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partially disagree with this, every proto-science historically had a bunch of wrong but highly sophisticated theories. medicine, alchemy (as mentioned in the ar

partially disagree with this, every proto-science historically had a bunch of wrong but highly sophisticated theories. medicine, alchemy (as mentioned in the article), physics, biology (Aristotle), astronomy. for some reason it seems you need the wrong theories to organize the empirical data. I actually think Freud’s elaborate mental structures have some of this feeling to them.

godelski 2y ago
> for some reason it seems you need the wrong theories to organize the empirical data There's a somewhat well known article on this by Isaac Asimov: the Relativity of Wrong The scientific process is really misunderstood. People think you use it to find truth, but actually you use it to reject falsehoods. The consequence of this is that you narrow in on the truth so your goals look identical, but the distinction does matter (at least if you want to understand why that happens and why it's okay that science is wrong many times -- in fact, it's always wrong, but it gets less wrong (I'm certain there's a connection to that website and this well known saying). He's well known for his Sci-Fi but he got a PhD in chemistry, taught himself astrophysics, and even published in the area. He even had written physics texts. I found Understanding Physics quite enjoyable when I was younger but yeah, it isn't the same level of complexity I saw while getting my degree, but it's not aimed at University students. Anyways, I'm just saying, he's speaking as an insider and I do think this is something a lot more people should read. https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html I believe there's a copy of Understanding Physics here but currently offline: https://archive.org/details/asimov-understanding-physics https://archive.org/details/asimov-understanding-physics
- currymj 2y ago
  i think that astronomy/physics/gravitation is actually a pretty weird case in the history of science and most things don’t go that cleanly. better examples might be medicine, where people just bounced around from one insane wrong theoretical system to another (humors to “empiricism” to bad air to Paracelsus to Avicenna and round and round and round). but somehow progress happened anyway. actual steady scientific progress only took off in the 19th century. or chemistry, where alchemical theories were also completely bizarre, mostly mysticism and poetry. but despite being “not even wrong”, people following them became pretty good at laboratory skills After many centuries, this laid the ground for empirical chemistry, and after a few more centuries, a theoretical system emerged that is close to right. But there was a lot of progress even under the “not even wrong” theories.
  - godelski 2y ago
    I'm not sure this is quite right and really is counter to the "less wrong" progress. I know physics history best so that's what I used. My history of chemistry is a bit better than medicine, but I think you have to be careful with chemistry because much of the mysticism was coded language to guard their secrets. Maybe it shouldn't be as surprising that chemists are still a bit more secretive of their work than say physicists. And also we need to make sure we disassociate modern alchemy from classic alchemy, just like we would need to do with astrology with respect to astronomy. When there is a branching and one branch has the legitimate work it should be no surprise that the other branch becomes even crazier. We also have the benefit of distance with physics and astronomy because not nearly as much was recorded, especially with respect to what everyday people believed. There were far fewer professionals in those fields (almost exclusively the rich, because you had to be rich to spend your time studying). For medicine, I think you are being a bit too critical. Yes, "bad air" (miasma) was a bad theory, but did that theory lead to improved outcomes? Yes! While the underlying mechanism was incorrect, but that model caused people to clean up the cities to smell better and I'm sure you can see how that would result in decreased illnesses. It caused hospitals to be well ventilated, and in some cases it even caused doctors to clean their hands (when they smelled). Many parts of the belief were testable and could be confirmed through experiments because smell is a confounding variable. It led to some doctors wearing masks because they wanted to put better smelling things in front of their faces and well... the mask helped even if the herbs didn't (some even did). But it is also true that there were falsifiable experiments, which people did perform, that did not fit the model. This is *exactly* what led to people discovering germ theory. There had to be an explanation for why those failed, right? But it would be naive to ignore the fact that the reason this belief persisted for so long was not just due to lack of scientific experimentation or lack of observation (both happened) because odor is caused by particles. The problem is that odor particles are way smaller than germs and so you get a ton of false positives and that not all germs are associated with things that smell. But the two definitely correlate in many ways, including being able to pass through air and liquids. You question "how progress happened anyways?" Well it happened because they were not too far off course. It is because our view of history is often very limited and for most people it is a brief summary of what we know, so we do not see how many people were pushing back against the status quo. But I promise you, it wasn't just Semmelweis vs the world (no matter how poorly he was mistreated). Our view of history is warped in ways that both over exaggerate things as well as gravely under represent. These are not in contention, they are just different forms of noisy and biased information. So I do not think medicine or chemistry (which we could discuss similarly. And I will even mention that lead can be transmuted to gold, but to do that requires an understanding that wouldn't be discovered till Dalton and the actual capability to do so wouldn't until very recently) run counter to my point. I do also encourage you to read the wiki on the history of germ theory (it even quotes Martin Luther discussing washing his hands, a full 300 years before Semmelweis). While it is concise, I think you can see that there was lots of pushback to disease just being from bad air well back into history. Like many summaries, it captures the main events but misses much of the smaller progress in between. It shouldn't be surprising as you might guess that would require far more text. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_of_disease

godelski 2y ago

> for some reason it seems you need the wrong theories to organize the empirical data There's a somewhat well known article on this by Isaac Asimov: the Relativity of Wrong The scientific process is really misunderstood. People think you use it to find truth, but actually you use it to reject falsehoods. The consequence of this is that you narrow in on the truth so your goals look identical, but the distinction does matter (at least if you want to understand why that happens and why it's okay that science is wrong many times -- in fact, it's always wrong, but it gets less wrong (I'm certain there's a connection to that website and this well known saying). He's well known for his Sci-Fi but he got a PhD in chemistry, taught himself astrophysics, and even published in the area. He even had written physics texts. I found Understanding Physics quite enjoyable when I was younger but yeah, it isn't the same level of complexity I saw while getting my degree, but it's not aimed at University students. Anyways, I'm just saying, he's speaking as an insider and I do think this is something a lot more people should read. https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html I believe there's a copy of Understanding Physics here but currently offline: https://archive.org/details/asimov-understanding-physics https://archive.org/details/asimov-understanding-physics

currymj 2y ago
i think that astronomy/physics/gravitation is actually a pretty weird case in the history of science and most things don’t go that cleanly. better examples might be medicine, where people just bounced around from one insane wrong theoretical system to another (humors to “empiricism” to bad air to Paracelsus to Avicenna and round and round and round). but somehow progress happened anyway. actual steady scientific progress only took off in the 19th century. or chemistry, where alchemical theories were also completely bizarre, mostly mysticism and poetry. but despite being “not even wrong”, people following them became pretty good at laboratory skills After many centuries, this laid the ground for empirical chemistry, and after a few more centuries, a theoretical system emerged that is close to right. But there was a lot of progress even under the “not even wrong” theories.
- godelski 2y ago
  I'm not sure this is quite right and really is counter to the "less wrong" progress. I know physics history best so that's what I used. My history of chemistry is a bit better than medicine, but I think you have to be careful with chemistry because much of the mysticism was coded language to guard their secrets. Maybe it shouldn't be as surprising that chemists are still a bit more secretive of their work than say physicists. And also we need to make sure we disassociate modern alchemy from classic alchemy, just like we would need to do with astrology with respect to astronomy. When there is a branching and one branch has the legitimate work it should be no surprise that the other branch becomes even crazier. We also have the benefit of distance with physics and astronomy because not nearly as much was recorded, especially with respect to what everyday people believed. There were far fewer professionals in those fields (almost exclusively the rich, because you had to be rich to spend your time studying). For medicine, I think you are being a bit too critical. Yes, "bad air" (miasma) was a bad theory, but did that theory lead to improved outcomes? Yes! While the underlying mechanism was incorrect, but that model caused people to clean up the cities to smell better and I'm sure you can see how that would result in decreased illnesses. It caused hospitals to be well ventilated, and in some cases it even caused doctors to clean their hands (when they smelled). Many parts of the belief were testable and could be confirmed through experiments because smell is a confounding variable. It led to some doctors wearing masks because they wanted to put better smelling things in front of their faces and well... the mask helped even if the herbs didn't (some even did). But it is also true that there were falsifiable experiments, which people did perform, that did not fit the model. This is *exactly* what led to people discovering germ theory. There had to be an explanation for why those failed, right? But it would be naive to ignore the fact that the reason this belief persisted for so long was not just due to lack of scientific experimentation or lack of observation (both happened) because odor is caused by particles. The problem is that odor particles are way smaller than germs and so you get a ton of false positives and that not all germs are associated with things that smell. But the two definitely correlate in many ways, including being able to pass through air and liquids. You question "how progress happened anyways?" Well it happened because they were not too far off course. It is because our view of history is often very limited and for most people it is a brief summary of what we know, so we do not see how many people were pushing back against the status quo. But I promise you, it wasn't just Semmelweis vs the world (no matter how poorly he was mistreated). Our view of history is warped in ways that both over exaggerate things as well as gravely under represent. These are not in contention, they are just different forms of noisy and biased information. So I do not think medicine or chemistry (which we could discuss similarly. And I will even mention that lead can be transmuted to gold, but to do that requires an understanding that wouldn't be discovered till Dalton and the actual capability to do so wouldn't until very recently) run counter to my point. I do also encourage you to read the wiki on the history of germ theory (it even quotes Martin Luther discussing washing his hands, a full 300 years before Semmelweis). While it is concise, I think you can see that there was lots of pushback to disease just being from bad air well back into history. Like many summaries, it captures the main events but misses much of the smaller progress in between. It shouldn't be surprising as you might guess that would require far more text. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_of_disease