When Scientists Don't Agree

Scientists are often viewed as one body, monolithic, always in agreement over everything. And yet. nothing could be farther from the truth. Scientists are also looked upon as being above ego, personal gains and the lust for money, like many fields, scientists come in all kinds, the personally ethical to the personally rotten.

Lately on many hubs, especially those written by people seeking to reduce evolution to a a level of incredibility, while also trying to make creationism sound like real science, some writers have focused upon the many divisions within the scientific community, if such a term can be used, and have written the names or shown web links with scientists who purportedly do not support evolutionary theories.

I have done some research, and indeed, as I expected, there are some people who have gone to school to obtain advanced degrees, who indeed work in scientific fields, who do not support evolution. they, these true disbelievers, are actually very few in number. There about the same number of such scientists as those who truly believe the world in flat, a large disk, or that the center of the Earth is hollow and contains a here-to-fore unknown civilization.

I use these examples, not to make fun of those who hold opposing views, but rather to show that for any cause there are some who are, indeed, true believers. I maintain that anyone who holds an opposing view to the prevailing theory may one day over turn that theory and replace it with a new one. Science holds many exciting stories of individuals or small groups who managed through serious research and constant vigilance, have indeed changed how science in general views the world around us. Louis Pasteur comes to mind, as does Charles Darwin, both of whom endured ridicule and outright anger when they proposed their ideas more than a century ago.

Scientists tend to be rather conservative as a group, having invested a lot of time coming to conclusions based upon the best evidence of the day. It has taken decades for evolution to come to where it stands today, and even as it was more widely accepted, changes were made to the prevailing theories as more evidence was discovered. For example, there were some comical adventures with fossils as this branch of science slowly grew and was able to categorize these odd, frozen bits of pre-historic history into some semblance of understanding.

When questioned, most evolution-believing scientists will tell freely that we are still discovering new evidence which may change the basic understanding of how evolution works, but that nothing produced to date has made any headway in trashing the theory or the basic nature of our understanding of how evolution works.

Yes, there have been some scientists who have attempted, and sometimes succeeded, in changing our understanding of a model of evolution, even while their evidence has not overthrown the basic Theory of Evolution. In some cases we have emerged with a better understanding because of such efforts.

But the fact still remains that while not all scientists accept 100% of every idea out there, there is still a strong consensus of people who work in science who believe that evolution is more or less proved, we just need to work out the details. It's kind of like a sister-science, electricity, where we know a whole lot about the basic theory, we can use electricity to do many things, are familiar with it, but we don't quite agree on just how it works. Evolution science is in much the same form: we know and have evidence that something happened which we call evolution, and we have some understanding of how it came about, but we really don't have a 100% accepted answer as to why it occurred in the first place, meaning the absolute beginning of life as we know it. We can also see evolution occurring around us, and this is documented in scientific literature for anyone who cares to read about it. we have new evidence based upon DNA and RNA which so far backs up a lot of the prevailing ideas of how evolution worked over time, which species are closely related and which are not. But we still have to find the actual answer of just how the whole thing began and why it began. Indeed, we may never know the answers to these questions. Like religion, we may just need to take certain things on faith until we do come across the answer.

What science attempts to do is to discover and clarify answers to what we observe in the world around us. therefore, when a scientist tries to discover exactly how electricity works, he or she is often limited to whatever understanding and technology is available at the time of the research. thus, while electricity was observed in various forms thousands of years ago, humans did not have the basic understanding or technology to fully explain what it was. the first ideas were that somehow the gods were angry and were throwing huge bolts down upon the Earth. In a way, this was a budding scientific discovery, which used all the knowledge available at the time, to come up with an answer for an occurrence in nature. Of course, later science grew as knowledge grew and today we explain lightning as atmospheric static electricity and can readily explain much of what lightning appears to be.

Yet, there are often surprises as we go along. Until recently "sprites", large glowing plumes of unexplained light shooting off into space, were not known to exist. With the advent of space travel and satellite imagery, we have seen these fascinating events occur over huge thunderstorms. What are they? Right now, that research is still going on. We simply do not know. Yet, to deny that sprites exist seems rather a silly thing to say since we have seen them, and we know they exist for our eyes to view. In other words, we have facts and data to show that sprites do indeed occur and we learned something about when we can best view them. Now that we know they exist, we can better observe and evaluate them and hope to discover exactly what they are, why they occur and what, if anything, this may mean for climate, physics, and other related sciences.

Evolution was once considered a fool's quest, because everyone simply knew that God had created everything and we needed no further explanation of how or why we ended up here on Earth. Yet minds are not always content with such explanations. it is not that they disbelieve in God or gods or super-natural powers; it is simply that the pat answer does not suit their curiosity or fulfill the longing to understand, just what is this and why did it occur? Religion hearkened back to a time when people were not supposed to question the Bible or other Holy Books, and to deny the veracity of these books was considered heresy, often punishable by death in some gruesome fashion.

It seemed odd to me when I learned about Europe where the Islamic cultures once dwelt, they had some rather advanced science, especially when looking at the rather modern-day fundamentalistic drive that exists in some Muslim countries. Yes, Islamic doctors were performing cataract surgery, successfully, when European doctors were still bleeding patients for having bad humours. The idea of the number zero comes to European cultures via contact with Islamic cultures on their borders. There were even theologians who denounced zero as a Satanically inspired work meant to divert Christians away from their beliefs, since the concept of zero was not in the Bible they had in those days. For those with a European ancestry, remember that until about 500 years ago most arithmetic (another Arabic word) was done using Roman Numerals, which had no concept of zero. Therefore this new idea was rejected until it proved rather useful to those in power, and to those who had a great understanding of business.

So, it can be said, without bias or anger, that science attempts to remove our inherent ignorance of nature and replace it with knowledge. Ignorance in itself is not a bad thing unless people try to cling to it because of traditions or fear, in which case it can lead to, and I am serious here, the downfall of a society.  That is, ignorance not replaced by knowledge, can become a bad thing.

Islamic cultures were once the gem of the world, until they began to turn to religious fanaticism and a sense that God would send His wrath upon a people who strayed from His commands. Christianity has also had eras when science was banned and theology ruled and prevailed. We call those times the Dark Ages, and while some monasteries did indeed save much ancient literature, other books and writings were burned and banned because they did not agree with prevailing dogma and theology. Acts such as these can still be seen in our day. The consequences have, indeed, driven cultures and nations into the Dark Ages, economically, scientifically, and culturally.

We have shown that science is often a contentious field of study, with people of diverse understandings arguing for their own viewpoint.  Scientists do not often agree on everything, or even anything.  Even Einstein had to work hard to prove his ideas, and then watch as his own genius was later questioned and his basic ideas replaced as better evidence became available.  Just the fact that people are able to use their brains to discover and interpret observations is a miracle in and of itself.  If there is a God, don't you think that this God would be proud of us for being able to crawl our way slowly up from our ignorance into the light of knowledge?  I do.

And if there is no God, then we are all we have.  We had best make sure we continue to work our way up from where we are to where we are going.