The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science

by Michael Strevens

How can a rule so scant in content and so limited in scope account for science’s powers of discovery? It may dictate what gets called evidence, but it makes no attempt to forge agreement among scientists as to what the evidence says. It simply lays down the rule that all arguments must be carried out with reference to empirical evidence and then steps back, relinquishing control. Scientists are free to think almost anything they like about the connection between evidence and theory. But if they are to participate in the scientific enterprise, they must uncover or generate new evidence to argue with. And so they do, with unfettered enthusiasm. The resulting productivity is what makes all the difference: science is a machine for motivating disputatious humans to carry out tedious measurements and perform costly and time-consuming experiments that they would otherwise not care to undertake. It is these empirical minutiae, so painful to collect, that single out the truth among the plausible falsehoods. Eventually, enough such evidence accumulates that just about every scientist, whatever their quirks, biases, and prejudices, agrees on its significance: one theory stands well above the rest as the best explainer and predictor of it all.