The scientific method

The recent news that scientists at the CERN European Organisation for Nuclear Research in Geneva might have observed a sub-atomic particle that was capable of travelling at a speed greater than that of light has given some ammunition to those who would attack science, and scientists, in the interests of furthering their claims for religion. For example, Mr. Gregory Shenkman, in a letter to the Financial Times on Saturday Oct 8th 2011, has written:

“…science changes its mind about many things quite frequently. When it does so, it does not admit it was wrong before, it simply hands down a new tablet of stone. However, the current speculation at the facility at Cern as to whether certain subatomic particles can go faster than the speed of light demonstrates the need for science to keep an open mind”.

The discovery of anything that was capable of travelling at greater than the speed of light would, indeed, throw Einstein’s famous Theories of Relativity into disarray.

But theists, such as Mr. Shenkman, are being selective. For a start, they’re conveniently ignoring the fact that it was scientists who made this news public. That shows they do, in fact, have open minds. As for changing its mind, science is in a constant state of flux. In relation to scientific models that are still with us, such as the First and Second laws of Thermodynamics, Darwinian Evolution, The Germ Theory of Disease, and Special and General Relativity, any modifications that have been made since the original discovery was published have been in order to refine the model, never to negate it, and always on the basis of new evidence. One gets weary of hearing claims that “Darwin has been proved wrong” whenever something like punctuated equilibrium, the assertion that evolutionary changes are not constant over time, but occur in bursts, is postulated on the basis of new fossil discoveries. This is adding a new detail, guys, it doesn’t do anything to discredit the original theory.

There are theories we no longer hear about but which were strongly believed in at one time, such as the existence of the “luminiferous ether”, a substance that was supposed by scientists in the 19th century to occupy all of space. It was believed that it must exist, in order to transmit light waves, in the same way that air is needed to transmit sound. Its existence was disproved by the Michelson – Morley experiment in 1887. We now understand that most of the Universe is composed of a true vacuum.

The Michelson Morley experiment was believed at the time to be a failure because it did not detect the ether, which was part of the belief system of many eminent people who had devoted their lives to science. But it was not a failure. It simply gave us more information than we had before.

And the fact that the scientific community was able to come to terms with its results is therefore a triumph for the scientific method and for evidence based, as opposed to faith based, belief.

And so it goes. There might have been something faulty with the CERN experiment. Or perhaps Einstein was wrong. If he was, that fact will be embraced when all the evidence is in.

Primo Levi, and my belief

The success of the World Atheist Convention, held at the start of this month (June 2011) in Dublin, makes it appropriate to consider the nature of belief. Thanks to a recommendation by Claire Keegan in the book section of the Irish Times, I read the account by Primo Levi of his time in Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II, called “If this is a man” or, in the USA, “Survival in Auschwitz”. It’s a short book and, although it tells a story of incredible cruelty, both in terms of its scale and of the suffering that was inflicted in individual cases, it’s written objectively, with some humour and with no trace of self-pity on the part of Levi. He was a young man at the time, in his 20s, and he only survived because, apart from possessing a high degree of resourcefulness and luck, he was Italian by birth and residence and was taken by the Nazis late in the war. At that point in time they were, temporarily at least, more interested in slave labour than in genocide. He had been born into the Jewish tradition. His survival is fortunate for us too, because the book is one of the most important accounts of what happened during this infamous period in human history when so many, many others did not live to tell the tale, in any form.

After his liberation by the Russians at the end of the war Levi eventually returned to his native Turin, to the apartment where he had been born and in which he was to live out the rest of his life. He had qualified as a chemist and, as well as writing, practiced his profession in his home town. There is evidence that he suffered from time to time with depression, and this is hardly to be wondered at given his experiences.

Controversy exists over his death, which was as the result of falling from a landing in his apartment block, in 1985. Nobody saw what happened to cause the fall. Even though no suicide note was ever discovered, an inquest found that he died by his own hand. The whole question is discussed in detail in an article that was written for The Boston Review by Diego Gambetta. This is a long, closely argued and well written piece. At the end of it one is left with the clear understanding that there is no definitive evidence either for suicide or against it.

That brings us into the realm of belief. Those of us who would seek inspiration in the triumph of the human spirit, for example as demonstrated by Levi’s accounts of how he dealt with his travails and his determination not to allow them to leave him all bent and twisted afterwards, would want to believe that he did not kill himself. I contend that we are, under the circumstances, entitled to have this belief. For me, then, the reality is that Primo Levi died as the result of an accident. But there are caveats: I can only hold that as fact for as long as no irrefutable, or even strong, evidence to the contrary appears. Apart from anything else, a failure to acknowedge evidence against what I might like to perceive as truth would mean that I was fooling myself, and that realisation would be far more unsettling than the demolition of any ideal I might like to hold on to.

I do not have the right to insist that any public behavior that depends upon my version of unverified events is written into the laws of the land. Above all, it would be terribly wrong of me to attempt to impose this belief on others, or to present it to children or impressionable adults as an indisputable account of what happened.

Belief in anything in the absence of direct evidence is, truly, a private matter. Authority figures who insist otherwise are doing a great disservice to the people they are in a position to influence and, because we have a democratic system and said influenced people have votes, by extension to the rest of us.