[Please read Part I of this post first]
Part V: Newtonian science & low hanging fruit
As science advanced over the 19th and early 20th century, adding triumph after triumph, the seeds of scientism were laid. Having advanced so far, and conquered so many fields, was there any line too far, any frontier that could not be crossed by the intrepid scientist? The belief arose that science could attack any problem, could be applied everywhere. All knowledge disciplines would ultimately adopt the scientific method; disciplines that refused would be unmasked as spheres of opinion, not knowledge.
Wonderfully hubristic claims began to be made, of which Stephen Hawking’s “philosophy is dead” is but one of many. I remark again the ongoing struggle with religion, as claims for science converge with claims of omniscience heretofore only granted to deity. That is scientism indeed.
But what if the scientific method proves after all to be provincial in extent? No one asks this question anymore; all kowtow to the power of science. But might physics be regarded as the criterion science, because the province of physical matter at human scale is one of the few spheres where the scientific method works really well? And even physics carries too broad a writ; say rather kinematics, matter in motion. And say further “under STP,” standard temperature and pressure, a phrase every chemistry student soon learns, the scientific equivalent of ceteris paribus.
What goes unremarked: matter in motion under STP, at human scales, may be one of the few domains where ceteris paribus can be a safe assumption. Force, mass and acceleration can be isolated: in this sphere we deal with closed systems. A sniper shooting over a mile may have to worry about wind direction and barometer—his system is not so closed; but you need not worry, if you have the gun barrel pressed against the skull. All else will be equal, every time.
Now consider the social psychologist in his lab. Ceteris paribus never applies; there is never an “experimental subject,” but only a white female, 20 years old, who grew up in a 21st century suburb, and was selected by the admission committee for her uncanny ability to divine what teachers and other authority figures expected her to do.
Next, consider the macroeconomist examining a national economy: his or her phenomenon is always a one off, an unrepeated conjuncture of a thousand factors—unless you are a Marxist, and hold the laws of history in your grasp.
And now consider the climate theorist on his planet’s surface: is his object of study a one off? Insofar as orbital mechanics determine planetary temperature (e.g., Milankovic cycles), no—we are back in the sphere of kinematics. But those cycles, according to some, predict imminent cooling, as the current interglacial draws to a close. If that cooling is not going to occur, because of anthropogenic excess carbon release, then the current situation is a one-off: the climate theorist has never had the opportunity to observe current conditions before.
Do we have scientific certainty when dealing with domains other than matter in motion, within a closed system, at human scale? We also get it with DNA, because we can alter its chemical building blocks, which are directly connected to the proteins it manufactures, which govern the activity of cells: molecules in motion. But where else?
In turn, pragmatic action becomes most likely and certain of outcome under conditions of closed systems where physical connectedness obtains. Guns fire; manipulated genes alter cell structures.
You can act powerfully in the world once you understand F = ma, or know how CGTA structures manufacture proteins.
Now, what new action can you perform once you understand the equations for representing tiny strings in vibrating in eight dimensions? What action do you perform once you observe evidence for gravity waves? Were we to accept our world as one of countless multiverses, what could we then do?
More to the point: what action are you enabled to perform once you observe a historical correlation between planetary temperature and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Do you have the same certainty, or less, or more, as when you observe historically that when price-earnings ratios for stocks were high, future market returns were lower?
Everyone wants to claim the mantle of Newton; but how many claimants can assume it? On this skeptical examination, there are dozens of subject areas that ape some aspect of physical science, in particular the search for mathematical formulation, and the gathering of evidence susceptible to mathematical tests; but only a handful that actually succeed in gaining control over the world, along with the certainty that comes from repeatable pragmatic consequence. The rest may be but pretenders, naked emperors, whose knowledge claims aren’t any different than those of a Shakespearean scholar, who finds a particular Graeco-Roman myth woven into the text of Hamlet. Or a technical analyst, who issues a buy signal for Apple stock, based on examination of its price chart. Careful analysts all, committed to gathering evidence, and checking predictions against data. But are those the sort of actions which built the prestige of science and the scientific method? Or was it the gun and the light switch, the bomb and the drug?
There’s no harm in trying; no one can know if the low hanging fruit of pragmatically powerful science has all been picked. And although human paleontology cannot be expected to ever give pragmatic control—e.g., knowledge of how to arrange the evolution of today’s homo sapiens into something more advanced—the topic holds interest for many, no less than the provenance of Shakespeare’s great plays.
The epistemological fruit of the climate change controversy lies in how it lays bare the scientific pretension and hubris so widespread today. It helps us to resist scientistic over-reach, the supposition that all the claimants to Newton’s mantle are future Einsteins, each to find the equivalent of a nuclear bomb within their chosen area of study.
Alas, what we seek today from climate science is technological certainty, knowledge of how to make planetary temperature stop rising, or even go down. We aspire to technological control: we want the certainty that if we undertake very expensive and inconvenient actions, planetary temperature will respond, and respond precisely: our efforts will not overshoot, nor have too long a lag in their effect, nor fail of their end. We want the certainty of the gun from climate change: a bullet to slay the beast of global warming.
But we have heard for decades from dozens of precincts that science is Other to technology, and that technological advances provide no evidence for the truth of any scientific knowledge claim.
Over decades of government funding, climate scientists and scientists across dozens of fields have abjured the need for any technological consequence. Science, they have argued, is a matter of elaborate mathematical formulations checked against precise measurements; its goal is to make those mathematical formulations more encompassing and those measurements more precise. Nothing more is required, outside of medical science, where grantees are expected to find a cure for cancer, and surely will, if not on the next funding cycle, then on the one after.
Now we are in dire need of technological control over climate; but under the consensus model of science, that is not where scientific truth resides. Accurate measures of global temperature change do not make available the technological means to control planetary temperature.
Scientific certainty, isn’t; only technology carries pragmatic certainty. And technological certainty is an outgrowth of repeated experiments. Because we are not able to repeat planetary experiments, we cannot be confident that we possess a technology of planetary temperature reduction.
But I still support a carbon tax, one that climbs over time to steeper and steeper levels, along with better cost-accounting for pollution of all kinds. But I cannot call on science to back me up; I have only good reasons.
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