Just a few days ago, in my previous post, I discussed how people (including those who need to take public decisions) can have personal ideas of what science is. This was prompted by my own observations of recent archaeological news that I discussed in this blog and the publication of the BBC Science coverage report that criticised the current state of affairs. One of the points that I tried to make was that science very rarely comes to definitive conclusions or achieves understandings that need not any further work. This is not a criticism of science, I fault those thinking of science as a belief, that cannot be challenged or modified. Science is more like a collective baggage of knowledge, which is constantly revised, improved and expanded as new data, models, theories and discoveries are made. There are things that are now known very well, but our explanations have also moved forward to more complex situations, and what is known is never satisfactory for researchers. If it was, there would be no need for research.
Among the few news that I read and discussions that I had in the past few days, there are some interesting bits worth noting. I stress that when I write blog posts I do not carry out the kind of research that is to be expected for papers and books. Thus, often my interest born from my own writings brings me to find some evidence to substantiate what I said. Of course, I try to avoid being inexact, and I regularly read the published research that I comment, even if what prompts me to write is a press release or a news article. I mentioned in my previous post the standard model, the one theoretical model constructed on observations and the most complex mathematical formulas that describes the universe, or in popular terms, nature, everything. I said that, such models
"are never absolute and are not necessarily true for all the minute details of nature in their current form".
I just read on the Nature website that new discoveries are challenging the model and Dan Hooper (Fermilab) is quoted as saying that, there are
"many cracks in the standard model of particle physics".
I avoid suggesting any particular cracks, as one may fix something and break something else, or in other words there is no consensus beyond the fact that overall the model needs further improvements. Clearly physics is far more complicated than E=mc2 and that elegance, clarity and simplicity that so many associate with hard sciences.
Science instead presents another news article, referring to a paper published this month in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine. It is an attempt to determine the cause of death of Jesus Christ, and for anyone curious about it, it is not even the first one. In other words, a few people are trying to run an autopsy based on reported information (in the Christian Gospels). Do they understand that (according to those texts) Jesus Christ resuscitated and his body is no longer with us? Do they know that the Gospels are not scientific reports chronicling a series of notable facts? Apparently not. Frankly I think that people should only read sacred texts either to find messages of religious and spiritual value that are positive and peaceful (all sacred texts of the main religions invite to peace), or analyse them from a literary perspective, with added constraint to avoid offending anyone. Readings that try to apply scientific methods to reported facts, or try to find hidden meanings, or seek answers to today's problems by re-interpreting them and making them current are dangerous. What happened in Oslo by the hand of fundamentalist "Christian" Mr Anders Behring Breivik on Friday 22 July 2011, or some of the conclusions reached in the King's Thora are clearly worrying. Scientific thought should not be applied to information derived from sacred texts, as the results cannot be confirmed and often lead to new (and always horrific) "messages" from the spiritual world. In my opinion, it is a grave mistake to accept any scientific value in such discussions, and no such research should be funded with public funds, nor be diffused or broadcast through scientific or religious channels. This is not even fringe work and if anything, it complicates the already difficult relationship between science and religion.
In fact, Jesus Christ had already settled the matter himself when he said that human and divine justice and economy are to be kept separate (he was referring specifically to taxation and more generally on whether following moral precepts dispenses from anything related to human affairs). The physical world of humans and the spiritual world should be treated as two separated worlds. Science describes one world through the collective effort of humans, and is fully aware of limits, flaws and difficulties in such a pursuit. Religion describes another world, where the doubts and uncertainty of humans can be replaced with certainty. Both can coexist in one person, but the two should not be mixed.
Regrettably, I suppose some people still think that medical research (and whatever is typically classed as hard or useful science) is "superior" (and possibly infallible) than anything archaeology or social sciences may produce. I think that any research following scientific methods and improving our understanding is worth pursuing, and anything that answers our questions related to knowledge is relevant and useful.
As an archaeologist, I came to appreciate science, but I am also used to the complexities of humanistic sciences. Far from being a confused and confusing mixture of different thoughts, those complexities make up reality, which is far less predictable than some mathematical formulas may suggest. I often deal with complex systems that may be explained in different manners, according to different perspectives and none is necessarily more true than the other. There are indeed many specialty "archaeologies" pursuing separated interests and perspectives. I admit candidly that some archaeological approaches are of no interest to me, but that does not make them irrelevant or wrong. That means however that I have decided not to understand fully any archaeological record, and I rather pursue perspectives that are more familiar or interesting to me. This may sound as madness from a rigid "scientific" perspective, but in fact this what happens in ordinary life: I have no knowledge of what happens at all times anywhere in the world (not even in my own home), nor what anyone beyond me does. And I am not curious about it. I take in as much information as I can, and do what I can with it. There is information relevant to me that I do not know, as well as irrelevant information that I do know. There is order and deliberate prioritisation in the apparent chaotic state that is my perceived world. Perhaps one day the standard model of physics , or any replacement, will come to include such notions, and accept a great truth coming from archaeology: there is no direct (i.e. causal, mathematical, etc.) connection between generalisations (broader patterns) and particular archaeological records. In other words, what happens in a given system (be it a human community or a galaxy) is not the exact product of much broader "patterns" (as climate change or natural laws of physics may be), and vice versa. There are clear links, of course, and broader patterns are usually recognisable at smaller scales, but it is fundamentally wrong (at least in archaeology) to assume that one pattern (or law) can alone explain all the evidence. Finding the ultimate law that describes the whole universe is a long-standing project in some fields. Yet, that is only an aspiration so far.
I come to the end of my musings today, mentioning another news article from Science. It is about the practice by the publishing industry to overcharge for academic papers (and books), and the reactions to it, from open access journals to hacking and piracy. Since academic papers are not easily accessible, most people will indeed be forced to rely on journalistic coverage, which stands improvement overall, to obtain information that in many cases is publicly funded. I appreciate that there are costs for digitising, storing and transferring data, but I sincerely hope that some pioneering publisher will produce new models to fund the industry. I understand that much of the scientific literature can be meaningless to all but a few specialists. The number can be really low, and in the case of publishing previously unpublished archaeological artefacts, that number may be as low as one. Yet, there are interesting bits of data in most papers and books and at least parts of them (the conclusions or the full text without data tables and images) may be of interest. Trials should be attempted. One way to move forward in the future would be to produce extended abstracts aimed also at non-specialists for most papers, so that accessing abstracts will suffice in most cases. There is certainly much to do to connect the scientific world to the society at large, and ensure that the society benefits directly from knowledge and understands what researchers are doing. Even the fields that have proven (or have produced some belief in) their usefulness are often poorly understood. Worse than all, researchers often specialise so much and enter restricted circles of knowledge to a degree that ideas no longer circulate as freely as they should among scholars. In some ultra-specialist fields of research there may be stagnation as to practices, expectations, methods and the communication of results. I admit that in the past I had serious troubles in understanding some papers within archaeology, and more so in separated disciplines. I know that many have difficulties in understanding my publications, if they are not accustomed with the problems I discuss. Better communication practices and easiness to access disparate scientific information may benefit researchers along with the public and boost scientific research and interest in science. This idea clashes however with the fable that scientists are unquestionable authorities, and possibly challenge some research or produce different priorities for research. Change is never easy to accept, not even to those that change our understanding almost every day.