We may be getting somewhere, slowly.
One of my agenda threads is that the naturally tendency of science and many scientists to defend themselves against (so-called blind, unreasonable) “faith” is to treat all accepted scientific models as objective fact (despite formally qualifying themselves with concepts like evidence, contingency and empirical falsifiability) – something, after Maxwell, I refer to as “scientistic neurosis”. A denial of doubt where it matters most, at the boundaries of “known” science, as if to give an inch is to concede the whole nine yards. It does real science – and knowledge, and wisdom, and understanding – a major disservice.
Well, fundamental foundations and origins of the cosmos are precisely the areas where such major contingency in the accepted “standard model” exist – by definition. There is such an edifice of cards built on these (contingent) fundaments, that the ratio of the inch to nine yards understates the odds. More butterfly to rain-forest. Chaos is not to be permitted.
Fellow science-worrier Rick unearthed this physics conversation on Space Daily over the weekend. Attempts to probe remaining evidence of the big bang (according to the standard model) yet again, throw up inexplicable anomalies. Surprising evidence, where either adding a fudge to the standard model (no longer massless neutrinos, say), or the possibility that the standard model is fundamentally flawed as a “cosmological principle” are equally valid hypotheses.
Oh for a cadre of working scientists to investigate rather than defend. Trouble is the defenders have multi-$billion budgets to protect, the real scientists don’t.
It is so unwise to have scientific academe justify itself by objective inputs and outcomes. Honesty has more real value.
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Facebook thread captured for posterity:
[If the subject matter interests you, see the key reference links below too.]
