I've written several columns critical of the scientific method. The criticism runs to the use of the method to prove concepts. The real scientific method is best illustrated by Edison. He spent days testing this idea and that idea against reality in order to find out which ideas worked in reality. If we don't have reality to fight back, to correct our misconceptions, to challenge our assumptions, then we simply wander off into a wonderland of make-believe. On the other hand, saying that black holes make up the center of the galaxy, and then sitting down with a whole basketful of assumptions and mathematically "proving" it, isn't scientific, it's simply the art of self-delusion.
Our goal, since we first crafted shoes or put a roof over our heads, has been to create a technology that makes our lives easier and safer. As Edison well knew, technology has to reflect reality. Therefore, the technology we create has to reflect reality if it is to make our lives easier and safer. However, because there are two realities outside of our skulls, a physical reality we can actually tinker with, hammer, heat, shape, and another reality that is not so physical, but real nonetheless, objects fall, light illuminates, fires heat, magnets attract, electricity works for us, we don't have hard edges to deal with. And, to be truthful, even the hard edges, the things we can tinker with, have their hidden secrets, what are they ultimately composed of.
There are things we can know simply from trial and error and these things become the basis of our engineering, the way we put the blocks of reality together. But the things that we can't know are still things that we need to take into account when we develop our technology. As I've stated before, assuming away gravity as a property removes it from any consideration in our technology other than in considering it as a force that has to be accounted for when we arrange the hard edges of reality into components that benefit us, houses, bridges, automobiles, and airplanes. However, by assuming away the cause of gravity as not being susceptible to technology, we have eliminated any chance our technology will reflect actual reality because gravity is an actual reality. If we viewed gravity as something, we could attempt to figure out what it is, how it works, and then we could incorporate it into our technology rather than focusing our technology on merely accounting for its existence.
Empirical science does not make the distinction between the things that are real and we can shape to our liking, and the things that are real and we can't shape to our liking. Empirical science is a mathematical operation and mathematics has to deal with realities. Therefore, empirical science has to turn the things we can never really know, the actual nature of gravity, the actual nature of light, the actual nature of electricity, the actual nature of matter, into the type of realities we can shape to our liking. To do this, it has to quantify them and in quantifying them, it denies access to explanations for their operation. Empirical science does not explain anything, it merely explains away reality.
It can't tell us what gravity is, so it becomes a property like color or hardness. It can't explain why the planets orbit and rotate so it says, hey, it's the result of momentum from something that happened billions of years ago. It can't explain what electricity is, so it simply says it's a moving charge. It can't explain what light is, so it, without embarrassment, says it's both a wave and a particle. It can't connect light to matter, so it concocts the notion that it's produced by electrons jumping up and down in orbit around the nuclei of atoms, and does so without even blushing at the fact it has no explanation for why the electrons are orbiting in the first place.
This isn't a problem of whether we are using inductive or deductive reasoning, it's a problem with the foundation of the scientific method, which is a reliance on mathematical constructs at the expense of reality. Mathematics cannot answer the basic questions we want answered about reality, how it is that reality operates the way it does. Mathematics can describe, but description is not a substitute for understanding. Let's say we stumble across an object whose utility escapes us. We just don't know what the object is for. We run into this situation a lot with tools. We can take the object and weigh it, measure it, find out what it's made out of, but we can't use mathematics to understand what the purpose of the object is. Mathematics simply is incapable of explaining, it can merely measure. If we want to find out the utility of the object, what it's used for, we will have to ask someone. However, when it comes to what makes objects fall, planets rotate and orbit, light and electrons move, we don't have anybody to ask. We can measure these things to the extent possible, but when it comes to explaining exactly how they work, we are at a loss, and we will always be at a loss because these things are invisible to our senses. The only thing we can do is construct concepts, not mathematical formula, but concepts to explain what we are seeing. Mass as a cause of gravity is a concept just as Aristotle's objects fall because the Earth is the center of the universe is a concept. My own deduction, and it is a deduction, that gravity is produced by the cooling process, is also a concept, but unlike the first two concepts, my concept is not only based on fact, cooling emits emissions which measure the same as gravity, it explains all the mysteries of gravity, how it acts on matter at a distance, and in addition, provides a basis to probe reality with technology by producing a mechanism that is constructed out of known electromagnetic measurements. In short, my concept can be measured in reality while the first two cannot. See column 02-05.
Which leads to the second great defect in the scientific method. Not only is the scientific method unable to distinguish between what is measurable, and what is only amenable to the construction of concepts that are in agreement with what is measurable, concepts that are always subject to change as more measurable facts emerge, but the scientific method cannot distinguish between concepts that deal with reality that can be measured and concepts that deal with a reality that cannot be measured, things we know that are of no use to us in our technology. In the first category, I obviously place gravity. It is something that is real, something we can deal with by creating concepts that we can then, and notice I say, then, apply the scientific method Edison-style to probe reality. In the second category I place questions such as where did the universe come from, questions that are clearly of a religious or philosophical nature.
What empirical science does is use the Edison-style scientific method for probing reality to claim factual outcomes for questions that deal with both the reality we can't know but need to conceptualize in order to probe reality to improve our technology and it does so for questions that have no basis in science, religious and philosophical questions. By not clearly delimiting its methodology to appropriate spheres, empirical science ends up with a religious, philosophical and metaphysical hodge podge of inconsistent concepts, none of which actually explain why things are the way they are in their own domain, but taken together produce an astoundingly inaccurate picture of reality which it then has to claim is the actual reality in the face of an actual reality that contradicts it. Empirical science is fond of saying, reality is stranger than the human mind can imagine, simply because it has rejected the human mind as a way to understand reality in favor of a mindless mathematical process that, because it deals with symbols rather than reality, ignores the most important questions of reality, what causes object to move.
And here we get the real clue to the failure of empirical methodology. Empirical science is also fond of exclaiming that human reasoning is fallible, that it has to be brought into check by the stringent measurements of mathematics. I can't disagree as long as it limits mathematics to things that are actually measurable. We can't even begin to deal with facts until we know the measurements of those facts. But to then take the position that human reasoning is fallible and therefore should be abandoned in favor of mathematical reasoning when it comes to questions for things we can never know for certainty, is simple stupidity. If we can't know something with certainty, why would we want to create a procedure and then claim that procedure could allow us to know with certainty the things we cannot know with certainty?
We will never, ever, be able to take the mechanism that results in matter falling over a distance onto the surface of other matter and put it under a glass case in a museum for people to line up and look at. I've got a better example. We will never, ever, be able to put the empirical concept of nuclear fission on display in a museum. Questions of the microcosm, the arena that is too small for us to probe without manipulating other microcosmic phenomena, smashing something into something else in a cloud chamber and taking photos of the resulting paths, are forever out of our reach as far as obtaining answers with no degree of uncertainty (when, say, measuring the height of a building results in certainty).
Yet, by claiming the use of the Edison-type trial and error scientific method in this area can result in the discovery of laws, actually bald statements about those things we can never know with certainty, empirical science is claiming that it can accomplish exactly what it can't accomplish. It's saying human reasoning is fallible, but that mathematics uncovers the answers to the questions that, because human reasoning is fallible, shouldn't be left to human reasoning, questions like what makes objects fall, gravity, what makes planets orbit and rotate, momentum, what is light, a wave particle, how is it produced, by an electron jumping up and down in orbit, all of these non answers human reasoning is expected to just accept and walk away, satisfied that a tried and tested procedure has produced the answers.
What do we end up with? In the case of nuclear fission, we end up with a museum display, I'm referencing the American History Museum in D.C., where I push a button and I actually see atoms undergoing the process of fission. I see it, but I see it only in the mind of empirical science, because fission is a concept, not something that we can actually see. Yet, empirical science is successful in its ruse in the same way its successful in its claim that its concept of light being a wave produced all of Edison's inventions, simply because we sit around like dumb little sheep willing to believe anything the wolf has to offer.
The crux of the problem lies with a scientific methodology that simultaneously denies the existence of a mind that can reason while claiming that whatever it is empirical science substitutes for the mind, the Christmas tree parody of the brain neurons lighting up in specific patterns when something is observed, can never reason correctly. As usual, empirical science is 180º away from reality. The statement that human reasoning is fallible is followed by the statement that claims a substitute for human reasoning has been found that is not fallible instead of saying, human reasoning is fallible, it's all we have, so let's recognize its fallible and get on with the process of using it to produce technology. Let's think up concepts of the possible, concepts that permit us to act in reality, knowing all along they can't be right, and then let's start probing reality with those concepts.
The empirical methodology, by simply naming the most important things in reality, force and motion, so they can be used as symbols in equations, removes the reality of those phenomena from the provenance of practical experimentation, crippling our attempts to create a technology that reflects reality. Empirical science scoffs at attempts to tinker with gravity, wrapping itself up in its proclamation that gravity is a property and therefore cannot be tinkered with. Any empiricist found publicly tinkering with gravity is run out of the educational establishment on a rail. Empirical naming of the things we can never know excludes practical experimentation in all areas those things affect, and force and motion affect every area of our lives, as does light and electricity.
My approach, that answers dealing with the things we cannot know will always be concepts and nothing more than stepping stones to experimentation, allows for openness, experimentation, revision on the basis of results and reformulation leading to more experimentation, the true application of the scientific method. Empirical science's assumption that it has found a procedure independent of human reasoning that can uncover for us the hidden laws of the universe, leads to self-delusion, blindness of the worst kind.
I'll never forget the June to October Olmec Exhibition visited the Smithsonian. I was watching local coverage on a Sunday morning. An empirically certified archaeologist was standing before one of the giant Negroid heads found scattered around the Southern coast of the Gulf of Mexico.. The archaeologist, looking directly at the stone head, said it was amazing how the features were uniquely Olmec. Asked by the reporter if she thought they had Negroid features, she replied, there's no similarity at all between the Olmec features on the stone head and Negroid features. I wanted to see for myself, so I ambled over to the Museum the next day. Wandering around what turned out to be a pretty eclectic selection of artifacts, I finally came upon the head, truly impressive. However, what I spied in a case behind the head was even more impressive. I went over to a statue that contained a card identifying the garbed man represented as a high Olmec priest. I was looking at a statue that any high school student, at least in my day, would readily recognize as Confucius.
The delusions empirical science produces wouldn't be a problem except for the fact that our very lives, our existence as the unique life that evolved on this particular planet in this particular arm of the Galaxy in this small sector of space, depend on having an accurate picture of reality so we can produce a technology that reflects reality.
Peter Bros is the author of the 9 volume Copernican Series and is President of The Far Museum of Dallas, an actual history museum, which will house its collection of 50,000 rare Eastern Mediterranean manuscripts and artifacts together with actual history displays and tours in a full-sized replica of the Egyptian Temple at Dendera to be built in the Dallas Ft. Worth area. Email:peterbros@therealskeptic.com