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What does it mean to be scientific?

American Atheist Magazine - March 22, 2004

For twenty years I taught science in one form or another, at levels ranging from high school to graduate school. My high school assignments included physical science, biology, and chemistry. At the undergraduate level I taught everything from anatomy and botany to zoology, from geology to genetics, from molecular biology and chemistry for nurses to psychobiology. There was even a course in pseudoscience--a laboratory course designed to help students investigate popular claims of the paranormal. Astrology, creationism, pyramid power, ancient astronauts, UFOs, and parapsychology all came under the careful scrutiny of my class. At the graduate level, I taught a course in human ecology for teachers and a seminar in human neuroanatomy for neurophysiologists. Throughout those twenty years, at whatever the level, I tried to make my students grapple with the question, "What does it mean to be scientific?"

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While my students were wrestling with this question, I too was struggling with it. What always seemed so intuitive and obvious to me in my own personal and professional life proved astonishingly elusive and tantalizing when I tried to define or explain it to others. I never succeeded in coming up with a one-sentence or even a one-paragraph definition of what constitutes the scientific attitude or outlook. The best I could do was to formulate a list of component attitudes and practices that, taken all together, might qualify a person to be called "scientific."

In these parlous times of creation 'science' and Intelligent Design 'theory,' alternative medicine, Post-Modernism, Christian Science, therapeutic touch, and near-death experiences it seems desirable to extract some of my lecture notes from the mothballs in which they have slumbered for more than twenty years so that anyone desiring to discern and discriminate genuine science from pseudoscience might get a little help from my experience. What follows are some characteristics that I associate with scientists and the scientific enterprise.

Curiosity

Before all else, to be scientific is to be curious about the world around us. Why does the thunderclap always follow the lightning-flash? What is living under that dead and rotting log? Why are all the bird species on this island so closely related? Why are most American Catholic cardinals and bishops of Irish descent, and what does that have to do with a parasitic fungus? Why do some people with college degrees think the world is only six thousand years old? Curiosity is the prime mover of science and scientists. Without it, there would be no forward movement in science, no motive for discovery, no thrust to propel us from the world of the known into the realm of the unknown. It is curiosity that sends us as hunters into the dark forest of ignorance to discover and capture new facts and understandings that can be brought back as trophies to exhibit in the great heritage halls of the human intellect.

Intellectualism

To be scientific is to be intellectual--that is, to derive pleasure from employing one's intellect, to enjoy contemplating ideas, to feel that ideas in themselves are pleasures apart from any physical or monetary rewards that may accompany them. Conversely, anti-intellectuals often are distrustful of science and hostile to its practitioners. Teachers of science must do all that is possible to help their students share in the thrill of discovery of new ideas or of novel consequences of old ones. Could any student not feel at least a tingle of delight upon learning that there would be no Episcopalians had it not been for syphilis?

Open-Mindedness

To be scientific is to be open-minded and fair, and to eschew bias and prejudice. Prejudice is to have your conclusions before you have your facts. This is the method of 'scientific creationism,' and it is a major reason for concluding that creationism is not scientific. Open-minded means no more than that one is willing to consider new evidence and arguments and weigh them fairly. It does not mean that one is in any way obliged to accept them. Many people forget that there is a big difference between a mind that is open and a mind that is gaping.

Bias--a mental leaning or inclination--is much harder to avoid. Fortunately, in the course of scientific progress, one person's bias is likely to be counterbalanced by the contrary bias of another researcher, and any contradictory results achieved alert the entire scientific community that there may be a bias problem. In the experimental sciences, double-blind experiments are designed to eliminate the bias of the experimenter. In such experiments, often carried out when testing drugs on human subjects, neither the subjects nor the experimenters know who is getting the actual drug and who is getting the placebo because the stuff being administered has been secretly coded by someone not directly involved in the conduct of the experiment. Later, after all the observations of results have been recorded, the code is disclosed and it is possible to compare the experimental group with the placebo group without bias.

Doubt

To be scientific is to be a doubter. Demand proof for everything. "Test all things, hold fast that which is good" [1 Thess 5:21]. As Peter Abelard [1079-1142] said, "Through doubt we are led to inquiry; and through inquiry we are led to truth." Doubt your own best hypotheses and try to disprove them. No matter what happens, you will have a stronger hypothesis as a result--an hypothesis more worthy of being accepted as true. The beauty of being truly scientific--that is, really wanting to know what is true about the world rather than wanting to prove a preconceived notion of dogma--is that one 'wins' no matter how an experiment or test turns out. Being free of incorrect ideas and delusions is as useful a reward as discovering a 'truth' that you can stake your life on.

Ockham's Razor

A scientific person always tries to apply Ockham's Razor, a principle first formulated in Latin by the medieval philosopher William of Ockham [c. 1285- c.1349]. "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem"--basic assumptions should not be multiplied beyond necessity. According to this principle, when there are competing explanations for a fact or phenomenon, the simplest adequate explanation should be chosen, the explanation that requires the fewest basic assumptions or postulates. In the words of the American philosopher of science Charles Sanders Pierce [1839-1914], "more elements must not be introduced into a hypothesis until it is absolutely proved that fewer are not sufficient" (Essays in the Philosophy of Science, ed. Vincent Tomas, New York: The Liberal Arts Press, 1957, 251).

To Benjamin Franklin, this principle was just common sense. He explained lightning in terms of electricity--period. It probably never occurred to him to include a wrathful Jehovah as a causal factor.

This principle was applied most famously by the mathematician Pierre Simon de Laplace [1749-1827] in his answer to Napoleon Bonaparte [1769-1821]. The emperor had asked him why he made no mention of "the Good Lord" in his treatise on celestial mechanics. "Sire," said Laplace, "I have had no need of that hypothesis." In the same way, evolutionary biologists, when trying to dissuade boards of education from following the siren song of Intelligent Design lobbyists have to show that the hypothesis of supernatural design is not needed in order to account for the adaptations of plants and animals. They have to get the boards to see that the Ideers aren't shaving with Ockham's Razor.

Explainability

To be scientific is to feel that all things and events are explainable in principle, that everything happens for a reason, and that only natural explanations can be valid. If one thought that certain properly framed questions were unanswerable, the driving force of curiosity would be thwarted and no advances in knowledge would ensue.

Supernatural explanations are ruled out not because scientists are prejudiced against them, but rather due to the practical reason that they exemplify the fallacy known to old-time logicians as ignotum per ignotius--the attempt to explain the unknown in terms of the more unknown.

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