed to be bearing us toward a future in which bionic superhumans whiz around the cosmos in warp-drive spaceships. Science was an “endless frontier,” as the physicist Vannevar Bush, founder of the National Science Foundation, put it in his famous 1945 essay.
By the mid-1990s, however, skepticism had undermined my faith. I reluctantly concluded that science writers, including me, were presenting the public with an overly optimistic picture of science. By relentlessly touting scientific “advances”—from solutions to the riddle of cosmic creation to quantum theories of consciousness–and by overlooking all the areas in which scientists are spinning their wheels, we made science seem more potent and fast-moving than it really is. In The End of Science, published a decade ago, I argued that in attempting to solve mysteries such as the origin of the universe and of life and the nature of consciousness, science might be bumping up against fundamental limits.
I still see science as our best hope for understanding ourselves and the universe, and for creating, if not a sci-fi utopia, then at least a much better world. Scientists can provide us with cleaner, cheaper sources of energy; better treatments for cancer, AIDS and other diseases; more detailed accounts of how brains make minds. That’s why, in spite of writing a book called The End of Science, I’ve remained in the science-journalism racket, why I work at a science-oriented school, why I encourage young people to become scientists. But I also encourage greater recognition of science’s limitations and fallibility. It is precisely because science is so consequential that we must treat its pronouncements skeptically, carefully distinguishing the genuine from the spurious.
My goal in this blog—as in most of my writings–is to examine current events in science with “hopeful skepticism,” a term I originally coined in my second book, The Undiscovered Mind. Too much skepticism can culminate in solipsism, in a radical postmodernism that denies the possibility of achieving not only complete knowledge but any knowledge at all. Too little skepticism leaves us vulnerable to peddlers of scientific snake oil. But just the right amount of skepticism—mixed with just the right amount of hope–can protect us from our desire for answers while keeping us open-minded enough to recognize genuine truth when or if it arrives.
May 24th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
I wish you luck in your endeavour! I’m an evolutionary biologist and I’ve lately been worried with the sensationalism of science news. Who’s to blame? I think everybody is! The blame is that true science is lost in translation and both uncritical scientists and journalists are profiting from the situation. So, I agree with you, one needs a little skepticism but also to establish honest and critical scientist/journalist partnerships that help in the translation and in making sense of science for the grand public. I’ve recently started a blog (in portuguese) with a journalist but we’re aiming to create a more ambitious and open blog iniciative that encompasses distinct fields of knowledge, including more scientists, journalists, writers and the public. Is there something of the like in english language?
June 5th, 2006 at 5:49 pm
I also wish you well with your new blog. I used to be a skeptic myself. Yet circumstances forced my hand. I have come to the conclusion that I will not be able to fathom deity. I believe in One. One from which all things come. The source if you like. I am like the cockroach that will never understand quantum physics. (I read that in one of your books or elsewhere.) So I don’t try to understand. I do know that through the practice of faith/belief, all things are possible. I often tell people that if I saw the “burning bush” I would keep it to myself as most would think I was a crackpot. Come to think of it maybe I am a crackpot. I was told a while back to have faith and turn a little of my life over to a God of my belief and see how that went. Well, that has no let me down turning everything over. I don’t pretend to know, I live the knowing. Everyone is free to believe whatever they want but I found what was missing in my way of living. So I live in the solution rather than the problem.
June 15th, 2006 at 11:29 am
[…] Horgan describes himself as a “hopeful skeptic”, writing: […]
June 22nd, 2006 at 6:11 pm
I will add…that if I saw the proverbial bush, I ain’t telling anybody. Didn’t you detail in one of your books having some mystical experience while you were young?
September 4th, 2006 at 3:24 am
A RECIPE FOR RESTORING RATIONALITY IN SCIENCE
The present crisis in science and science education (expressions like “terminal decline” and “farewell to physics” have become commonplace) has many and various sources and is probably irreversible. Still, in a desperate counterattack, two fundamental falsehoods should be dealt with immediately:
1. The false conclusion of Clausius according to which all heat engines working between the same two temperatures have the same maximal efficiency should be replaced with its negation: Heat engines working between the same two temperatures could have different maximal efficiencies. Then all possible deductions should be made.
2. Einstein’s false second postulate according to which the speed of light is independent of the speed of the light source should be replaced with its negation: The speed of light does depend on the speed of the light source. Then all possible deductions should be made.
Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com