(A variety of depictions of the Scientific Method. The old one. We have a newer one based on Sciency sounding things that makes us feel better).

Refuge Farm was in a bit of a turmoil on a lovely morning. We haveall heard a lot about Science over the last two years that has wrenched our way of life apart. Dr. Fauci, a nice enough guy when one of us was on a team he led against a nasty virus known twenty years ago as “SARS.” That was the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. It is the direct antecedent to COVID, and how it came to be involves a lot of that Science stuff we are supposed to obey. Without Question. Because of a big Sciency-sounding problem.

That was what had our closest approximation of a Scientist worked up this morning, since one of the Q-words (not Quarantine! That didn’t work!) was the question about what the heck happened to the word “Question.” It used to be the basis of what most of us heard was a thing called the “Scientific Method.”

Most of the folks around the Fire Pit on this lovely day were more practitioners of “applications” sorts of things. Melissa, in addition to being an adept social and business operator, had a series of specific skills involving health, supply chain management for a small group of humans and education. Other ones in the circle flew in the heavens or had working jobs involved in the practical application of operating large machines off even larger steel platforms on incredibly vast oceans. There was a lot of complexity, but we accepted the consensus view that the laws of physics were pretty much settled, and that the jets could fly, after a fashion. If, of course, they were properly connected to gigantic steam catapults and brought home with strong cross-deck steel ropes that would engage awkward-looking alloy hooks.

It was a little improbable, if you stopped to think about it. All those people working all those physical things in an elegant integrated system of systems. But all of them worked in daily validation by actually performing the steps involved. We accepted it. Our de facto leader DeMille did it more from the Scientific end of things, since he was responsible for operating a container of powerful radioactive materials that could, if properly operated and with an understanding of basic physics, safely provide power to a floating city holding 4,000-odd humans.

DeMille is pretty effective in explaining things, having dealt with dungaree-clad work forces and those in khaki who were sometimes charged with doing things that defied the laws of physics in the interest of some necessary operational mission. He knows how to slow thing down enough to help people understand some of the implacable limitations of how things work. This morning he had obviously been thinking while still abed. He had a chart displayed on the tablet he carries for note-taking in the sometimes raucous production meetings.

He stood at the apex of the fire ring on which Splash was attempting to toast some cinnamon rolls. “Listen up, Folks,” he said. “Here is one of the problems I wrestled with last night.” At least two heads swiveled slowly from the lovely panorama of the deep azure sky over this part of Virginia’s rolling green Piedmont region. On the face of DeMille’s screen was a diagram that attempted to convey an intellectual process. This is what he waved around:

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“This is a simplified flow chart on how the Scientific Method used to work. I could start with Aristotle, father of Science in the Western tradition. Or we could go with a tip of the topper to possibly the greatest Islamic scholar, Ibn al-Haytham. He was best known for innovative work on light and vision he called “The book of Optics.” It is an expression of the unity of thought about the nature of the way logical thinking could be applied to advance our knowledge. Copernicus and Galileo came to the same general conclusions fighting theology and social pressure to arrive at a state of Science. Al-Hatham worked it out this way:

Define the problem, based on observation and experimentation.

Test or criticize a hypothesis- a theory- that could validate or disprove potential explanations to the problem.

Interpret the data from the experimentation, usually helped by application of mathematics.

Publish your findings so other interested parties can validate them.

Splash scowled. “That is the same thing they used to teach in high school. The Scientific Method was what Copernicus used to challenge the Biblical view of the composition of the universe. His thing was the idea that the planets of our solar system revolve around the Sun, rather than everything revolving around the earth. It was a big deal at the time. His observations of the planets through a telescope, easily duplicated by others and tested using mathematics began the process after the Dark Ages.” He stopped, obviously challenged by putting that many rational sentences in a row. He shook a Marlboro out of the little red box and lit it up, exhaling a cloud of gray smoke toward the ashy middle of the Fire Pit where the cinnamon rolls were beginning to smolder.

DeMille smiled in surprise. “Exactly, Splash. I bring this up because in this most scientific of times for human beings we have thrown the Method overboard.”

Loma, a practitioner of the art of delivering heavy ordnance in a safely destructive manner, leaned in. “The way we were taught was that the questions were the most important part of the process. Simply asserting that something was true and having a bunch of friends agree wasn’t good enough. You had to experiment and prove the assertion.”

Melissa stretched languidly. “So, this is what you want to talk about on a glorious early Spring Day?”

DeMille put down his pad. “Actually, yes. Like I said, we hear a lot about Science as the basis for doing all sorts of things. But the Scientific Method, the means by which there is validation and progress, says we should question and test the hypothesis.”

“You mean all this Sciency-like stuff we are told is not how it actually works?”

“Strictly speaking, no. Take the weather. Weather is not climate, since general agreement is that you should take periods of at least thirty years of objective measurements of the weather to get an idea about the climate changing.”

“Yeah. I remember when we were ecology nuts back in the 1970s. We had all kinds of great ideas about the Ice Age returning. It was pretty alarming.”

“Right. The observed measurements of temperature did not support that hypothesis, so we changed the consensus that we would be shivering under a mile of snow.”

“Yeah. But then the thing about Carbon Dioxide being the thermostat for the globe didn’t seem to be working out, either. So although some of us are still sweating it, the temperatures didn’t cooperate. And the computer models are not ‘observations,’ they are estimates based on the assumptions you load into them. Now, the useful phrase is that the Climate is Changing.”

“We agree on that, right? I have walked over the fossils of sea creatures over there on the top of Mount Pony. They didn’t walk up there.”

DeMille watched a cigarette butt arc gracefully toward the ashes and away from the cinnamon rolls. “We are agreed that the climate changes, and based on the evidence, quite dramatically without human intervention. Which is not to say that there isn’t evidence that our species hasn’t had an impact on how things work. But the reason we dropped ‘Global Warming’ as the operative Sciency thing was that there didn’t appear to be any demonstrable connection to what the weather was doing.”

“Well, just show me where the evidence is that human-produced CO2 is directly linked to climate change. Then we can get going on fixing that part of it.”
“We are already beyond that. We have accepted the Sciency-sounding explanation and based our national policy that the assumption is correct, and worth changing everything in our global interaction on something that we cannot question. That seems like the church folks telling Copernicus that the sun revolved around the earth.”

“They had their reasons, and the folks today say there is such a crisis that we have to act immediately.”

“That seems to be a complete inversion of how all this stuff is supposed to work.”

“Not exactly. We now feel good about it.”

“We are supposed to feel good about the end of the earth?”

“Yep. It sounds Sciency. That should be worth the $400 Trillion dollar estimates to fund our Net Zero plan.”

“That is just one of the estimates on what it is going to cost. That is about four hundred times more than what we used to call the annual Federal budget. I wonder what the grandkids are going to think about our giving up a system that works pretty well all the time in order to bet the future on a system that only works when the sun shines and the wind is blowing in a vigorous but stable manner. And all the batteries we are going to have to bury to get rid of them haven’t even been invented yet.”

DeMille smiled. “I slept with a nuclear reactor for most of my career. They are safe and reliable. But we can’t even talk about them because…well, I forget why. That is one of those Sciency things in the new method. You are supposed to feel good about doing something.”

“Because it is a crisis, even if it doesn’t feel like much has changed. It is Sciency, though.”

“Isn’t there a part where you ask a question or two and have to prove it?”

“No time for that. We have a crisis.” There was general laughter at that statement, and then we decided to talk about what to actually do on a day when both the Smoke Shop and Distillery were open, and we could actually do something before the reality of Sunday’s Blue Laws, which we heard was coming whether it was Sciency or not.

Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com