Tuesday, July 03, 2012

CERN ABOUT TO ANNOUNCE RESULTS IN SEARCH FOR HIGGS BOSON - THE MODERN NATURE OF SCIENCE - RELIGION AND SCIENCE TODAY - WORLD SCIENCE CULTURE - NOTE ON EINSTEIN


POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

This is real news, stuff that changes understanding of the universe and our ability to do things with the understanding.

Not the sad stuff that fills most of the columns and broadcasts, leaks and rumors and propaganda of various sorts to benefit the interests generating them.

What an admirable effort by the scientists.

What is especially interesting is the standard towards which they work: it involves levels of probability.

The big question is whether the CERN analysis to be announced yields five-sigma (0.0003%) certainty or just four sigma (0.005%). Five sigma is the gold standard, and it means there is only a 0.0003% chance that the finding is not real.

Most scientists, and people, would say that an event that has only a 0.0005% probability of being not real is indeed real. But the physicists have set a standard above that, giving themselves a huge analytical task.

Five sigma is a very high standard of certainty, but even at that, no statement can be made in the sense of certainty as most people use it.

The universe is stochastic in nature. There are no certainties and no "laws" as traditionally understood. Only probabilities.

To the person citing Einstein's, "Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind," all I can say is that the quote is the great mind at its worst. Even genius makes mistakes, sometimes very big mistakes.

Einstein, one of the most admirable people of the 20th century in many ways, also made a mistake when he spoke of God not playing with dice, rejecting early quantum mechanics.

But in fact, we understand now that quantum mechanics is a very accurate way of describing how things work.
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There is apparently a genetic tendency in people's minds towards credulity and superstition and belief in gods.

That is the root of all religion.

And when I say religion, I include such secular religions as communism or American super-patriotism - anything, in short, which is embraced as an ultimate cause or purpose or explanation.

Science cannot compete with this genetic tendency, in part because it cannot make statements with the kind of absolute certainty that people seem to crave.

But not everyone has that genetic tendency, just as a minor portion of people are endowed with left-handedness.

Neither of these divisions of humanity can likely ever convince the other of their point of view: it is much like expecting right-handed people to become left-handed.

But as science progresses, the apparent likihood of the religious explanation of things becomes more and more remote.

It is that implicit threat which always brings out the more tyrannous-minded of the religious camp to bellow and castigate and even threaten.

We should remember that for the first time in human history we have a world-wide culture of science: tens of thousands of very clever people are highly trained and equipped with equipment as never before and they work regularly towards understanding how things actually work. It is a process that perhaps will never end.

They will never speak with the same certainties as the religious-minded because they know the universe is stochastic in nature, but, bit by bit, they will astound us with their findings and ability to mimic nature's ways.

The whole phenomenon of movements like the Religious Right are at least in part a fearful reaction against this reality, but it is very interesting that all the phony old pitchmen of fundamentalism bellowing against science still like their cars and televisions and plane travel.