Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
Karl Popper (1902-1994)
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In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus published De revolutionibus orbitum coelesticum (On the Revolution of Heavenly Spheres), in which he argued that the Earth revolved around the Sun, not vice versa. He addressed the Preface by name to Pope Paul III, knowing that the work contradicted Church teachings. He knew they were not what people wished to believe.
Copernicus based his conclusions on observations he made by using a telescope. Yet while his main conclusion was correct, the details of his theory were incorrect. Galileo proved Copernicus’ theory of our heliocentric solar system to be true, largely by making four observations (which he published in The Sidereal Messenger (The Starry Messenger) (1610), Letter to Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany (1615) and Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), taking great pains in his Letter and his Dialogue to argue that his findings did not contradict The Bible).
- The Moon was cratered and mountained, not smooth-surfaced, which meant that it was not a perfect sphere as described in ancient texts;
- As seen through a telescope, Venus went through crescent-shaped phases, as the Moon did, which could be explained only by its moving around the Sun, not the Earth;
- Four moons revolved around Jupiter, which further proved that not every “heavenly body” revolved around Earth; and
- The Milky Way consisted of individual stars.
Observing, collecting facts, and basing conclusions on facts – this is the essence of the third civilization-transforming revolution in history, the Scientific Revolution. The content of Copernicus’ and Galileo’s conclusions are revolutionary in themselves; but more important is the method by which they arrived at their conclusions. Once we know how to do science, and become practiced at it, the conclusions will follow. The greatest compliment anyone has ever paid me came from my son, who wrote one Father’s Day, “He didn’t tell me what to think; he taught me how to think.” By following the facts to a conclusion, through reason, Copernicus and Galileo led the way to development of scientific method.
Yet while science has transformed our lives in these past nearly-600 years, a substantial share of populations all over the world know little of it, and do not follow its methods. Unlike mental health and physical fitness, adherence to scientific methods appears to have little effect on individual well-being. Denial of the evolution of species, global warming and the efficacy of vaccines are among the most destructive science-rejecting myths prevalent today. In human affairs, emotion routinely overpowers reason at nearly every turn. Can we use our marvelous brains to change this? What is the point of developing ethical systems and laws, only to believe what we wish to believe, and do what we wish to do anyway?
The very fact that science sticks out like a sore thumb amid mental health and physical fitness tells us where our species probably has gone astray. We do not attach the same kind of importance to the intellect as we do to our emotions and our physical health. That may substantially explain why our species is under threat – through climate change, overpopulation, degradation of the natural environment and warfare – from within. Yet each of us can commit ourselves to following the facts, through reason, if we so choose. This is an essential foundation to a well-grounded life.
Real
Technical and Analytical Readings
- Steven S. Carey, A Beginner’s Guide to Scientific Method (Wadsworth Publishing, 2011).
- Steven Gimbel, eds., Exploring the Scientific Method: Cases and Questions (University of Chicago Press, 2011).
- Richard A. Lockshin, The Joy of Science: An Examination of How Scientists Ask and Answer Questions Using Evolution as Paradigm (Springer, 2010).
- Morris F. Cohen, An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method (Hughes Press, 2008).
- J.A. Cover and Martin Curd, Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues (W.W. Norton & Co., 2008).
- Hugh G. Gauch, Jr., Scientific Method in Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
- Samir Okasha, Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2002).
- E. David Ford, Scientific Method for Ecological Research (Cambridge University Press, 2000).
- Yuri Balashov and Alex Rosenberg, eds., Philosophy of Science: Contemporary Readings (Routledge, 2002).
- Don K. Mak, Angela T. Mak and Anthony B. Mak, Solving Everyday Problems with the Scientific Method: Thinking Like a Scientist (World Scientific Publishing Company, 2009).
- William Whewell, Theory of Scientific Method (Hackett Pub. Co., Inc., 1989).
- Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend, For and Against Method: Including Lakatos's Lectures on Scientific Method and the Lakatos-Feyerabend Correspondence (University of Chicago Press, 1999).
- Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (New Left Books, 1975).
- Adam Leroy Jones, Logic, Inductive and Deductive: An Introduction to Scientific Method (Henry Holt and Company, 1909).
- David Lindley, The Dream Universe: How Fundamental Physics Lost Its Way (Doubleday, 2020): “ . . . if we can never confirm the existence of parallel universes, isn’t it just metaphysics . . .?”
True Narratives
“Leonardo was a forerunner of the age of observational experiments and critical thinking. When he came up with an idea, he devised an experiment to test it. And when his experience showed that a theory was flawed – such as his belief that the springs within the earth are replenished the same way as blood vessels in humans – he abandoned his theory and sought a new one.” [Walter Isaacson, Leonardo da Vinci, (Simon & Schuster, 2017), p. 521.]
- Alexander Jones and Liba Taub, eds., The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 1: Ancient Science (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
- David C. Lindberg and Michael H. Shank, eds., The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 2: Medieval Science (Cambridge University Press, 2013).
- Katharine Park and Lorraine Daston, eds., The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 3: Early Modern Science (Cambridge University Press, 2006).
- Roy Porter, ed., The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 4: Eighteenth Century Science (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
- Mary Jo Nye, ed., The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 5: The Modern Physical and Mathematical Sciences (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
- Peter J. Bowler and John V. Pickstone, eds., The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 6: The Modern Biological and Earth Sciences (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
- Theodore M. Porter and Dorothy Ross, eds., The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 7: The Modern Social Sciences (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
- John Gribbin, The Scientists: A History of Science Told Through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors (Random House, 2003).
- John Gribbin, Science: A History (Penguin, 2010).
- David C. Lindberg and Michael H. Shank, eds., The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 2: Medieval Science (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
- Katharine Park and Lorraine Daston, eds., The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 3: Early Modern Science (Cambridge University Press, 2006).
- Roy Porter, ed., The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 4:The Eighteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
- Mary Jo Nye, ed., The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 5: The Modern Physical and Mathematical Sciences (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
- Peter J. Bowler and John V. Pickstone, eds., The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 6:Modern Life and Earth Sciences (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
- Theodore M. Porter and Dorothy Ross, eds., The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 7: The Modern Social Sciences (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
- Henry Smith Williams, A History of Science, Volume 1: The Beginnings of Science (Harper and Brothers, 1904).
- Henry Smith Williams, A History of Science, Volume 2:The Beginnings of Modern Science (Harper and Brothers, 1904).
- Henry Smith Williams, A History of Science, Volume 3: Modern Development of the Physical Sciences (Harper and Brothers, 1904).
- Henry Smith Williams, A History of Science,: Modern Development of the Physical Sciences (Harper and Brothers, 1904).
- Henry Smith Williams, A History of Science, Volume 4: Modern Development of the Chemical and Biological Sciences (Harper and Brothers, 1904).
- Henry Smith Williams, A History of Science, Volume 5: Modern Development of the Physical Sciences (Harper and Brothers, 1904).
- David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450 (University of Chicago, 1992).
- Clifford Pickover, Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them (University of Chicago Press, 2008).
- Richard DeWitt, Worldviews: An Introduction to the History and Philosophy of Science (Wiley-Blackwell, 2004).
- John L. Heilbron, The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science (Oxford University Press, 2003).
- Peter Achinstein, Science Rules: A Historical Introduction to Scientific Methods (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).
- Perri Klass, A Great Time To Be Born: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future (Norton, 2021): “. . . an ambitious, elegant meditation on what the doctor-writer Perri Klass describes as one of our greatest human achievements: a reduction in child mortality.”
- Jennifer Raff, Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas (Twelve, 2022): “. . . Raff beautifully integrates new data from different sciences (archaeology, genetics, linguistics) and different ways of knowing, including Indigenous oral traditions, in a masterly retelling of the story of how, and when, people reached the Americas.”
- David Quammen, Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus (Simon & Schuster, 2022): “Scientists Knew More About Covid-19 Than We Think. And They Still Do.”
Developers of scientific method:
- Bradley Steffens, Ibn al-Haytham: First Scientist (Morgan Reynolds Publishing, 2007).
- From the Encyclopedia of Islamic Science and Scientists
- Ibn al-Haytham, Book of Optics (ca. 1000 A.D.).
Abu Arrayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni:
- Bill Schleppler, Al-Biruni: Master Astronomer and Muslim Scholar of the Eleventh Century (Rosen Pub. Group, 2006).
- Ahmad al-Biruni, A Book of Instruction in the Elements of the Art of Astrology (ca. 1000).
- John McGinness, Avicenna (Great Medieval Thinkers) (Oxford University Press, 2010).
- John McGinniss, Interpreting Avicenna: Science and Philosophy in Medieval Islam (Brill Academic Pub., 2004).
- Lenn E. Goodman, Avicenna (Arabic Thought and Culture) (Routledge, 2002).
- Jules Janssens and Daniel de Smet, eds., Avicenna and His Heritage: Acts of the International Colloquium Leuven-Louvain-La-Neuve, September 8-September 11, 1999 (Louven University Press, 2002).
- James McEvoy, Robert Grosseteste (Great Medieval Thinkers) (Oxford University Press, 2000).
- Francis Seymour Stevenson, Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln (MacMillan & Co., 1899).
- Brian Clegg, The First Scientist: A Life of Roger Bacon (Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2003).
- Jeremiah Hackett, ed., Roger Bacon and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays (Brill, 1997).
- David Wootton, Galileo: Watcher of the Skies (Yale University Press, 2010).
- J.L. Heilbron, Galileo (Oxford University Press, 2010).
- Bertolt Brecht, Life of Galileo (Grove Press, 1966).
- Stillman Drake, trans., Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (Anchor, 1957).
- Brian Vickers, eds., Francis Bacon: The Major Works (Oxford University Press, 2008).
- Nieves Mathews, Francis Bacon: The History of a Character Assassination (Yale University Press, 1996).
- A.C. Grayling, Descartes: The Life and Times of a Genius (Walker & Company, 2006).
- Desmond M. Clarke, Descartes: A Biography (Cambridge University Press, 2006).
- Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford University Press, 1995).
- Joseph Brent, Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life (Indiana University Press, 1993).
- Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934). [full text]
- Karl Popper, All Life Is Problem Solving (Routledge, 1999).
- Karl Popper: Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography (Open Court, 1982).
- Malachai Haim Hacohen, Karl Popper: The Formative Years – 1902-1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interior Vienna (Cambridge University Press, 2000).
- Thomas S. Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought (Fine Communications, 1997).
- Thomas S. Kuhn, The Road Since Structure: Philosophical Essays, 1970-1993 (University of Chicago Press, 2000).
- Thomas Nickles, Thomas Kuhn (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
From the dark side:
- Michael Specter, Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives (Penguin Press, 2009): “The optimistic view of science is that the theories advanced with its methods will have self-evident appeal to an educated public. Why, then, do people so often behave unscientifically?”
- Michael Schermer: Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (MJF Books, 1997).
Further from the dark side: ethics and scientific “progress”:
- Matthew Cobb, As Gods: A Moral History of the Genetic Age (Basic Books, 2022), pondering “whether a research community capable of altering life is also capable of putting ethical decisions first.”
- Amy Guttman & Jonathan D. Mareno, Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven but Nobody Wants to Die: Bioethics and the Transformation of Health Care in America (Liveright Publishing Company, 2019), “explores the troubling contradictions between expanding medical research and neglecting human rights, from testing anthrax vaccines on children to using brain science for marketing campaigns.”
- Euzebiusz Jamrozik & Michael Selgelid, Ethics and Drug Resistance: Collective Responsibility for Global Health (Springer, 2020): “It is widely acknowledged that the development of resistance by human bacterial pathogens to pharmaceutical antimicrobials due to their use (acquired antibiotic resistance or acquired ABR) poses a major threat to global public health. Recent data suggest that over 1 million deaths per year are attributable to resistant bacterial infection.”
- Bonnie Steinbock, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Bioethics (Oxford University Press, 2007).
- Ezio di Nucci, Ji-Youg Lee & Isaac Wagner, eds., The Roman & Littlefield Handbook of Bioethics (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2022).
- Cynthia C. Kelly, The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb, in the Words of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2020), is “. . . collection of essays, including excerpts from 45 books and almost twice as many articles . . .” about the project that developed the first nuclear weapon in the 1940s.
- Bruce Cameron Reed, Manhattan Project: The Story of the Century (Springer, 2020): “Over 27 months during World War II, an extraordinary combination of intelligence, organization and sheer labor was assembled: about half a million people, from all walks of life, were involved in the Manhattan Project. They devised and built a means of obliterating life on our planet. In August 1945, it killed some 150,000 Japanese and injured an equal number in an especially ghastly way.”
Imaginary
Visual Arts
- Pablo Picasso, Science and Charity (1897)
- Jusepe de Ribera, Archimedes (c.1630)
Fictional Narratives
Novels and stories with science as a theme:
- Edward St. Aubyn, Double Blind: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021): “. . . Serious Thoughts About Science in an Entertaining Package”.
Music: Composers, artists, and major works
James Dashow, an electronic music specialist, has composed an opera called “Archimedes, A Planetarium Opera” (2008), after the ancient Greek mathematician. “After witnessing some epic laser and electronic music shows that took place in science museum theaters, Dashow – a distinguished electronic music pioneer – decided this venue would be perfect for bringing the Ancient Greek mathematician’s story to life. It was only later that he learned Archimedes had in fact invented the first planetarium (a mechanism that demonstrated the planets rotating around the Earth).” “The vocal parts are performed with a mix of spoken word, Sprechstimme, and fully sung lines, most of which are visceral representations of the text.” “. . . Mr. Dashow’s vision is to have Archimedes performed in a planetarium with a live ensemble; singing, acting, dancing, and immersive electronic sounds and images are to fuse in forming a profound multimedia discourse.”
Other works:
- Derek Bermel, A Short History of the Universe (As Related by Nima Arkani-Hamed) (2013): “During my tenure at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, I have attended several lectures on the subject of space-time, gravity, and the multiverse by the renowned theoretical physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed. Nima's talks -- always expansive, extroverted, and inspiring -- describe phenomena at both tiny and enormous ends of the cosmic scale. His depictions (and diagrams) of gravity are exciting and dynamic, and I wondered how they might be expressed in musical terms.” [The composer.] “The writing is simultaneously comprehensible and quirky, a series of gestural thought experiments that catch listeners off-guard without ever letting them lose the thread of the argument. And although the crackle of ideas is evident throughout, Bermel never descends into arid theorizing - there’s a deep vein of wit and beauty enlivening the proceedings . . .”
Albums:
- Christopher Fox, “Natural Science”
- Arild Andersen, “In-House Science” “offers a master class in individual virtuosity in service to exquisitely fine-tuned interplay.” [Andy Hermann, Downbeat magazine, June 2018 issue, p. 67.]
- William Goldstein, “The Invisible World”, original soundtrack created for National Geographic