Inflation and the Truth

When Theories Become Meaningless

One of the greatest scientists in all of history, Sir Isaac Newton got some things horribly wrong. He observed, for example, that when water evaporated, it left a slight residue behind. This held true, even after repeated distillations. His experiment and observation of the residues could be repeated and confirmed endlessly in laboratories everywhere.

Newton concluded, therefore, that upon evaporation water was partly transmuted into earth. We now believe this to be nonsense. But belief in transmutation is not just a phenomenon of centuries ago. It reappears from time to time amongst reputable scientists—and has done so quite recently. Usually, it rears its head again when the scientific “environment” for some reason makes transmutation appear more plausible.

Michael Polanyi, one the great scientists of the twentieth century, gives the following fascinating account:

“Observations which can be interpreted as a transmutation of chemical elements frequently occur in the laboratory. But actual claims by reputable investigators of having achieved a transmutation appear only at times when the possibility of such a process is for some reason considered plausible. In earlier times when the assumptions of alchemy were generally accepted by scientists, such claims were of course quite common. Newton considered the fact that water, even after repeated distillation, still left behind on evaporation a slight earthy residue as a proof for the spontaneous transformation of part of the water into earth.

“Observations of a similar kind no doubt continued to be made throughout the centuries, but since the acceptance at the end of the eighteenth century of Lavoisier's views on the nature of the elements they were explained as mere dirt-effects. Such at least was the case up to the beginning of the twentieth century. Then, suddenly, under the stimulus of Rutherford's and Soddy's discovery of radioactive transmutation (1902-3) a series of erroneous claims were made by careful observers to have achieved in their own way a transmutation of elements.

“A. T. Cameron (1907) and Sir William Ramsay (1908) announced the transformation of copper into lithium as a result of the action of alpha-particles. In 1913 Collie and Patterson claimed the formation of helium and neon by electric discharge through hydrogen. After these claims had been disproved, no new ones appeared until 1922, when the discovery made three years earlier by Rutherford of certain forms of artificial transmutation encouraged a new wave of similar claims based on erroneous evidence.

“The transmutation of mercury into gold under the effect of electric discharges was reported quite independently by Miethe and Stammreich in Germany and Nagaoka in Japan. Smits and Karssen reported the transformation of lead into mercury and thallium. Paneth and Peters claimed the transformation of hydrogen into helium under the influence of a platinum catalyst.

“All these claims, however, had to be abandoned in the end. The last of them was given up in 1928. A year later came the establishment of the theory of radioactive disintegration which showed clearly that the attempts described above to transform elements had been futile. Since then, up to this date no new claims were made in this direction although evidence of transformation of the kind put forward by Newton, Ramsay, Paneth, etc., is always at hand. It is now disregarded because it is no longer considered as sufficiently plausible.” (Michael Polanyi, Science Faith and Society, [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964] p.91)

What these examples illustrate is the circularity of all scientific theorising and research. Prevailing theories have a tendency so to inform the research environment that not only will they direct research and experimentation, but they will be confirmed by experimental results. Each theory operates as a net which will determine what size fish are caught from the outset. Prevailing theories tell scientists what to look for, what they should expect to find, and when the duly expected findings are produced the theory is confirmed and has a tendency to become more entrenched.

Circularity is not isolated to science—although that profession has sometimes been found trumpeting a pseudo-objectivity as its great strength, and has sought to ignore the “queering” effect of prevailing theories—but, in fact, circularity (or subjectivity) is inescapable in all human knowledge and learning. It is only the disingenuous who pretend otherwise. Intellectual rigour, on the other hand, requires critical self-consciousness of the tilting and conditioning effect of fundamental premises and theories.

All theories tend to be self-amplifying. Thus, when contradictory evidence is produced which undermines or calls a theory into question, the theory is not thereby quickly abandoned. Rather, the theory will be referred back to for explanations and reasons which would account for the factual deviation. The more this occurs, the more the theory becomes meaningless, as it is made to account for all conceivable observations and data—even those which appear contradictory. The more widespread the prevailing assumptions are, the more self-amplifying the theory is likely to be; the more it is likely to account for all data no matter how contradictory, to the point where it can actually predict nothing because it accounts for everything.

A current example is the theory of anthropogenic global warming. As more and more evidence emerges of global temperatures actually falling, and the earth cooling, the protagonists claim that their theories (and the models which explicate them) account for such contradictory data.

Another current example is evolutionism. Because it is grounded in non-verifiable and non-falsifiable philosophical beliefs, evolutionism has become thoroughly self-amplifying, explaining everything, accounting for everything, and so predicting nothing.

In the end, the sheer meaninglessness of such self-amplifying “meta-theories” results in them being finally abandoned. But because reputations, careers, and credibility of both people and institutions are at stake, this process can take a long time.