This is an article where I agree with its statements yet disagree with its spirit. Everything written is true, but has to be put in context - the writer he's responding to was challenging these specific claims:
> what I meant was that we now know the basic rules governing the Universe ... We also know the basic rules governing the subatomic particles and their interrelationships ... What's more, we have found that the galaxies and clusters of galaxies are the basic units of the physical Universe ...
I don't think there's anything wrong with making casual statements of this sort, but I also don't think there's anything wrong with pointing out (in response) that these statements are philosophically unrigorous. I mean, what makes something a "basic rule", and how can you tell that we have apprehended all such rules in existence?
The English Lit professor was effectively arguing we cannot know anything; that any certainty is bound to be as false as any debunked theories of the past; that people of the past were also sure of their silly notions and look where they are now; etc.
This is what Asimov is essentially rejecting (in a humorous manner; it's important to know Asimov's claims that he's "never wrong" were to be taken with humor. He was quite the comedian).
Essentially, Asimov is saying to the professor:
- You are wrong in believing nothing can be known.
- You are not saying anything new or unknown to people of science. We've thought of this and have ways of testing our ideas and of evaluating their relative merits.
- Even if two theories are wrong, it's misleading to conclude "everything is equally wrong, therefore assertions about the universe are reckless", because there are degrees of wrongness, and some knowledge that is wrong is nevertheless more useful than other knowledge that is also wrong.
We can never know if this English Lit professor ever existed or is just a rhetorical device by Asimov, but we do know one thing for certain:
Allow me to defend the professor here. Asimov is making a couple different claims and attempts to equivocate them, perhaps incorrectly. It's fairly obvious that spelling "sugar" as "sugur" is less wrong compared to spelling it as "afjkdsfk". This is because we have an objectively correct value for "sugar" that we can compare it to. This is different from refining theories and observations over time and declaring that they are less wrong!
Take stomach ulcers for example - before modern medicine people didn't know their cause, but were able to somewhat treat them using bismuth compounds. Doctors and scientists refined their theories over the years based on the concept that they are caused by stress, spicy food, and excess stomach acid, developing various cures, until Barry James Marshall discovered that they were actually caused by H. pylori. Before this discovery it would seem reasonable to think we were "less wrong", that because our theories became more refined that we were closer to the truth.
As theories of the universe become more uh, theoretical, we cannot accurately measure and gain a sense of if we are moving closer or farther from the truth. Perhaps this was the point the professor was getting at, or maybe it's just some postmodern "knowledge doesn't exist" thing - we can't really tell because Asimov only paraphrases the professor. But I increasingly get the idea that we don't actually know much of anything about the universe based on the seemingly insane theories coming out (eg string theory, infinite worlds).
Of course Asimov oversimplifies things. He's also playing to his audience and being sarcastic and humorous. He's being snarky, and when snarkiness is the goal, accuracy suffers.
We don't even know if this professor actually existed, or whether he/she was invented by Asimov for the sake of his essay.
I think the message is valuable though, even if there are nuances and exceptions to it. A "rule of thumb" if you will.
The idea Asimov was fighting against was this "new age" belief that nothing can be known, everything is equally wrong, everything is "opinion" and yours is as valid as mine, etc etc.
PS: a tangent, aren't things like string theory pretty controversial (in the sense of "is this real or fantasy") even within the Physics community?
> The idea Asimov was fighting against was this "new age" belief that nothing can be known, everything is equally wrong, everything is "opinion" and yours is as valid as mine, etc etc.
Yeah that's valid. I do find philosophical discussions about the nature of knowledge fascinating but it's often used as a bludgeon to assert one's opinion as being equal to fact.
> what I meant was that we now know the basic rules governing the Universe ... We also know the basic rules governing the subatomic particles and their interrelationships ... What's more, we have found that the galaxies and clusters of galaxies are the basic units of the physical Universe ...
I don't think there's anything wrong with making casual statements of this sort, but I also don't think there's anything wrong with pointing out (in response) that these statements are philosophically unrigorous. I mean, what makes something a "basic rule", and how can you tell that we have apprehended all such rules in existence?