The power of doubt - science as a model for dialogue that produces knowledge

The spectacular success of science

When looking for an example of dialogue that has had an extraordinary success, it is worth exploring scientific discourse – a constantly morphing conversation that has lasted more than two and a half thousand years. The spectacular success of science at finding explanations for many things and basing technologies on those explanations is not primarily due to its use of evidence, or its design and performance of experiments, or that it risks making predictions based on its models of reality. Science’s success is largely a product of its willingness to doubt itself.

Many knowledge systems use evidence, test their ideas through experiments and make predictions, but science is the only knowledge system that consistently says, “Don’t believe me.” In most knowledge systems doubt excludes you from membership. Questioning authority, tradition and dogma is taboo. But in science doubt is the key to entry. The criteria for what constitutes valid doubt has been refined over centuries.

It was the father of natural philosophy, Thales of Miletus (born in the 7th century BCE), that said something like: What if we can share our ideas on the nature of reality, agree to keep criticising one another’s ideas and then keep that conversation going for centuries. He also wanted to explain what was going on without referring to the untestable idea of the gods. It was this kind of thinking, this “natural philosophy”, that eventually led to the scientific and political revolution which began in the 17th century in Europe. This revolution was all about challenging authority, tradition and antiquity as reliable sources of knowledge. Its attitude can be seen in the motto of the Royal Society, the oldest scientific academy that has been in continuous existence. Its motto is Nullius in verba, or “Take no one’s word for it!” It was the 20th century philosopher, Karl Popper, who made this principle even more explicit by saying, “the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.” Popper suggested that we cannot prove anything is absolutely true. The only thing we can do with any certainty is identify error.

Open to falsification

Most forms of human knowledge are based on the generalisations we make from experience. Our predictions about the future are based on our experiences of the past. This is called induction. In most cases, this kind of thinking, this inductive reasoning, works well enough, but its generalisations are not always reliable (often leading to false assumptions, prejudices, stereotypes and superstition). This is why in science all claims to knowledge about the nature of reality remain open to criticism and falsification, even if the corroborating evidence and experiments give us overwhelming reasons for provisional acceptance. All ideas are potentially falsifiable. It is easy to design an experiment to prove your hypothesis. You select the data that supports it. In this way you become a victim of what we call “confirmation bias”. This is why you need the courage to question your assumptions and design an experiment, or counterargument, that disproves your own hypothesis. An idea’s ability to survive falsification makes it the best model we have so far for explaining some phenomenon in reality – the idea with the least amount of error.

For falsifiability to be embraced as a method for producing knowledge, you need a courageous community of practice that is more committed to working out what is going on than they are to being right. For such a community of practice to function, there needs to be some agreement on the criteria for mutually beneficial disagreement. What constitutes a logical argument, evidence, reliable experimental design and effective modelling?

Is this some kind of cultural domination?

Practitioners of science would argue, for example, that a well-designed experiment is one that can be repeated by anyone (and be used to identify error and disprove hypotheses), regardless of her prejudice, scepticism, language, beliefs, cultural assumptions, fear, desire, or what she had for breakfast. This has led some to claim that science is a universal method for assessing knowledge, free of subjective points of view and cultural assumptions.

This perspective is poorly understood by those who claim that science is trying to force its narrow form of knowledge production onto them. Contrary to popular misconceptions, science is not an attempt to defend a collection of beliefs or truth statements, but a process that encourages creative guesses and then criticises them. Any reliable process of identifying error, that can be understood by believers and unbelievers alike, is scientific. When dealing with knowledge claims that cannot be submitted to a reliable process of falsification, science cannot say anything, and it must withhold judgement.

Does science represent some kind of cultural domination protecting a particular worldview? Or is it the opposite – a reliable process for identifying error in any argument in any context? If you disagree with a method of knowledge production, and think you know of more reliable criteria for assessing knowledge and identifying error, it is the nature of that tradition of criticism we call science to welcome your suggestions.

The role of creativity

There is the popular impression that scientists have a special genius for having ideas about the nature of reality. But the truth is that the source of scientists’ ideas is no different to those of artists, philosophers, poets, mechanics, gardeners and daydreamers. Democritus’ idea that everything is made of irreducible atoms was speculation. Fleming’s discovery of penicillin was an accident. Kekulé imagined the circular structure of the benzene molecule during a dream about a snake biting its tail. The idea that led Newton to discover the law of gravity was the wild conjecture that the moon is in free fall. Mendeleev’s periodic table started out as an analogy based on the card game of patience. Einstein’s ideas about relativity began as fantastical thought experiments, like travelling on a beam of light. Wallace’s vision of the tree of life was the product of a hallucination induced by malarial fever. Scientists may have access to a particular kind of data, but their ideas, just like any other new ideas, are based on clever guesses and fantasies. They don’t have a special talent for having ideas, but they have a special commitment to criticising ideas once they, or someone else, has had them.

Richard P. Feynman stressed the importance of being able to make creative guesses – and then to test them.

Growing knowledge over time

By embracing its own fallibility, science grows knowledge faster than any other knowledge system. No rigid dogma is helpful in the process of knowledge production – even “scientific” dogma. In the short-term, scientific research may often be determined by who is funding the research, which interest groups the research serves, who controls access to technology, and ideological perspectives that determine research priorities. Poor scientific practice and unprofessional peer review processes have led to the recent replication crisis, where new research has not managed to replicate the results claimed by the initial research. As in many fields, funding and reputation, money and celebrity status, can distort scientific integrity. In the long-term, however, the errors of the past are identified, better replicable experiments are designed, access to new information is considered, explanations are improved and technologies that extend our senses even further are innovated – all because the tradition of criticism is ultimately maintained.

Effective scientific practice actively invites you to prove its ideas wrong, because it is not trying to maintain certainty or protect an identity. It is trying to open up new possibilities by constantly creating better explanations for things.

Being willing to admit you could be wrong

So, how can we integrate the power of doubt into our conversations, improving our ability to co-create knowledge?

We can start by recognising that our most reliable source of knowledge is not that we have found a way to prove something is true. We haven’t. What we have discovered are effective ways for identifying error.

While knowledge spreads when people agree, knowledge grows when people disagree. This is why social media, which is good at spreading rumours and creating trends, is so terrible at growing knowledge.

If we are all trying to solve the same problem, then it should be in everyone’s interests to come up with the best solution possible. This is not about winning a debate, or the victory of one position over another, or protecting an identity, or shaming someone for being politically incorrect, or claiming the status of victim. It is about having a conversation in order to understand, because understanding what is really going on is more valued, by all involved, than being right. If your need to know is growing stronger than your need to be right, you’ll be willing to say about the most precious ideas you hold, “Don’t believe me.”

Based on an article initially developed by André Croucamp for First Rand in November 2018.