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.Next to Galileo, the greatest of the endoheretics was Charles Darwin, whose views on the evolution of species through the blind action of chance variation and naturalselection turned biology upside-down.Here the general public did know of the controversy and did, in a very general and rough way, have a dim view of what it wasabout.And the public was definitely on the side of the orthodoxy.The public has remained anti-evolution to this day.Science has accepted Darwin without, at this time, respectable dissent.The more sophisticated churches no longerquarrel publicly with it.But the general public, in what is probably the majority opinion if a vote were to be taken, stubbornly adheres to the tenets of a lost and deadorthodoxy of a century and a quarter ago.Galileo and Darwin won out.A number of the endoheretics did.Never by public pressure, however.Never by majority votes of the general public.51They won out because science is a self-correcting structure and because observation, experimentation, and reasoning eventually support those heresies that represent amore accurate view of the universe and bury those orthodoxies that are outpaced.In the process, orthodoxy gets a bad press.Looking back on the history of science, it would seem that every endoheretic was right, that each wore the white hat ofheroism against an evil and short-sighted orthodoxy.But that is only because the history of science is naturally selective.Only the endoheretic who was, in the end, shown to be right, makes his mark.For each of those,there may have been, let us say, fifty endoheretics who were quite wrong, and whose views are therefore scarcely remembered, and who are not recorded even as afootnote in the history books or, if they are, it is for other nonheretical work.What, then, would you have the orthodoxy do? Is it better to reject everything and be wrong once in fifty times or accept everything and be wrong forty-nine in fiftytimes and send science down endless blind alleys as a result?The best, of course, would be neither.The best would be to reject the forty-nine wrong out of hand and to accept and cherish the one right.Unfortunately, the day that the endoheretical pearl shines out so obviously amid the endoheretical garbage as to be easily plucked out is the day of the millennium.Thereis, alas, no easy way of distinguishing the stroke of intuitional genius from the stroke of folly.In fact, there has been many an utterly nonsensical suggestion that hasseemed to carry much more of the mark of truth than the cleverly insightful stroke of genius.There is no way, then, of dealing with the endoheresies other than by a firm (but not blind or spiteful) opposition.Each must run the gauntlet that alone can test it.And it works.There is delay and heartbreak often enough, but it works.However grimly and slowly the self-correcting process of science proceeds, that the processexists at all is a matter of pride to scientists.Science remains the only one of man's intellectual endeavors that is self-correcting at all.The problem of endoheresy, then, is not a truly serious one for science (though it may be, we all know, for the individual endoheretic) and is not one that must be ironedout in public.But what of exoheresy?We had better first be sure of what we mean by an exoheretic.Science is split into endless specialties, and a specialist who is narrow-minded and insecure may see asan "outsider" anyone who is not bull's-eye on target within the specialty.Robert Mayer was a physician and James P.Joule was a brewer who dabbled in physics.Neither had academic credentials, and the fact that52 The Role of the Hereticboth saw the existence of the law of conservation of energy went for nothing.Neither could get his views accepted.Hermann Helmholtz, third in line, was a fullacademician, and he gets the credit.When Jacobus van't Hoff worked out the scheme of the tretravalent carbon atom, the orthodox chemist Adolf Kolbe denounced the new concept intemperately,specifically, and contemptuously, mentioning the fact that van't Hoff was teaching at a veterinary school.But we can't go along with this.If we wish to be fine enough and narrow enough, then all scientific heretics are exoheretics in the eyes of the sufficiently orthodox andthe term becomes meaningless.Nor should we label as exoheretics those who are not formally educated but who, through self-education, have reached the pitch of professional excellence.Let us, instead, understand the word exoheretic to refer only to someone who is a real outsider, one who does not understand the painstaking structure built up byscience, and who therefore must attack it without understanding. When Jacobus van't Hoff worked out the scheme of the tretravalent carbon atom, the orthodox chemist Adolf Kolbe denounced the new concept intemperately,specifically, and contemptuously, mentioning the fact that van't Hoff was teaching at a veterinary school.But we can't go along with this.If we wish to be fine enough and narrow enough, then all scientific heretics are exoheretics in the eyes of the sufficiently orthodox andthe term becomes meaningless.Nor should we label as exoheretics those who are not formally educated but who, through self-education, have reached the pitch of professional excellence.Let us, instead, understand the word exoheretic to refer only to someone who is a real outsider, one who does not understand the painstaking structure built up byscience, and who therefore must attack it without understanding.The typical exoheretic is so unaware of the intimate structure of science, of the methods and philosophy of science, of the very language of science, that his views arevirtually unintelligible from the scientific standpoint.As a consequence, he is generally ignored by scientists.If exoheretical views are forced upon scientists, the reactionis bound to be puzzlement or amusement or contempt.In any case, it would be exceptional if the exoheresy were deemed worthy of any sort of comment.In frustration, the exoheretic is then very likely to appeal over the heads of the scientists to the general public [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.Next to Galileo, the greatest of the endoheretics was Charles Darwin, whose views on the evolution of species through the blind action of chance variation and naturalselection turned biology upside-down.Here the general public did know of the controversy and did, in a very general and rough way, have a dim view of what it wasabout.And the public was definitely on the side of the orthodoxy.The public has remained anti-evolution to this day.Science has accepted Darwin without, at this time, respectable dissent.The more sophisticated churches no longerquarrel publicly with it.But the general public, in what is probably the majority opinion if a vote were to be taken, stubbornly adheres to the tenets of a lost and deadorthodoxy of a century and a quarter ago.Galileo and Darwin won out.A number of the endoheretics did.Never by public pressure, however.Never by majority votes of the general public.51They won out because science is a self-correcting structure and because observation, experimentation, and reasoning eventually support those heresies that represent amore accurate view of the universe and bury those orthodoxies that are outpaced.In the process, orthodoxy gets a bad press.Looking back on the history of science, it would seem that every endoheretic was right, that each wore the white hat ofheroism against an evil and short-sighted orthodoxy.But that is only because the history of science is naturally selective.Only the endoheretic who was, in the end, shown to be right, makes his mark.For each of those,there may have been, let us say, fifty endoheretics who were quite wrong, and whose views are therefore scarcely remembered, and who are not recorded even as afootnote in the history books or, if they are, it is for other nonheretical work.What, then, would you have the orthodoxy do? Is it better to reject everything and be wrong once in fifty times or accept everything and be wrong forty-nine in fiftytimes and send science down endless blind alleys as a result?The best, of course, would be neither.The best would be to reject the forty-nine wrong out of hand and to accept and cherish the one right.Unfortunately, the day that the endoheretical pearl shines out so obviously amid the endoheretical garbage as to be easily plucked out is the day of the millennium.Thereis, alas, no easy way of distinguishing the stroke of intuitional genius from the stroke of folly.In fact, there has been many an utterly nonsensical suggestion that hasseemed to carry much more of the mark of truth than the cleverly insightful stroke of genius.There is no way, then, of dealing with the endoheresies other than by a firm (but not blind or spiteful) opposition.Each must run the gauntlet that alone can test it.And it works.There is delay and heartbreak often enough, but it works.However grimly and slowly the self-correcting process of science proceeds, that the processexists at all is a matter of pride to scientists.Science remains the only one of man's intellectual endeavors that is self-correcting at all.The problem of endoheresy, then, is not a truly serious one for science (though it may be, we all know, for the individual endoheretic) and is not one that must be ironedout in public.But what of exoheresy?We had better first be sure of what we mean by an exoheretic.Science is split into endless specialties, and a specialist who is narrow-minded and insecure may see asan "outsider" anyone who is not bull's-eye on target within the specialty.Robert Mayer was a physician and James P.Joule was a brewer who dabbled in physics.Neither had academic credentials, and the fact that52 The Role of the Hereticboth saw the existence of the law of conservation of energy went for nothing.Neither could get his views accepted.Hermann Helmholtz, third in line, was a fullacademician, and he gets the credit.When Jacobus van't Hoff worked out the scheme of the tretravalent carbon atom, the orthodox chemist Adolf Kolbe denounced the new concept intemperately,specifically, and contemptuously, mentioning the fact that van't Hoff was teaching at a veterinary school.But we can't go along with this.If we wish to be fine enough and narrow enough, then all scientific heretics are exoheretics in the eyes of the sufficiently orthodox andthe term becomes meaningless.Nor should we label as exoheretics those who are not formally educated but who, through self-education, have reached the pitch of professional excellence.Let us, instead, understand the word exoheretic to refer only to someone who is a real outsider, one who does not understand the painstaking structure built up byscience, and who therefore must attack it without understanding. When Jacobus van't Hoff worked out the scheme of the tretravalent carbon atom, the orthodox chemist Adolf Kolbe denounced the new concept intemperately,specifically, and contemptuously, mentioning the fact that van't Hoff was teaching at a veterinary school.But we can't go along with this.If we wish to be fine enough and narrow enough, then all scientific heretics are exoheretics in the eyes of the sufficiently orthodox andthe term becomes meaningless.Nor should we label as exoheretics those who are not formally educated but who, through self-education, have reached the pitch of professional excellence.Let us, instead, understand the word exoheretic to refer only to someone who is a real outsider, one who does not understand the painstaking structure built up byscience, and who therefore must attack it without understanding.The typical exoheretic is so unaware of the intimate structure of science, of the methods and philosophy of science, of the very language of science, that his views arevirtually unintelligible from the scientific standpoint.As a consequence, he is generally ignored by scientists.If exoheretical views are forced upon scientists, the reactionis bound to be puzzlement or amusement or contempt.In any case, it would be exceptional if the exoheresy were deemed worthy of any sort of comment.In frustration, the exoheretic is then very likely to appeal over the heads of the scientists to the general public [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]