How Galileo Broke the Scientific Method

Comments · 1.6K

• PA

  @packman2321 · 1 year ago

  I studied Gallileo back in my Philosophy and Theology undergrad, and I remember saying to people that they miss a lot of the political history going on around it. Not only was Gallileo proposing a theory that would fundamentally collapse the laws of motion at the time (implying that the then accepted laws of physics applied to all objects except the Earth) but he was doing it very aggressively at a point in time where the Catholic Church was trying to performatively express its unification (having supported a protestant ruler in a war, I belive under the previous Pope). Gallileo was a very aggressive argumenter, who got personal dispensation from the Pope to publish his work on the grounds that it remain neutral and then proceeded to publish the book without submitting it to censors, in Italian (so clearly aimed at the general population) and putting the argument the Pope had asked him to include in the mouth of a character named &apos;the idiot&apos;.<br>I always argue that the Gallileo affair is more profitably read as an expression of the personal conflicts and current politics of Italy at the time, and maybe we should read our science as the same, with large disparities in focus arising from the grant funding and corporate funding model, very clear biases in things like climate research and firearm studies, and others emerging from personal conflict. Like, maybe Flat Earth is prompted in part by the constant circulation of conspiracy narratives and individualist fiction that presents one common man up against corrupt experts. The audience is already primed to believe this, so when they fall down a confirmation rabbit hole it&apos;s easy to pick up the idea that you&apos;ve &apos;found the Matrix&apos; or so on.

  148

• CW

  @cwestrephx · 1 year ago

  As someone who failed out of a reasonably high-level physics program, I can never say enough about how eye-opening your work can be. It seems so obvious now having both my own retrospective re-evaluation and your explanation, but it still feels somewhat like a fish coming to understand they exist in a medium, and that medium is water. There was so much of the system I was learning in that I was chafing against, but didn&apos;t know enough about at the time to properly identify parts of my struggles.

  146

• MI

  @milliescient · 1 year ago (edited)

  As a postdoc I worked on a very high profile controversey in evolutionary biology concerning whether the earliest animals were sponges or ctenophores (comb jellies). For years, I defended the classical sponge hypothesis using extremely sophisticated statistical methods and huge amounts of whole genome molecular data to show that the newer, splashier ctenophore hypothesis was just an elaborate illusion. The ctenophore claims were simply not supported by the best available evidence at the time. Eventually, I left academia partly because I had become disillusioned by the politics of what felt like an impact measuring contest between factions of a white male boys club. Years later, I disidentified with that whole part of my life and eventually came out as a trans woman. Then, only a few months later, a paper dropped in Nature confirming the ctenophore hypothesis using overwhelmingly convincing, novel methods. Reading that paper felt like a psychedelic experience, witnessing the arc of my identity and the comb jellies converge. Like the authors, I allowed myself to imagine a life outside of my critical rationalist worldview, and we both followed an anarchic trajectory to what ultimately turned out to be the truth. I think it’s a fitting epilogue to a period of my life where so much of my entire understanding of myself turned out to be a lie. It’s actually pretty funny, realizing everything you know is wrong. There’s no better closure than to see it validated quantitatively in the most prestigious scientific journal in the world 😂

  817

• 10

  @103cubobo · 1 year ago

  I’m a relatively early career psychotherapist and thinking through psychological theories and modalities has really changed the way I think about the scientific method. A lot of the practices we think of as “evidence based” (like CBT) are largely that way because they are easy to test in highly rigorous and manualized settings. They really do work in those settings and can be very helpful for a lot of people, but the drive to only use “evidence based practices” sucks all the air out of the room. A lot of very effective treatments that rely heavily on the relationship between therapist and client or are informed by historical practice can just be really hard to test, but they are often what the client needs. At the same time, there is a lot of woo-woo in the field and it can be easy to fall into thinking something useless is actually working if you don’t have some sort of standard of evidence. Anyway, I have no answers to any of this but it felt related.

  144

• CR

  @crouching_tiger · 1 year ago

  I dont know if this is appreciated enough but your choice of music in these videos is absolutely magnificent

  733

• AL

  @aldynuswhabiology · 1 year ago

  i found this video very enlightening regarding my own strict and suffocating view of science. i grew up very religious and rejecting some parts of science and the method due to my own lack of understanding as well as the forced dogma around me, but as i grow up i learned about the importance of identity and the fact that self confidence is crucial. now as a 22 year old high school biology teacher, i guess it&apos;s time to show that confidence just as you present your ideas and thoughts. thank you sincerely, your contribution to science communication is highly needed in today&apos;s world

  51

• DR

  @DroppedBass · 1 year ago

  I think the biggest inaccuracy in the popular view of Galileo as a scientist is the belief that heliocentrism was his main contribution. His true contribution to science was Galilean relativity, not his arguments for heliocentrism, which, as you point out, were flawed. Moreover, from an instrumental standpoint, Galilean relativity demonstrated that the question “What is the center of the universe?” isn’t even meaningful in scientific terms, placing both geocentrism and heliocentrism in the category of ideas that are &quot;not even wrong.&quot;

  234

• DA

  @davidshi451 · 1 year ago

  Reminds me of the (artificial) demarcation between &quot;hard&quot; sciences like physics and &quot;soft&quot; social sciences. But as statistician Kareem Carr puts it: &quot;Using Physics as your template for how science works makes you stupid about science. Physics is a weird little science with a very simplistic causal structure. It’s fundamental laws are universal. They operate always and everywhere. No other science is like that.&quot;

  54

• VE

  @Vermn8tr · 1 year ago

  I love how every line CJ The X read was increasingly seeped with CJ The X personality.

  322

• DI

  @DivaGrind · 1 year ago

  I love this video because it reminds me of some of the qualities of the best scientists I met from Grad School: All of them were interested in knowledge outside of the realm of not just their specific scientific fiefdom but science itself.

  61

• AL

  @alanlu8625 · 1 year ago

  Discussion prompt: <br><br>Just finished a double bachelor&apos;s in math and physics after a decade hiatus following a mental health episode. I wanted to be a scientist but didn&apos;t get into a program this year. Maybe next year...<br><br>I&apos;ve noticed many of my professors when describing theory (especially quantum theory) would spend time trying to impart feelings and intuitions, like this potential curve makes sense because &quot;fermions don&apos;t like each other, while bosons want to get together and party.&quot; In the computations class there are so many different ways of shaping a call to e.g. fit a curve or optimize a parameter, some of which produce different results which may straddle the line of a phenomenon even being observed. In experiments you&apos;re constantly using complicated machines to make measurements, and then essentially you have to trust that the machines are doing what you think they&apos;re doing, assuming you even understood what they&apos;re supposed to do. Then, when you have reams of data to process, that the software you&apos;re using to process it is written correctly, that you&apos;re using it right, that the lens thru which you&apos;re viewing the data (i.e. theory) is valid for your experiments...<br><br>Science is built on the labor of so many people and a huge network of trust. That&apos;s a leap of faith which is practically unavoidable if we&apos;re to reach new frontiers. We&apos;re going out on a limb with the help of countless collaborators and making squishy decisions at every turn because there&apos;s no way we get everything airtight, not when we&apos;re constantly stretching time, energy, and resource budgets. Heck, we have a whole codified approach to ad-hoc parameters like eta because some theories are just currently intractable to work with directly (phenomenology, not the philosophy jargon though). It&apos;s like &quot;okay this seems possible under a quantum field theory and it works pretty good for the data we got but i have no idea how to get to it from first principals.&quot;<br><br>Anyway, science is a messy bitch, but so am i

  73

• TS

  @tsmosca · 1 year ago

  Thank you for another brilliant essay making the case for epistemic humility. In my opinion, widespread failure to cultivate this virtue — or even to recognize it as a virtue — has contributed to the dark times we live in, and portends even greater darkness ahead. <br><br>I can’t express — can barely contain — my gratitude that you’ve undertaken this work. And that you do it with such clarity, grace, and wit, such precision of thought and expression, makes you, in my opinion at least, a national living treasure. I hope that many, many people agree and help to spread your words and your light.

  44