Knowledge: The Sciences: Not What We Believe but What We Really Know

By Robin Oxman

Once upon a time life was simpler. Information came to us through gossip, books, newspapers, the radio and newsreels at the movies. Then came television. Initially the first news shows were only 15 minutes in length but gradually expanded until now we have CNN with its 24-hour coverage. But none of this was going to compare to the master of all information inundation - the Internet. Information overload, once confined to the few, is now the headache of the many. Surely not all this information carries equal weight. Some, if not most, is out-right nonsense. How do we discern between accurate information and facts that are not? By detailing how science is a process, a method of obtaining truth, this book hopes to arm the reader with tools with which to apply intelligent thinking, thinking that is critical, skeptical and evidenced based.

Once you know why microwave radiation cannot induce cancer you become impervious to the fears of cell phone use. Once you understand the laws of probability you are better equipped to decide whether or not it is prudent to buy that lottery ticket or, better yet, which games at Vegas give you the best chance of winning and which you should avoid as the plague.

Yes, you can get your arms around Einstein's Theory of Relativity, Quantum Physics and the newest advances in neuroscience - the study of the brain, of consciousness, of awareness - the study of you. No, you do not need math and formulas.

Science can even answer those riddles from childhood:

1. What came first, the chicken or the egg?

2. If a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound?

3. Is it night that follows day or day that follows night?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 4, 2001
• ISBN: 9781469109947

Robin Oxman

Robin Oxman is a retired physician, having spent thirty-eight years as a specialist in Internal Medicine. Trained in the life sciences, it was not long before his interest in them expanded into physics, evolutionary biology and history, as he became aware of the interconnections between these disciplines and his lifelong study of the healing arts. As religion is a criterion that separates the human species from those of the other mammals, it soon captured the focus of his attention. Over two years of studying this phenomenon in the light of the physical and life sciences inevitably lead to his recognition that the basic premises of religion are false. That recognition birthed this book.

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Copyright © 2001 by Robin Oxman.

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Contents

FOREWORD

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

PROBABILITY

PHYSICS

Big Bang

Einstein

Atoms

Quantum Physics

Solar System

Asteroids

Extraterrestrials

THE STORY OF LIFE

Life and Death

Evolution

Earliest Life

Dinosaurs

The Road to Humankind

The Brain

Language

Chimps & Other Primates

Other Smart Animals

Animal Potpourri

Plant Potpourri

Genetics

Human Potpourri

Extinction

NOT SCIENCE

GLOSSARY

To those who put the truth ahead of the myths

no matter how comforting those myths may be.

A VERY SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENT

TO A VERY SPECIAL 9 YEAR OLD 4TH GRADER LAUREN ALYSSA STOWELL WITHOUT WHOSE SUGGESTION THIS BOOK WOULD NOT HAVE HAD A GLOSSARY

FOREWORD

"Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here?

We are staggeringly complex electrochemical machines. There is no ghost in the machine, no soul that exists independently of the body, and therefore no self that will survive the body’s disintegration. Our bodies, minds, and consciousness evolved over hundreds of millions of the years from primitive organisms, on a planet that formed from a gassy nebula about 4.5 billion years ago near a star that is just one of a trillion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way is typical of tens of billions of visible galaxies that probably had their beginning 10 to 15 billion years ago in a cataclysmic explosion from a seed of infinite energy.There appears to be nothing central or special about who, what, or where we are in the universe of galaxies. We are contingent throwoffs of organic evolution, at least in the details. We are here to make copies of our genes, and thereby ensure the continuance of our species after the deaths of ourselves."—Chet Raymo.

Acceptance of this scenario, based on overwhelming scientific evidence, requires both humility and courage.

The wonder of science is the wonder that fragile, self-replicating specks of matter, trapped on a tiny planet for a few dozen orbits about an undistinguished star among countless other stars in one of billions of galaxies, have managed to figure all this out.—Robert L. Park

Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.—J.B.S.Haldane.

Science comes from the Latin word for to know, not to believe. Purveyors of theism, mythology, the paranormal, alien visitation and abduction, bogus cures and therapies and New Age nonsense are quick to point out that conventional science does not have all the answers. True, but what they fail to mention is that all the answers we do have come from science; from them, none.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Science—the industry responsible for manufacturing new knowledge.

The only difference between genius and stupidity is that genius is limited—unknown.

We will always know less than there is to know.

What is Science? Science means, sometimes, a special method of finding things out. Sometimes it means the body of knowledge arising from the things found out. It may also mean the new things you can do when you have found something out, or the actual doing of new things. This last field is usually called technology.—Richard Feynman

Happy is the man that findeth wisdom and the man that getteth understanding—Proverbs 3:13

The word Skeptic comes from the Greek thoughtful.

The journey of discovery has neither a destination nor an end.

What is so special about Science? It has been more successful than any other intellectual enterprise in explaining the world in which we live.

Science is the lamp that lights up the darkness of the unknown.

The first rule of Science—Do not believe easily.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Do not believe because you want to; Believe because you have to.

We know so much—we know so little.

The beauty of science is that it gives us a method in which we may all believe and which leads to the common acceptance of truths.

Unlike any other world view, science attempts to devise a coherent and objective system of explanations of the natural world. It deliberately attempts to combat the natural human tendency to believe what feels comfortable, and does so by testing scientific theories against facts. Unlike religions, whose emphasis is on faith, it represents a fairly genuine and honest attempt to avoid bias and prejudice.—Cohen and Stewart.

A theory is a proposed explanation for an observed and/or measured event (or events), the use of which allows for the prediction of future events. It is acceptable only for as long as it predicts accurately. The moment it fails to do so, even once, requires it be modified or set aside, provided, of course, it was applied properly. A hypothesis is a working guess which, when supported by enough evidence, becomes a theory.

Laws of nature are not rigid rules that nature just obeys but are, in reality, excellent descriptions of what nature does.

Technology does not improve communication; it merely speeds it up.

Though we can measure the universe, we can never truly comprehend its size.

The sciences are the spectacles that allow us to see most clearly the wonders of our world.

The more we learn, the more we recognize we do not know. Knowledge increases our view of our ignorance.

Progress advances in steps, not leaps, though at times it steps more lively.

It is so easy to prove a lie to be a lie and so difficult to prove the truth to be true.

We can experience only what was and never what is or will be until it becomes what was. Often what was, was so recent, we fool ourselves into thinking it is what is.

What hard evidence do you have that you really exist and are not merely a manifestation of your own imagination?

Astronomers are more likely to find intelligent life out there than we are to find it back here.

The bottom line goal of all the sciences is either to predict the future or repair the present. Understanding is merely a tool towards these ends.

Science can answer Who, What, When, Where and How but never Why. Why implies purpose and in all likelihood there is none, and if there were, who would we ask? Why belongs to theological fantasy.

Only the dreamers and innovators advance mankind. There is no progress in the real world.

Nothing is absolute and nothing entirely random.

Truth is not as important as utility.

My inability to explain a phenomenon does not add credibility to your explanation.

No one believes in a beginning. Whenever someone proffers a concept of a beginning, religious or scientific, someone will always ask, "what came before that?

Do we experience reality or merely our perception of it? And if only our perception then what is the real world, is there one and can we ever know it?

Societies that believe they have all the answers or believe they have all the answers they need do not engage in scientific exploration.

Just because we believe all things to be explicable does not imply we are the ones who will be able to explain them.

The direction of scientific research is dictated by the society in which it takes place.

Wisdom is composed of two elements; knowledge and knowing how to use it.

What will be, is the child of what was and what is, and, as with all children, it is unique though similar to its parents.

Man’s ability to know is restricted by his limited senses and the technology that expands them.

Man’s intellectual progress is like a staircase. Without yesterday’s step there would be none today.

Since faith is belief without evidence, it has no place in science and since faith is the bulwark of theism, neither does religion.

The whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. The proof rests in the fact that you cannot totally characterize the whole by the examination and characteristics of its parts.

Scientific fact is not determined by the democratic process.

Remember always the injunction to seek simplicity and to distrust it.—Alfred North Whitehead

Superstition and science serve the same function. They attempt to satisfy our curiosity about the universe in which we live.

There is never a reason to fear a technology and always a fear regarding how men will use it.

We are so intolerant of the gaps in our knowledge that we fill them with superstitious nonsense. There they remain until replaced by scientific fact.

While nothing may be impossible, many things may be infinitely unlikely.

The phrase anything is possible is too often used to defend nonsense.

Experience a realistic dream and you will never again believe that you can always separate the real from the unreal.

How real is your reality if it can be severely altered merely by altering your ability to perceive it?

Any interest in science is soon coupled with a wish that you had been born later.

Order is a concept imposed by man’s intellect on what is. It has no independent reality.

There is no reality. There are only perceptions. What we refer to as reality are actually commonly perceived perceptions. The rest we call opinions.

There is no certainty, only probability.

The results of scientific exploration are neither good nor bad; they are amoral or neutral. What gives them morality is the way humans apply them. These applications then result in judgments of the discovery instead of the applicators.

The difficulty lay not in finding the answer, but in knowing how to pose the question.

There may be only one reality but we will never know it. We will have only our perception of it and even this may not be shared.

Sometimes it is reason and logic that need to be changed.

The value of science is that it tells the truth and it works.

In science there is no place for personal incredulity. Beware of explanations that center upon it is hard to understand, it is not easy to understand, it is equally difficult to explain, I do not find it easy to comprehend, I find it hard to understand, I cannot see how, or It is impossible for. These prefaces should be translated into I personally, off the top of my head sitting in my study, never having visited the area, never having seen the object in question, and having been educated in fields other than that which pertain, have not so far managed to think of a reason why the event occurs. It is called the argument from ignorance.

Truth being stranger than fiction, it is more exciting to contemplate how things are than how they could have been. Is this not the basis of science?

Science asks the questions, then seeks the answers. Faith has the answer and asks no more questions.

Solely because one can theorize that it can happen, does not mean that it did, does or will.

Science demystifies and this demystification is seen as a desecration by the faithful.

The possibility that there could be, bears no relationship to there is or there will be.

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.—Carl Sagan

Philosophy without science is fiction.

For the researcher the excitement is more in the finding than in what is found.

The grander the scale the less any one thing within it much matters.

Yahoos never rest.

Science has done much to reduce our cosmic self-importance. Astronomy has defined our home as a small planet tucked away in one corner of an average galaxy among millions of galaxies. Biology has taken away our status as paragons created in the image of God. Geology gave us the immensity of time and how little of it we have occupied.

Because science is funded by society, scientists tend to behave in a conservative way by providing objectivity for what society at large wants to hear. Society will fund only those areas of interest to it and to scientists of the same bent.

No science, no progress.

Tradition is the enemy of science.

Complexity is merely multiple simplicities. The word simplicity derives from an ancient Indo-European expression meaning fold once while complexity comes from an expression in the same language meaning braided together.

Science is a human activity motivated by hope, cultural prejudice and the pursuit of glory yet stumbling in its erratic path toward a better understanding of nature—Stephen J.Gould.

It takes but one nasty ugly fact to destroy an exquisitely beautiful theory—Thomas Henry Huxley.

Pointing out what we do not know is no argument against what we do know.

Scientific progress is always at the expense of theology and philosophy. Theologies and philosophies that are too rigid (dogmatic) to adapt are subsequently relegated to historic curiosities.

False facts are more dangerous than false views.

As a young man I believed the experts.

In middle age, I questioned them.

In my senior years I came to realize they do not exist.

Science does not uncover God’s mechanisms. It uncovers his limitations.

Knowing what something is not is helpful in discovering what it is.

Imagination is more important than knowledge—Albert Einstein.

In science, the shortest life span is that of state of the art.

The difference between magic and science is understanding.

William of Ockham in the 14th century said, It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer. This is the basis of Ockham’s Razor which, in essence, says that given more than one theory to explain an event or events choose the simpler one. And No more things should be presumed to exist than are absolutely necessary.

Every great scientific truth goes through 3 stages. First, people say it conflicts with the bible. Next they say it has been discovered before. Lastly they say they always believed it.—Louis Agassiz.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end with doubt; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.—Francis Bacon.

It has been said that Art and Music feed the soul while science feeds the mind. Not so. Science too feeds the soul but it order to reach it, must pass through the mind.

While the philosopher is wondering, the scientist is discovering.

Do not be surprised if today’s truth, that accurately displaces an older truth, itself gets displaced tomorrow.

Happiness goes like the wind, but what is interesting stays.—Georgia O’Keeffe.

As a house cannot stand without a firm foundation, so reason and logic collapse in the absence of observation and fact.

Today’s common sense is the result of yesterday’s science.—Neils Bohr.

I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.—J.B.S.Haldane.

The end of man is knowledge but there is one thing he cannot know. He cannot know if knowledge will save him or kill him.—Robert Pen Warren.

All new thought is the direct result of the reshuffling and varying of old thought, often sprinkled with a heavy dose of new observation.

While observing Ben Franklin conducting experiments with electricity, for which no foreseeable use could then be imagined, a friend asked, what good is it?. What good is a newborn baby?, replied Franklin.

In the chain of thought, assumption is the weakest link.

Common sense and faith are not friends of science.

Given enough time, anything is possible. Lands are remade, beasts become men, and the men become strangers to their fathers.—William Brandon.

The results or findings of scientific observation are immutable.

It is the interpretation of these observations that is subject to change over time and that gives the false impression that truth is variable.

The subjugation of evidence that is contrary to accepted beliefs is, unfortunately, not a rare event in the progress of science.—Christopher McGowan.

Physics is not about how the world is, it is about what we can say about the world.—Neils Bohr.

There does not exist any science that is not motivated by seeking the answers to one or more of the following questions:

1.  Where did it all come from?

2.  Where is it all going?

3.  How did we get here?

The more the Universe seem comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless—physicist Steven Weinberg.

So easy it seemed once found, which yet unfound most would have thought impossible.—John Milton.

Science is nothing else than the search to discover unity in the wild variety of nature.—Jacob Bronowski.

Science (the search for truth) thrives on anomaly, inconsistency controversy and doubt. Certainty kills it.—Hans Christian von Baeyer.

The senses are bad witnesses—Heraclitus.

The art of reasoning is nothing more than a language well arranged.—unknown.

I don’t mind your thinking slowly. I mind your publishing faster than you think.—Wolfgang Pauli.

Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. Each generation that discovers something from its experience must pass that on, but it must pass that on with a delicate balance of respect and disrespect, so that the race does not inflict its errors too rigidly on its youth, but it does pass on the accumulated wisdom plus the wisdom that it may not be wisdom.—Richard Feynman.

Charlatans usually make the claim that their revealed truth is being suppressed by the ensconced establishment, intent on preserving the status quo with all its rights and privileges. Science is not about status quo. It is about revolution—Leon Lederman.

Conventional thought can be much narrower than the capabilities of nature.—Stephen J.Gould.

In the end, we will conserve only what we love, love only what we understand, and understand only what we are taught.—Baba Dioum.

The more you simplify a complexity in order to understand it, the greater will be the error in your understanding.

A scientific Law is a statement of relation or sequence of phenomena that is invariable under the same conditions.

A Theorem is a mathematical law.

Science is an infinite regression—behind each answer lurks a question and behind that, another.—Hans Christian Von Baeyer.

I am not so interested in how many questions you can answer, as I am in getting you to worry over them. Jearl Walker.

Both science and religion attempt to show order in an otherwise chaotic existence. Science does it by uncovering any order that there actually may be while religion accomplishes the same end by imposing order that we wish was there.

When the news arrived that there would be a second great flood submerging all that is now known as land, the faithful prayed for deliverance while the scientists set about learning how to breathe under water. Therein lies the difference between faith and science.

There is no such thing as permanent.

Common things are common and rare things rare. When you hear hoof beats think of horses, not Zebras. And if you look up and see a Zebra, be sure you are not looking at a horse through a venetian blind.

No matter how good it sounds do not believe it until you have seen the evidence.

Philosophers have had such a poor record over the past 2000 years that they would do better to show a certain modesty rather than the lofty superiority that they usually display.—Francis Crick.

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; That no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought or feeling, can preserve a life beyond the grave; That all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system; And the whole temple of man’s achievements must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins. All these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy that rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation be safely built.—Bertrand Russell.

Being open-minded does not require you to consider concepts for which there is no evidence.

If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn’t.—Lyall Watson

The answers we get depend on the questions we ask.

Cycle of discovery, premature assumption of finality, disillusion and renewed endeavor is very characteristic of the scientific life—Sir Cyril Hinshelwood.

Basic research is what I am doing when I don’t know what I am doing.—Werner Von Braun.

It is never what you believe; only what you can prove.

Its possibility says nothing about its probability and even less of its reality.

On the train of progress, doubt is the engine and faith the brakes.

To prove that common sense is worthless consider this:

If all A’s are B’s and some B’s are C’s then does it necessarily follow that some A’s are C’s?

The common sense answer is yes. The true answer is no. To understand the correct answer make the following substitutions:

A—Men, B—Human, C—women

The evolution of both life forms and technology is quite the same. Both are initiated by changes in function (desired or required) that result in changes in form, driven by natural selection (Survival of the fittest).

Invention begins not so much in need as in want—Henry Petroski.

Nature is not cruel, just practical.

Why is thought—being a secretion of the brain—more wonderful than gravity, a property of matter? It is our arrogance, our admiration of ourselves.—Darwin.

I asked a question, devised some method for getting an answer, and got a fresh question.—From the Island of Dr.Moreau by H.G.Wells.

Asked what God was doing before he created the Universe St.Augustine responded, He was creating hell for people who ask such questions.

Given enough time, if it can happen it will happen.

Progress in science is usually made by dropping assumptions—David Bohm.

He who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.—Samuel Smiles.

No position is so absurd that a philosopher cannot be found to argue for it—Michael Lockwood.

Science discovers and technology creates (based on what science discovers)

Give credit to those who first discovered it but make no mistake, without them there would have been others.

You cannot get the right answer without asking the right question. Consider this: You come across a green car in your driveway. Do you ask, Why is this car green? or What is a green car doing here?

Whenever we say we have solved some problem by intuition, all we are saying is that we do not know how we solved it.

When studying a scientific problem we must consider not only what does happen but what might have happened. When asking why does this particular behavior occur, we are also asking why all the remaining possibilities did not. You cannot explain why pigs do not have wings without thinking about what would happen if they did—Ian Stewart Nothing is the miracle it appears to be—Simon Stevin.

The art of numbering is the basis of all sciences, and the art of combining letters the memory of all things—Aeschylus.

Through doubt we are led to inquiry; through inquiry we reach the truth.—Peter Abelard.

When religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now that science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic. Thomas Szasz.

While the non-specialists know less and less about more and more, the specialists know more and more about less and less (until finally knowing everything about nothing).

If we allow fundamentalists to teach creation science in our public schools, will they allow us to teach evolutionary science in their private schools?

People evaluate evidence concerning an established belief in such a way as to maintain its perceived validity, and are more likely to discredit methodology than their own beliefsMichael S Gazzaniga.

The brain exists in order to provide an internal representation of reality. Quotation marks are employed here in deference to the fact that no creature, including ourselves, can ever know any other reality than the representations made by his brain. These representations, in turn, depend upon the brain’s organization, which differs from one creature to another, and, in our own species, from one person to another—Richard Restak

Scientists believe only what they see while theists see only what they believe.

The laws of nature are perfect for they require no law enforcement, as they cannot be broken.

We study the evolution of human uniqueness and not the uniqueness of human evolution.

Men will not be content to manufacture life: they will want to improve on it.—John Bernal

The only meaning of life worth caring about is one than can withstand our best efforts to examine it.—Daniel Dennet

Concepts without precepts are empty, whereas precepts without concepts are blind.—Immanuel Kant

All observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service—Charles Darwin.

It was Sigmund Freud who noticed that the most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.—Stephen J.Gould.

Religion has all the answers and is finished. Science has all the questions and will never be finished.

Unfailingly, humans pity their ancestors for being so ignorant and forget that their descendants will pity them for the same reason—Edward R.Harrison.

Anything that thinks can build, anything that builds can destroy.—Charles Pellegrino.

The first thing that must be asked about future man, is whether he will be alive, and will know how to keep alive, and not whether it is a good thing that he should be alive.—Charles Darwin.

It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you have it—Edmund Teale.

No one can predict the future—nonsense. Science predicts the future repeatedly, often and with a 99+% accuracy. An example: Astronomers can tell you when you may see the next solar eclipse, where on earth you should be standing, what time to be there, whether it will be partial or total and can predict it to the minute a thousand or more years in advance. What other doctrine comes this close?

Keep an open mind but not so open that your brains fall out—James Oberg.

Why fund basic research that appears to have no practical application? Because:

1.  Maxwell was not thinking of radio, radar and television when he studied electromagnetism.

2.  Newton was not thinking of space exploration or communication satellites when he studied the motion of the moon.

3.  Roentgen was not contemplating medical diagnoses when he investigated a penetrating radiation so mysterious he called it X-rays.

4.  Curie was not thinking of cancer therapy when she studied radium.

5.  Fleming was not planning to save millions of lives and create the antibiotic era when he studied the effects of a growth of mold soon to be called penicillin.

1.  Watson and Crick did not think of curing genetic diseases when they studied an unusual protein called DNA.

2.  Rowlands and Molina were not planning to implicate CFC’s in ozone depletion when they began studying the role of halogens in stratospheric photochemistry.

That is why. All of this basic, fundamental, apparently useless knowledge arising from scientific curiosity is a primary requirement for the development of those things that make our lives longer and better. Without it, they would not exist.

It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble. It’s the things we know that just ain’t so—Artemus Ward.

All superstition is much the same in that the deluded believers observe events which are fulfilled, but neglect or pass over their failure, though it be much more common.—Francis Bacon

This tendency to be more impressed by what has happened than by what has failed to happen and the temptation to draw conclusions from what has occurred under present circumstances without comparing it to what would have happened under alternative circumstances is the basis for the continued belief in the superstition.

The real purpose of the scientific method is to make sure nature hasn’t misled you into thinking you know something you actually don’t know—R.Pirsig.

There is no such thing in evolution as an intermediate species as evolution does not know what is going to happen next, and is not even thinking about it, then by definition each species is exactly as it should be at any given time. It is not going anywhere.—Ron Caird

Facts seldom interfere with belief —James Randi

Throughout history man has been admonished against learning too much; has been warned against the dangers of knowledge. In the Bible’s story of the fall there is a warning about learning more than is good for you. Pandora was told not to open the box that Zeus had given her but she did and out flew a swarm of evil spirits, all the ills that forever would torment the human race. Oedipus was warned by Tiresias against inquiring too deeply into his origins but he did and suffered terrible consequences.

There is an accepted axiom that we should never enrich ourselves by demeaning others, yet that is exactly what we do in all our relationships with the animal kingdom.

Because there are so many more ways of being wrong than being right it will always be easier to find evidence against something than for something and therein lies the power of science, for scientific truths, in order to exist, must be able to withstand the