What Scientists Really Do
Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2014 5:22 am
“eminent researchers can be held captive by their entrenched intuitions and refuse to accept new ideas until they are faced with overwhelming empirical evidence contradicting their views”
“scientists continually uncover new facts that confront them with the extent of their ignorance”
This book review published in the New York Review of Books is available online free at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archive ... ?insrc=toc
Priyamvada Natarajan
OCTOBER 23, 2014 ISSUE
Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything
by Philip Ball
University of Chicago Press, 465 pp., $35.00
Ignorance: How It Drives Science
by Stuart Firestein
Oxford University Press, 195 pp., $21.95
This is a highly informative book review regarding scientific method, addressing evolving attitudes towards curiosity, and the bizarre outcomes of public ignorance. In two incidents from 2012, Italian seismologists were jailed for failing to predict an earthquake, and North Carolina banned the use of scientific data on sea level.
The quotes above from the review, citing books by Mario Livio and Stuart Firestein, illustrate the humility and uncertainty that are core to scientific method. I think these principles are difficult to apply well, because science does have areas of certainty, and the challenge is to demarcate the boundary between certainty and uncertainty.
The review features this imaginary drawing from Titan, a view of Saturn that is impossible because Titan is wreathed in thick cloud.
“scientists continually uncover new facts that confront them with the extent of their ignorance”
This book review published in the New York Review of Books is available online free at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archive ... ?insrc=toc
Priyamvada Natarajan
OCTOBER 23, 2014 ISSUE
Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything
by Philip Ball
University of Chicago Press, 465 pp., $35.00
Ignorance: How It Drives Science
by Stuart Firestein
Oxford University Press, 195 pp., $21.95
This is a highly informative book review regarding scientific method, addressing evolving attitudes towards curiosity, and the bizarre outcomes of public ignorance. In two incidents from 2012, Italian seismologists were jailed for failing to predict an earthquake, and North Carolina banned the use of scientific data on sea level.
The quotes above from the review, citing books by Mario Livio and Stuart Firestein, illustrate the humility and uncertainty that are core to scientific method. I think these principles are difficult to apply well, because science does have areas of certainty, and the challenge is to demarcate the boundary between certainty and uncertainty.
The review features this imaginary drawing from Titan, a view of Saturn that is impossible because Titan is wreathed in thick cloud.