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Recently I read this snippet in the "Believe in Ghosts" thread on the Horror forum, and it prompted me into a separate line of thought.
Belief: an opinion I hold about the truth of a statement that may or may not be supported by evidence or proof
Faith: my trust in some belief when it's not yet supported by proof
Superstition: my faith in some belief when I'm both ignorant and afraid
Science in its present form has been with us for around 400 years. In that time it's shaped our beliefs, challenged our faiths and helped demolish an uncountable number of superstitions (do many people still believe that the bite of the shrew is venomous for instance, that pelicans feed their offspring blood from their chests, or that frogs appear spontaneously in swamps?) On the other hand, our beliefs and faiths have had only modest impact on our scientific activities and very little on the results themselves, while our superstitions have hardly had an impact on science at all.
But on the other hand, almost all our myths about science are about how belief and faith (and sometimes even superstition) have somehow shaped scientific results. A typical example begins with a presentation to the scientific community, of this sort: "I have a dream! That man can fly!" There's plenty of hooting and mockery from the eminent peers. Then the scientist goes about turning the dream into reality through some sort of introverted arcane theorising. Eventually, after much toil and many false starts there's success and the scientists proves all the skeptics wrong (or in a horror story, the scientist succeeds, but at a terrible cost).
But that's not really how it works. Or not usually anyway.
Science is much like US or British law: the burden of proof is on the scientist. In this respect it differs markedly from superstition, in which the burden of disproof is on anyone who disagrees with us. Professionally, scientists are allowed to speculate, and suspect. They're allowed to disbelieve whatever they like in public, and believe whatever they like in private, but their beliefs (no matter how popular) are only professionally credible when they come with some weight of proof.
Mostly, science does not happen the way the myths tell us it does. The lightbulb was not invented in response to a dream of cold light, but rather opportunistically, by some experiments in what happens when you pass electricity through various substances.
The myth is also very biased. For every pair of Wright brothers celebrated by myth, history is littered with a thousand dead Icaruses, laying splattered at the bottom of cliffs with fairy-wings strapped to their backs. Dream- or belief-led innovation has a huge history of catastrophic failure. Most of our successful innovations are artefacts of dogged plodding. And superstition-driven invention has been proven over time to be almost entirely fraudulent.
While there may be 'more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt in your philosophy', that's not to say that everything we dream (or indeed anything we dream) is as legitimate or viable as that which we've demonstrated conclusively and contestably.
But here's the rub: lack of proof is not evidence of disproof. We can perform a thousand experiments about people walking under ladders and find no proof of harm coming to them, but there may still be an experiment we haven't performed that could show evidence the other way.
In the final analysis, I think that science alone doesn't demolish superstition. Rather, superstition melts when there is reliable information and sufficient control over our environments that people no longer fear.
There are different kinds of belief. I'd like to separate belief, faith and superstition for starters. Here are my descriptions:I think science sometimes has to catch up with belief, and, of course, the other way around, too. A couple of hundred years ago, someone "believing" that they could "make light without candles", just by flipping a switch, would have been someone sort of out there.
Belief: an opinion I hold about the truth of a statement that may or may not be supported by evidence or proof
Faith: my trust in some belief when it's not yet supported by proof
Superstition: my faith in some belief when I'm both ignorant and afraid
Science in its present form has been with us for around 400 years. In that time it's shaped our beliefs, challenged our faiths and helped demolish an uncountable number of superstitions (do many people still believe that the bite of the shrew is venomous for instance, that pelicans feed their offspring blood from their chests, or that frogs appear spontaneously in swamps?) On the other hand, our beliefs and faiths have had only modest impact on our scientific activities and very little on the results themselves, while our superstitions have hardly had an impact on science at all.
But on the other hand, almost all our myths about science are about how belief and faith (and sometimes even superstition) have somehow shaped scientific results. A typical example begins with a presentation to the scientific community, of this sort: "I have a dream! That man can fly!" There's plenty of hooting and mockery from the eminent peers. Then the scientist goes about turning the dream into reality through some sort of introverted arcane theorising. Eventually, after much toil and many false starts there's success and the scientists proves all the skeptics wrong (or in a horror story, the scientist succeeds, but at a terrible cost).
But that's not really how it works. Or not usually anyway.
Science is much like US or British law: the burden of proof is on the scientist. In this respect it differs markedly from superstition, in which the burden of disproof is on anyone who disagrees with us. Professionally, scientists are allowed to speculate, and suspect. They're allowed to disbelieve whatever they like in public, and believe whatever they like in private, but their beliefs (no matter how popular) are only professionally credible when they come with some weight of proof.
Mostly, science does not happen the way the myths tell us it does. The lightbulb was not invented in response to a dream of cold light, but rather opportunistically, by some experiments in what happens when you pass electricity through various substances.
The myth is also very biased. For every pair of Wright brothers celebrated by myth, history is littered with a thousand dead Icaruses, laying splattered at the bottom of cliffs with fairy-wings strapped to their backs. Dream- or belief-led innovation has a huge history of catastrophic failure. Most of our successful innovations are artefacts of dogged plodding. And superstition-driven invention has been proven over time to be almost entirely fraudulent.
While there may be 'more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt in your philosophy', that's not to say that everything we dream (or indeed anything we dream) is as legitimate or viable as that which we've demonstrated conclusively and contestably.
But here's the rub: lack of proof is not evidence of disproof. We can perform a thousand experiments about people walking under ladders and find no proof of harm coming to them, but there may still be an experiment we haven't performed that could show evidence the other way.
In the final analysis, I think that science alone doesn't demolish superstition. Rather, superstition melts when there is reliable information and sufficient control over our environments that people no longer fear.
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