Strong convictions, weakly held
Been reading bits and pieces from The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2013 this weekend. This excerpt, from “Beyond the Quantum Horizon” jumped out at me (by the way, I have no idea if I am using any of these quotes or italics correctly to reference anything in an official style):
If quantum mechanics allows new kinds of computation, why did physicists ever worry that the theory would limit scientific progress? The answer goes back to the formative days of the theory.
Erwin Schrödinger, who discovered quantum theory’s defining equation, once warned a lecture audience that what he was about to say might be considered insane. He went on to explain that when his famous equation describes different histories of a particles, those are “not alternatives but all really happen simultaneously.”…
How could such an apparently innocuous claim ever have been considered outlandish? It was because the majority of physicists have succumbed to bad philosophy: philosophical doctrine that actively hindered the acquisition of other knowledge. Philosophy and fundamental physics are so closely connected — despite numerous claims to the contrary from both fields…
The culprits were doctrines such as logical positivism (“If it’s not verifiable by experiment, it’s meaningless”), instrumentalism (“if the predictions work, why worry about what brings them about?”), and philosophical relativism (“Statements can’t be objectively true or false, only legitimized or delegitimized by a particular culture.”)
This sent a mini shock wave through me when I read it, because I recalled how much we studied these various schools of thought that were lauded as ushering in a new era of rationality and progress. I thought about how:
- Even philosophies that once signaled progress can outlive their usefulness and become dangerous. Once anything is cemented as not just a useful, guiding principle, but a paradigm that demands (implicit) right or wrong, acceptable or not acceptable, you are at risk of not progressing to discover the next big understanding that will change your world
- You have to try damn hard to always leave the things you are comfortable with behind— whatever truths or knowledge you have worked so hard to internalize, glean, systematize, or evangelize — Don’t be afraid to be wrong or outdated. Be afraid that you are one step further away from the truth of that moment or reality, or the next level of understanding that will alter your point of view.
It’s disorienting to grow, but it’s scarier to not at all.
