Letter From America (About the End of the World)

Our Climate-Change Cathedral

The science of global warming is weak, but the idea is strong.

By  Andrew Stuttaford 

National Review Online

July 27, 2013 1:00 AM

A 19th-century Scottish journalist, songwriter, and poet is not an obvious guide to a 21st-century intellectual and political phenomenon, but when it comes to making sense of climate-change zealotry, there are worse choices than Charles Mackay (1812–89), the author of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841), an acerbic, often drily amusing study of the frenzies — from witch mania to the tulip bubble — that regularly possess our supposedly sophisticated species.

“In reading the history of nations,” wrote Mackay, “we find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion and run after it.” One recurrent fantasy, he jeered, was that the last trumpet is ready to sound: “An epidemic terror of the end of the world has several times spread.”

The Overreach of Stupid Science, Part II

The Abdication of the Philosophers

[Part II of  The Folly of Scientism by  Austin L. Hughes

Originally published in The New Atlantis ]

 
If philosophy is regarded as a legitimate and necessary discipline, then one might think that a certain degree of philosophical training would be very useful to a scientist. Scientists ought to be able to recognize how often philosophical issues arise in their work — that is, issues that cannot be resolved by arguments that make recourse solely to inference and empirical observation. In most cases, these issues arise because practising scientists, like all people, are prone to philosophical errors.

To take an obvious example, scientists can be prone to errors of elementary logic, and these can often go undetected by the peer review process and have a major impact on the literature — for instance, confusing correlation and causation, or confusing implication with a biconditional. Philosophy can provide a way of understanding and correcting such errors. It addresses a largely distinct set of questions that natural science alone cannot answer, but that must be answered for natural science to be properly conducted.

These questions include how we define and understand science itself.

Genuine Science and Alchemy

The Mythology of Snot-Nosed Science

When is a science not a science, but ideology in drag? This is probably one of the most important questions facing the modern world. Sadly, the question has already been answered—convincingly and comprehensively—but the answer is so embarrassing to modern sensibilities that it has been put in the back room, with the door as firmly shut as an Austrian cellar.

The modern world craves infallible and certain truths upon which it can rely. It is impossible to live, move and have being without relying on some infallibility or other. That is why David Hume, the most consistent philosophical sceptic in the history of western philosophy, is regarded as an enfant terrible. He kept arguing that one could never know anything for certain. To a world requiring infallible certainties, his views have never been congenial—although never successfully refuted by the Unbelieving Mind.

In the grand empiricist tradition which flowed out of the Enlightenment, the quest for certainty has taken refuge in science. Usually, what is meant by the term “science” is a relentless pursuit of the facts, by means of proposing hypotheses, then testing them rigorously, seeing if they can be falsified. In this method, the presumption is always that hypotheses are likely not to be true, and the task of the scientist is to prove that they are not true, by falsifying them. And if they cannot be falsified, we should accept the theory as a working hypothesis in the meantime. The scientific method, historically, was imbued with a fundamentally deep vein of scepticism. David Hume would have approved.

This exacting method has led to an explosion of knowledge about the world and how it works—precisely because the method is so rigorous and demanding. Ironically, the more rigorously sceptical science became, the greater the profusion of discoveries. It has led to wonderful discoveries—not just of knowledge, but of technology and, therefore, economic progress.

So wonderful has been the outcome that a patina of infallible certainty has developed around science. Now, when science proclaims it must be infallibly true. Science is now promoted as the opponent of myth, ideology, and religion. Science deals with the facts—just the facts, ma'am. Everything else is speculation, pure and simple, and consequently the preserve of the simple minded.

This is a pure propaganda play by institutionalised organs of modern science. It is, however, willingly believed by a world craving certainty and infallibility. Consequently, we now have two types of science between which we must distinguish. The first what we will call hard-nosed science; the second is snot-nosed science.

Hard-nosed science insists upon the inherent scepticism, rigour, and limitations of the scientific method. Hard nosed science—restricted to repeated observations seeking to confirm hypotheses—knows that it can never prove anything. At best it can disprove. This is the fundamental problem inherent in all induction—investigation from the bottom upwards. Hard-nosed science knows that empirical investigation is inescapably inductive. It starts from the “facts”, the basic raw, observable, measurable data, and reasons outwards by means of constructing hypotheses, then testing them to see whether they can be falsified.

The limitation of induction is that it can only ever establish something as probably true. For this verity we are indebted to Karl Popper, one of the greatest philosophers of science in modern times, if not in all time. If something is only probably true, it is possibly false. Induction and the scientific method, for example, can test ad infinitum whether the sun will rise tomorrow. But it can only test the hypothesis in such a way that all the repeated observations have not yet falsified the rising of tomorrow's sun. But that is not to say it will not be falsified in the future. The best that the scientific method can deliver is to say that it is probably true that the sun will rise tomorrow. On the other hand, it only takes one genuine falsification of an hypothesis to lead to its rejection or severe modification.

As Popper demonstrated, under the principles of induction, testing, and falsification, which lie at the heart of the scientific method, there are no such things as natural laws—only natural conventions. Natural laws, by definition, could not be falsified; natural conventions, by definition, could be.

Hard-nosed science knows that the scientific method cannot give infallibility nor certainty. It can only give higher probabilities of something being true, the more rigorously a proposition sustains testing. But probabilities are not certainties. In this sense, hard-nosed science knows that the scientific method cannot establish certainty about anything—except those hypotheses which it has successfully falsified. It can give greater certainty about what it not true, but far less certainty about what is true. Ironically, this is sceptical, hard-nosed science at its best and most reliable. This is what induction is all about. This is what repeated testing and scrutiny is all about. This is the essence of the scientific method.

Snot-nosed science, on the other hand,—which has come to dominate modern society—claims that science will provide certainties, verities, and infallible truths. Naturally, snot-nosed science is far more popular with the madding crowd because it gives the people what they need. Infallibility is an inescapable necessity. It has to be found somewhere. In our modern world, materialist science has the nod.

But there is a great irony in this. Hard-nosed science knows that this is a false claim. Hard-nosed science knows that it can never provide positive certainty. But snot-nosed science has deliberately chosen to cover this over with false propaganda and claims about the veracity and integrity of science.

Ah, but you can always tell whether you are dealing with hard-nosed, genuine science, or snot-nosed science. It is a simple test. Hard-nosed science will always be able to tell you the terms, the data, and conditions which will falsify any hypothesis—because that is the scientific method. Snot-nosed science will be unable to declare terms of falsification. It will not be able to tell you what would falsify the claims. In other words, snot-nosed “scientists” are not involved in sceptical scrutiny, examination and testing. They are involved more in works of advocacy, of propaganda, of sensationalism, of ideology. It pays more.

Two pervasive examples are ready to hand. The first is Evolution. Evolution is a non-scientific ideology, falsely claiming the garb of hard-science. How do we know that? It has failed spectacularly to define the terms under which its hypotheses would be falsified. Evolutionists do not rigorously and relentlessly seek to falsify the theory. Thus, Evolution is not science, but mythology. It is snot-nosed science.

A second is more recent—Global Warming. We can tell instantly that in the case of Global Warming, we are not dealing with scientific knowledge, but ideological advocacy, with propaganda. How do we know this? Its protagonists cannot define the terms under which it would be falsified. That is, Global Warming has not been developed under the rigour of the hard-nosed scientific method. It is snot-science.

As actual data comes in, the evidence is mounting that the earth is cooling. The Global Warming hypothesis would lead us to expect the opposite, particularly with the huge increase in anthropogenic CO2 output over the past thirty years. If the science were genuine and hard-nosed, the actual testing of the hypothesis would lead to its falsification. The Global Warming hypothesis implies rising temperatures. Temperatures are not rising; global cooling is occurring. Ergo, Global Warming hypothesis is false. At best, it needs to be radically rethought, and re-crafted—then re-tested.

But what is actually happening? In a German study, published by Nature magazine (peer reviewed, of course), in light of the growing evidence of cooling, the prestigious, mainstream magazine asserted that the world is definitely warming! There is snot-nosed science at its worst. Ideology masquerading as science. The “scientists” concede that it is now likely the world will cool until 2015, but—there is always a “but” in snot-nosed science—it will heat up rapidly after that.

Sounds remarkably like Evolutionists trying to marshall believable explanations for brute chance producing perpetual order and structure. Yes, how do you explain that? “More time folks.” Billions of years more time. Anything can happen over billions of years—projected back into the past.

So the earth is cooling, rapidly. How do you explain that in the light of your hypothesis? “More time folks”. It's the Pantene effect. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen. The evidence will emerge—eventually. There is one certainty in all of this which is beyond doubt: the earth is definitely warming! In other words, regardless of the evidence, the theory cannot be falsified. It has no terms under which it could be falsified. Snot-nosed science. Ideology. Mythology.

Not that scientists are entirely to blame—although those worthy of the name should know better. (Thankfully, a growing number of hard-nosed genuine scientists are starting to rip into Global Warming mythology.) The world demands certainties, verities, infallibilities in order to be or do anything. As the modern world has devolved into a crass materialistic world-view, it has demanded that those that study matter, the scientists, provide infallible certainties upon which it can base its policies, programmes, and planning. Stupidly, far too many scientists have heeded the Siren's call. The outcome is likely to be a shipwreck of the credibility of science.

For the snot-nosed scientists, this will be a tragedy. For the hard-nosed scientists, it will be huge leap forward.

For the modern world, its politicians, planners, pseudo-intellectuals, and chattering classes it will be just one more idol, lying broken in the temple of Baal.