The story or the myth goes like this. An
experimental physicist, after conducting an experiment, obtained results which
were not what was expected. They were not in accordance with the then prevalent
understanding of certain phenomenon. Puzzled, the experimentalist tried to
grapple with the offending data and having had no luck with it, finally turned
to the in-house theoretician. The theoretician asked for a week’s period to try
to offer an explanation for the observations. After a week, the theoretician
went to the experimentalist and triumphantly offered an explanation that was
tenuously tethered to reality or, at least, our understanding of it. After hearing the theoretician’s esoteric explanation patiently, the experimentalist told the
theoretician that they had found the experimental setup was faulty. Hearing the experimentalist’s explanation, the
theoretician famously responded, “That's better than mine!”
Stories like this are usually told with glee by the experimentalists in order to underline the gullibility of theoreticians… and the war goes on! But this happens to be a true story. Furthermore, the point of this story is not to demonstrate one-upmanship of any particular aspect of physics research, rather to demonstrate the typical way scientists think and science works. Science, after all, is not just accumulation of facts that are corroborated by solid evidence. In fact, it is a way to accumulate set of facts. Science is all about how you gather the facts and it is all about ‘what can be called a fact’ in the first place. Science does not claim complete knowledge, but it does provide us with some authoritative ways to define knowledge and at the same time, a way towards gaining that knowledge, a way which is firmly grounded in observations and reason. A way that's made impartial as far as possible.
There is a popular opinion that science cannot tell us everything and it certainly cannot explain everything. There are so many unexplained phenomena on which science remains largely silent. But that is largely because of lack of efforts. Given the size and complexity of our universe, it is understandable that the scientific community has to leave the analysis of quite a few issues to posterity. Although the basic laws of nature are indeed small in number, the sheer variety of manifestations of the same laws is simply astonishing. Yet, that the task of understanding the universe is daunting is but only one, and considered negative in some quarters, way to look at it. What really should amaze us is that such a variety of phenomena can be explained by so few a laws. Scientists like to call this the ‘beauty of science’. One of the reasons scientific outlook can be so powerfully persuasive is that it is anchored in reason. When the theoretician saw a better explanation he had no qualms in chucking out his own reasoning, because he had learnt to be thoroughly skeptical, which lead him to be skeptical about his own reasoning, too. Science, on a broader perspective, is just like that. It will keep on rechecking, correcting and rediscovering itself. This was perhaps best encapsulated by Miguel de Unamuno when he said, “The supreme triumph of reason is to cast doubt upon its own validity.”
Stories like this are usually told with glee by the experimentalists in order to underline the gullibility of theoreticians… and the war goes on! But this happens to be a true story. Furthermore, the point of this story is not to demonstrate one-upmanship of any particular aspect of physics research, rather to demonstrate the typical way scientists think and science works. Science, after all, is not just accumulation of facts that are corroborated by solid evidence. In fact, it is a way to accumulate set of facts. Science is all about how you gather the facts and it is all about ‘what can be called a fact’ in the first place. Science does not claim complete knowledge, but it does provide us with some authoritative ways to define knowledge and at the same time, a way towards gaining that knowledge, a way which is firmly grounded in observations and reason. A way that's made impartial as far as possible.
There is a popular opinion that science cannot tell us everything and it certainly cannot explain everything. There are so many unexplained phenomena on which science remains largely silent. But that is largely because of lack of efforts. Given the size and complexity of our universe, it is understandable that the scientific community has to leave the analysis of quite a few issues to posterity. Although the basic laws of nature are indeed small in number, the sheer variety of manifestations of the same laws is simply astonishing. Yet, that the task of understanding the universe is daunting is but only one, and considered negative in some quarters, way to look at it. What really should amaze us is that such a variety of phenomena can be explained by so few a laws. Scientists like to call this the ‘beauty of science’. One of the reasons scientific outlook can be so powerfully persuasive is that it is anchored in reason. When the theoretician saw a better explanation he had no qualms in chucking out his own reasoning, because he had learnt to be thoroughly skeptical, which lead him to be skeptical about his own reasoning, too. Science, on a broader perspective, is just like that. It will keep on rechecking, correcting and rediscovering itself. This was perhaps best encapsulated by Miguel de Unamuno when he said, “The supreme triumph of reason is to cast doubt upon its own validity.”
