Rough Beast

Rough Beast
Grifo Mecanico - Diego Mazzeo

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Denying Science: Mention vs. Use

No science denier; evolution denier, climate change denier, string theory denier or evolutionary psychology denier will give up any of their artifacts of science that they find useful. Questioning quantum mechanics leads no one to give up their iPhone. Questioning evolution leads no one to avoid getting a new genetically modified flu immunization. The deniers 'mention' their lack of cognition regarding science but 'use' the science to enrich their lives.

What distinguishes the land of denial from the state of skepticism is an understanding of scientific methods - specifically the use of scientific theory to drive understanding of the natural world. Deniers depend on random facts that both cast doubt on the subject at had and bolster the contrafactual universe that contains the framework of unexamined belief. There is no offer of a theory of no climate change or a theory of no evolutionary process of natural selection. Some version of a true faith interposes itself between themselves and the facts they reject. They have a 'just so story' about mysterious forces conspiring to foist dark means into the world to end personal freedoms. That is a response to a hated theory but not a theory of their own.

A working theory of no climate change or no evolution bears the responsibility for bringing new and disruptive theories into play and then to introduce new evidence predicted by the new contrarian theory. But contrarian theories from deniers do not exist. In other words, deniers offer no conjecture or hypothesis that will falsify a theory of a stable climate or biology without evolution. But they still hang onto their iPhones.

Did I mention that there are unicorns in the garden?. I am using the tomatoes the unicorns did not eat in the salad.

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