To the Editor:
In “A Crisis at the Edge of Physics” (Gray Matter, Sunday Review, June 7), Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser take too narrow a view in suggesting that empirical confirmation is at the heart of science. Testability is a better notion. So long as tests can be devised, scientific inquiry moves on.
The philosopher Karl Popper argued that falsifiability rather than confirmation is at the heart of science. Popper believed that the main role of the experimental scientist is to test hypotheses, find that many are false and discard them. From this point of view, physics is in no crisis.
Mr. Frank and Mr. Gleiser ask, “How are we to determine whether a theory is true if it cannot be validated experimentally?” The answer: If it coheres with relevant science on the subject that is validated and/or not falsified experimentally.
The big problem that Mr. Frank and Mr. Gleiser mention is the unification of quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of gravity. Here a major difficulty is not directly with empirical experiment; it is theoretical. The two theories don’t cohere; it is a logical problem that is at bottom conceptual. In other words, for starters the two theories need to be couched in compatible terms. If that is the crisis in physics, it is also theoretical rather than empirical.
RAYMOND KOLCABA
Chagrin Falls, Ohio
The writer is a retired philosophy professor at Cuyahoga Community College.
Note from KBJ: Let's apply what Kolcaba says about science in general (which, except for his third paragraph, is correct) to the science of biology in particular. The very most that any biologist can say is that Darwinian natural selection (i.e., evolution by natural selection) hasn't (yet) been refuted (i.e., shown to be false). That's not only the most that can be said; it's the most that ever will be able to be said. When biologists say that Darwinian natural selection is "true," "proved," "a fact," or even "confirmed," they are either ignorant (of the scientific method) or deceitful. If biologists insist on using the word "confirmed," they must explain that all they mean by saying that Darwinian natural selection has been confirmed is that (1) it has been rigorously tested and (2) it has not (yet) been refuted. The degree of confirmation is a function of the degree of rigorous testing. "Confirmed," in short, does not mean, or even imply, "true." It means "still a candidate for truth" or "not provably untrue."
