Analog SFF, December 2007
Page 25
It also provides a nice answer for the perennial question of what sample of SF to give someone who thinks of SF as puerile c**p, perhaps because of excessive exposure to much of what passes for SF in Hollywood. These stories don't come from a pulp magazine with lurid covers, nor even the more well behaved modern incarnation of such a magazine. They come from a highly respectable science journal (Hey, Nature published the Watson & Crick paper that spelled out the structure of DNA and won a Nobel Prize). Therefore, QED, this SF is highly respectable too!
It won't a hurt a bit that the stories are good as well. I enjoyed them.
Copyright (c) 2007 Tom Easton
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BRASS TACKS
Dear Stan,
Until I read the July/August 2007 Analog, I considered Michael Flynn second only to Heinlein as a hard SF author (using “hard” here to mean “reality-based” rather than “difficult"), and second only to DeCamp as a competent and intriguing explicator of science-fact.
His Latin-titled double-header, in the July/August issue, forces me to re-evaluate this. The fictional half of the set ("Quaestiones Super Caelo et Mundo") easily equals the best that RAH ever wrote—the factual item ("De Revolutione Scientiarum in ‘Media Tempestas’”) handily beats out DeCamp's best (and also most similar) factual work, “The Ancient Engineers."
Flynn's double-header not only makes clear that the so-called “Dark Ages” created more enlightenment than chronologically parochial moderns tend to imagine, it also raises (for me, at least) a question which I hope he will address in subsequent fiction and/or non-fiction:
If modern science arose directly from “Dark Ages” (medieval western Europe) philosophical premises and ways of thinking, then how can we ensure that our culture will hang on to science, now that our culture has grown beyond (or otherwise abandoned) many of the premises and ways of thinking which (Flynn cogently argues) the scientific revolution depended on?
Example: Flynn makes a pretty convincing argument that, if medieval western Europeans had not believed in a single absolute god who lays down immutable and universally absolute laws, medieval western Europeans would have had a tough time coming to the notion that “laws of nature” could exist, could deserve study, and could reward such study. (Today, fewer and fewer of us believe in a single absolute divine law-giver: many who disbelieve this, in fact, disbelieve it for reasons grounded in that very science which, Flynn argues, required monotheism in order to arise.)
Similarly, Flynn's list of cultural obstacles to science (that prevailed in cultures outside medieval Western Europe) includes (1) a belief in “a multitude of self-willed gods” and (2) a belief that “all possibilities must eventually come to be” somewhere/somewhen in the universe or universes. Regarding (1)—polytheism has notoriously made a comeback (among well-read, college educated under-40s in the USA, at least: including—to my personal knowledge—quite a few Analog readers, computer programmers, and others whom one would generally regard as scientifically inclined. Regarding (2)—judging from what little I understand of current developments in physics, at least one widely supported interpretation of available data on particle behavior (the “multiple universes” interpretation) does hold, quite as strongly as any believer in cosmic cycles, that all possibilities must eventually exist—do indeed exist—somewhere out there.
Now let's imagine that, sometime in the not-too-distant future, rigorous scientific experiment establishes the “multiple-universes” interpretation as factually correct. (Heck, we could even imagine that, sometime in the not-too-distant future, rigorous scientific experiment establishes polytheism as factually correct!)
Let's imagine that, sooner or later, these experimental findings become generally known. Perhaps it turns out that consequences of these findings make a difference: just as findings on evolution make a difference in medicine because modern medical research depends in very large part on consequences of evolutionary biology (as another excellent July/August story pointed out: C. W. Johnson's “Political Science,” which I wish that someone could make required reading for every holder of a government office).
And let's imagine, too, that Flynn has it right: that a polytheistic culture (or an all-possibilities-come-true culture) tends not to grow scientists. (Note to my polytheist friends who read and write for Analog: I don't know that Flynn has it right.) So ... If science ever really does establish the reality of (say) multiple universes where all possibilities come true—and if Flynn has it right about this sort of belief discouraging science—then science educators (including science popularizers) will have a heart-breaking choice.
Making the scientific findings a part of the culture (which science educators and popularizers strive to do) means making the culture less able to grow scientists (if “multiple universes” proves true, and if Flynn has it right about the mental effects of believing that all possibilities come true). Keeping science in a culture requires (among other things) ensuring that the culture keeps on producing scientists.
Let A = “the set of beliefs that make it harder to think and act like a scientist” ... let B = “the set of important scientifically established findings” ... then suppose that, as Set B becomes bigger and bigger through scientific discoveries, Set A and Set B begin to overlap. Presumably, if and when this ever happens, learning about scientific findings tends to discourage (rather than encourage) potential future scientists.
So—if Flynn has it right (and if the “multiple universe” physicists turn out to have it right, too), then some particular phenomenon “out there” will (once discovered and understood and accepted as true) impede scientific thinking in the people who understand/accept that phenomenon. If this happens, then sooner or later:
(a) we have fewer and fewer people going into science (because their cultural background includes the scientifically discovered obstacle to scientific thinking),
and/or
(b) we have people going into science, but dropping out or losing interest once their science education reaches the “overlap” area and they have to absorb (as part of their science instruction) an impediment to scientific thought,
and/or
(c) people going into the sciences produce less scientific work than previous generations of scientists (take “less scientific work” either in the sense of “a smaller quantity of scientific work” or in the sense of “work that less deserves the name of science.")
Once this happens (and it will happen, if both Flynn's reasoning and the multiple universe hypothesis prove true), some science popularizer(s) or other science educator(s) will propose making and keeping the public (including science students) pig-ignorant of that risky “overlap” area of scientific thought. If the intersection of Set A (cultural obstacles to science) with Set B (important things we know because of science) makes it harder to care about science (harder to grow the scientists of the next generation) then by all means—someone, somewhere, will say—make science education “safe for future scientists” by culturally and educationally censoring out the area where B overlaps A!
Any bets that this would not happen, once some significant number of scientifically minded folks had good, solid reason to believe both (a) Flynn's argument and (b) some fact which, according to Flynn's argument, posed a cognitive obstacle to science if known and accepted as fact?
Of course, not one word of the above has the least bearing on whether or not Flynn, a multiple universe hypothesist, or anyone else has gotten it right or gotten it wrong—any more than pi becomes a rational number if some intelligent species evolves with a subtle neurological quirk that makes a member's brain implode as soon as that individual forms or accepts the concept of “irrational number.” But what on Earth (or off Earth) will science educators do if the truths inescapably demonstrated by science ever do turn out to include some concepts inimical to thinking scientifically?
Kate Gladstone
Albany, New York
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The author respond
s...
Question: Whether a society can abandon the preconceptions that enabled the development of science and still maintain science.
Objection: It would seem that society could not do so, for reasons stated above by Gladstone.
On the contrary: Lightfoot sang, “Though your mother was your maker/From her apron strings you pass."
Therefore, I say: It depends on whether the preconditions are more like the root of a tree or the chrysalis of a butterfly. If the former, the tree dies when the roots are cut off; if the latter, the butterfly lives while leaving the cocoon behind. Analogies are always suspect, even in a magazine named Analog, but it would seem that an idea, once firmly planted in society, would remain after the original impetus in the same way that a tree survives the landscaper. Thus, the idea that material bodies have natures and these natures act directly upon one another according to the “common course of nature” seems fully accepted. Few people now suppose that a river can be placated by appealing to its sprite. Even creationists crave recognition for “creation science” and contend, contrary to theology, that God can be demonstrated by the material evidences of biochemistry. This is akin to proving the existence of Frank Whittle by careful measurement of particular jet engine components.
However, the decay of science has been due more to the uncritical acceptance by many scientists of Popperism and its consequent irrationalism. The distinctions among episteme, pistis, and doxa have been blurred; as have those among the Physics, mathematics, and the Metaphysics and among observed fact, natural law, and physical theory. Even scientists often fail to distinguish between what we know and what we think we know. The contention that science is a social construct of privileged white males and that “feminist biology” or “Native American anthropology” represent “other truths” and “other ways of knowing” constitutes a decidedly “political” science that stems from the worship of multiple, and sometimes conflicting gods. The expression “other truths” is reminiscent of the Averroeist “double truth” condemned at Paris in 1277.
Reply to the Objection. There cannot be multiple gods. If two gods existed, they would differ from each other and one would possess a quality that the other lacked. But then the one lacking the quality would not be absolutely perfect and hence not a god. Similarly, multiple universes cannot be a matter of science. If two universes existed, the one would either be observable or not to the other. If observable, it is simply another part of a single uni-verse. If it is not observable, it is not an object of science, which deals only in that which can be empirically verified. Therefore, the dangers to science from these two possibilities are not likely. n
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UPCOMING EVENTS by ANTHONY LEWIS
21-23 September 2007
FOOLSCAP IX (Washington state SF conference) at Sheraton Bellevue, Bellevue, WA. Guest of Honor: Charles de Lint; Artist Guest of Honor: Charles Vess. Registration: $45 until 20 September; more at door. Info: www.foolscapcon.org; chair@foolscapcon.org.
21-23 September 2007
MOUNTAIN-CON III (Utah SF/media conference) at University Park Marriott, Salt Lake City, UT. A Celebration of Fandom. Guests of Honor: David Prowse, Garrett Wang, Barbara Luna, Felix Silla, Eric James Stone, Dan Willis, Paul Genesse, Robert J Defendi, Howard Tayler. Registration $40 in advance; $5 at the door. Info: www.MountainCon.org; info@mountaincon.org; Mountain-Con III c/o Carl Stark, 3872 West 2550 South, Ogden, UT, 84401-9007.
28-30 September 2007
CONTEXT 20 (SF reader/writer conference) at Midwest Hotel and Conference Center, Columbus, OH. Author Guest of Honor: Tim Powers; Editor Guest of Honor: Mike Resnick; Horror Guest: Michael Arnzen; Anime Guests: Matt Greenfield, Tiffany Grant; Special Guest: Walter Hunt; Musical Guest: Tom Smith. Registration: $35 until 15 August 2007; $45 thereafter; $50 at the door. Writers Workshops: check website for fees. Info: www.contextsf.org
1-4 November 2007
WORLD FANTASY CONVENTION at Saratoga City Center and Saratoga Hotel & Conference Center, Saratoga Springs, NY. Guests of Honor: Carol Emshwiller, Kim Newman, Lisa Tuttle; Special Guests of Honor: Barbara & Christopher Roden, George Scithers; MC: Guy Gavriel Kay. Registration $135 until 31 March 2007, $35 supporting. Info: www.lastsfa.org/wfc2007/; World Fantasy 2007, Post Office Box 1086, Schenectady NY 12301. n
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