James Hrynyshyn is a freelance science journalist based in western North Carolina, where he tries to put degrees in marine biology and journalism to good use.
There's an essay in the latest issue of Science & Spirit on the history and value of doubt called "Redeeming Saint Thomas." It carries my byline and I'm quite proud of it. Science & Spirit is a curious and evolving publication that explores "things that matter."
If that's not reason enough to buy a copy, the cover package of this issue is a series of pieces on stem cells research by veteran science writer Rick Weiss and Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology, among others. Which makes it quite timely, considering what's going on in the halls of Congress at the moment. Other writers include cosmologist extraordinaire Paul Davies and humorist P.J. O'Rourke.
Here's the opening to my essay:
In the beginning was doubt. Nobody assumed anything, and nothing was taken for granted.Side note: Some of the more hard-core atheist types point out that the magazine's original funding cames from the Templeton Foundation, which is primarily concerned with trying to bridge the gap between science and faith. I'm one of those that thinks such missions are a waste of time, but in any event, the Templeton gang sold the magazine in 2001, after just two years, to the Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation, and I'm not sure that the TF is still giving it any support now at all. Regardless, it's pages are filled with good science stories, critical reviews and lots of atheist/skeptic bylines. Like mine.That's not the way things really began, of course. Instead, we've never really given doubt a chance. We live in something resembling a sea of certainty, one that champions absolute truth, rewards those with the strength of their convictions, and dismisses anyone who dares challenge the dogma of the day. Perhaps I exaggerate. Still, it's difficult to overestimate the power of doubt to rescue us from our baser instincts and more egregious excesses.
Comments
The climate change example shows a problem with how the word "doubt" is commonly used. In science, doubt causes you to retest a result. When a politician says that he doubts that climate change is real, it means something else altogether.
In the following, a key word is used with more than one meaning, getting a nonsense result:
Nothing is better than complete happiness.
A ham sandwitch is better than nothing.
Therefore, a ham sandwitch is better than complete happiness.
Which is one of the common ways we get so much nonsense.
Posted by: Stephen | April 12, 2007 2:26 PM
Sorry you misunderstood the essential thesis of the essay. Allow to summarize: absolute certainty is a bad.
Posted by: James Hrynyshyn | April 13, 2007 6:20 AM