The Science of Extraterrestrials - Eric Julien-pages

Page 91 of 400

Page 91 of 400
The Science of Extraterrestrials - Eric Julien-pages

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and knowledge, particularly with regard to researchers of the paranor- mal. Epistemology is to science what ethics are to human relations. Sci- entists have a perfect memory of the epistemological precautions: “Yes, I know these concepts very well,” they often answer. Indeed they do. In practice however, they are far from applying the rules they know exist. That is why the debates are often fruitless, because what matters are the actions taken and the spirit in which the experiment takes place. It is wrong to personify science to condemn it more, just as it is wrong to personify religion. There are scientists and there are devotees. What we fight most of all is the dogmatic interpretation that they both have of their occupation of faith. If we clearly understand what reli- gious faith is, we see less what scientific faith is all about. It pertains to representations, i.e., equations such as the icons of our priests. At least the latter have the courage to openly speak about faith, unlike certain scientists who take offence. Nevertheless, the history of science shows us that there are differ- ent ways to demonstrate the same thing, more or less by chance. It also shows the capacity of a mathematic device to broaden the scope of its applications and thus of the profound meaning of the concept it pro- poses. Let me illustrate this comment. In 1965 the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to Julian Schwinger, Shin-Itiro Tomonaga and Richard Feynman for their work in quantum electro-dynamics. All three used a different formalist approach to say more or less the same thing, or almost (the three formulations were compared by Freeman Dyson, to Feynman’s good fortune, because his work was misunder- stood). Whereas the first two stayed within a very conventional and complex framework, the third distinguished himself by simplifying diagrams that have become standard today. But what is tomorrow’s standard? There may be a middle term between two a priori opposite positions, between rationality and irrationality: the frame of reference! If a rule is true in one whole, the laws of classical physics for instance, it may no longer be true in another. Think of the laws of the mind. We could also speak of the principle of the excluded third possibility. In other words, why fight when we are not even talking about the same issue? Representation and Reality 83