Who understands science?
To those who understand,
and daily use, science, many rejections of science by post-modernists are
seen as absurd. Some science principles, if understood, cannot be
rejected. To reject is simply to not understand. Some aspects
of science are
seen, not learned; just as one sees that green
is different from orange. To insist that they are the same is to
tacitly admit colorblindness.
Misunderstanding of science
is even more widespread than generally recognized. Consider that
Richard Feynman found all of the authors of seventeen shelf-feet
of K-12 science textbooks submitted to the California State Curriculum
Commission "were teaching something they didn't understand ... didn't
know what the hell [they were] talking about, so it was a little bit wrong,
always!" The entire group of texts submitted were "UNIVERSALLY LOUSY!"
"Perpetual absurdity." ("Judging Books by their Covers," in Surely,
You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, Bantam Books, pp 262 - 276.)
This is simple science, not
college-level high powered stuff. The authors were highly educated,
many holding academic positions. Many may well have been post-modernist
academics. But we can see from Feynman's accounts of their errors,
they could not have been working scientists; they could not have been using
those
principles.
Percy C. Wason's famous (among
cognitive psychologists) card selection puzzle can shine some light into
the corners of the human mind struggling to understand something just a
bit out of easy reach. It shows a little of why science is so difficult,
even when extremely simple. And it speaks simply, but subtly, to
the hypothesis that reality is only a mental construct with no existence
"out there." |