16.4. Queue: The Soapbox.

It wasn’t only because of Einstein…a revolt against German Idealism was already in the air in Europe, eventually centering in Vienna. But when Einstein said that the ether was “superfluous” he was enunciating an important criterion for what we can declare as scientifically knowable and what is not.

In a nutshell, his observation that there is no way to experimentally determine whether an ether exists (as an absolutely stationary rest frame) meant that it was meaningless to assert that it did. That’s our criterion now:

  Science versus Not-Science

An assertion about nature that is in principle unmeasurable is unscientific.

This assertion is a close cousin to the famous idea of Karl Popper that the aim of science is to only disconfirm theories, not to confirm them. None of us accept that as a guide because we simply don’t work that way. But here too, there’s a whiff of an important point. Here’s my take on this:

  Refutability

Every scientific theory can be refuted and every scientist can describe what evidence would be required in order to disconfirm his or her favorite theory.

  What it takes

If I would never, ever accept that Theory X or Belief Y can be showed to be wrong, then neither Theory X nor Belief Y is scientific. If you want to test someone’s behavior as unscientific, ask them to tell you what it would take to change their mind. If they cannot come up with any circumstance that would convince them that their previous commitment was incorrect, then they’re not being scientific. That’s why Evolution belongs in the science curriculum, but Creationism does not.

By the way, we do accept and often strive to confirm theories, or more appropriately, models all the time. But confirmation comes with contingency: there are highly trusted confirmations, either because of the weight of the evidence or the long-standing, repeated success of the evidence. Popper was wrong about that.

Now I’ll gently step down from my soapbox and get back to work.