Feynman and the Cult of Science

[http://wwwcdf.pd.infn.it/~loreti/science.html]

Here is a link to an object lesson in so very very many things. In fact, it summarizes so much about our modern culture and the culture of science that exists alongside and inside and outside of it, that I would have had a hard time crafting a parody more brilliant and articulate. What we have here is Richard Feynman, noted public scientist (and, dare we say it, celebrity intellectual?) speaking about what science is and what it does and all the crazy things that people who are not doing science, in fact, do. The anchoring metaphor of the piece is the example of the Cargo Cult people of the south pacific, who build runways and make nonfunctional communications gear out of bamboo in hopes that planes will land and bring them the kind of cool stuff they brought during World War II.

The difference between Mr. Feynman and myself is that I believe that, gratefully, we are all Cargo Cultists, including scientists - ever imitating the form of things in hopes of stumbling upon a solution. This is the dirty part of science that Mr. Feynman would like to pretend does not exist - the process of hypothesis formation. Hypothesis formation is an essentially creative (if also analytical) activity that draws on the whole range of the experiences of the scientist, most definitely including imitation of form. We see this process at work in Da Vinci, who built wings of wood and feathers that looked like the bird's, and whose work influenced every subsequent aeronaut, both would-be and successful. Such imitation may not always be sufficiently rigorous to provide real solutions to problems, but in many cases, it is quite sufficient. Witness the imitation in nature - where an oppossum's sham death is quite sufficient, in many cases, to avoid predation, or in genomic science, where by having one gene imitate another great progress is made. In fact, the line between form and function is often drawn at precisely the point where imitation begins to fail to lead to a desired result. Had the Cargo Cult people managed to build exact replicas of 50s radio equipment, only to find no one to speak to but passing fisherman, they could be congratulated for their rigor and attention to detail, but not for their success in bringing airplanes to the island. Their new magical equipment would have failed to function as desired.

I only wish that scientists were as willing to hold up messy creativity as essential to their work as cherished observation. I have encountered many a cynical lab technician and post-doc employed by the "cancer industry", one of thousands of researchers who do work every day that has little bearing on any kind of cure. They follow up obscure leads, rule out scenarios that were already terribly unlikely. In other words, they imitate the form of the scientific method, day in and day out, because the grant money is there and because hopefully, amongst all the admittedly useless activity, a handful of experiments are done that actually have some chance of bringing real progress to the search for a cure. In other words, even science must pay the bills, and it often does so with research that is "merely formal". Is this a great moral failing or necessary realism?

One of the many things that Feynman reveals about science, I think, is how at pains its practitioners are to separate themselves by dint of method, from other kinds of thinkers. Is this passion derived from a serious belief that one day, if we can distill "scientific integrity" into its pure principles, we might jettison any other kind of human effort, creative or intellectual, to be honest and thorough and rigorous? I'm sorry, but no institution will ever accomplish that. Principles alone will never uniquely and thoroughly identify charlatans and separate them from trusted helpers. Ask anyone whose loved one has ever died of cancer after long and tortorous years of chemotherapy whether our modern witch doctors have solutions that "work". I guarantee you'll find someone waiting to be converted to another kind of religion than the one that you and your labcoated fellows preach. Ask any south american tribesman whether the shaman's aloe poultices soothe chafed skin, and you'll find someone loathe to abandon his healer's sacred wisdom.

Whatever you might think you mean by "scientific integrity", I would remind you that intellectual integrity transcends a slavish devotion to empiricist positivism, and that if "does it work consistently and observably without any room for interpretation or disupte?" were the only criteria for success in experimentation, 99% of "science" would never get done.