Scientific mythology

There are many stories that inform our understanding of the history of science and technology. Some of these are perfectly true, some are questionable, and some are known to be false. Our understanding, appreciation and commitment to science is supported by ritual and stories. Science itself can be studied through the lens of mythology.

Contents

1 Myths within the history of science 1.1 The limitations of using dramatic historical stories to teach science 1.2 A listing of some major myths of science 2 Myths about science itself 3 Related mythologies 4 External links 5 References

Myths within the history of science

The limitations of using dramatic historical stories to teach science

Commentators on the history of science, such as James Burke, Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend have pointed out the limitations of using dramatic historical stories to teach science. In the attempt to fit the history of science into a tale with a moral lesson, there is a tendency to simplify complex historical realities, and this tends to give the general public a misimpression about what scientists do and how the process of science works.

For example, historians of science and scientific educators often point out that scientific myths often contain an inspired "heroic" genius, and this obscures the role of social communication and collaboration in the scientific process as well as contributes to the perception that science is too hard for mere mortals to undertake. Also, scientific myths often contain an "evil" establishment, and this obscures the fact that there are often good reasons why the establishment believes what it does and that in many cases, the established view turns out to be correct. Scientific myths also tend to either overstate or understate the role of chance in scientific discovery, and the tendency to emphasize the dramatic tends to understate the incremental progress that constitutes most scientific advancement.

Also in the effort to create a dramatic story, scientific myths tend to reduce theory verification to one dramatic experiment which is claimed to prove a theory (for example, the Michelson-Morley experiment). This leads to the misperception that scientific theories are fragile in that they are based on a few crucial facts, when in fact most scientific theories are robust in that they are based on many independent lines of evidence and can withstand cases in which some interpretations of data later turn out to be incorrect.

A listing of some major myths of science

Some of the stories told about science and scientific discovery are:

• Isaac Newton's apple
• Galileo Galilei's cannonballs off the leaning tower of Pisa, and some stories about his persecution by the Catholic Church. The leaning-tower story orginated with Galileo's own student Vincenzo Viviani but is not generally accepted.
• Archimedes' "Eureka"
• Christopher Columbus's "discovery" of The Americas, or the round Earth
• Copernicus, his theory, and his reasons for withholding publication. According to Arthur Koestler, Copernicus did not propose a true heliocentric theory; he added a system of cycles and subcycles that made his system even more complicated than the Ptolemaic system, and he withheld publication out of fears of being ridiculed by other scholars, not out of fears of persecution. (However simply looking at pages from the original manuscript would seem to eliminate the first part of this claim. [1] (http://www.bj.uj.edu.pl/bjmanus/revol/qprev_e.html) Likewise, "more complicated" refers to the greater number of epicycles, with whcich Copernicus replaced equant circles, achieving what was considered a simplification.).
• Medieval stained glass windows as "proof" that glass is really a liquid, not a true solid, since the fact that the bottom edges of the glass pieces are thicker than the tops "proves" that the glass has flowed (albeit slowly) over the centuries. The truth most likely is that 1) medieval glass-making techniques did not produce glass with uniform thickness (this is known), and 2) the window artisans installed the glass pieces with the thicker edge toward the bottom. (Exactly what glass "is" remains controversial.)
• That people used to believe the Earth is flat. While during some periods in history, certain groups have advocated theories of a "flat earth," the knowledge that the Earth is likely a sphere of some sort dates back at least to Aristotle. According to historian Jeffrey Burton Russell, this myth has been used to encourage the dichotomy of science and religion. (An extension of the mythology, invented by Washington Irving, helps to glorify the achievement of Christopher Columbus.)
• Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz understanding the ring shape of the benzene molecule after a dream of a snake seizing its own tail (the mythic symbol known as the Ouroboros).

Myths about science itself

Given the increasing prominence of science and scientific results onto the world stage, it is perhaps inevitable that myths and misconceptions should have grown up around the entire institution of science (see also: pseudoscience). Some examples of such myths include the following:

• Science as a monolithic enterprise: There has been a tendency among some writers to portray "science" as if those practicing science by and large worked toward a set of common goals. In actuality, any study is "scientific" which adheres to the scientific method or similar means of verification through measurable evidence. As a result, science cannot be said to "work toward" any end in itself; rather, the process of science is used by scientists to discover and verify useful models, which are then applied to whatever goals that scientist may have.

Related mythologies

Today scientific knowledge has such a high status that it is easy to forget that there are other mythologies that confront the mystery of reality. For example, the Far Eastern philosophy of the Tao suggests a non-intrusive approach to fact finding. Here the world around us must be examined undisturbed, in its natural habitat. Any attempt to shape events would make the results somehow less real. Knowledge derived from experiment then seems contrived.

External links

• The Myth of the Magical Scientific Method (http://www.dharma-haven.org/science/myth-of-scientific-method.htm)
• Absurd Characters Stumble Around Science: Viewing science from inside and outside (http://www.scicom.hu.ic.ac.uk/students/essays/anna1.html)
• The Mythology of Science and Technology: Prometheus or Science is in trouble (http://www.freespeaker.org/lincolndouglas/technology/prometheus.html)
• Dealing with the Modern Crisis of Religiosity: Reflections from the Aum Case (http://www.human.toyogakuen-u.ac.jp/~acmuller/articles/dayori1.htm)
• The Myth of the Flat Earth (http://www.id.ucsb.edu/fscf/library/RUSSELL/FlatEarth.html)

References

• Feyerabend, Paul. 1975. Against Method. London: Verso.

See also: history of science and technology.