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Ignorance,How It Drives Science.

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This strikes me as a particularly apt description of how science proceeds on a day-to-day basis. It is certainly more accurate than the more common metaphor of scientists patiently piecing together a giant puzzle. With a puzzle you see the manufacturer has guaranteed there is a solution.
I know that this view of the scientific process—feeling around in dark rooms, bumping into unidentifiable things, looking for barely perceptible phantoms—is contrary to that held by many people, especially by nonscientists. When most people think of science, I suspect they imagine the nearly 500-year-long systematic pursuit of knowledge that, over 14 or so generations, has uncovered more information about the universe and everything in it than all that was known in the first 5,000 years of recorded human history. They imagine a brotherhood tied together by its golden rule, the Scientific Method, an immutable set of precepts for devising experiments that churn out the cold, hard facts. And these solid facts form the edifice of science, an unbro- ken record of advances and insights embodied in our mod- ern views and unprecedented standard of living. Science, with a capital S.
That’s all very nice, but I’m afraid it’s mostly a tale woven by newspaper reports, television documentaries, and high school lesson plans. Let me tell you my somewhat different perspective. It’s not facts and rules. It’s black cats in dark rooms. As the Princeton mathematician Andrew Wiles describes it: It’s groping and probing and poking, and some bumbling and bungling, and then a switch is discovered, often by accident, and the light is lit, and everyone says, “Oh, wow, so that’s how it looks,” and then it’s off into the next dark room, looking for the next mysterious black feline. If this all sounds depressing, perhaps some bleak Beckett-like scenario of existential endlessness, it’s not. In fact, it’s somehow exhilarating.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Ignorance,How It Drives Science.

Call Number

-

Publisher

USA : ., 2012

Collation

1-208

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

978–0–19–982807–4

Classification

NONE

Content Type

-

Media Type

-

Carrier Type

-

Edition

1st Edtion

Subject(s)

Communication

Specific Detail Info

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Statement of Responsibility

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