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PJ and Dr. Chris Haufe discuss how our scientific knowledge adapts and expands over time. Dr. Haufe also shares his surprising pathway to academia through exposure to nu metal band Rage Against the Machine.
Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
[Unknown9]: excited to hear here about it first tell me a little bit about yourself and tell
[Unknown9]: us a little bit about how did you get into this question um is this
[Unknown10]: hm
[Unknown9]: a childhood thing like you were like you were always like fascinated with science
[Unknown9]: or is it like later on development tell us a little bit about doctor chris alfa
[Unknown10]: sure yeah um i mean i i really didn't get into philosophy until college
[Unknown10]: i mean i went you know when i was about sixteen years old i really fell in love
[Unknown10]: with noam chomsky
[Unknown9]: hm
[Unknown10]: and kind of
[Unknown9]: i'm sorry how old were you
[Unknown10]: about sixteen yeah
[Unknown9]: but you weren't into philosophy early
[Unknown10]: no no i mean it actually i came to him through through the band rage against the
[Unknown10]: machine
[Unknown9]: oh that would
[Unknown10]: um
[Unknown9]: make sense yeah
[Unknown10]: yeah so you know and i
[Unknown10]: you know so i i kind of uh you know one of the rags machine albums had like this
[Unknown10]: picture of a bunch of books kind of
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: like you know stacked end to end
[Unknown9]: i'm sure i've seen it yeah
[Unknown10]: yeah and so i saw one of those books was by a person named nome chomsky so i went
[Unknown10]: to like the local college library and i um i found a book by him you know and i
[Unknown10]: didn't really
[Unknown10]: it was it was the most challenging thing i'd ever read for sure it was
[Unknown9]: oh yeah
[Unknown10]: it was uh it was necessary illusions it was like classic chomsky book um and so i
[Unknown9]: i'm sorry i'm just tried to get over the fact that you like cold turkey had no
[Unknown9]: idea i just picked up a nome chomsky book that was a bit yeah would you say was
[Unknown9]: the hardest thing you've ever read like
[Unknown10]: yeah and i
[Unknown9]: sorry it's a it's amazing
[Unknown10]: mean to be honest like i it was probably like the sixth book i've read
[Unknown9]: gotcha
[Unknown10]: at that point like i just not a big reader
[Unknown10]: at that point like i just not a big reader
[Unknown10]: so yeah i guess when you think of it in along that trajectory it was kind of a
[Unknown10]: big step
[Unknown9]: yes yes
[Unknown10]: yeah but you know i think ra against the machine
[Unknown10]: just kind of woke up something in me
[Unknown9]: eight
[Unknown10]: you know and just really got
[Unknown10]: concerned with knowing more stuff
[Unknown9]: right
[Unknown10]: just generally
[Unknown10]: and you know so that that led me directly to chomsky and
[Unknown10]: i did finally manage to get um a little a much more accessible chomsky book they
[Unknown10]: were selling at the time these kind of thin little volumes at barnes and noble
[Unknown10]: which had just opened ah in my town okay and so i g i got one of these and um
[Unknown9]: oh gotta ga up track medy
[Unknown10]: yeah it just re i mean not just the the content
[Unknown10]: you know very surprising kind of about
[Unknown10]: you know what
[Unknown10]: you know the kinds of human atrocities
[Unknown9]: yes
[Unknown10]: that had
[Unknown10]: you know been occurring over the last fifty or so
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: but the style of it of him kind of like just effortlessly
[Unknown10]: refuting people using their own words
[Unknown9]: hm
[Unknown10]: was just like really intoxicating you know um
[Unknown9]: yes yeah
[Unknown10]: and
[Unknown10]: and so i was like
[Unknown10]: i just wanna i wanna do this i want to just prove people wrong like that's what i
[Unknown10]: want to do with my life you know um
[Unknown10]: and and so when i got to college
[Unknown10]: um
[Unknown10]: i had i met a i was involved in a student activist group that was
[Unknown10]: kind of
[Unknown10]: directed by a philosophy professor and this philosophy professor had been a
[Unknown10]: student of chomsky in fact so
[Unknown9]: oh wow
[Unknown10]: this is kind of like you know my third month at college okay and i'm just a lot
[Unknown10]: like everything's coming together and so you know i'm like okay well this guy you
[Unknown10]: know he's kind of like a hardcore you know activists i mean we're going to you
[Unknown10]: know the school of the americas protest and were you know mailing medicine to
[Unknown10]: iraq like in protest of you know sanctions against raq i mean this is back in the
[Unknown10]: early
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: late nineteen nineties okay
[Unknown9]: right
[Unknown10]: and
[Unknown10]: you and i'm like i just want to be this guy you know so i'm just gonna i guess
[Unknown10]: philosophy is the way you do that and i was right i mean the philosophy that i
[Unknown10]: was introduced to was
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: really like the science of proving people wrong that's kind of how i
[Unknown10]: i
[Unknown10]: viewed it you know it was just there it was just a game and the game was to prove
[Unknown10]: people wrong um and i you know i it really felt like i had found my calling you
[Unknown10]: know
[Unknown10]: which is kind of sad when you think about it but
[Unknown9]: he
[Unknown10]: yeah i mean
[Unknown10]: so that you know that that kind of that's what led me into philosophy just the
[Unknown10]: fact that you know i i'm just a jerk at heart
[Unknown10]: trying to prove people wrong
[Unknown9]: oh man
[Unknown10]: what a dark story god
[Unknown9]: yeah no i i i love that so you mentioned uh it's a little sad so i you reflect on
[Unknown9]: that and it seems like maybe some things have changed for you how do you view
[Unknown9]: philosophy instead of just the science of proving people wrong do you view it as
[Unknown9]: something slightly different now
[Unknown10]: well yeah so that that's really this project how knowledge grows was really my
[Unknown10]: my first attempt to do philosophy
[Unknown10]: um that didn't involve just proving people wrong
[Unknown9]: hm
[Unknown10]: so i had written my uh
[Unknown10]: my phd dissertation on
[Unknown10]: evolutionary psychology specifically what's wrong with it you know because that's
[Unknown10]: my thing at that time yeah
[Unknown9]: that's your thing yep yep
[Unknown10]: and you know i got done with that project and i i felt like it i i had done a
[Unknown10]: pretty good job um
[Unknown10]: but the world
[Unknown10]: contained no more stuff than before i started
[Unknown9]: hm
[Unknown10]: you know doing philosophy and you know i had not kind of produced any ideas and
[Unknown10]: it really bothered me and i just kind of you know looked at
[Unknown10]: my approach to philosophy and kind of how i conceptualized my my role an
[Unknown10]: intellectual and you know reminding myself that as good as chomsky was at proving
[Unknown10]: people wrong that wasn't the only thing he did that was like a side
[Unknown9]: yeah yeah yeah yeah
[Unknown10]: gig right um and and that you know
[Unknown10]: that i should probably um
[Unknown10]: spend some time generating some kind of positive
[Unknown10]: contribution
[Unknown10]: some useful or you know illuminating idea
[Unknown10]: or set of ideas
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: um
[Unknown10]: and uh yeah i mean that's that's kind of the orang orientation that i had adopted
[Unknown10]: when i came upon this project
[Unknown9]: gotcha now it was that discovering thomas coon are you already kind of familiar
[Unknown9]: with coon
[Unknown10]: course
[Unknown9]: and and it started to kind of grow from there
[Unknown10]: i mean i had i was i was a little bit familiar with kon i mean of course i knew
[Unknown10]: kon as a figure well as like an object of abuse
[Unknown10]: among philosophers of science
[Unknown10]: and but i hadn't really studied his kind of you know important book structure of
[Unknown10]: scientific revolutions in any depth and
[Unknown10]: then i started teaching it
[Unknown10]: at case western
[Unknown10]: on a regular basis and
[Unknown10]: i just you know i mean i i i became more and more
[Unknown10]: uh infatuated with the book and just really kind of
[Unknown10]: developed an appreciation for its depth and scope
[Unknown10]: that i certainly never had and that was never really given to me by the
[Unknown10]: philosophy that i had read
[Unknown9]: he
[Unknown10]: you know which which was which was substantial i mean it was i was i was you know
[Unknown10]: i knew the literature with respect to coon and
[Unknown10]: you know i think coun
[Unknown10]: had published his book at a time
[Unknown10]: that philosophy of science was not really ready for it
[Unknown10]: you know just way
[Unknown9]: what
[Unknown10]: ahead of his time
[Unknown10]: and uh
[Unknown10]: and it contains some controversial ideas um
[Unknown10]: and i think that the philosophers
[Unknown10]: kind of
[Unknown10]: latched on to those really controversial ideas
[Unknown10]: and
[Unknown10]: missed
[Unknown10]: um the ideas that weren't so controversial
[Unknown10]: you know because they were just super accurate
[Unknown9]: so
[Unknown10]: you know this
[Unknown9]: they were just really valuable it is funny how people miss like the really
[Unknown9]: valuable stuff
[Unknown10]: yeah
[Unknown9]: if it's just kind of like um
[Unknown9]: if it's just obvious right
[Unknown10]: yeah
[Unknown9]: even if no one's implementing that
[Unknown10]: yeah yeah exactly i mean that's that's exactly what happened
[Unknown10]: and you know i think it it's taken a really long time to to kind of
[Unknown10]: you know detox as a as an academic community
[Unknown10]: and try to start fresh
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: um looking at this book and
[Unknown10]: and focusing on
[Unknown10]: you know just the whole model of the development of science that's presented
[Unknown10]: rather than you know the very controversial philosophical thesis of
[Unknown10]: incommensurability which is kind of like the
[Unknown10]: the inability of
[Unknown10]: different communities of scientists to to understand each other really
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown9]: gotcha so so when when you're talking about yeah
[Unknown9]: gotcha so so when when you're talking about yeah
[Unknown10]: you know so sorry go ahead
[Unknown9]: i just want to make sure for our audience sake um
[Unknown9]: do you mind just maybe explaining incommensurability a little bit
[Unknown10]: yeah
[Unknown9]: and then
[Unknown9]: of course i think the more interesting thing you know after you kind of explain
[Unknown9]: that controversial side what are the things that are really not that controversial
[Unknown9]: but are super helpful
[Unknown10]: yeah
[Unknown9]: for us and obviously then your own work branches off that so if you want to let
[Unknown9]: that flow into what your book is about i'd love to hear that
[Unknown10]: sure good yeah so maybe i'll start with the the uncontroversial stuff
[Unknown9]: sure
[Unknown10]: cause it's kind of there's a sequence
[Unknown9]: yeah i am
[Unknown10]: yeah so
[Unknown10]: you know i mean
[Unknown10]: the the essence of coon's book is to
[Unknown10]: describe the way that a ideas within a scientific community
[Unknown10]: develop from their earliest stages
[Unknown10]: and eventually transition to a whole new set of ideas a new framework okay so
[Unknown10]: that's kind of the project
[Unknown10]: um of the book
[Unknown10]: and
[Unknown10]: the
[Unknown10]: the the kind of key idea in this book is the notion of a scientific a paradigm
[Unknown10]: okay this is where the this is where that term comes from in popular usage right
[Unknown10]: and the way coon
[Unknown10]: articulates the notion of a paradigm it's basically just kind of a set of kind of
[Unknown10]: like a framework that scientists work in okay um
[Unknown10]: it's not really a set of beliefs they have about nature but it's a set it's a
[Unknown10]: style with which they investigate nature
[Unknown10]: that style includes the kinds of instruments they use but it also includes the
[Unknown10]: kinds of ideas that they use to kind of you know as a platform for their
[Unknown10]: investigations
[Unknown9]: can
[Unknown10]: and
[Unknown9]: you give an example i i know in one of your talks you even talked about kepler
[Unknown9]: just
[Unknown10]: you sure
[Unknown9]: so that we can root this in something concrete if you don't mind
[Unknown10]: yeah sure i mean
[Unknown10]: so i mean kepler is a is a good example um
[Unknown10]: the you know astronomy for for a couple thousand years uh give or take before
[Unknown10]: kepler um
[Unknown10]: concerned well
[Unknown10]: not a couple thousand fifteen hundred or so
[Unknown10]: is
[Unknown10]: involved in the project of using different combinations of circles to
[Unknown10]: model
[Unknown10]: the motion of celestial bodies
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: okay so if you want to
[Unknown10]: uh you want to sort of predict where a celestial boy is gonna be at some time
[Unknown10]: you um
[Unknown10]: you chart its path as if it were going moving in a perfect circle at a uniform
[Unknown10]: speed
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: okay
[Unknown10]: and that's just
[Unknown10]: that's it's so deeply ingrained in the culture of doing
[Unknown10]: astronomy it's not it's barely a belief i mean it's it's that deep you in much
[Unknown10]: the way that
[Unknown10]: the kinds of
[Unknown10]: mental constructs right that guide us in our everyday culture
[Unknown10]: are not really beliefs it's like you know them but you don't like hold them
[Unknown10]: consciously in your mind
[Unknown10]: um
[Unknown9]: with an example maybe this is a little too we're a little too aware of this or
[Unknown9]: maybe not i often find myself thinking about this with the way the western world
[Unknown9]: treats efficiency as like automatically good right like it's like
[Unknown10]: yeah
[Unknown9]: oh like literally people just think oh well it's more efficient and that like
[Unknown9]: that's supposed to be the end of the discussion right like if it's more efficient
[Unknown9]: it's automatically better and so
[Unknown10]: yeah yeah that's a good example right
[Unknown9]: okay yeah yeah
[Unknown10]: you don't it's a it's a value that you don't have to it can be it can go
[Unknown10]: unquestioned right
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: like you can assert it as valuable and no one will question it it's just part of
[Unknown10]: the you know your participation in the culture really depends on you accepting
[Unknown10]: this as valuable
[Unknown9]: yeah yeah it's the default like if i said like well it actually think this is
[Unknown9]: better even though it's inefficient like well you got to explain that right like
[Unknown9]: so like so it kepler imm assuming you know it's the ellipse the ellipticals
[Unknown10]: yeah yeah yeah
[Unknown10]: yeah
[Unknown9]: right's like okay what are you even talking about it's not circles what you know
[Unknown10]: yeah exactly right i mean that's so you wouldn't have to it it was just assumed
[Unknown10]: you know the presupposition is that if you're doing astronomy
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: you're modeling motions with combinations of circles
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: um and it's not something that comes up because it's you know virtually by
[Unknown10]: definition that's what you're doing right that kind of thing is what coun
[Unknown10]: referred to as a paradigm
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: it's like the culture of research
[Unknown10]: you know
[Unknown10]: the the default assumptions or you know default presupposition about
[Unknown10]: what kinds of instruments we use what kind of ideas we use and so on
[Unknown10]: and
[Unknown10]: you know
[Unknown10]: uh what coon argued in the first part of this book is that
[Unknown10]: science as a cumulative kind of community endeavor the you know the kind of
[Unknown10]: um research
[Unknown9]: let's see
[Unknown10]: production we associate with modern science
[Unknown9]: he
[Unknown10]: right that doesn't exist
[Unknown10]: outside of
[Unknown10]: a paradigm
[Unknown9]: h
[Unknown10]: right that communities of scientists groups of scientists require this paradigm
[Unknown10]: in order to produce a cumulative product that we call scientific knowledge
[Unknown9]: so and that's where that incent comes in where he's saying that if you
[Unknown10]: arch
[Unknown9]: don't share the same paradigm you can't even communicate
[Unknown10]: yeah exactly right exactly
[Unknown9]: am i tracking okay like i mean i've only heard like five minute explanations of
[Unknown9]: coon so
[Unknown9]: like i i mean i'm just piecing together and making sure i'm tracking with you
[Unknown10]: yeah no you're already an expert
[Unknown10]: exactly yeah
[Unknown10]: you know i mean and and so
[Unknown10]: i mean just to flesh that out a little bit right
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: uh these cultures for coon were
[Unknown10]: you know something like a scholarly language of thought
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: and language you know a language of communication kind of the the currency of
[Unknown10]: of of scholarship is
[Unknown10]: you know all all these ideas pull out you know different properties of coon
[Unknown10]: thought of as a paradigm
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: right
[Unknown10]: and right if people who share different paradigms
[Unknown10]: um
[Unknown10]: are speaking different
[Unknown10]: scholarly languages
[Unknown10]: and sometimes they don't realize that
[Unknown10]: you know they're because they're using a lot of the same sounds and the same
[Unknown10]: symbols right but those symbols have taken on a totally different meaning
[Unknown10]: or or a partially different meaning right um maybe
[Unknown9]: gotcha
[Unknown10]: there's some overlap
[Unknown10]: but
[Unknown9]: can i do you might if i give an example i
[Unknown10]: please yeah
[Unknown9]: just talked to uh doctor bal binder bagale he he is a a chair in sicky studies
[Unknown10]: okay
[Unknown9]: and pretty much we i honestly i didn't know much about sicky
[Unknown9]: and pretty much we i honestly i didn't know much about sicky
[Unknown9]: and he was talking about
[Unknown9]: you know the the culture and the the devotional practices and that sort of thing
[Unknown9]: but one of the first things you said it's often list is like the world's fifth
[Unknown9]: biggest religion major religion he's like it's not really a religion that's
[Unknown10]: yeah
[Unknown9]: that's something that came from outside the culture but we're actually at this
[Unknown9]: weird point now where it's been applied so many times that now we have to use the
[Unknown9]: word religion but we have to use it in a different way
[Unknown10]: mm yeah
[Unknown9]: right like i mean even when you talk about like the distinction in western culture
[Unknown9]: between religion and philosophy
[Unknown9]: it doesn't make sense when you're talking about sicky like the the religion and
[Unknown9]: the philosophy are pretty much the same thing and so
[Unknown10]: okay
[Unknown9]: you know you're using the same word the same sounds religion but it means
[Unknown9]: something very different to to him than first you know for instance i grew up in
[Unknown9]: christianity and at this point there's this whole
[Unknown9]: historical background to what religion means if that makes sense
[Unknown10]: yeah sure um
[Unknown10]: yeah exactly so that right i mean you know what
[Unknown10]: that's a perfect example so we use the same sound but we often mean very
[Unknown10]: different things by it right you know for some people it's rituals for some
[Unknown10]: people it's like an entire lifestyle for some people it's you know a list of
[Unknown10]: beliefs
[Unknown9]: hm
[Unknown10]: yeah so i think that's um that's a that's a good example of you know when
[Unknown10]: the terms
[Unknown10]: that people are using they they seem to be the same but they are using them in
[Unknown10]: different ways and they often don't realize that
[Unknown9]: right
[Unknown10]: um
[Unknown9]: which is
[Unknown10]: and
[Unknown9]: considerably worse than using them differently and at least realizing it right
[Unknown10]: yeah yeah exactly right because they keep running into
[Unknown10]: like confusion
[Unknown10]: because they think they're communicating but that you know a lot of stuff's
[Unknown10]: getting lost because the meanings of their shared terms have changed
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: um
[Unknown10]: good right so
[Unknown10]: you know what would coon
[Unknown10]: essentially
[Unknown10]: describes as you know a culture kind of defined by this paradigm a research
[Unknown10]: culture defined by a paradigm
[Unknown10]: and that
[Unknown10]: this paradigm kind of unites them all and kind of unites their efforts
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: and narrows their focus
[Unknown9]: hm
[Unknown10]: and this is what
[Unknown10]: allows them to
[Unknown10]: produce
[Unknown10]: you know to kind of probe more deeply into nature
[Unknown10]: uh to you know
[Unknown9]: mm
[Unknown10]: presupposed a lot of stuff
[Unknown10]: and then start investigating much deeper questions
[Unknown10]: they don't constantly have to
[Unknown10]: you know build nature from the ground up every time they want to say something
[Unknown9]: hy
[Unknown10]: they can just assume a massive amount of of shared ideas shared ways of
[Unknown10]: investigating shared ways of arguing
[Unknown10]: you know for a particular view about nature
[Unknown10]: it's you know once you have a community that is bound in this way you can produce
[Unknown10]: what we recognize as scientific knowledge
[Unknown9]: set
[Unknown10]: outside of that you know when you don't have a scientific community essentially
[Unknown10]: what you have is just
[Unknown10]: a bunch of people
[Unknown10]: doing you know they're kind of off on their own doing their own investigations
[Unknown10]: you know it makes sense to them and but there's no community that they're
[Unknown10]: speaking to right
[Unknown9]: six
[Unknown10]: there's no kind of shared understanding
[Unknown10]: that everybody in this field is drawing on to kind of understand
[Unknown10]: the results that other people are producing and fit them into a broader framework
[Unknown10]: so
[Unknown10]: you know i mean just to to to kind of
[Unknown10]: get
[Unknown10]: into the messy details of science right i mean if you
[Unknown9]: sure
[Unknown10]: do an experiment
[Unknown10]: um
[Unknown10]: and you know you follow a very rigorous protocol
[Unknown10]: and then you draw a conclusion based on that experiment
[Unknown10]: at that point
[Unknown10]: all we have is your like well
[Unknown10]: supported idea right or you're kind of like rigorously investigated idea
[Unknown9]: h
[Unknown10]: but
[Unknown10]: it's not yet scientific knowledge because
[Unknown10]: it hasn't been submitted to the scientific community
[Unknown10]: it hasn't the community hasn't had a chance to kind of properly vet
[Unknown10]: your investigation your methods and your conclusions and so on right and so i
[Unknown10]: mean no matter how
[Unknown10]: well you do your science ultimately it's going to depend on the community's
[Unknown10]: appraisal of what you've done in order for it to
[Unknown10]: you know rise to the status of scientific knowledge does that make sense
[Unknown9]: yes
[Unknown9]: so one of my my second son's name is was soren so one of my favorite philosophers
[Unknown9]: obviously
[Unknown9]: his
[Unknown9]: kirk guard or kirk you know if you want to go the danish pronunciation and
[Unknown9]: i i one of the things from fear and trembling and you know this is my reading of
[Unknown9]: it obviously he's not the uh he does tend to be kind of controversial but that
[Unknown9]: idea that you have subjective truth objective truth and absolute truth and he's
[Unknown9]: he's arguing with hegel about objective truth and there's a lot of value to
[Unknown9]: objective truth of course he's arguing kind of against it but this idea that
[Unknown9]: if you're working with with stats for instance um and this isn't exactly what he's
[Unknown9]: talking about but it's close and you're like ninety nine percent of the time this
[Unknown9]: is going to happen right
[Unknown10]: no
[Unknown9]: and that's kind of the objective truth of it's like most of the time we know this
[Unknown9]: is what happens but that
[Unknown10]: m
[Unknown9]: doesn't mean anything to the individual who encounters the one percent
[Unknown10]: hm
[Unknown9]: and what actually happens in the individual moment is absolute truth if that makes
[Unknown9]: sense
[Unknown10]: hm
[Unknown9]: i don't know if that you know that's a good explanation of that but this idea that
[Unknown9]: there is common knowledge that we push together in store and then sometimes people
[Unknown9]: are able individually to break through to something new something that is deeper
[Unknown9]: into truth but generally we have to exist with like like cultural wisdom if that
[Unknown10]: mmm
[Unknown9]: makes sense right
[Unknown10]: yeah
[Unknown9]: and his example of course is in ethics with abraham right like
[Unknown10]: right yeah
[Unknown9]: we don't want to revisit every generation whether it's okay to kill or sacrifice
[Unknown9]: your kids you know that's like the kind of thing we just generally accept you know
[Unknown9]: yeah um
[Unknown9]: you know there's a lot of things we just kind of accept is like okay we're not
[Unknown9]: going to
[Unknown10]: its
[Unknown9]: discuss this but his point was that for abraham because he was talking to god now
[Unknown9]: you know all of this is very controversial from t guard's point of view but i
[Unknown9]: think the whole point stands that let's say if abraham actually was talking to god
[Unknown9]: and god told him to do that then it was the right thing to do
[Unknown10]: i you
[Unknown9]: right we can we can argue about whether abraham really heard god but that idea
[Unknown9]: that when you do have a connection to what is really true and i think that's what
[Unknown9]: happens with for instance
[Unknown9]: going back to kepler kepler's like wait if i if i make it not circles it makes so
[Unknown9]: much more sense even though everyone else looked at him like he was crazy he was
[Unknown9]: able to kind of break through in this paradigm shifting moment
[Unknown10]: hm
[Unknown9]: i liked i loved it you know i just got to see very getting you're like honestly he
[Unknown9]: wasn't a very good scientist he just came you know what i mean he just cave across
[Unknown9]: this right and he's like oh that just makes more sense and
[Unknown10]: yeah
[Unknown9]: so what's interesting about that is that you don't even have to be
[Unknown9]: a genius to find the paradigm breaking moment to find the the individual touching
[Unknown9]: on the absolute it's just when you happen to come across it so
[Unknown10]: yeah
[Unknown9]: is that i mean that's me coming from my kind of
[Unknown9]: humanity hermetic background
[Unknown10]: yeah
[Unknown9]: but does that is that tracking
[Unknown10]: yeah i think i think the key there is the idea of some kind of common knowledge
[Unknown10]: right
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: that
[Unknown10]: scientific knowledge is kind of like common knowledge for scientists
[Unknown9]: yes
[Unknown10]: you know it's it's what everybody knows it's a kind of thing that could appear in
[Unknown10]: a text book
[Unknown9]: right
[Unknown10]: right and you just in your lab
[Unknown10]: you know doing an experiment and coming to conclusion
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: it's not it's not
[Unknown10]: fit for
[Unknown10]: a text book yet okay
[Unknown9]: right right
[Unknown10]: maybe someday it will be um
[Unknown9]: yes
[Unknown10]: but that will depend on you know the community's appraisal
[Unknown9]: yes
[Unknown10]: and
[Unknown10]: the you know without that community
[Unknown10]: um
[Unknown10]: the idea of a textbook just doesn't even make sense
[Unknown9]: right and i
[Unknown10]: right
[Unknown9]: think the important thing here is that text books can be wrong
[Unknown9]: but you can't you can't work without textbooks like you have
[Unknown10]: right
[Unknown9]: to have a base knowledge that everyone agrees on and then even it's like with
[Unknown9]: artists like you have to start with the rules and then break them right
[Unknown10]: exactly yep that's a very very good analogy um
[Unknown10]: you yeah it's the the what's in the text book it's not about being right it's
[Unknown10]: about being what every the ideas that the community in general appeals to to
[Unknown9]: hm
[Unknown10]: do science
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: you know there's not i mean you know look at how many textbooks
[Unknown10]: have
[Unknown10]: you know are based on newtonian mechanics right
[Unknown10]: newtonian mechanics is super useful
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: and it's a great way to introduce people
[Unknown10]: into the style of physical reasoning
[Unknown10]: um
[Unknown10]: but
[Unknown9]: what's that what's that quote every model is wrong but some are useful something
[Unknown10]: yeah yeah
[Unknown9]: like that yes yeah
[Unknown9]: like that yes yeah
[Unknown10]: right um
[Unknown10]: so you know we don't look to textbooks for as the you know repositories of
[Unknown10]: absolute truth we look to them as the
[Unknown10]: the kind of manuals that will help us learn how to do science in
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: this community
[Unknown9]: that gives us the ability to make decisions right and to make decisions well
[Unknown10]: mm hm
[Unknown9]: you know even for the lay person you know the
[Unknown9]: they might be wrong about some things in your biology textbook but you're
[Unknown9]: generally going to be better off going with what you learn your biology textbook
[Unknown9]: than just what as a twelve year old you know
[Unknown10]: yeah
[Unknown9]: you're just like this is what i've experienced yeah
[Unknown10]: and more more importantly you'll be able to communicate with other biologists
[Unknown9]: yes
[Unknown10]: about science
[Unknown9]: yes yeah
[Unknown10]: right
[Unknown10]: so you know i think like is is is the stuff in the biology textbook more likely
[Unknown10]: to be correct than you know what you come up with in a dream
[Unknown10]: i mean
[Unknown10]: maybe probably i hope so
[Unknown9]: i would hope so yeah yeah
[Unknown10]: but but the you know
[Unknown10]: what
[Unknown9]: so
[Unknown10]: the role that it's playing is to
[Unknown10]: help you di you know acquire the language that biologists use to communicate with
[Unknown10]: one another about nature
[Unknown9]: well and i just want to put out because i laughed at it and then i thought about
[Unknown9]: it like we laughed at at the dream thing right like i hope you like the bio the
[Unknown9]: biology textbook is better but the truth is that like thousand years ago like most
[Unknown9]: people would have taken their dream over over a text book
[Unknown10]: yeah you probably would have he probably would have been just fine uh
[Unknown10]: you know
[Unknown9]: well that's true the textbooks weren't very good so the but this this accumulation
[Unknown9]: is incredibly valuable
[Unknown10]: yes exactly and and it's
[Unknown10]: so you know i think that was coon's you know really really fundamental
[Unknown10]: contribution which
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: was to show that
[Unknown10]: the di the growth of scientific knowledge
[Unknown10]: requires
[Unknown10]: this kind of community
[Unknown9]: hm
[Unknown10]: a community that um kind of proceeds from a common
[Unknown10]: platform of you know shared
[Unknown10]: understanding and it doesn't have even be explicit or like articulated beliefs
[Unknown10]: about nature right i mean a lot of it is just stuff you absorb
[Unknown10]: at you know as part of your training as a scientist you're in the same way that
[Unknown10]: um you and i uh i mean i'm not from new england i'm from the midwest but you know
[Unknown10]: we have a very um
[Unknown10]: precise sense of how far we're supposed to be standing from somebody when we talk
[Unknown10]: to them
[Unknown9]: yes
[Unknown10]: you know and i didn't get that sense from like you know using a measuring tape
[Unknown10]: and somebody's sitting me down and saying now look when you stand by you know to
[Unknown10]: talk to somebody you got to stand this far away from them right you just acquire
[Unknown10]: it as part as being part of the culture and but you will it's you acquire a very
[Unknown10]: very acute sensitivity right to
[Unknown10]: the when this space has been breached
[Unknown9]: yes
[Unknown10]: you know uh and i think this is this is how kon envisioned most of
[Unknown10]: the training of a scientist was to
[Unknown10]: get them you know
[Unknown10]: inculturate them into
[Unknown10]: the community of scientists by
[Unknown10]: imparting to them in in one you know via one channel or another
[Unknown10]: the capacities for communicating with other scientists for
[Unknown9]: hm
[Unknown10]: you know an intuitive sense of how to kind of categorize nature or you know
[Unknown10]: divide up nature
[Unknown10]: an acute sense of when something is not
[Unknown10]: going the way it's supposed to be going
[Unknown9]: right because we don't always make conscious decisions about those things the the
[Unknown9]: corollary to what you're talking about like in the west we have very clear like
[Unknown9]: physical you know this is my personal space
[Unknown10]: yeah
[Unknown9]: and then i remember my friend went over and taught english in china and
[Unknown10]: okay
[Unknown9]: like getting in line is a very different like you have to be
[Unknown10]: yes
[Unknown9]: touching in order to be considered in line
[Unknown10]: ah okay
[Unknown9]: like like literally like your body
[Unknown10]: who
[Unknown9]: has to be touching the person in front of you and that's like it like they like if
[Unknown9]: you're three feet behind somebody like people will come and get in front of you
[Unknown9]: like he had like two people get in between
[Unknown10]: oh my god
[Unknown9]: until they were touching right like he
[Unknown10]: wow
[Unknown9]: learned he like so and that's but that kind of stuff ends up affecting science
[Unknown9]: right it might not be personal space though i could see how that could show up in
[Unknown9]: certain things but there are other assumptions like that that that are going to
[Unknown9]: influence how you set up experiments for example
[Unknown10]: exactly right yeah just you know
[Unknown9]: and how people respond to them sorry good
[Unknown10]: yeah you just yeah i mean no that's exactly right you just have you know you
[Unknown10]: develop a feel for a lot of stuff and so much of doing
[Unknown10]: science in a community
[Unknown9]: i don't
[Unknown10]: develop involves having a shared feeling for you know when an experiment is going
[Unknown10]: right or you know what direction all the research is pointing to
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: and you know all these things that you
[Unknown9]: that
[Unknown10]: can't really articulate but you know in a in a different form
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: you know
[Unknown10]: and
[Unknown10]: and so yeah i mean i i think that this is where i got really interested in
[Unknown10]: trying to
[Unknown10]: understand
[Unknown10]: uh or to kind of model
[Unknown10]: the scientific communities as
[Unknown10]: uh you know evolutionary entities right
[Unknown9]: yes
[Unknown10]: like a population of organisms that
[Unknown9]: hm
[Unknown10]: evolves and adapts and
[Unknown10]: sometimes splits into
[Unknown10]: you know separate populations and what sorts of pressures drive that and that
[Unknown10]: sort of thing right so i mean i just i you know because most of my
[Unknown10]: most of my time up until uh my reading of coon had been spent studying you know
[Unknown10]: the philosophy of evolutionary
[Unknown10]: biology you know evolutionary theory
[Unknown10]: and the kind of you know related disciplines population genetics and
[Unknown10]: evolutionary developmental biology and that sort of thing and you know it was
[Unknown10]: just kind of i started to see
[Unknown10]: the a as many people before me have
[Unknown10]: you know the very including coon himself very strong parallels between
[Unknown10]: the process
[Unknown10]: by which
[Unknown10]: communities generate scientific ideas and kind of move forward
[Unknown10]: in their understanding of nature
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: and on the other hand the way in which populations of organisms
[Unknown10]: respond
[Unknown10]: and adapt to their environment and undergo their own kind of evolutionary change
[Unknown9]: yeah what would you say is the most surprising thing because often as you're
[Unknown9]: working through the stuff something will come up that you realize it's true but it
[Unknown9]: surprises you was there anything like that you were like wow i hadn't thought
[Unknown9]: about that conclusion or kind of that
[Unknown9]: application of what what i was studying
[Unknown10]: yeah for sure um i mean the thing that surprised me most was this idea that
[Unknown10]: the phenomenon coun describes as a scientific revolution right a paradigm change
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: can be
[Unknown10]: under you know has many many parallels with the
[Unknown10]: phenomenon known as mass extinction in evolutionary biology
[Unknown10]: you know it
[Unknown10]: so much so that so that you know uh
[Unknown10]: coon describes
[Unknown10]: scientific revolutions as crises in the history of science
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: at exactly the same time
[Unknown9]: gotcha
[Unknown10]: you know in the sixty seconds paleontologists described mass extinctions as
[Unknown10]: crises in the history of life
[Unknown9]: got it
[Unknown10]: right they both
[Unknown10]: talk about you know different rules for success right that these transitions
[Unknown10]: involve transitions in the rules of what counts as success you know what
[Unknown10]: determines success
[Unknown10]: um
[Unknown10]: and uh yeah just i mean a whole whole load of
[Unknown10]: surprising points of contact between these two
[Unknown9]: right so if you look at it from that evolutionary standpoint
[Unknown9]: you know if you go like the media hypothesis it hits everything is like
[Unknown9]: the idea of what it takes to survive all of a sudden rap like rapidly shifts
[Unknown10]: yeah good exactly yeah
[Unknown9]: right that's and and then of course in a scientific revolution you have like your
[Unknown9]: criteria and standards for why like this is proven right and so when you have this
[Unknown9]: revolution
[Unknown9]: and when the paradigm changes the the body of knowledge changes and becomes
[Unknown9]: displaced the everyone's scrambling to find okay what does it mean to prove
[Unknown9]: something now
[Unknown10]: yes exactly
[Unknown9]: and so and i'm sure there is so you know there's a lot of animals that die in a
[Unknown9]: media event and there's a lot of maybe careers that die you
[Unknown9]: that you're like oh i do not understand this new world that i'm existing in
[Unknown10]: hm
[Unknown9]: you know it's interesting to see and i'm sure you've seen this where um certain
[Unknown9]: thinkers are very prominent during a certain time period and then all of a sudden
[Unknown9]: they just they're just gone they're not interesting anymore yeah and i think is
[Unknown9]: that kind of what we're talking about here like everyone's like oh actually we
[Unknown9]: don't like that like that doesn't work
[Unknown10]: yeah i mean sure that can happen you know once the the
[Unknown10]: the rules for what good sciences change
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: yeah people can be left behind right if they i mean you know coon talks about
[Unknown10]: this a lot of people look at this even max plunk
[Unknown10]: described uh a phenomenon whereby
[Unknown10]: you know a new theory is only able to gain hold once
[Unknown10]: the adherents of the old theory are all dead right
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: because it requires such a radical shift
[Unknown9]: hm
[Unknown10]: in perspective that you know people that are kind of reared in the earlier
[Unknown10]: perspective
[Unknown10]: often aren't able to get on board
[Unknown9]: hm
[Unknown10]: coons about this a little bit too but yeah i mean
[Unknown10]: you hear this a lot um
[Unknown10]: uh from scientists just about you know kind of
[Unknown10]: more senior scientists
[Unknown10]: not
[Unknown10]: not always
[Unknown10]: um
[Unknown10]: s you know abandoning what looks to be
[Unknown10]: a degenerating
[Unknown9]: hm
[Unknown10]: research program
[Unknown9]: y do you think there's a little bit of sunk cost
[Unknown10]: christmas
[Unknown9]: faa there where they're like i've put so much of my career into this that i just
[Unknown9]: need to stick with it
[Unknown10]: yeah i mean
[Unknown10]: i think there is
[Unknown10]: i think there you know for many people there are sunk costs but i wouldn't
[Unknown10]: necessarily call it a fallacy i mean the the thing is that if you've spent your
[Unknown10]: entire career
[Unknown10]: working within a particular perspective you've honed your
[Unknown10]: use of that perspective so
[Unknown10]: effectively that
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: you probably are better off
[Unknown10]: just sticking in it
[Unknown9]: that makes sense yeah yeah so not not a fallacy yeah no
[Unknown10]: yeah
[Unknown9]: it's a great correction yeah i mean that's not fair like to ask someone at like
[Unknown9]: fifty or sixty to like completely
[Unknown9]: jettison and create an entire new apparatus for doing what they do um
[Unknown9]: yeah would i mean i'm sure some people have done it but that's that that's quite
[Unknown9]: the undertaking at that point
[Unknown10]: yeah it's not for everybody and um you know it may be that the science that you
[Unknown10]: produce
[Unknown10]: from you know with the older tools is actually better than what you would have
[Unknown10]: produced with the the newer tools
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: um you know i think i mean i in in so many ways i think kind of you know
[Unknown10]: scientific ideas are much more like
[Unknown10]: bits of technology that we kind of keep in our minds right rather than beliefs
[Unknown9]: he
[Unknown10]: about nature per se and
[Unknown10]: you know there may be some fancy new technology available
[Unknown10]: but because i'm such an expert with you know the older you know more primitive
[Unknown10]: tools
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: i may be able to do the job and you know just as well
[Unknown10]: in a shorter amount of time um
[Unknown9]: got it
[Unknown10]: even without the the new fancy technology
[Unknown9]: so feel free to reject this question because it might be too broad
[Unknown10]: sure
[Unknown9]: i've gotten some of this from and it was a while ago but
[Unknown9]: the way that the word science has morphed over time can you give a layman
[Unknown9]: a better grasp of what science even is
[Unknown9]: in terms of in in terms of how you think about it and articulate it
[Unknown10]: uh yeah i think
[Unknown10]: science is the
[Unknown10]: production the investigation of nature
[Unknown10]: in communities right
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: they communally organized investigation of nature
[Unknown9]: got it
[Unknown10]: beyond that
[Unknown10]: i don't think there's a very stable uh
[Unknown10]: you know any anything that i
[Unknown10]: anything more specific is likely to be
[Unknown10]: you know it'd change over time
[Unknown9]: right
[Unknown10]: because
[Unknown10]: ideas are changing styles are changing you know i mean you take something like
[Unknown10]: hypothesis testing
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: you know i mean two hundred years ago
[Unknown10]: you know full modern science is is fully in motion
[Unknown10]: testing using hypotheses was was a widely distrusted
[Unknown10]: viewed as not really real science i mean darwin criticized
[Unknown10]: from all sides for you know because he was using the method of hypotheses
[Unknown10]: you know in his book origin of species
[Unknown9]: huh
[Unknown10]: right
[Unknown10]: and that's just not good science from that pers you know the perspective of that
[Unknown10]: time
[Unknown10]: you know nowadays science involves a lot of statistical testing
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: you know that wasn't true a hundred years agogo
[Unknown9]: hm
[Unknown10]: we still had
[Unknown10]: fully modern
[Unknown10]: scientific investigation
[Unknown9]: yes
[Unknown10]: so you know it it evolves in its in its
[Unknown9]: mm hm
[Unknown10]: content
[Unknown10]: but you know i think at at its core kind of like a higher level is this
[Unknown10]: you know communally organized
[Unknown10]: investigation of nature
[Unknown9]: yeah yeah and i think that's really solid it fits a lot with what you've been
[Unknown9]: saying so far so one of the things as i'm looking at the description of your book
[Unknown9]: because i couldn't get it yet right it's you know coming out in november but the
[Unknown9]: talk to me about this tension between historical contingency and forgive me but if
[Unknown9]: you
[Unknown10]: yeah
[Unknown9]: can give a definition of that that tension between historical contingency and the
[Unknown9]: trustworthiness of science right you said we should still trust science even if it
[Unknown9]: is historically contingent which coming from like my studies in godam makes total
[Unknown9]: sense to me but like in our in our culture like people are like but but it's
[Unknown9]: always changing how we know and it's like well i mean i'll leave it up to you
[Unknown10]: yeah yeah no i mean that's a serious problem um
[Unknown10]: you know i think that so by historical contingency i i i sort of mean
[Unknown10]: look we have certain you know our science today has
[Unknown10]: a certain content to it right maybe
[Unknown9]: then
[Unknown10]: you know in physics we believe in quantum mechanics and einstein and stuff like
[Unknown10]: that and darwinian theory in biology and
[Unknown10]: atomic theory of chemistry
[Unknown10]: now
[Unknown10]: suppose history had gone uh radically differently right
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: from i don't know
[Unknown10]: the seventeenth century on
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: um
[Unknown10]: you know or or you know even more recently
[Unknown10]: we we probably still would have had
[Unknown10]: we still would have developed some systematic investigation of nature i mean we
[Unknown10]: had it in other um domains i mean astronomy is
[Unknown10]: is kind of a modern science from from a long long time ago
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: for example right
[Unknown10]: so you know we could expect it to still have developed you know the kind of
[Unknown10]: systematic communally organized investigation of nature that we have
[Unknown10]: but it's likely that our theories would have been very different
[Unknown9]: hm
[Unknown10]: right the specific views we have about nature would have been very different
[Unknown10]: and when you realize that
[Unknown10]: i mean i stand by that comment i think every historian of science would
[Unknown10]: when you realize that
[Unknown10]: uh you you can't help but look at
[Unknown10]: the implications for you know what we actually do believe about nature
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: well if i you know if i had i would have believed something totally different and
[Unknown10]: i would have believed that that is true
[Unknown10]: i currently believe that these ideas are true so
[Unknown10]: what
[Unknown10]: like is my belief in the truth of the idea really tracking if i still would have
[Unknown10]: believed the idea was true had it been totally different
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: and if
[Unknown10]: that's the case
[Unknown10]: it's really hard to
[Unknown10]: come up with
[Unknown10]: um
[Unknown10]: you know a reason to trust science
[Unknown10]: that appeals to the truth of scientific theories
[Unknown9]: h
[Unknown10]: right because
[Unknown10]: the theories
[Unknown10]: i mean what reason is there to think that they're true if we would have believed
[Unknown10]: they were true had they been totally different
[Unknown10]: right
[Unknown9]: right
[Unknown10]: you know and it doesn't you don't it doesn't have to be we don't have to imagine
[Unknown10]: alternative history you know at every point
[Unknown10]: in in you know the history of modern science we've had certain understanding of
[Unknown10]: nature
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: and we've abandoned it
[Unknown9]: see
[Unknown10]: in favor of something better
[Unknown10]: right and we will continue to do that
[Unknown10]: right we will abandon what we have now when something
[Unknown10]: we
[Unknown10]: have better more faith in comes along
[Unknown9]: yeah it seems like there's an underlying idea of like progress here that it's like
[Unknown9]: like a gradual accumulation versus kind of these lightning vaults and then
[Unknown9]: complete moments if that makes sense
[Unknown10]: i don't know if there's that kind of progress in terms of
[Unknown10]: getting closer to you know the ultimate truth about nature i think it would be
[Unknown10]: very hard
[Unknown10]: to show that that was happening
[Unknown9]: uh yeah and let me let me correct that even like
[Unknown9]: the way that i said that i could see how that could be construed the i mean even
[Unknown9]: my point like the pursuit of big questions right
[Unknown9]: even like the use of like chasing the vith and the point is you can never catch
[Unknown9]: leviathan you can only pursue it right
[Unknown10]: yeah okay
[Unknown9]: so like i yeah like we can't we i would completely agree that unless you're like
[Unknown9]: some kind of omniscient being you can't ever fully know everything all at once
[Unknown9]: cause you'd have like it would your brain would explode right so i'm not talking
[Unknown9]: about i'm not talking about like ultimate truth but what we have
[Unknown9]: not always but often is better than what we had before right like our
[Unknown10]: yeah
[Unknown9]: understanding of that's what i'm talking about in terms of progress not not kind
[Unknown9]: of this ultimate synthesis that will get to you know where hegel's very self
[Unknown9]: congratulatory right
[Unknown10]: yeah we we
[Unknown10]: we
[Unknown10]: at any given time we are more satisfied with what we what we have than what we
[Unknown10]: used to have
[Unknown9]: right right
[Unknown10]: um
[Unknown10]: you know
[Unknown10]: i think that
[Unknown10]: you know if you in in certain ways you can
[Unknown10]: you can be more specific you can point to specific forms of progress right so
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: you know our theories are more accurate
[Unknown10]: than they used to be
[Unknown10]: we our theories encompass a broader range of phenomena um than they used to
[Unknown10]: those to me seem like
[Unknown10]: you know uncontroversial forms of progress
[Unknown9]: right
[Unknown10]: epistemic progress you know progress
[Unknown9]: yep
[Unknown10]: in terms of knowledge i mean you know do they amount to some form of social
[Unknown10]: progress no not always
[Unknown9]: no
[Unknown10]: right i mean
[Unknown10]: sometimes you know that we've gone i think backwards socially culturally because
[Unknown10]: the you know some theories are more accurate
[Unknown10]: you know there's no
[Unknown9]: i mean aren't we all glad that uh russia finally said you know what we're not
[Unknown9]: gonna use nukes right like that's like
[Unknown10]: yes
[Unknown9]: like th that's good news yes
[Unknown10]: that's that's quite a relief yeah
[Unknown10]: yeah
[Unknown10]: you know so
[Unknown10]: i'm not talking about progress in some cosmic sense
[Unknown9]: yes yes
[Unknown10]: i'm just talking about it in terms of if you
[Unknown10]: you know look along a specific
[Unknown10]: d dimension of value accuracy or
[Unknown10]: b scope right
[Unknown9]: yes
[Unknown10]: or
[Unknown10]: depth of understanding or something like that right and you
[Unknown9]: yeah predictions are statistically more accurate that kind of thing
[Unknown10]: yeah right so you can you can certainly point to cases where um
[Unknown10]: we are we do better than we used to right
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: we're more accurate and so on
[Unknown10]: uh where where was this going i i i'm trying to remember how this came up oh the
[Unknown10]: contingency stuff yeah
[Unknown9]: yes yes uh that tension between uh
[Unknown9]: like this idea of like we okay we are along certain axes right um i like the word
[Unknown9]: satisfied it's like cause you know like terms like good or better can be very
[Unknown9]: controversial right like is it necessarily better i don't know but i'm satisfied
[Unknown9]: that this is better
[Unknown10]: yeah right right
[Unknown9]: than it was before right um
[Unknown9]: there is a little bit of a crisis in terms of faith in the scientific community
[Unknown9]: you know maybe crisis is too strong of a term but there is that tension right now
[Unknown9]: and you know your book kind of speaks to that and so that's kind of where i think
[Unknown9]: we are headed
[Unknown10]: yeah okay right so you know
[Unknown10]: uh
[Unknown10]: we
[Unknown10]: the content of the ideas is probably you know highly historically contingent but
[Unknown10]: the nature of the scientific communities the way in which they're organized
[Unknown10]: sometimes right
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: not every community but
[Unknown10]: when they're organized in the right way
[Unknown10]: progress in the sense of increased accuracy and scope
[Unknown10]: is basically inevitable right
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: so we
[Unknown10]: we would have had a you know had things been different we would have had a very
[Unknown10]: different theory of of kind of
[Unknown10]: the unobservable you know bits of nature would that theory have been
[Unknown10]: as accurate as the theory we have now um i don't see why it wouldn't have been
[Unknown9]: yes
[Unknown10]: um i mean you know it maybe uh you know things didn't go well for us maybe we
[Unknown10]: didn't develop as inaccurate as a theory as we have maybe it would have been more
[Unknown10]: accurate right
[Unknown9]: ripe
[Unknown10]: you know but it we would we would still see this steady increase in accuracy
[Unknown10]: steady increase
[Unknown10]: in the scope of
[Unknown10]: what we are able to investigate and kind of improve our knowledge of and this is
[Unknown10]: another
[Unknown10]: nice parallel with the evolutionary process right
[Unknown10]: it is something that
[Unknown10]: lots of um evolutionary biologist got into starting in the the kind of one
[Unknown10]: thousand nine hundred seventies and eighties
[Unknown10]: just that if you rewound the tape of life right this is a phrase that stephen jay
[Unknown10]: gould
[Unknown10]: used
[Unknown10]: you would have gotten very different
[Unknown10]: species than we actually got right i mean depending on how far back you go you
[Unknown10]: know it's it's just a matter of chance whether mammals appear or you know whether
[Unknown10]: dinosaurs appear or anything like that right
[Unknown10]: so that
[Unknown10]: that's all very highly contingent historically but what would not have changed
[Unknown10]: right is that these
[Unknown10]: uh organisms would have become better adapted over time
[Unknown10]: um they would have
[Unknown10]: fissured into separate species over time right these populations would have
[Unknown10]: split up into to new species over time
[Unknown10]: that's just sort of baked into
[Unknown10]: the evolutionary process
[Unknown10]: at a higher level
[Unknown10]: you know and it doesn't really depend on what it is that's evolving subject to
[Unknown10]: certain conditions right so you need to have some kind of inheritance
[Unknown10]: you know the kind of inheritance that we have is you know this is kind of like
[Unknown10]: packets of biological information
[Unknown9]: dna right right
[Unknown10]: yeah yeah maybe that's necessary for adaptation that
[Unknown9]: so
[Unknown9]: so from the knowledge side that'd be something like
[Unknown9]: would be something like books or archives that sort of thing right like you can't
[Unknown9]: you have to have some way of transmitting what is constantly being worked on
[Unknown10]: yeah right journals you know scientific right some training scientists i mean
[Unknown9]: right
[Unknown10]: there are many many channels of inheritance
[Unknown10]: cultural kind of inheritance right
[Unknown9]: sure yeah
[Unknown10]: and right so uh
[Unknown10]: as long as certain conditions are satisfied you still get evolutionary adaptation
[Unknown10]: you still get speciation
[Unknown10]: and for analogous reasons you get
[Unknown10]: more accurate theories about you know a greater number of phenomena
[Unknown9]: got it
[Unknown10]: in science right they have to you know as long as you the scientific communities
[Unknown10]: satisfy these
[Unknown10]: certain you know constraints
[Unknown10]: constraints that that are necessary in order to kind of be susceptible to the
[Unknown10]: evolutionary process
[Unknown10]: or the process of selection anyway
[Unknown9]: yeah yeah it seems so
[Unknown10]: school
[Unknown9]: for you do you see this primarily as a model to help us better understand the
[Unknown9]: growth of
[Unknown9]: or is there actual some kind of correlation where you think there is an
[Unknown9]: evolutionary like a real evolutionary process just slightly different mechanisms
[Unknown9]: with with the growth of knowledge
[Unknown10]: i guess i would say both i mean i ha i
[Unknown9]: gotcha
[Unknown10]: have a hard time unsee
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: science as an evolutionary phenomenon now
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: uh
[Unknown10]: so it yeah it's a model but it's a it's a surprisingly
[Unknown10]: kind of illuminating and explanatory model of science
[Unknown9]: science is evolving so then from yeah
[Unknown10]: yeah it's i you know i think in
[Unknown10]: to put it in in very little role terms
[Unknown10]: science is a you know certain communities of scientists um
[Unknown10]: behave like
[Unknown10]: any other human culture
[Unknown10]: and they evolve
[Unknown10]: subject to the kinds of pressures that
[Unknown10]: that you know push cultures in general
[Unknown9]: hm
[Unknown10]: along an evolutionary trajectory
[Unknown9]: so when you eat out
[Unknown10]: so it's a kind of cultural evolution
[Unknown9]: which goes back to your work in evolutionary psychology because it's not just
[Unknown9]: about scientists and their communities it's about human culture in general has
[Unknown9]: these evolutionary tendencies
[Unknown10]: mm
[Unknown10]: i hope it doesn't go to my work in evolutionary psy
[Unknown9]: okay sorry no
[Unknown10]: i
[Unknown10]: um
[Unknown9]: i was trying to track but i appears i did not okay
[Unknown10]: well it's you know i it's more about
[Unknown10]: kind of the i guess you'd you'd call
[Unknown10]: the demographic properties
[Unknown9]: i'm just talking
[Unknown10]: of science rather than their
[Unknown10]: the psychological properties of scientists you know so
[Unknown10]: scientific communities for example are very good at kind of isolating themselves
[Unknown10]: from or certain communities anyway are very good at isolating themselves from
[Unknown10]: things that don't matter to their subject
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: you know um when i'm
[Unknown10]: when i'm working out some problem in quantum mechanics i'm not going to really be
[Unknown10]: worrying about what is being debated in the united states senate except you know
[Unknown10]: maybe it affects my funding or whatever but
[Unknown9]: right
[Unknown10]: in terms of like trying to solve the problem that i'm working on i'm not going to
[Unknown10]: let that come in in any way right um
[Unknown9]: yeah the and the worrying about your funding is uh
[Unknown9]: a great example of evolutionary like adaptability
[Unknown10]: yeah
[Unknown9]: yeah like adapting to survive right
[Unknown10]: yes exactly yeah survival of the the funnest um
[Unknown9]: exactly
[Unknown10]: and yeah so you know they have it's the communities that have properties
[Unknown9]: got it
[Unknown10]: that matter rather than the individual scientists themselves
[Unknown9]: the psychology yes i
[Unknown10]: yeah
[Unknown9]: understand why that's problematic yeah that makes them make sense
[Unknown10]: right and just in the same way that for populations of organisms right
[Unknown9]: hm
[Unknown10]: they don't need to behave in a certain way in order to be subject to adaptation
[Unknown10]: right the process of natural selection
[Unknown10]: does that independently of how they behave
[Unknown10]: of of
[Unknown9]: gotcha
[Unknown10]: how the individuals behave right it just kind of filters out
[Unknown10]: um things that are less fit for the environment
[Unknown9]: got it yeah
[Unknown9]: um so as we as we wrap up here what are some applications that someone can take
[Unknown9]: away from this what's something that someone looks at this and if you had
[Unknown10]: gosh
[Unknown9]: to leave people with like a main thought what would that be
[Unknown10]: hm
[Unknown10]: that
[Unknown10]: certain scientific communities are more trustworthy than others
[Unknown9]: here
[Unknown10]: um
[Unknown10]: because
[Unknown10]: they're the properties they kind of community level properties
[Unknown10]: are better at producing reliable knowledge
[Unknown9]: do you mind listing what some of those characteristics are or is that is that
[Unknown9]: sting on too many toes
[Unknown10]: no i don't mind
[Unknown10]: i'm just trying to think of how to
[Unknown9]: sure
[Unknown10]: express this in a
[Unknown10]: diplomatic way
[Unknown9]: i was like i was like because i'm pretty sure there were are some definite people
[Unknown9]: that will come to mind when you save us so
[Unknown10]: was
[Unknown9]: yeah i get it yeah take your time
[Unknown10]: hm
[Unknown10]: i think i would just refer people to the book
[Unknown9]: yes
[Unknown10]: rather than
[Unknown9]: that's fine yep
[Unknown10]: because it's kind of a long argument and
[Unknown10]: it's not something i could package i feel like i i apologize um
[Unknown9]: no no no
[Unknown10]: but yeah
[Unknown9]: worries yeah yeah well and i understand cause like
[Unknown9]: you don't want to
[Unknown9]: on the fly call people out like you want to carefully think through you know when
[Unknown9]: you mention something people are going to take that and apply to certain
[Unknown9]: communities you know obviously the one about inheritance the one about obviously
[Unknown9]: you can measure by the results of accuracy and scope you've mentioned those but
[Unknown9]: those are pretty non controversial like obviously if a community continually
[Unknown9]: reproduces
[Unknown10]: it's
[Unknown9]: inaccurate findings like
[Unknown10]: and
[Unknown9]: people are like yeah obviously you don't trust them
[Unknown10]: uhuh
[Unknown9]: right like that's that's kind of an obvious one but i understand that
[Unknown9]: you know that's fine we can wait till november so that makes sense
[Unknown10]: i mean yeah i i could i could say you know a couple general things just about
[Unknown9]: sure
[Unknown10]: you know kind of trustworthiness and you know i mean i
[Unknown9]: what
[Unknown10]: think like if you look at you know so much of the confusion that has happened
[Unknown10]: around covid you know
[Unknown9]: he
[Unknown10]: i think
[Unknown10]: one of the things that i hope people will understand is that um
[Unknown10]: we are very rarely
[Unknown10]: given a glimpse into
[Unknown10]: scientific knowledge developing like day you know on a daily
[Unknown9]: yes
[Unknown10]: schedule um and
[Unknown10]: i wish that we had
[Unknown10]: in our culture
[Unknown10]: a more realistic model for
[Unknown10]: what science is actually like
[Unknown10]: i
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: think that
[Unknown10]: our this kind of caricature that we promulgate in the form of the scientific
[Unknown10]: method
[Unknown10]: which leaves no room for human judgment which leaves mentions nothing about the
[Unknown10]: community level vetting process of scientific ideas
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: has
[Unknown10]: made it very difficult for people to see how science actually works in real time
[Unknown10]: and not be horrified by what they see because it doesn't look anything like the
[Unknown10]: pat
[Unknown10]: you know method that we've um
[Unknown10]: raised our children with understanding
[Unknown10]: is what science is all about
[Unknown9]: that process from lab to textbook generally takes i would say one to three decades
[Unknown9]: maybe longer
[Unknown10]: it take it you know depends on the science and
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: in the it's the shelf life of the content of a textbook
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: also depends on the science right
[Unknown9]: right
[Unknown10]: i mean in the st you know in microbiology you know the the textbooks may not you
[Unknown10]: know five years later you know we might have a completely different picture
[Unknown9]: that's true too i've heard that yeah
[Unknown10]: um
[Unknown10]: so you know it's just
[Unknown10]: the scientific community needs to be able to do its work
[Unknown9]: hey
[Unknown10]: and
[Unknown10]: and
[Unknown10]: close up to the uninitiated
[Unknown9]: he
[Unknown10]: observer that work looks like a complete mess um
[Unknown10]: but it's a community level process
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: and that is what makes good science so good
[Unknown10]: right is that the community is a well functioning scientific community
[Unknown10]: and well functioning
[Unknown9]: yes
[Unknown10]: scientific communities tend to all have certain properties
[Unknown10]: certain community level properties
[Unknown9]: yeah
[Unknown10]: you know
[Unknown9]: awesome uh dr hafa thank you so much for joining me today this has been really
[Unknown9]: awesome uh dr hafa thank you so much for joining me today this has been really
[Unknown9]: helpful in illuminating
[Unknown9]: helpful in illuminating
[Unknown9]: so thank you
[Unknown10]: oh my pleasure thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk this is really fun
[Unknown9]: awesome