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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Here are some nuggets (quotes); if you like them, buy the book!,
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This review is from: Science is a sacred cow (A Dutton Everyman Paperback) (Paperback)
15-16: Scientists are convinced that they, as scientists, possess a number of very admirable human qualities, such as accuracy, observation, reasoning power, intellectual curiosity, tolerance, and even humility.18-19 [Certain people (called "science fiends" later in the book)] suppose that because science has penetrated the structure of the atom it can solve all the problems of the universe. ... They are known in every ... college as the most insufferable, cocksure know-it-alls. If you want to talk to them about poetry, they are likely to reply that the "emotive response" to poetry is only a conditioned reflex .... If they go on to be professional scientists, their sharp corners are rubbed down, but they undergo no fundamental change. They most decidedly are not set apart from the others by their intellectual integrity and faith, and their patient humility in front of the facts of nature.... They are uneducated, in the fullest sense of the word, and they certainly are no advertisement for the claims of science teachers. 23-24: Mr. Hillaire Belloc has pointed out that science has changed greatly, and for the worse, since it became popular. Some hundred years ago, or more, only very unusual, highly original spirits were attracted to science at all; scientific work was therefore carried out by men of exceptional intelligence. Now, scientists are turned out by mass production in our universities, and ... they are very ordinary professional men, and all they know is their trade. 26: As advertising always convinces the sponsor even more than the public, the scientists have become sold, and remain sold, on the idea that they have the key to the Absolute, and that nothing will do for Mr. Average Citizen but to stuff himself full of electrons. 31: They will define these [terms] in tight phrases which convey a meaning only to those who already understand it. 31: The dreadful cocksureness that is characteristic of scientists in bulk is not only quite foreign to the spirit of true science, it is not even justified by a superficial view. 35: There is more truth in an old wisecrack of Oliver Wendell Holmes: "Science is a good piece of furniture for a man to have in an upper chamber provided he has common sense on the ground floor." 43: Education, like everything else, goes in fads, and has the normal human tendency to put up with something bad for just so long, and then rush to the other extreme. 60-62: The first thing to realize about physics ... is its extraordinary indirectness.... For physics is not about the real world, it is about "abstractions" from the real world, and this is what makes it so scientific.... Theoretical physics runs merrily along with these unreal abstractions, but its conclusions are checked, at every possible point, by experiments. 69-70; 85: Lord Kelvin was so satisfied with this triumph of science that he declared himself to be as certain of the existence of the ether as a man can be about anything.... "When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it...." Thus did Lord Kelvin lay down the law. And though quite wrong, this time he has the support of official modern Science. It is NOT true that when you can measure what you are speaking about, you know something about it. The fact that you can measure something doesn't even prove that that something exists.... Take the ether, for example: didn't they measure the ratio of its elasticity to its density? 68, 88, 179: Physics is NOT a body of indisputable and immutable Truth; it is a body of well-supported probable opinion only .... Physics can never prove things the way things are proved in mathematics, by eliminating ALL of the alternative possibilities. It is not possible to say what the alternative possibilities are.... Write down a number of 20 figures; if you multiply this by a number of, say, 30 figures, you would arrive at some enormous number (of either 49 or 50 figures). If you were to multiply the 30-figure number by the 20-figure number you would arrive at the same enormous 49- or 50-figure number, and you know this to be true without having to do the multiplying. This is the step you can never take in physics. 90-91: It is true that physics gives a wonderful training in precise, logical thinking-about physics. It really does depend upon accurate reproducible experiments, and upon framing hypotheses with the greatest possible freedom from dogmatic prejudice. And if these were the really important things in life, physics would be an essential study for everybody. 191: If this "critical openminded attitude" ... is wanted, the question at once arises, Is it science that should be studied in order to achieve it? Why not study law? A judge has to do everything that a scientist is exhorted to do in the way of withholding judgment until all the facts are in, and then judging impartially on the merits of the case as well as he can.... Why not a course in Sherlock Holmes? The detectives, or at least the detective-story writers, join with the scientists in excoriating "dogmatic prejudice, lying, falsification of facts, and data, and willful fallacious reasoning." 98-100: Analogy is a wonderful, useful and most important form of thinking, and biology is saturated with it. Nothing is worse than a horrible mass of undigested facts, and facts are indigestible unless there is some rhyme or reason to them. The physicist, with his facts, seeks reason; the biologist seeks something very much like rhyme, and rhyme is a kind of analogy.... This analogizing, this fine sweeping ability to see likenesses in the midst of differences is the great glory of biology, but biologists don't know it.... They have always been so fascinated and overawed by the superior prestige of exact physical science that they feel they have to imitate it.... In its central content, biology is not accurate thinking, but accurate observation and imaginative thinking, with great sweeping generalizations. 108-10: But regular biology, as an "ology," has to be "scientific," and this means in practice that it has to be made dull.... Everything has to be expressed in utterly impersonal terms.... The explicit purpose of this is to be "scientific," as science is understood by biologists, but there is also an implicit purpose, which ... consists of inculcating a particular "ism," which may be called "materialism," or "mechanism," or "determinism." 101 & 103: Evolution ... is really two theories, the vague theory and the precise theory. The vague theory has been abundantly proved.... The precise theory has never been proved at all. However, like relativity, it is accepted on faith.... On getting down to actual details, difficulties begin. 107: "Survival of the fittest" led to "nature red in tooth and claw" and this is not sufficiently wishy-washy for modern scientists. 112: Since biologists deal constantly in analogies, they are easily misled by them. 118: Psychologists, like other scientists, pride themselves on being extremely modern, and therefore much better than any group of people that ever were before.... 127: Psychologists pay lip service to the scientific method, and use it whenever it is convenient; but when it isn't they make wild leaps of their uncontrolled fancy.... 120: It is perfectly possible to be objective about an angry man, but it is inadvisable, for it will only make him angrier. 128 & 130-31: If you want to understand human beings, there are plenty of people to go to besides psychologists.... Most of these people are incapable of communicating their knowledge, but those who can communicate it are novelists. They are good novelists precisely because they are good psychologists.... If one wishes to learn about psychology in a genuine, rather than a scientific, way, by far the best thing to do is to read masterpieces of literature.... Not that literature is taught as if it had anything to do with psychology.... The professional literature men ... are if anything even worse than the scientists.... Really great psychological insights cannot be simply expressed, as so many propositions.... It is unlikely that they will ever be "scientifically known" .... 123: Insight is not the same as scientific deduction, but even at that it may be more reliable than statistics. 137: The really important questions in human life are hardly touched upon by psychologists. Do liars come to believe their own lies? Is pleasure the same as happiness? Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved, or not to be able to love? 140: "There's many a true word spoken in jest"; scientists are abominably solemn; therefore scientists miss many a true word. 141: Science ... must be absorbed in order to inculcate that wonderful humility before the facts of nature that comes from close attention to a textbook, and that unwillingness to learn from Authority that comes from making almost verbatim lecture notes and handing them back to the professor. 149-50: The theory that gravitational attraction is inversely proportional to the square of the distance leads by remorseless logic to the conclusion that the path of a planet should be an ellipse .... It is this logical thinking that is the real meat of the physical sciences. The social scientist keeps the skin and throws away the meat.... His theorems no more follow from his postulates than the hunches of a horse player follow logically from the latest racing news. The result is guesswork clad in long flowing robes of gobbledygook. 151: A biologist, if he wishes to know how many toes a cat has, does not "frame the hypothesis that... Read more ›
1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Perhaps applicable for the 1950's but now outdated and invalid,
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This review is from: Science Is a Sacred Cow (Paperback)
I have very mixed feelings about this book. My father grew up in the time period this book was written and from what he has told me, there were scientists at that time who treated science like some kind of infallible religion. For that time period, this book likely was a relevant and important critique.Times have changed though and we have learned much more in the 60 years since this book was written. I went through college and graduate school about ten years ago in a scientific field and the criticisms the author makes no longer apply. From my experience, there are no longer claims of absolute truth made by scientists. All theories are understood to be provisionally accepted. Contemporary scientists welcome challenges to hypotheses, theories, and even the scientific method itself. In fact, it is this challenge, which is open to anyone, that leads to changes making science even more reliable and valid as time goes on. A sacred cow is something beyond criticism. That is the antithesis of what modern science is and asserts to be. From a contemporary standpoint, this book is essentially one big logically fallacious strawman argument, peppered with other logical fallacies. It's interesting reading from a historical point of view, but as a relevant critique of modern science, it is just an anachronism.
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