The Decline of Certainty in Science

Steven Dutch, Professor Emeritus, Natural and Applied Sciences,University of Wisconsin - Green Bay

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Sinking of the Titanic - A Metaphor

Three great ship disasters 1912-1915

• Empress of Ireland collided with another ship in Gulf of St.Lawrence, 1014 lives lost May 29, 1914.
• Lusitania torpedoed by German submarine May 7, 1915; 1198 lost.
• Titanic sinks after hitting iceberg April 14-15, 1912; 1503 lost.

Of the three disasters, the first is almost forgotten, memory ofthe second fading, third remains vivid. Why?

• Titanic was a symbol of the best technology had to offer.
• Titanic is a symbol of technological hubris: "God Himself couldnot sink this ship."

Effects of sinking

• Shock, loss of confidence
• Reforms
• Confirm usefulness of radio
• Black folk song "Great Ship Titanic" sees sinking both as greathuman tragedy and as Divine retribution for social inequity.

Loss of Titanic was a death-blow to an overconfident world-view.There have been many others.

Lisbon Earthquake, November 1, 1755

• First great quake to hit Europe in 300 years
• 50,000 killed by 3 shocks, sea wave
• First scientifically-studied earthquake
• Tremendous shock to rationalistic "Newtonian" world view--impetus to rise of skeptical and pessimistic philosophers
• Blow to theological self-confident. Event hard to reconcile withrational, just God--many victims were killed by collapsing churches.

Evolution

• Early theories of Lamarck, Cuvier could be reconciled easily witha concept of design, reconciled with fairly literal Biblical interpretation.
• Natural Selection (Darwin, Alfred Russell Wallace, 1859)
• Effects
  • Impossible to reconcile with literal interpretation of Bible.
  • Widened rift between conservative and liberal Protestants.
  • Questioned existence of design, seemed cruel and irrational to many.
• Tremendous abuse as model for social/moral doctrine:
  • Social Darwinism.
  • "Proof" of non-existence of God.
• Reactions against implications or abuses of evolution
  • Lysenkoism.
  • Creationism.

Non-Euclidean Geometry

Parallel Postulate of Euclid

Given a line and a point not on theline, only one line can be drawn through the point parallel tothe given line.

Postulate seemed somehow "different," was focus of many attemptsto prove.

Discoverers of non-Euclidean Geometry

• Saccheri, 1730's
• Bolyai, 1823
• Lobachevski, 1840's

Impact

Geometry seemed as nearly absolute as knowledge could be.The discovery that there were many kinds of geometry, all equallyvalid, was a blow to the very roots of certainty.

Relativity

• Concept of "ether"
• Michelson-Morley Experiment, 1887
• Einstein - General Relativity, 1905
• Effects: required redefinition of seemingly solid concepts of distance, time and mass.
• Often used inappropriately as a model for relativism.

Uncertainty Principle

• Planck, 1900, black-body problem
• Einstein, 1905, photo-electric effect
• Heisenberg, 1927, indeterminacy
• Effect: showed there were some things that could not be known orpredicted even in principle. Even Einstein rebelled: "God does not playdice."
• Sometimes misused to support the notion that nothing is really knowable.
• Heisenberg himself was a vigorous opponent of philosophical abuses of indeterminacy.

Incompleteness Theorem

• Godel - 1930's
• Mathematical systems are not "complete." Require axioms outsideof system for some proofs.
• Always possible to make "undecidable" statements that cannot be proven true or false.
• Effects: even mathematical proofs are not absolutely attainable.
• Philosophical implications still to be understood.

A common theme in the above topics has been the abuse ofscientific ideas as models for philosophy. Scientists and non-scientists alike should be aware of "scientific proof" forideologies.

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Created 20 May 1997, Last Update 30 May 1997