I am quite interested in the nature of science. In the last 100 years science has moved from isolated geniuses to huge multinational groups of scientists. Yet there has to be (we feel intuitively) a basic hallmark of science. Here are some comments on a presentation by Lee Smolin at the Perimeter Institute.

First some personal observations.

Science and the "Church"

I am frequently amazed that people try and marry science and religion, to the derision of one or the other. For my part I see them as complimentary bodies of knowledge, with no compelling reason to compete. This is because, while I do subscribe to Popper's falsifiability criteria, I do not believe in naive scientific reductionism - where even human emotion must be understood in terms of QED. Complexity theory rubbishes this, but one has to merely observe the growth of a baby to a child to be aware that there is something much more remarkable at play.

I have a cartoon I like to put up in these kind of arguments, that scientists are merely programmers in God's Universe. We may write (or merely understand the rules) - what people do with the rules is beyond our ken.

(This is the tenuous link of these opinions with compute.)

Native Club

Some time ago their was a kerfuffle around a Native Club - this seemed to be a group of black academics and intellectuals who were challenging the received wisdom of universities and journals, and the control thereof. While I am skeptical both of the politics and the logic of the club, they quite rightly raised skepticism about a number of features of science and academi, one of which was to note that the international scientific world was controlled by cliques. (I think that their suspicions are well founded, but their ideas too young to be well formed, yet.)

I have always felt that a lot of arguments around Africanising universities was pointless, due to the fundamental definition of "university". The challenges to universities would actually fundamentally lead to new structures. The problem with the Africanisation program was that it was intellectually limited to rebutting a model (universities), and not structured to creating a new model.

Communities

With these thoughts in mind I read Smolin's article. I see Smolin's point of view as a welcome modern critique of Popper, Kuhn and Feyerabend.

I comment as I read:
He claims there is no "scientific method" but Woit argues that it is the marriage to maths that is important.

He comments "membership is open to all who master a relevant craft". This is quite illuminating - your average Somali probably cannot gain access in that case. But even if you can get access, this is because your society has granted you a privilege, with the tacit (and explicit) intention of getting a return. Someone does set the agenda, although perhaps not with you, and without your explicit compliance. There is a lot more in this statement.

"without a PhD from a reputable research department ... someone cannot make useful contributions to a scientific community." Wow. This is strong, but is it true? I think he was focusing on 'PhD' here. But there are other niggles: 'reputable' is circular, and that term 'useful' opens the really interesting arguments as to who and what determines this, and consequently issues a reward.

'Reputation' is again circular, as mentioned earlier. However, his claim to what constitutes 'Reputation' is wrong. He goes on: 'Fairness' and 'breadth of knowledge' are far from being key aspects of reputation in my opinion. In my opinion reputation is more a mechanical effect of social networking (read PR).

His claim that 'Authorship' is important is also not right to me. Einstein and Heisenberg were not abundant publishers. Also, anonymous contributions cannot be disregarded. In some cases they are not ethical - but in other cases they are essential.

The author makes some great comments on whether universities are the best custodian of science, technology and research. He also looks at the way universities are being monopolized by older academics.

Wiki

My professor used to say that he no longer used libraries. He said he could find everything he needed on the web. But this is only partially true - be had the knowledge and experience to be able to ignore discredited and wacko resources.

This is identified in Smolin's Conclusion: "There are many positive uses of the internet and Science 2.0 tools which can play a very important role in addressing the structural issues in the current organization of science.

But experience so far shows that there are dangers from
* responsible and disruptive interventions by anonymous posters.
* Mixing of contexts for discussions amongst experts and pedagogical discussions with lay people.
* Weakening of the roles of accreditation, reputation and authorship in disciplining scientific discourse."

It seems to me that South African instiutions should succeed, but seem locked in a comfortable model does not provide a service to there customers (students) and keeps a certain group happy pottering away at this and that. I am not for one second denying the importance of academic autonomy etc, but surely there should at least eb an intelligent debate without the governement and acacemic PR machines sqawking their tired message.