The Myth of Settled Science

“To one studying the history of science, it even seems that the more certain
are the proponents of a theory, the more likely they are to be wrong …”

[James Lawrence Powell,
Grand Canyon, Solving Earth’s Grandest Puzzle]

“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."
[Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate in Physics; The Physics Teacher,
volume 7, issue 6 (1969)]

I am not making a general criticism of Science in general, nor of Climate
Science. I am simply pointing out that Science is based on skepticism and that
all knowledge is provisional and subject to change.

The phrase "Settled Science" has been bandied about over the past
few years in relation to Climatology and "Anthropogenic Global
Warming". This paper examines the notion of "Settled Science"
and shows it to be illusory.

Several examples will demonstrate the absurdity of calling anything
"Settled Science". In most of these there was far more than a 97%
consensus: The belief in these facts of “Settled Science” were usually
unanimous.

Isaac Newton created a magnificent theory of Celestial Mechanics that, for
the first time, explained why the Solar System has the shape and the motion
that it has. He published Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia
Mathematica in 1687. This book is widely acclaimed at the most
important scientific book ever published. It became the foundation of Classical
Mechanics, which was extended to nearly every possible natural phenomenon. As
mathematical techniques developed, the final triumph of Newtonian Celestial
Mechanics was achieved by Pierre Simon de Laplace who wrote a five-volume
masterpiece, Celestial Mechanics (completed 1825). Laplace
showed in detailed calculations that Newtonian Physics agreed with astronomical
observations to better than one part per hundred thousand. Observations and
calculations were further refined later in the 1800s resulting in success after
success. Not only did Newtonian Celestial Mechanics explain the motions of all
the known planets, but predicted the existence and orbit of a previously
undiscovered planet, Neptune, along with the orbits of comets, asteroids, etc.
The success rate of Newton's Mechanics, as augmented by the calculations of
Laplace and others was nearly perfect. By the end of the 1800s, Newtonian
Celestial Mechanics was able to predict observations to better than one part
per million.

One of the axioms of Newtonian Celestial Mechanics is that gravity is a
force that exists between any two masses and propagates at infinite
speed, that is instantaneously. This instantaneous propagation
bothered quite a few physicists, including Newton himself. Nonetheless,
invariable agreement with observations and predictions to better than one part
per million is a tough argument to counter. The matter was "Settled
Science" for more than 200 years without a single significant discrepancy
between theory and observation. In the middle of the 1800s, one tiny deviation
between prediction and observation was discovered: the perihelion precession of
the planet Mercury. It was so tiny that it bothered nobody. It was explained
away by the existence of another new planet, Vulcan, within the orbit of
Mercury. Unlike Neptune, Vulcan was not found where it was
expected to be, in fact, it was not found at all. The matter was still so
small, and the success of Newtonian Celestial Mechanics was so overwhelming,
that the issue was largely ignored. It was thought that some observational
error was responsible, although such an error could not be found.

Attempts to fix Newtonian Celestial Mechanics by assigning a finite
propagation speed to gravity failed utterly. Any finite speed
of gravitational propagation would cause the planets to spiral outward from the
Sun and the entire Solar System would disintegrate.

Then, in 1905, a Swiss patent clerk named Albert Einstein blasted Newtonian
Mechanics out of the water. He showed, among other things, that no force could
propagate faster than the speed of light.

This problem vexed Physics until 1915, when Einstein published his General
Theory of Relativity. Einstein showed that, despite the finite speed of gravity
(which was the same as the speed of light), velocity dependent forces
cause each object to be attracted to other objects not where those objects
were, but where those objects would have been if they had
continued at uniform velocity in a straight line and if the speed of gravity
were infinite. Furthermore, General Relativity explained the perihelion shift
of Mercury and predicted that light would be bent when passing around a massive
object such as the Sun. This phenomenon could be observed during a solar
eclipse, so an expedition was mounted to carry telescopes to the predicted
location of an eclipse and observations were made that again confirmed
Einstein's prediction.

The entire point here is that Newtonian Mechanics, the most
respected theory in all of Physics and Astronomy, which had
been supported by millions of observations over some 200 years, proved to be
incorrect, and not in a minor way either, but in a fundamental way.
One of its foundational assumptions, infinite speed of gravity, was simply
false, and the seeming agreement with experiment was due to a mathematical
coincidence involving the inverse square law of Gravity. Exactly the same
phenomenon happens in Electromagnetism, again due to an inverse square law.

Since the time of the double slit experiment by Thomas Young, it was
universally accepted that light was a wave. Light was diffracted by gratings
and other irregularities. Only waves can be diffracted. The notion that light
was a particle died in 1801 and Young killed it. For over 100 years, the wave
nature of light was accepted by 100% of all scientists. Whoopsie. Light is a particle
and a wave. This was demonstrated in 1905 by Albert Einstein and has
been giving people headaches ever since. Similarly, it had been shown in 1897
that electric charge was carried by a particle named "electron" by J
J Thomson. There was no question about the particulate nature of the electron.
Whoopsie again. It turns out that the electron is also both a particle
and a wave. In fact, it turns out that all sub-atomic particles are
waves.

This was one of the several Earth-shaking identifications of seemingly
different entities that turned out to be the same things
merely viewed from different perspectives. For centuries, it was "Settled
Science" that these word pairs described distinct and very different
objects. Each of these distinctions was accepted by 100% of scientists:

star, sun -- Giordano Bruno hypothesized that they were identical,
a discovery for which he was burned at the stake.

world, planet -- Nicolaus Copernicus showed that the Earth was just
another planet, orbiting the Sun [actually the common center of mass of the
Solar System]. For millennia, there was a near 100% consensus that the Sun,
Moon, & planets orbited the Earth.

time, space -- Einstein, 1905

mass, energy -- Einstein, 1905

particle, wave -- Einstein, 1905

acceleration, gravity -- Einstein, 1915

To the utter amazement of the scientific community and the entire World,
both words of each of these word pairs mean exactly the same thing.
It is equally astonishing that the last four of these were discovered by one
person: Albert Einstein.

It was "Settled Science" that the "inert gasses",
helium, neon, argon, krypton, & xenon did not form any chemical compounds
whatsoever. This is because they all have completely filled outer electron
shells and therefore are not prone to either lose or gain electrons. Whoopsie.
In the last few decades, it has been discovered that all of
the "noble gasses" form compounds.

Stability of the Chemical Elements was "Settled Science" for
nearly a century. Since Lavoisier and the other early true chemists,
it was known that elements could not be transmuted from one to another and that
the hope of the alchemists was futile. The elements were absolutely fixed and
immutable. ALL chemists agreed on this point unanimously. Whoopsie,
Becquerel discovered radioactivity and the immutability of elements, the
"Settled Science" of most of the 19th century Chemistry, sank like a
lead brick.

It was "Settled Science" that acquired characteristics cannot be
inherited. The great evolutionist and taxonomist Jean Baptiste Lamarck believed
in the inheritance of acquired characteristics. This was shown to be false
within a century when Darwinism and Mendelism became established. Researches by
many biologists showed that Lamarck was wrong on this issue. By the 1940s, the
"fact" that acquired characteristics could not be inherited was a
piece of "Settled Science" acknowledged by ALL biologists. Whoopsie!
In 1942, Conrad H. Waddington discovered epigenetics and
showed that, in some cases, acquired characteristics can be
inherited.

The "central dogma of molecular biology" is a
phrase by Francis Crick, who proposed the double helix structure of DNA.
It means that information passes from DNA to mRNA to proteins, but neither
mRNA, nor proteins can pass the information back to DNA. Crick first wrote it
in 1958 and repeated it in 1970. It was "Settled Science". Then reverse
transcriptase was discovered, which is an enzyme used to generate complementary
DNA from RNA. So at least one reverse link exists. But the matter is far from
over. Recently, James A. Shapiro in his book Evolution: A View from the 21st
Century  has published evidence that proteins edit nuclear DNA directly.

Furthermore, there was the "one gene, one
protein" hypothesis, which was universally believed for a couple of
decades and considered to be "Settled Science". Further research
demonstrated that there were no more than 25,000 genes in the human genome, but
at least 100,000 different proteins produced under direction of the genome.
Simple arithmetic shows that a single protein specifying gene must produce more
than one protein. Whoopsie! This was shown to be the
result of differential mRNA "editing" which occurs within the nuclear
envelope before the edited mRNA enters the general cytoplasm. In a given
organism, different cell types have distinct editing enzymes in the nuclear
envelope, converting mRNA into different versions, permitting a single piece of
DNA to direct the synthesis of distinct but related proteins.

Slowing of the expansion of the Universe was "Settled Science".
Gravity was known to be always attractive. Therefore, once the
expansion of the Universe was discovered, it became clear that gravity must be
slowing the expansion of the universe for the same reason that a rock thrown
vertically into the air slows down. A major stated goal of the Hubble Telescope
project was to determine the "deceleration parameter", the rate that
expansion was slowing. Everybody in Science was unanimous on
this. Whoopsie. In 1998, it was discovered that the expansion of the Universe
was accelerating.

Here is another pair of settled scientific matters that were not quite so
"settled" as scientists thought. They were first promulgated by two
of the scientific giants of the 19th century who happened to be good friends,
Darwin & Lyell.

Charles Lyell built his theory of the Earth on the ideas of
uniformitarianism and gradualism. Prior to Lyell, geologists spoke of strange
and repeated catastrophes as the explanation for the geological record. Lyell
said, "Nonsense," all forces that shaped the Earth were prosaic and
common and are still going on today. This was called
"uniformitarianism", the idea that processes were uniform across time
and space. He also believed that all change was gradual
("gradualism", keeping in mind that there were brief violent changes
such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. All such events were believed
to be local in scope and the notion of global catastrophes was quietly buried.
Nearly all geologists believed firmly in gradualism right up until the 1980s,
when Walter Alvarez and his colleagues destroyed gradualism (Whoopsie) with
their emphasis on mass extinctions such as the end cretaceous event perpetrated
by a colossal asteroid strike. The bulk of the geological community was so
committed to gradualism that Alvarez et all were subjected to a great deal of
derision. Now mass extinctions are one of the central features of Earth
Sciences.

Charles Darwin built his Theory of Evolution on the notion of gradual
change, bit by bit, as life adapted over time. Darwin rejected the
"saltation" theories of many others to explain the apparent gaps in
the fossil records, and instead blamed the gaps on the incompleteness of the
record. According to Darwin, species change gradually with
time, introducing the same gradualism into Evolution that Lyell introduced into
Geology. The vast majority of evolutionary biologists agreed with Darwin.
Whoopsie. Darwin was wrong. Eldridge & Gould showed that Evolution was very
uneven in time. There were long periods when a group of animals changed little
if at all, interrupted by brief (in the geological sense) episodes of rapid
evolution. They called their theory "punctuated equilibrium" and
produced a wealth of data to support their point of view.

It was "Settled Science" that the rigidity of the Earth's crust
made it impossible for continents to move around. Continental Drift was tossed
into the dustbin of history. Even the great Harold Jeffreys was convinced
that there was no possible means for continents to move. This was nearly unanimously
believed. Whoopsie. Plate Tectonics burst on the scene and
became one of the central tenets of Geology.

Not quite so recently, but just as firmly believed to be "Settled
Science" was Lord Kelvin's declaration that the Sun (and hence the Earth)
was no more than 20 million years old. This time scale gave Charles Darwin fits
because it was insufficient to permit observed Biological Evolution to occur.
Remember, Lord Kelvin (after whom the Kelvin temperature scale was named) was
one of the greatest physicists of all time. He was a founder of Thermodynamics
and many other areas of Science. His word carried the highest authority in the
scientific world. Nearly all physicists of the era agreed with him based upon
his brilliant and incisive papers on the subject. His calculations, based on known
Physics of gasses, were correct. But his conclusion was wrong.
He did not know about nuclear reactions, which had not yet been discovered.

Then there was the matter of what caused ulcers. It was "Settled
Science" for decades that most ulcers were caused by excess acidity in the
stomach. All treatments of ulcers were based upon this incontrovertible
fact. Whoopsie, wrong. Most ulcers were found to be caused by a
bacterium called Helicobacter pylori. The linkage to acid was real,
but only because this bacterium is acidophilic. But the bacterium and not
acidity was the cause.

Then there were these big misses by great minds:

“There is not the slightest indication that [nuclear energy] will ever be
obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will,”
Albert Einstein told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on December 29, 1934 [In 1938,
only 4 years later, nuclear fission was discovered.]

In 1895 Lord Kelvin stated that “heavier-than-air
flying machines are impossible”. In 1903, the Wright
Brothers proved him wrong.

British Astronomer Royal in January 1956, Richard van der Riet Woolley said,
''Space travel is utter bilge.'' In 1957, the first artificial satellite was
launched by the USSR. In 1959, Luna 2 impacted upon the Moon.

Now, when one looks at the predictions of "Global Warming", one
does not get predictions that are very accurate at all. In fact, all of the
most prestigious models disagree with one another by wide margins. To which I
ask the question: How can a theory that does not agree with observations to any
reasonable degree of accuracy be considered "Settled Science"?

Unlike astronomical observations, temperature measurements are not accurate
to even parts per thousand, let alone parts per million. In fact, the claimed
deviations are close to the noise levels.

I do NOT mean to disparage Climate Science and the hypothesis of
Anthropogenic Global Warming (or Climate Change) There is much data and
reasoning to support this position. I merely point out that the matter is not
"Settled Science" because there is no such thing.