Some thoughts about post-modernism and science

I've been thinking a lot about post-modernism and its influence in the sciences lately. In ways, it's almost paradoxical. Here we have science, which really started developing quickly into its current form as a result of the Enlightenment and its emphasis on observation and reason. This way of thinking was refined over time and led to positivism which claims that we can't know anything except by our own experience - and particularly that all of our experience is derived from sense-perception. This develops in two different ways: First, it acted as a forerunner to post-modernism because of its claim that all we can know is what we sense-perceive. This is very individualistic, and meshes well with post-modern ideas of individuality plurality, and even relativism since what you experience (sense-perceive) is different from what I experience (sense-perceive) and how can anyone say that one set of experiences is better than another? Sense-perception is inherently individual and inherently neutral. Second, the focus on sense-perception as the only way to know anything was paralleled by work in mathematics which was trying to ground itself on a specific and small number of basic axioms. Could such a set of axioms be defined? Could these axioms be facts of the world that were sense-perceivable, or did they have to be divorced from the material world and simply posited? Kurt Gödel's work showed that a totally consistent and complete system of mathematics could not exist, and that we therefore had to live with the fact that we couldn't know all things by reason alone. [This is very messy exposition, I know, but...] This also played a role in the development of post-modernism. It's no longer ok to work from a given set of assumptions (e.g. F=ma, or conservation of mass, or...), because there may be truths out there for the finding, but not with your particular set of basic axioms/assumptions. So the need for creativity and a multitude of perspectives is emphasized. This is perhaps most easily seen in the humanities and social sciences, or even in current American politics. It forms a part of the argument for quotas in college admissions and in immigration; it is in the rationale behind bipartisanship in Congress (even if it doesn't get carried out in practice); it is in the notion that a book is to be judged by what it means to individual readers; it is in the conception of all religions as equally containing some but never all Truth.

And in science? It seems to me that the emphasis on creativity in the sciences is sometimes overblown. Is creativity important for good scientific work? I think it is. But where does that creativity come from? What role does it actually play in research? One hundred years ago and more people talked about creativity somewhat as though it were simply luck - with statements such as "fortune favors the prepared mind" (Pasteur) and "genius is 1% inspiration and 99% persperation" (Edison). True, these things were said before post-modernism came onto the scene. But sometimes I get worried about the current state and future of science when I hear things like "the point of science is to challenge authority". This sort of statement has been made recently in regard to claims that the Holocaust wasn't so bad, or it was the Jews' fault, or that 9-11 was the Jew's fault, or it was a U.S. conspiracy, or other crazy stuff like that. This argument isn't made in the hard sciences so much, but an analogue to it is very common although usually not explicit. There's "something in the air" that makes young researchers (like me) feel that they have to say something provocative just for the sake of being provocative. (Actually, the claim that scientists need to do provocative research *is* very common and even rather explicit, at least in some fields - and it does make sense to some degree, insofar as it helps to get attention and funding, but it also commonly goes beyond that to being provocative for the sake of being provocative.) There's almost an unspoken law that scientists need to focus on coming up with crazy and provocative ideas and that the rest will then follow. This is played out in a variety of ways, but one way in which it is played out is when the scientist says "I've come up with this radical new theory that accounts for all (or a lot) of the data". Nevermind that the fundamental premises may or may not be hard to swallow (and that is sometimes the point of being provocative), but we often stop after stating the theory and do very little high quality real research to shore up or dismantle the theory. And why not? All of the money and all of the glamour is in the provocative theory itself. There's no glory in the steady stream of technical papers published in less flashy journals, no matter how solid the research actually is.

And here's the paradox... The development of science played an important role in the development of post-modernism, but post-modernism in large part undermines the foundations of science.

So what's going to happen to science? How do we in the sciences (or academia more generally) go about doing excellent science? How will this whole conflict play out over the next 50 years (when people in my generation, who I think are arguably among the first true post-moderns - at least in the sense that I've been thinking about it - will be "taking over" responsibility and leadership from the previous generation(s) of scientists? And what is the role of engineering in all of this? If I might make a prediction, I'd say that the engineering-research schools (MIT, CalTech, etc.) are going to become increasingly prominent, as will engineering-research departments in all schools. Because solving engineering problems is practically-oriented, it must be focused on the rigorous, solid research that will lend itself to developing real applications. No engineer wants to challenge authority unless he has to - it's enough to let Newton remain a major authority figure. I think this also connects with the major developments of funding and research in the biomedical world - it is extremely practically-oriented stuff.

Ok, this is a *way* long enough entry. Some thoughts....some more clearly organized and expressed than others....but some thoughts, all the same.