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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>I really like this, and it strengthens my belief that we ought to be assembling and publishing a book of FRIAM Gems. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Nick <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Nicholas Thompson<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Clark University<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="mailto:ThompNickSon2@gmail.com"><span style='color:#0563C1'>ThompNickSon2@gmail.com</span></a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/"><span style='color:#0563C1'>https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/</span></a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b>From:</b> Friam <friam-bounces@redfish.com> <b>On Behalf Of </b>Jon Zingale<br><b>Sent:</b> Saturday, May 16, 2020 7:07 PM<br><b>To:</b> friam@redfish.com; Kaitlyn Berry <kberryemail@gmail.com><br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [FRIAM] from 5/15 virtual FRIAM<o:p></o:p></p></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>Disclaimers:<br>1. TLDR Warning<br>2. These opinions will be poorly founded and are subject to change.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>Dave,<br><br>You write: `</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333'>Nick raised the issue of being contrarian with regards science and</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333'>could get no one to admit to anything beyond ignoring doctor's orders.</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>`</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'><br>Questions like the one Nick posed fill me with a sense of <i>aporia</i>.<br>I am left without an immediate response. Personally, I find it useful<br>to factor science into a number of modes or senses. The ultimate goal<br>for me is to sketch out the kind of space where I can investigate the <i>shape</i><br>of my own conception of science. Ultimately, whatever science is to me<br>cannot be a single consistent entity, but rather a kind of <i>eidetic variation</i>.<br><br>* Science as institution. Science can be identified with its institutions:<br>STEM outreach after-school programs, publishing companies, research centers,<br>and the like. Here science is sometimes portrayed as a career with clear<br>delineations regarding who is <i>good</i> or <i>bad</i> at science. Its goals are set by<br>commitees and participation is all but automated through bureaucratic policy.<br>The authority we assert when we reference expertise, degrees and associations<br>is one of institutional authority. While there is probably a lot for me to pick<br>apart here, I will stick to two or three contrary beliefs I hold. For me, the<br>notion of STEM is awkward exactly because mathematics is a liberal art and<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>not necessarily a science. Mathematics exists to describe relationships and to<br>facilitate thought. It's home is not far from painting, drawing or the<br>activities of thespians. Another belief I hold is that any institution is<br>susceptible to <i>legitimation crisis</i>. It is very possible, as is often argued of<br>our news outlets, for scientific institutions to fail in their duty to produce<br>science.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>For anyone who is interested in these potential short-comings I recommend<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>reading the history of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belousov%E2%80%93Zhabotinsky_reaction" target="_blank">Belousov-</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belousov%E2%80%93Zhabotinsky_reaction" target="_blank">Zhabotinsky reaction</a>. While the story ends<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>well, it leaves the critical reader wondering what <i>good science</i> has been left to die.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>Here, I hold the belief that there is very likely science, as legitimated by other<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>scientific senses, which have been de-legitimated by science as institution.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>Science as institution is not itself consistently decided. It is prone<br>to as-well-as open to inter-institutional disagreement. Putting aside for the<br>moment that agreement will one day be reached (an ontological claim that<o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>may itself not be amenable to scientific inquiry) any <i>active</i> area of research</span><span style='color:#333333'><br></span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>is riddled with competing theories. Extreme cases include cosmology and</span><span style='color:#333333'><br></span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>string theory. A weaker example is the </span><span style='color:#333333'><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe" target="_blank"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif'>Feynman-Wheeler electron</span></a></span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>.</span><span style='color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#333333'><br></span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>* Science as abstract authority. It is a personal pet peeve of mine when</span><span style='color:#333333'><br></span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>someone forms a sentence like, "Well, science </span><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>says</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'> X". It is a strange side-</span><span style='color:#333333'><br></span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>effect of our culture that the notion of science can be lifted to the status</span><span style='color:#333333'><br></span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>of abstract authority. The function of such a statement is to end discussion,</span><span style='color:#333333'><br></span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>to leave ideas stillborn. To the degree that I find this behavior appalling,</span><span style='color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>I hold beliefs contrary to science in this sense.</span><span style='color:#333333'><br><br></span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>* Science as methodology. Science as the product of scientific methodology</span><span style='color:#333333'><br></span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>has a great number of sub-topics whose surface I will barely ever get to know.</span><span style='color:#333333'><br></span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>Scientific method, peer-review publishing, description production, explanation</span><span style='color:#333333'><br></span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>production, Occam's Razor and the constructivists. Many scientific results</span><span style='color:#333333'><br></span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>have at the core of their methodology useful but known-to-be troublesome</span><span style='color:#333333'><br></span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>assumptions. The scientific method itself is a co-recursive algorithm and</span><span style='color:#333333'><br></span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>therefore subject to limitations like NP-completeness and decidability.</span><span style='color:#333333'><br></span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>At the root of our most trusted tools, like differentiation, hide the uncertainties</span><span style='color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>of second-order logic. In an attempt to remedy perceived failings in the tools of</span><span style='color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>formal logic, the constructivists (under the impetus of Brouwer, Heyting and others)</span><span style='color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>proceeded to develop new logics which in turn were used to create new forms of</span><span style='color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>analysis, non-standard analysis and synthetic differential geometry to name two.</span><span style='color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#333333'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>This proliferation of new tools, however, introduce new complexities.</span><span style='color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>Theorems which were abhorrent in one logical frame (Banach-Tarski) became</span><span style='color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>non-issues in another, but now in the new frame live other <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/con-math/#SH3a" target="_blank">abhorrent theorems</a></span><span style='color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>which didn't exist in the first (Specker's Theorem). I suspect it will not be</span><span style='color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>possible for science as methodology to decide which logical frame is somehow</span><span style='color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>the <i>most correct</i>. As it stands I do value the predictions afforded by a classically</span><span style='color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>founded differential calculus, even if its foundations are unresolvable. Perhaps</span><span style='color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>less controversially, I hold space for the existence of Chaitin random numbers.</span><span style='color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>In a </span><span style='color:#333333'><a href="http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~km9/Randomness%20and%20Mathematical.pdf" target="_blank"><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif'>Scientific American article</span></a> </span><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>Chaitin writes:</span><span style='color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#333333'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#333333'>'Although randomness can be precisely defined and can even be measured,<br>a given number cannot be proved to be random. This enigma establishes a<br>limit to what is possible in mathematics'</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>.<br><br>Lastly on this point and just to bait Nick...<br>Nick often attributes to Peirce that, "Truth is what we will ultimately<br>come to agree upon". This idea is perhaps non-scientific in that it<br>may be a form of Ramsey statement (thanks Glen!) which falls on the side<br>of metaphysics. A truth-principle like this with Ramsey meta-physicality would<br>suggest that truth is <i>here</i>, but we cannot <i>know</i> it, despite Nick's deepest wishes.<br>Further, if we could <i>know</i> a thing in this way, we would only be able to <i>verify</i><br>it once <i>all of the ballots were in</i>.<br><br>* Science as metaphor. In a <i>very</i> <i>narrow</i> context, science can be construed as<br>metaphor between mathematical model and physical observation. Nick often</span><span style='color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>points out that while <i>instantaneous velocity</i> is mathematical, we should be leery</span><span style='color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>of calling it physical. When we apply the notion of an arc to the path of a ball,<br>we are importing and projecting onto physical space the properties of a model.<br>These properties almost invariably entail the continuity and smoothness of<br>time and of space. Arguably, even time and space are imported. I do believe<br>that time and space are <i>worth the import</i>, but I do not think of the metaphor<br>as establishing truth.<br><br>* Science as culture. A biologist friend of mine asked me to validate his<br>claim that our universe is four dimensional. I took the opportunity to elaborate<br>on the concept of dimension as I think of it, namely as an assertion about<br>linear independence. I attempted to move the conversation to a discussion<br>about models and what we intend to describe. I am ok with a four dimensional<br>time-space if we are discussing Einstein's relativity theory. Clearly, in other<br>physical contexts I may wish to talk meaningfully about infinite dimensional<br>Hilbert spaces or six dimensional Calabi-Yau manifolds. He left the conversation<br>miffed. Science has a cultural component, we argue and push and struggle to<br>define scientific contexts with each other. Imre Lakotos wrote a wonderful<br>book about this called "Conjectures and Refutations". It playfully covers,<br>in dialogue form, the development of modern topology from the perspective<br>of mathematics culture.<br><br>* Temporality in Science. Because Newton and Einstein held different beliefs,<br>we cannot rely (nor should we) on science to be consistent in time. We can hope,<br>along with Nick, that some scientific acquisition will meet the ultimate gold-<br>standard, jump the limit of our methodologies and finally and gloriously be<br>classified as <i>known true</i>. While it would likely be the case that if Newton<br>were here today he would agree that Einstein's theory is better, there are other<br>examples which exhibit oscillatory behavior. Is coffee good for you? Should<br>you avoid red meat? It is hard for me to keep up with the temporality of<br>science, and I suspect that we are capable of believing things which are not-<br>now-but-will-one-day-satisfy the scientific criteria of one or many of the</span><span style='color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>senses above.<br><br>In many ways I feel that I am taking a bold risk in rambling here, so I hope<br>that it meets your (Dave) satisfaction. I also hope that it inspires others<br>to take a chance and spill some <i>e-ink</i>.</span><span style='color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#333333'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>Full of it,</span><span style='color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Garamond",serif;color:#333333'>Jon</span><span style='color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div></div></body></html>