Mocking religion

[warumich]

... Unfortunately historians tend to present their work in the form of books rather than short articles so it takes more time and money to get up to speed, but I did recommend a recorded lecture upthread that "only" takes an hour and should I would have thought be interesting to anyone on a science forum anyway...

Do you mean this one? Peter Harrison - The Shifting Territories of Science and Religion

Yep. Just want to stress that Harrison is no maverick or anything, his stuff is generally recognised as solid historical work


ETA also hope it doesn't put anyone off that the lecture is taking place in what I believe is a theology school - you can imagine that a historian who argues that there has never been much justification for a conflict between science and religion is in high demand to speak at the more moderate theological schools across the pond who are eager for the rhetoric to die down a bit on both sides. I've heard him speak at a sociology/history conference in, of all places, Birmingham uni.

[Gfamily]

Just a quick thanks for your posts on this thread. Measured, informed, reasoned. All the things that there should be in Weighty Matters.

[JellyandJackson]

Just a quick thanks for your posts on this thread. Measured, informed, reasoned. All the things that there should be in Weighty Matters.

Seconded.

[JellyandJackson]

Going back a long way (sorry): Depends a great deal on which bit of the church you’re in, but ime there’s quite a bit of “not in my name” at pew level. This gets filtered out for a number of reasons: the inherent conservatism of the organisation, perhaps some parish priests thinking they know best & trying to impose uniformity of belief or otherwise making sure dissenting voices don’t get heard, etc. Some people do indeed just give up and leave.
Taking equal marriage as an example, a survey last year https://www.independent.co.uk/life-styl ... 69096.html found a majority of people in congregations support equal marriage*, but, as one campaigner said on a course I was on at the weekend, “the leadership don’t know what the people in their congregations think, because they have studiously avoided asking”.
*Actually, it’s 48%, I don’t know how they make that “most”.
ETA the actual article on the survey, muppet.

Yes, very much which bit of the church you're in. My experience of growing up was in a small rural community which was white, conservative (and Conservative) about pretty much everything and still is. The congregation is ageing and very resistant to change. The situation is different in some urban churches where the congregations are more mixed. There's also a cultural element as some of the church variants attended by black congregations are very conservative and hardline in their beliefs and practices. And then there's the churches that promote the Alpha course...

Oh the joys of Alpha. Holy Trinity Brompton and so much that issues forth from the place is very bad news for many people. But it’s where the money is.

[shpalman]

... Unfortunately historians tend to present their work in the form of books rather than short articles so it takes more time and money to get up to speed, but I did recommend a recorded lecture upthread that "only" takes an hour and should I would have thought be interesting to anyone on a science forum anyway...

Do you mean this one? Peter Harrison - The Shifting Territories of Science and Religion

Yep. Just want to stress that Harrison is no maverick or anything, his stuff is generally recognised as solid historical work


ETA also hope it doesn't put anyone off that the lecture is taking place in what I believe is a theology school - you can imagine that a historian who argues that there has never been much justification for a conflict between science and religion is in high demand to speak at the more moderate theological schools across the pond who are eager for the rhetoric to die down a bit on both sides. I've heard him speak at a sociology/history conference in, of all places, Birmingham uni.

His main assertion seems to be that there can't have been a historical conflict between science and religion because the terms "science" and "religion" have only recently taken on the meanings which we now associate with them (~19th century and ~17th century respectively).

So I'm happy to limit discussions of the conflict between science and religion to after that, if you prefer, which is the point at which his talk stops. Unfortunately this means we can't discuss the church taking 350 years to admit that Galileo was right, and we can't even really talk about the Age of Enlightenment. But maybe Darwin writing

With respect to the theological view of the question; this is always painful to me.— I am bewildered.— I had no intention to write atheistically. But I cannot see, as plainly as others do, & as I shd wish to do, evidence of design & beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.

is relevant, especially as young-earth creationists are still out there.

It seems like Harrison presents Ptolemy as having been motivated by spirituality in doing astronomy. But then I can accept that back then with a firmly christian* world view, studying the natural world would have felt like studying god's works. The quote from Darwin indicates what more and more scientists eventually realized, though: that sincere scientific practice leads to conclusions which are at odds with religious teachings. Religion has been struggling to not fall into irrelevance ever since and it knows it.

* - interesting how "the christian religion" in the sense of "the kind of religion which christians do" is a later construction, and the previous one was apparently "christian religion" in the sense of "religion done in the christian, i.e. the correct, way".

[Squeak]

I want to third the thanks for Warumich. I've learned a bunch in this thread too.

My gut sense (look at me with the Scientific Rigor!) is that mockery has done some useful things in partially puncturing the hold churches have had on public morality and politics, partly by giving young people a focus for questioning the traditions they grew up in. But I am very happy to accept that it also pushes believers much harder into their pre-existing beliefs and makes true conversation much harder as a result. And just as I'm seeing right-on people finally start to realise that mocking working class chavs and bogans perhaps makes them seem unkind and punch-downy, I would hope that a similar realisation is happening in relation to religion. There are things that religious people and institutions do that definitely deserve mockery and marginalisation, but it would be a lot more productive if that mockery and marginalisation were much more targeted to the bad stuff rather than at people's faiths.

This is all said as someone who doesn't have a religious bone in her body, despite my family's best efforts. I don't get what they get out of it but I know they I'm just as vulnerable to reinterpreting the world to match my pre-existing beliefs, so these days I try not to be a prat without good cause.

More tritely, can someone please summarise Alpha for me? I see the signs advertising at local churches (both the ugly modern rock-music type churches and the local pretty cathedrals, a split which suggests that it's got really quite broad appeal in Christian circles) and I don't trust my google-fu to find me useful information on the merits of religious education courses.

[Woodchopper]

On a different tack, the story of the Ark seems to be used here in the sense of 'absolutely false'. I'm not completely sure about that. I wouldn't be surprised if some Mesopotamian farmer (called, say, Utnapishtim) put his breeding livestock and family on a boat, and thereby survived a flood which wiped out a number of his neighbours. Myths might have a seed of truth somewhere (like the Trojan war).

Yes, and see a few flood stories at https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blo ... d-stories/ but I used it as an example because the essentials of the story are very well knows and clearly completely false. They are that: there was a flood covering the whole world, some people and animals were on board a floating vehicle which was build due to them being pre-warned by a god, and that the world's land areas were repopulated from these people and animals after the flood which had killed all other people and animals. Obviously there must have been very many times in the past where a few people had saved themselves and livestock from floods, but any stories inspired by them which are essentially true would not be sufficiently dramatic to be worthy of being religious stories.

I went to a church school, and I remember that we were clearly taught that the flood and other accounts in the bible are parables - ie stories that taught a moral lesson but weren't to be taken as factual accounts of what happened. For example, that Jesus' story of the good Samaritan didn't recount an event that actually occurred, but instead was a moral lesson.

I remember this quite clearly as later when I got older I was very surprised to find that some people actually take the bible literally.

[jimbob]

On a different tack, the story of the Ark seems to be used here in the sense of 'absolutely false'. I'm not completely sure about that. I wouldn't be surprised if some Mesopotamian farmer (called, say, Utnapishtim) put his breeding livestock and family on a boat, and thereby survived a flood which wiped out a number of his neighbours. Myths might have a seed of truth somewhere (like the Trojan war).

Yes, and see a few flood stories at https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blo ... d-stories/ but I used it as an example because the essentials of the story are very well knows and clearly completely false. They are that: there was a flood covering the whole world, some people and animals were on board a floating vehicle which was build due to them being pre-warned by a god, and that the world's land areas were repopulated from these people and animals after the flood which had killed all other people and animals. Obviously there must have been very many times in the past where a few people had saved themselves and livestock from floods, but any stories inspired by them which are essentially true would not be sufficiently dramatic to be worthy of being religious stories.

I went to a church school, and I remember that we were clearly taught that the flood and other accounts in the bible are parables - ie stories that taught a moral lesson but weren't to be taken as factual accounts of what happened. For example, that Jesus' story of the good Samaritan didn't recount an event that actually occurred, but instead was a moral lesson.

I remember this quite clearly as later when I got older I was very surprised to find that some people actually take the bible literally.

I was told that it was an underlying truth, or something equivalent - especially the creation story, but I think it's being too generous to the writers, who, by the time it was written down did believe them. And they would have been the Semitic / Canaanite attempts to understand their origins. Unlike Exodus, which was possibly trying to make the Israelites seem different from the other Canaanite groups which (as far as I understand) the archaeology shows their society developing from.

--------------------------------------------
My son did ask which was more internally consistent: to believe every word of the bible, or to say some of it is the literal truth, describing supernatural acts, but other parts are just parables?

[JellyandJackson]

I can have a go at summarising Alpha. It’s a course, usually 10 weeks though not always, which bills itself as an introduction to Christianity. It was developed by Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) church in one of the posh bits of London, and it’s in a kind of format which can be adopted quite easily by other churches, and other institutions too - it used to be run in prisons quite a bit.

Generally, there’s a meal, and a talk (or video) and then discussion in small groups. It “works” well (whatever works means in this context) in a big city church, where there’s perhaps quite a movement in population- lots of students, say, who are also keen to be fed. I did it in my first or second year at university.

I think this https://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2 ... ristianity is a fair and decent write up, though the course leaders here sound particularly tw.ttish, and I’m sure they’re not all that bad. Belief in creationism is vanishingly rare ime, too.
Some of the criticisms of Alpha are, firstly - it’s based on a particular, and very narrow, understanding of Christianity. I’m reluctant to mention theology on this board and in this discussion in particular, but I think their theology is a bit naff. Secondly, it’s really not the discussion it’s billed as being - tricky questions get smilingly swept under the carpet. They have their agenda, and my goodness they’re going to stick to it!

My church has run it a few times, and the result was a huge pressure on the Faithful Old Ladies to provide dinner for 30 people each week. And, as the NS item mentions, lots of people are lonely and anxious and in need of dinner and a chat. I’m not sure why we can’t just do dinner and a chat (if cooks can be found).

The bigger issue for me is the HTB juggernaut. It’s a massive corporate organisation with a huge staff. They are in hock (I think) to money, power and prestige - they’ve had a member of Trump’s evangelical council visit to speak, who spoke about how God had gifted him a plane, etc etc. I emailed them about that. No reply, obv.
Worse, they and their linked churches are smilingly homophobic and beneath the shiny exterior do tremendous damage, here’s one example, I’m sure there are loads more. https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/ ... urch-plant and there seems to be very little holding them to account by the management. But they have all the money, and the CofE is broke.
Oh, and they have a habit of taking over tiny churches often attended by people on the margins who found a home, and making them all shiny and part of the HTB brand. Like St Teilo’s https://www.change.org/p/diocese-of-lla ... -community

[Woodchopper]

Yes, and see a few flood stories at https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blo ... d-stories/ but I used it as an example because the essentials of the story are very well knows and clearly completely false. They are that: there was a flood covering the whole world, some people and animals were on board a floating vehicle which was build due to them being pre-warned by a god, and that the world's land areas were repopulated from these people and animals after the flood which had killed all other people and animals. Obviously there must have been very many times in the past where a few people had saved themselves and livestock from floods, but any stories inspired by them which are essentially true would not be sufficiently dramatic to be worthy of being religious stories.

I went to a church school, and I remember that we were clearly taught that the flood and other accounts in the bible are parables - ie stories that taught a moral lesson but weren't to be taken as factual accounts of what happened. For example, that Jesus' story of the good Samaritan didn't recount an event that actually occurred, but instead was a moral lesson.

I remember this quite clearly as later when I got older I was very surprised to find that some people actually take the bible literally.

I was told that it was an underlying truth, or something equivalent - especiially the creation story, but I think it's being too generous to the writers, who, by the time it was written down did believe them. And they would have been the Semitic / Canaanite attempts to understand their origins. Unlike Exodus, which was possibly trying to make the Israelites seem different from the other Canaanite groups which (as far as I understand) the archaeology shows their society developing from.

I don't doubt that people once believed it was the literal truth. But that change does support warumich's interesting points about how churches react and change their doctrines. People don't buy the flood as literal truth any more, so instead its presented as an 'underlying truth', whatever that is.

[warumich]

His main assertion seems to be that there can't have been a historical conflict between science and religion because the terms "science" and "religion" have only recently taken on the meanings which we now associate with them (~19th century and ~17th century respectively).

Thanks for the thanks, all.

Glad you appear to have found it interesting - I would have hated for you to waste an hour on my say so!

Regarding the above bit, I think it might need highlighting that Harrison almost exclusively talked about Western Christianity here (though Nongbri talks about a similar shift in the meaning of religion in Islam, though this was influenced by Europe and Islam is by and large not that different anyway). So when the concept of religion in a more contemporary sense had been developed and fully internalised by the 17th-18th century, it was put to use to shoehorn other "world religions" into a frame developed for, usually, Protestantism. The idea of Hinduism as a religion for example is a pretty much Western colonial construct. One of the reasons western scholars have had so many difficulties classifying religion in China (is Confucianism even a religion? How do they fit this with Taosim and Buddhism and ancestor worship??) is that they just won't fit into a Protestant box. And in a colonial context, any deviance from the Protestant model was then conveniently used as labelling other beliefs as deficient and in need of enlightenment, which of course the British empire was happy to dole out.

My point is that when we in our threads talk about religion vs science, there is a phenomenal variety of religion and spiritual thought (whatever that is) that gets bracketed out, forgotten, or labelled as not proper religion. Then if we have an issue with Protestantism (or Catholicism), this gets rather unfairly widened to religion as a whole (this is not to say that there are no problems in, say, Shintoism, but these would probably be of a different nature). But the variety of religious belief also exists within Western Christian churches, and our "protestant" frame then gets put to work to shoehorn everyone who identifies with Protestantism into a series of propositions and behaviours we feel they must satisfy. And of course, the churches, insofar as they are political and social institutions, do that to themselves as well.
So the fact that the church took so long to acknowledge Galileo was of course unfortunate, but not by itself an indication that every catholic agreed with that. That doesn't make them any less religious. I would take a similar attitude to Darwin - he appears to have had a fairly clearly and delimited idea of religion, based on the 19th c idea of a religion as a doctrinal institution. And so do the young Earth creationists.


Eta, sorry now with reference: Nongbri, Brent. Before religion: A history of a modern concept. Yale University Press, 2013.

[Tessa K]

But maybe Darwin writing

With respect to the theological view of the question; this is always painful to me.— I am bewildered.— I had no intention to write atheistically. But I cannot see, as plainly as others do, & as I shd wish to do, evidence of design & beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.

is relevant, especially as young-earth creationists are still out there.

It's the old Problem Of Evil. The usual glib answer is that we live in a post-lapsarian world where Satan is allowed his wicked ways until the End Times. It's all Eve's fault, of course.

I once went for a job interview with a charity that gave financial and debt advice to people. I found out that one of their directors was closely involved with Alpha and asked them about it. They got very uncomfortable and sort of denied it. I didn't get the job. In fact, they put me in a room to do the test part of the interview and never came back.

[shpalman]

His main assertion seems to be that there can't have been a historical conflict between science and religion because the terms "science" and "religion" have only recently taken on the meanings which we now associate with them (~19th century and ~17th century respectively).

Thanks for the thanks, all.

Glad you appear to have found it interesting - I would have hated for you to waste an hour on my say so!

Regarding the above bit, I think it might need highlighting that Harrison almost exclusively talked about Western Christianity here...

Yes, he does, but then that's what the tweet in the OP is about and where most of our experiences of religion are, so we can also stick to that. Perhaps the choice of title for the thread (and Harrison's talk) was unfortunate in that sense.

(Dead people don't get reincarnated either, by the way.)

When he says that there can't have been a historical conflict between science and religion because the terms "science" and "religion" have only recently taken on the meanings which we now associate with them (~19th century and ~17th century respectively), he then spends an hour talking about everything before that which he's just said isn't relevant to the idea of conflict between science and religion.

Like I said, I'm happy to stick to that period and after, and to Western Christianity.

There's a verse in the bible somewhere, I haven't been able to find it again, which says something like "don't listen to so-called wise men, they don't know anything". And it was perfectly good advice ~2000 years ago because back then we really didn't know anything. Similarly, if historically there were natural philosophers using a religious worldview as a point of departure, well, that was the framework through which they understood the world at the time. It doesn't mean it helped.

[shpalman]

... science is also not about abandoning previously held beliefs in the face of disconfirming evidence without a great amount of reluctance (Kuhn 1961).

Right now particle physicists are desperate to get some experimental data they can't explain with the Standard Model, for example. Just look at what happens when there's some bump at CERN (which then disappears rather than reaching 5-sigma) or the current interest in the distant decimal places of the magnetic moment of the muon.

[Fishnut]

The Society for American Archaeology's Annual Meeting is taking place over the next few days. One of the abstracts for a session titled "Curation, Repatriation, and Accessibility: Vital Ethical Conversations." has caused quite a stir,

Has Creationism Crept Back into Archaeology?
Archaeologists and anthropologists have been at the forefront of supporting the spread of science over creationism religion. For instance, the Society for American Archaeology posts teaching guidelines that includes statements that dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, the Americas were inhabited about 12,000 years ago, and that archaeology follows the scientific process. The American Anthropological Association, on their policy page, states that “Evolution is a basic component of many aspects of anthropology (including physical anthropology, archeology...).” And, the American Association of Physical Anthropologists has an anti-creationist statement in which it “condemns any effort by the state to dictate specific religious instruction to the people.” However, archaeologists and anthropologists have nearly unanimously supported the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). NAGPRA violates the First Amendment in multiple ways; for instance, “traditional” religious leaders are required for the review committee, “traditional” prayers open and close NAGPRA meetings, and decisions to repatriate remains are made on the basis of creation stories. With NAGPRA, archaeology has become entangled with religion in a way that would never be accepted if the religion was Western-based. We propose a different perspective on human remains and artifacts based on objective knowledge rather than creationism.

For context, the two other talks in the session are A Service Dog in the Field: Accommodating Disabled Archaeologists and Nontraditional Medical Equipment and Ethics of Repatriation > Culture of Academic Freedom.

At a time when many fields are trying to decolonise and acknowledge their culturally-based biases this feels like a rather retrograde step.

The AAS has offered an incredibly weak statement on the talk,

SSA Statement on the Annual Meeting general session titled “Curation, Repatriation, and Accessibility: Vital Ethical Conversations”

Discussions involving NAGPRA and related issues are highly sensitive. SAA unequivocally supports NAGPRA and advocates for its increased funding. We are also redrafting our Statement on the Treatment of Human Remains.

As a professional organisation, SSA hosts the annual meeting to provide a space to offer diverse viewpoints. Providing a place to exchange differing ideas does not equate to an endorsement.

SSA recognises some will find some certain positions in presentations objectionable or even offensive, and we do not want to minimise those feelings. The conversation reflects the broader discussions happening in our field. Scholarship requires the opportunity for rigorous interrogation of diverse views. We invite all participants to explore the broad range of research and information shared throughout this meeting

As has been pointed out,

The SAA cannot “unequivocally support NAGPRA” while also giving a platform to anti-NAGPRA rhetoric.

[Fishnut]

It appears that the authors of the talk are basically pimping their book (nothing wrong with that). But what a book. This twitter thread did a deconstruction of it and links to other threads that have looked at other aspects of the research.

[Millennie Al]

It's not that religious beliefs do not change: it's that when they change it's not by assessing evidence, it's a reluctant acceptance of the inevitable.

That's just not true though. Religion has been one of the main drivers of the scientific revolution (look at, oh idk, Shapin 1996). At the same time, science is also not about abandoning previously held beliefs in the face of disconfirming evidence without a great amount of reluctance (Kuhn 1961). But even if you think Kuhn is old-hat, this is just part of the historical evidence that nobody is really disputing. People, scientists included, do not change their minds just because of inconvenient facts.

You are confusing science with scientists. It's not science because it is something done by scientists: they're scientists because they are doing science.

religion by and large responds proactively to evidence as well.

Really? In that case there must be a great many examples of individual religions reacting proactively to evidence. Can you give me some?

Heresy is not a concept that exists in all religions, not even most religions afaik, so this is viewing religion again from a very European perspective. But even then, heresy is and was remarkably common, priests, monks and bishops routinely went against official teaching in their natural philosophical investigations and even went to the stakes for it. These were not non-religious people.

And here you confuse religion with religous people. But to say that some were tortured to death for disagreeing with others because of religion is proof of how religions care about belief and not truth.

Heresy laws are measures of social control and as such a political phenomenon pretty much divorced from religion as such. You can demonstrate that you don't need religion for heresy laws by trying to point out that Churchill was a racist on the Daily Express forum, or burning a Union Jack in Whitehall.

You can't refute the proposition that X is a property of Y by saying that X is also a property of Z. Whether Churchill was a racist or not is a matter of fact, and this can be approached scientifically - by finding out what he said and did - or religiously - by taking a position and not caring for the truth.

Actually it does seem to me that a lot of the dislike for religion here is actually a dislike for religious institutions.

Well, obviously it is. People are complex beings - nobody is just a scientist or purely religious - they're all mixtrures. Institutions can be much purer than people, so that's where the chacteristics are more pronounced.

Kuhn (1961) needs not bibliography entry, surely.

That depends on whether or not it refers to "The Function of Dogma in Scientific Research". He's not very convincing in that, since he doesn't seem to know what science is and has absolutely no idea what is involved in science eduction.

[Millennie Al]

Yes, and see a few flood stories at https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blo ... d-stories/ but I used it as an example because the essentials of the story are very well knows and clearly completely false.

I went to a church school, and I remember that we were clearly taught that the flood and other accounts in the bible are parables - ie stories that taught a moral lesson but weren't to be taken as factual accounts of what happened. For example, that Jesus' story of the good Samaritan didn't recount an event that actually occurred, but instead was a moral lesson.

I remember this quite clearly as later when I got older I was very surprised to find that some people actually take the bible literally.

Your experience is a consequence of living in modern times. In the past, lots of things that are now passed off as not being intended literally were indeed believed as if they were literal. People did go searching for the place where Noah's ark came to land, hoping to find some remains. But after about 2000 years of people applying science to it, the bible has been progressively proved wrong, leaving the only viable way to take it nowadays as some sort of God of the Gaps approach (except for some very strange people who persist in believing it literally).

[secret squirrel]

You are confusing science with scientists. It's not science because it is something done by scientists: they're scientists because they are doing science...

At this point it's just painfully clear that you know very little about the history or philosophy of science. Every post you make on this subject comes with an overpowering aroma of skimmed wikipedia articles.

[Allo V Psycho]

You are confusing science with scientists. It's not science because it is something done by scientists: they're scientists because they are doing science...

At this point it's just painfully clear that you know very little about the history or philosophy of science. Every post you make on this subject comes with an overpowering aroma of skimmed wikipedia articles.

That....seems a little unkind, surely? People can have different perspectives, and argue from these perspectives.

[secret squirrel]

That....seems a little unkind, surely? People can have different perspectives, and argue from these perspectives.

I'm calling it like I see it. This is a technical subject, and people have studied it intensively for a century at least. The idea that someone can just chime in with 'what they reckon' and be entitled to be treated like they have a serious contribution to make is ridiculous.

[Allo V Psycho]

... science is also not about abandoning previously held beliefs in the face of disconfirming evidence without a great amount of reluctance (Kuhn 1961).

Right now particle physicists are desperate to get some experimental data they can't explain with the Standard Model, for example. Just look at what happens when there's some bump at CERN (which then disappears rather than reaching 5-sigma) or the current interest in the distant decimal places of the magnetic moment of the muon.

Yes, this corresponds to my own experience of lab work. The excitement (and for me it was a literal sensation, a physical stirring in the pit of the stomach) comes from thinking you have discovered something new, something which goes against previously held beliefs (and almost always you are disappointingly wrong). I remember sitting up all night by the scintillation counter.... (Yep, wrong again).

My boss, bless him, would articulate firm positions, but offer a bottle of champagne if you proved him wrong, and pay up very cheerfully. We were all really interested in what actually happens in the natural world - it was a series of riddles, and each time something new emerged, it was a delight, even if (specially if) it was a surprise.

I think scientists get the respect of other scientists (something which is a real driver) by demonstrating something new, rather than by confirming something conventional. My problem with Kuhn was mostly about the 'normal science' bit, not the idea of big paradigm shifts. I wonder if philosophers and historians of science might lack that kind of experience.

[shpalman]

That....seems a little unkind, surely? People can have different perspectives, and argue from these perspectives.

I'm calling it like I see it. This is a technical subject, and people have studied it intensively for a century at least. The idea that someone can just chime in with 'what they reckon' and be entitled to be treated like they have a serious contribution to make is ridiculous.

No individual has studied it for a century, obviously. Everyone starts from zero with a subject.

[shpalman]

... science is also not about abandoning previously held beliefs in the face of disconfirming evidence without a great amount of reluctance (Kuhn 1961).

Right now particle physicists are desperate to get some experimental data they can't explain with the Standard Model, for example. Just look at what happens when there's some bump at CERN (which then disappears rather than reaching 5-sigma) or the current interest in the distant decimal places of the magnetic moment of the muon.

Yes, this corresponds to my own experience of lab work. The excitement (and for me it was a literal sensation, a physical stirring in the pit of the stomach) comes from thinking you have discovered something new, something which goes against previously held beliefs (and almost always you are disappointingly wrong). I remember sitting up all night by the scintillation counter.... (Yep, wrong again).

My boss, bless him, would articulate firm positions, but offer a bottle of champagne if you proved him wrong, and pay up very cheerfully. We were all really interested in what actually happens in the natural world - it was a series of riddles, and each time something new emerged, it was a delight, even if (specially if) it was a surprise.

I think scientists get the respect of other scientists (something which is a real driver) by demonstrating something new, rather than by confirming something conventional. My problem with Kuhn was mostly about the 'normal science' bit, not the idea of big paradigm shifts. I wonder if philosophers and historians of science might lack that kind of experience.

One of our very senior professors had a project he'd been working on for a while with one group, and then he got us working on it too, and it became obvious to me that it was working in exactly the opposite sense to the one he was aiming for.

He was like "what?" and I was like "look" and then I spent maybe a couple of hours gathering a bit more data to demonstrate it more clearly and he was like "oh ok" and there isn't that project anymore.

More famously, look at Plate Tectonics. It only took about 50-60 years for everyone to accept the frankly batshit idea of the continents drifting around the face of the earth.

[secret squirrel]

No individual has studied it for a century, obviously. Everyone starts from zero with a subject.

True, but what are you getting at? How is this relevant?