At the Science Prom in your Underwear
July 2, 2006 § 17 Comments
Quantum Mechanics: Historical Contingency and the Copenhagen Hegemony by James Cushing is an aging (first published in 1994, hah!) but interesting read in the philosophy of science. It is a bit mathematically meaty for Joe Public I suppose, but many of the core concepts are I think accessible to everyman.
In a nutshell, there are two rival theories of quantum physics: the widely accepted Copenhagen theory and the marginally accepted Bohm theory. Here is the important bit, for my purposes: both theories match observation exactly. That is to say, both theories rest on identical formalisms, produce identically the same predicted experimental results, and match all existing experimental data identically. Think of the formalism as being kind of a computer program: give it some initial conditions and it will tell you what the results will be of an experiment. Copenhagen and Bohm rest on the same formalism, because for any input to the two theories you always get the same output.
But nevertheless they are radically different theories. In the Copenhagen theory, against Einstein’s objections, God does indeed play dice. In the Bohm theory God doesn’t play dice, but events can instantaneously affect other events a vast distance away. So the two theories share the same formalism – the same outer mathematical structure which is a way of making the theory formally correspond to the data of experiments – and yet they have very different interpretations, that is, understandings about how the world actually works. It isn’t that any theory at all can match the data – that is, can share the same formalism. Obviously many theories exist which do not match the data. But in quantum mechanics more than one mutually incompatible theory exist which match the data perfectly, and the reason one is taken to be true (Copenhagen) is a matter of historical contingency; it isn’t because Copenhagen comports with observation and Bohm doesn’t.
Now, all I am doing is telling you all of this, not substantiating it, telling you why it matters, or anything else. Cushing does a great job of all that in the book, and I can’t possibly reduce the whole book to a blog post. Those who believe that the formalism is the scientific theory and that the interpretation isn’t science are commended to the text.
But with all that stipulated it becomes interesting to shift our attention to biology.
Fundamentally the problem with arguments over the scientific status of darwinian evolution is that it has no unifying formalism (warning: evil PDF format). There isn’t anything we can do in biology where we provide the inputs to a formalism and the formalism tells us in a fully generalizable way how reality will behave.
Now it is not true that there are no formalisms in biology. Given a DNA sequence I can tell you in general what polypeptide chain will emerge from a ribosome as a product of translation, for example. But it is true that there is no single overarching formalism which connects all of biology together. Darwinian evolution represents itself as the overarching theory which unifies all of biology: but darwinian evolution isn’t a formalism, it is an interpretation. There is no formalism in biology which represents the data. Darwinism is just a story about the data, an interpretation of the data, and one that could match an infinite number of mutually incompatible data sets; darwinian evolution is not a formalism and does not rest on any particular formalism. We can’t create hypothetical inputs to the theory of darwinian evolution and determine what outputs would result.
And there is no more formally valid a priori reason to believe Earnst Mayr’s story than there is to believe the Discovery Institute’s. Intelligent Design may not be “science” if interpretations lacking a unifying formalism are not science, but if ID isn’t science then neither is neodarwinian evolution. Neither one contains a formalism capable of reconstructing the observed data. Both are interpretations (at least logically) consistent with observed data, though having poked around in proteins and DNA directly myself I find the darwinian story laugh-out-loud implausible.
But you have your choice. If interpretation without a formalism can be legitimately called science, then both darwinian evolution and intelligent design are science: rivals on a footing no less equal than the footing of Bohm versus Copenhagen. If not, then neither are science. I’m not hung up on what kind of knowledge we call science and what kind we don’t. I am hung up on being consistent about it, though.
If it helps, I printed out the PDF. But I haven’t read it yet. So I don’t have anything to say.
Okay, I read the article. Then I re-read your post. So now I think I understand the article.
Hmm. The reason I disagree with this Zippy ultimately is that ID deep down isn’t the same, even formally, because it rejects methodological naturalism as the underlying axiom of science. Bohm and Copenhagen and Darwin do not.>>🙂
BTW, What kind of work are you doing with DNA? And what about it precisely is leading you to dismiss evolution as laughable?
…because it rejects methodological naturalism as the underlying axiom of science.
If methodological naturalism means that a comprehensively explanatory formalism is assumed to exist then you may have a point. It is an incoherent positivist assumption though, and in any case there is no such formalism in biology.
I am studying computational biology, with a particular interest in protein folding.
http://mliccione.blogspot.com/2006/07/at-science-prom-in-your-underwear.html
[…] with which many manosphere commenters seem rather taken. Â Any long term reader knows that I have my issues with evo-think in general; and adding “psych” into the mix turns the tommyrot meter into a fan strong enough to […]
[…] I’m sure I won’t convince those who hold to materialist Darwinism as their religion; but try to bear with me nonetheless.  My fight isn’t really with you in this post, because  even the staunchest Darwinist must concede that often more than one theory can sufficiently explain a given set of data. […]
[…] of a hedonic/materialist anti-feminism in blogland and of its inevitable romp in the sack with the religion called “evolutionary psychology.” Â But to the extent I paid any attention at all, […]
[…] consistent with known facts (er, well, mostly consistent) and treat those (wildly underdetermined)Â just-so stories as if they were established […]
[…] will tell you that sure, naturalism is false philosophically, but doing good science requires a methodological assumption of naturalism — never mind that all the most profound scientific discoveries were […]
[…] the rigorous mathematical formalisms of quantum mechanics underdetermine the choice of theories (Bohm vs Copenhagen). It isn’t that every theory is compatible with every formalism (the extreme end of the […]
[…] them as objective aspects of reality that we have to live with and conform to. Sola Scriptura and scientific positivism (scientism) are two ways of doing the same thing with respect to religious truth (doctrine): of […]
[…] X with “quantum mechanics” and it is a ludicrous statement. Replace X with “the Copenhagen interpretation” and it is at least arguable. The latter implicitly and explicitly makes much more concrete and […]
[…] impartiality means (at least methodologically) begging the question in favor of one of the most manifestly stupid and puerile metaphysical ideas ever conceived by […]
[…] are harder to explain away into oblivion, although it is worth noting that positivist anti-realism does ultimately explain away even tangible realities. For the positivist a rabbit doesn’t really exist qua rabbit: a rabbit is just a collection […]
Old old post, I know, but I’m avoiding studying for my QM qualifying exam at the moment.
The Copenhagen explanation is generally more adopted because it’s considered more elegant, which is a short way of saying that it hits the right mix of requiring fewer concepts and flattering the previous biases of most adoptees to be popular. It is also the only explanation you can adopt if you want to be rigidly positivist (under which I include phenomenology).
For what it’s worth, there are plenty of cases like this in physics, and I imagine in all sciences. For example, the data I’m working with could be explained either by the existence of intermediate-mass black holes, or by a to-my-mind-less-elegant arrangement of other dynamical qualities.
In fact, I’d go so far as to say this is always the case with physical theories; not all theories will fit the data, but there are a non-finite number of ones that will. We come to accept one over others through a priori knowledge or biases.