Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 6, 1995 TAG: 9503080002
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JUSTIN ASKINS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
That in itself is fascinating, but even more so is the comment of Berkeley astronomer Alexi V. Filippenko: "We may have to consider some new, perhaps wild ideas. Maybe there is another force pushing the universe out or something like that. That's exciting. That's what science is all about." From Filippenko's perspective - and I'm sure he is sincere - this potential "revolution in cosmology" is progress toward "real" knowledge, but to me his analysis makes it wonderfully clear just what science really is: a mythology of "wild ideas" just as "factual" as the mythologies of many traditional cultures.
Timothy Ferris, a Berkeley astrophysicist, wrote several years ago that our present views of the universe have no more credibility than the belief that the earth rests on a turtle's back. The exciting evidence from Hubble, if verified over the next few years, hints toward the same.
Not long ago, in his "A Brief History of Time," Stephen Hawking wrote that shortly we would understand how the universe was created and how its major forces (gravity, electromagnetic, weak nuclear, strong nuclear) tie together in a neat package: "I think that there is a good chance that the study of the early universe and the requirements of mathematical consistency will lead us to a complete unified theory within the lifetime of some of us who are around today." The Hubble data seems to throw a cosmic monkey wrench in Hawking's optimism.
We have known since Heisenberg that "objectivity" is impossible, that we are an intimate and influential part of the experimental process. What I want to argue is that there will likely never be any real surety in our understanding of the universe, simply because as our technology increases, so do the questions - or mysteries - that come up.
Quantum physics is one area that confirms this process, as we have moved from the supposedly indivisible atom to the equally indivisible electron/proton/neutron model to the favored quark hypothesis. Will anyone be surprised when further experimentation reveals particles smaller than quarks? I certainly won't, nor will eminent physicist Heinz Pagers, who wrote in "The Cosmic Code": "All present evidence supports the view that quarks are a 'rock bottom' to matter, but no physicist I know would be willing to bet much on that."
Another area of theoretical fancy concerns the distribution of matter throughout the universe. For years, scientists have thought that 90 percent of the matter that needs to be there for our general theories to work was hidden in black holes or dwarf stars. Now, however, it seems that the stuff is all over the place. We just can't see it.
We end up with absurdities like the above - I'm even skeptical of the 90 percent figure, since who can say whether that number will dramatically change in a few years? - because we still favor a particular epistemology, one that involves linear progress toward a measurable and stationary goal.
That this idea is mythological is difficult to accept because our present educational system so ruthlessly stresses goal-oriented and supposedly verifiable knowledge, even though there is much evidence that such a system doesn't work (at a cosmic or quantum level) and is horribly counterproductive. Look at all the problems - overpopulation, nuclear waste, ozone depletion, air and water pollution - scientific advances have brought us.
Even in the areas where science seems to have made genuinely positive headway - the "conquering" of diseases like polio and tuberculosis - there is increasing evidence that our progress is illusory. New and more deadly forms of these diseases have appeared, and I see no likelihood that this process will stop. A related concern involves our overuse of antibiotics. Doctors are being forced to use many more powerful and potentially dangerous drugs to treat a variety of infections since the earlier medicines have proved ineffective against the mutated forms.
What it comes down to is a matter of balance. Despite the arrogance of science, humans remain part of the Earth, part of an intricate web of essential connections and restraints (on population and on habitat destruction, to name two major ones). When we try to break that miraculous harmony, we inevitably create major disturbances. Consequently, I predict that within 20 years, the insanity of genetic engineering will be startlingly apparent.
The way out of this downward spiral is relatively easy. We must begin to look at science very differently. Instead of giving science an unmerited reverence, we must begin to view scientists as little more than entertainers. Then we must decide if the destructive results of their tricks are worth having. Cleaning up after a small and messy party is one thing; cleaning up an entire planet is quite another.
Justin Askins is an associate professor in the English department at Radford University.
by CNB