Isaac Asimov: some wrongs are wronger than others
One of the more ridiculous criticisms of science by religious believers is "Scientific facts often turn out to be proven wrong."
Well, in a narrow sense that's true, but American author and biochemist Isaac Asimov shows how it's also broadly false in an interesting essay, "The Relativity of Wrong."
His basic point is that there are gradations of wrongness. In response to someone who wrote him a letter praising Socrates' proposition that the wisest man knows he knows nothing, Asimov said:
My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that "right" and "wrong" are absolute; that everything that isn't perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong.
Great point.
Global warming skeptics make this absurd conclusion when they nitpick details of climatology research findings, claiming that if every conclusion made by any scientist who affirms the reality of human-caused climate change isn't 100% correct, then global warming has a 0% chance of being true.
I also see this attitude reflected in comments on my blog posts by religiously-minded people.
Just like Asimov's corresondent, John, they'll point to how some scientific theory has been shown to be wrong in some respects -- which must mean that science is wrong about God, the supernatural, consciousness being separable from the brain, and such.
But Asimov reminds us:
In short, my English Lit friend, living in a mental world of ! absolute rights and wrongs, may be imagining that because all theories are wrong, the Earth may be thought spherical now, but cubical next century, and a hollow icosahedron the next, and a doughnut shape the one after.
What actually happens is that once scientists get hold of a good concept they gradually refine and extend if with a greater and greater subtlety as their instruments of measurement improve. Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete.
