The Science of Discworld II

‘true’.
    Science’s models are not true , and that’s exactly what makes them useful. They tell simple stories that our minds can grasp. They are lies-to-children, simplified teaching stories, and none the worse for that. The progress of science consists of telling ever more convincing lies to ever more sophisticated children.
    Whether our worldview is magical, religious, philosophical or scientific, we try to alter the universe so that we can convince ourselves that we’re in charge of it. If our worldview is magical, we believe that the universe responds to what we want it to do. So control is just a matter of finding the right way to instruct the universe about what our wishes are: the right spell. If our worldview is religious, we know that the gods are really in charge, but we hold out the hope that we can influence their decisions and still get what we want (or influence ourselves to accept whatever happens …). If our worldview is philosophical, we seldom tinker with the universe ourselves, but we hope to influence how others tinker. And if our worldview is scientific, we start with the idea that controlling the universe is not the main objective. The main objective is to understand the universe.
    The search for understanding leads us to construct stories that map out limited parts of the future. It turns out that this approach works best if the map does not foretell the future like a clairvoyant, predicting that certain things will happen on certain days or in certain years. Instead, it should predict that if we do certain things, and set up a particular experiment in particular circumstances, then certain things should happen. Then we can do an experiment, and check the reasoning. Paradoxically, we learn most when the experiment fails.
    This process of questioning the conventional wisdom, and modifying it whenever it seems not to work, can’t go on indefinitely. Or can it? And if it stops, when does it stop?
    Scientists are used to constant change, but most changes are small: they refine our understanding without really challenging anything. We take a brick out of the wall of the scientific edifice, polish it a bit, and put it back. But every so often, it looks as if the edifice is actually finished. Worthwhile new questions don’t seem to exist, and all attempts to shoot down the accepted theory have failed. Then that area ofscience becomes established (though still not ‘true’), and nobody wastes their time trying to change it any more. There are always other sexier and more exciting areas to work on.
    Which is much like putting a big plug in a volcano. Eventually, as the pressure builds up, it will give way. And when it does, there will be a very big explosion. Ash rains down a hundred miles away, half the mountain slides into the sea, everything is altered …
    But this happens only after a long period of apparent stability, and only after a huge fight to preserve the conventional ways of thinking. What we then see is a paradigm shift, a huge change in thought patterns; examples include Darwin’s theory of evolution and Einstein’s theory of relativity.
    Changes in scientific understanding force changes in our culture. Science affects how we think about the world, and it leads to new technologies that change how we live (and, when misunderstood, deliberately or otherwise, some nasty social theories, too).
    Today we expect big changes during our lifetimes. If children are asked to forecast the future, they’ll probably come up with science-fictional scenarios of some kind – flying cars, holidays on Mars, better and smaller technology. They are probably wrong, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that today’s children do not say: ‘Change? Oh, everything will probably be pretty much the same. I’ll be doing just the same things that my Mum and Dad do now, and their Mum and Dad did before them.’ Whereas even fifty years ago, one grandfather , that was generally the prevailing attitude. Ten or eleven grandfathers ago, a big change for most people meant using a different sort of plough.
    And yet … Underneath these changes, people are still people. The basic human wants and needs are much as they were a hundred grandfathers ago, even if we ever do take holidays on Mars (all that beach … ). The realisation of those needs may be different – a hamburger instead of a rabbit brought down with an arrow you made