I plan to discuss a mathematician, but in a different context, namely, a mathematician who tried to make a revolution in our understanding of history. Not very successfully, but rather interestingly.
I didn't remember this Mendeleev story, and shame on me, because I am a chemist. But I think he had other reasons to order Te and I the way that he did: Te is a metal with typically high melting point (in the 500-600s, maybe) and other metallic properties. Iodine is a non-metal that turns into beautiful violet gas at 190 °C. This property, as well as the difference in their chemical reactivity, was definitely known in his times. The greatness of the periodic table is that it distinguishes elements not just by atomic number/weight but also by properties, and iodine is definitely in the same group as bromine, and not as antimony or selenium. So he at least had a scientific reason to put iodine where he did.
You also have to remember that in his times, the calculation of the atomic weight was not as precise as it is today, and the difference between Te's 127.6 and I's 126.9 was probably imperceptible, so, again, he was probably justified (by the data that was available to him at the time) in ranging them by properties and not by atomic weight.
I looked at the length and topic and thought "I'll die"-but all happenned unlike I expected-I emerged from the reading very much revived.
If you add to it the fact yours truly is truly dumb when it comes to sciences(and there were things I didn't understand fully, of course)-bravo, very well done. Will be expecting the next part with great interest.
PS I tend to think that medicine is art as much as it is science, maybe more art than science. Maybe doctors think so too, given their awards are called "for the art of medicine"...?
Bravo! I loved it all, and I entered it thinking- uff! What’s this guy going to say now about science, specially since COViD because everyone nowadays has a degree in immunology. I will point that since the introduction of evidence based medicine and translational research, as well as thorough clinical trials, medicine is very much a science. A special type of science since there are variables one cannot control for (unless you put patients in cages and temperature controlled rooms which we do not for obvious reasons) and it has many flaws, but the science is there. But I’m a doctor, so I would say that, right? 😉
Thanks! I have a PhD in chemistry, so this is where I feel the most comfortable. Medicine is too far from me, and I cannot comment with any sort of authority.
What I meant regarding medicine (without getting too much into this topic) is that I think sometimes the purpose of a doctor (the hippocratic oath, etc.) and the purpose of a scientist (pursuit of truth using the scientific method) are really conflicted, and in this case, I personally would 100% of the time prefer a doctor-doctor, and not a scientist-doctor. So I am not touching on that topic, seeing as there are much more qualified people to do that.
Although not central to your story, Hauser was, for a while, influential in Linguistics, where he managed to publish several papers with Chomsky. There's a big divide among linguists about whether there are 'innate' aspects of language that are separate from general cognitive aspects. Chomsky used to refer to the 'language organ'. Others, myself included, do not find this argumentation at all persuasive. This is a typical article: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.298.5598.1569 A 'strongly worded' dissent was given by Geoff Pullum a couple of months ago, and is worth reading to enjoy Geoff's inimitable style (full disclosure--other Geoff's a friend): http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/Pullum_NAAHoLS_2024.pdf
Wow, that's an incredible story. I don't remember anything close to this level of animosity from the time I have been closely monitoring the chemistry community (although in the last few years there have been many scandals). Linguists sure do know how to hold grudges!
Linguistics is a truly weird science. When you think about it, language is a really high level product of our brains, and a pretty complex one too. And it's not produced individually, but by largely unconscious consensus across communities. Historical linguistics is mostly sane up to a certain time scale, because they have found fairly reliable ways to match related languages together and infer what their common ancestor was like. But try to go earlier than that, and you find suggestive stuff, but not much clarity, and plenty of acrimonious debates.
Syntax is even more cursed, because you're essentially trying to impose a mathematical structure on language, and somehow claiming that it's "real", but as far as we can tell language is implemented in the brain on top of fairly general purpose neuronal tissue, so it's super unclear just where those mathematical structures are meant to sit, if anywhere - and if they're just an external framework with no close relationship to the actual implementation, why does anyone expect to find a good match? But then you open a textbook on any one of those theories (such as Chomsky's generative grammar), and you find all those weird examples where the theory perfectly describes some distinction that we all maintain without having conscious knowledge of it, which means there's apparently something there!
Mix all of that up with a big spoonful of the perennial debate between innatism and blank slatism, and you get articles like the one above.
I cannot begin to imagine the true complexity of the relationship between linguistics and neurology, and it sounds truly fascinating. But to truly get into that, one probably needs an additional scientific degree, or maybe two.
Historical linguistics intuitively seems "closer to earth", but this is probably also an illusion. In the 1990s and 2000s in Russia, there were a whole bunch of "folk linguists" who tried to prove ridiculous claims like Russian is the proto-language, and so on. I will discuss some of those "linguofreaks", as they were warmly called, probably in Part 3 of this series.
Thanks! These are great questions that highlight the complexity of our world. I will try to answer to the best of my abilities (but I am not an expert in either topic).
1. The writings of Lamarck himself are largely proven wrong. However, for the last 25 years, neo-Lamarckism, a part of epigenetics, has been quite prominent. I believe the main difference is that neo-Lamarckists largely observe the inherited outside of the DNA route differences on the molecular level, and not on the macro level, which Lamarck could not have observed. I believe there is substantial evidence to believe that epigenetic processes do occur. The absolute majority of those are not on the macro level, as far as I know.
2. Homeopathy, as largely understood, is nonsense. Regarding Benveniste, my personal opinion is that he drew faulty conclusions from unusual observations. The observations themselves may have been either real or imagined - this is unclear. Their poor (but not nonexistent) reproducibility suggests that even if they were real, we don't understand what we're actually observing, so we fail to reproduce the exact causes of the phenomenon.
I will write a separate newsletter dedicated to homeopathy in general, because I think I have a fairly interesting take on that.
whoa! You didn’t have to go so far - but thanks. I recently discovered epigenetics (superficially) and was interested to know if it is a real thing - so thanks! And homeopathy - I’ve always assumed it’s nonsense but a real scientist taking similar work seriously made me nervous! thanks!
I plan to discuss a mathematician, but in a different context, namely, a mathematician who tried to make a revolution in our understanding of history. Not very successfully, but rather interestingly.
I didn't remember this Mendeleev story, and shame on me, because I am a chemist. But I think he had other reasons to order Te and I the way that he did: Te is a metal with typically high melting point (in the 500-600s, maybe) and other metallic properties. Iodine is a non-metal that turns into beautiful violet gas at 190 °C. This property, as well as the difference in their chemical reactivity, was definitely known in his times. The greatness of the periodic table is that it distinguishes elements not just by atomic number/weight but also by properties, and iodine is definitely in the same group as bromine, and not as antimony or selenium. So he at least had a scientific reason to put iodine where he did.
You also have to remember that in his times, the calculation of the atomic weight was not as precise as it is today, and the difference between Te's 127.6 and I's 126.9 was probably imperceptible, so, again, he was probably justified (by the data that was available to him at the time) in ranging them by properties and not by atomic weight.
I looked at the length and topic and thought "I'll die"-but all happenned unlike I expected-I emerged from the reading very much revived.
If you add to it the fact yours truly is truly dumb when it comes to sciences(and there were things I didn't understand fully, of course)-bravo, very well done. Will be expecting the next part with great interest.
PS I tend to think that medicine is art as much as it is science, maybe more art than science. Maybe doctors think so too, given their awards are called "for the art of medicine"...?
Thanks!
I am not a huge fan of Rick and Morty, but there is a quote from them that I fully agree with: "Science is more art than science".
The more I work as a scientist, the more I return to this statement.
Bravo! I loved it all, and I entered it thinking- uff! What’s this guy going to say now about science, specially since COViD because everyone nowadays has a degree in immunology. I will point that since the introduction of evidence based medicine and translational research, as well as thorough clinical trials, medicine is very much a science. A special type of science since there are variables one cannot control for (unless you put patients in cages and temperature controlled rooms which we do not for obvious reasons) and it has many flaws, but the science is there. But I’m a doctor, so I would say that, right? 😉
Thanks! I have a PhD in chemistry, so this is where I feel the most comfortable. Medicine is too far from me, and I cannot comment with any sort of authority.
What I meant regarding medicine (without getting too much into this topic) is that I think sometimes the purpose of a doctor (the hippocratic oath, etc.) and the purpose of a scientist (pursuit of truth using the scientific method) are really conflicted, and in this case, I personally would 100% of the time prefer a doctor-doctor, and not a scientist-doctor. So I am not touching on that topic, seeing as there are much more qualified people to do that.
Although not central to your story, Hauser was, for a while, influential in Linguistics, where he managed to publish several papers with Chomsky. There's a big divide among linguists about whether there are 'innate' aspects of language that are separate from general cognitive aspects. Chomsky used to refer to the 'language organ'. Others, myself included, do not find this argumentation at all persuasive. This is a typical article: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.298.5598.1569 A 'strongly worded' dissent was given by Geoff Pullum a couple of months ago, and is worth reading to enjoy Geoff's inimitable style (full disclosure--other Geoff's a friend): http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/Pullum_NAAHoLS_2024.pdf
Wow, that's an incredible story. I don't remember anything close to this level of animosity from the time I have been closely monitoring the chemistry community (although in the last few years there have been many scandals). Linguists sure do know how to hold grudges!
Thanks for sharing, Geoff!
Linguistics is a truly weird science. When you think about it, language is a really high level product of our brains, and a pretty complex one too. And it's not produced individually, but by largely unconscious consensus across communities. Historical linguistics is mostly sane up to a certain time scale, because they have found fairly reliable ways to match related languages together and infer what their common ancestor was like. But try to go earlier than that, and you find suggestive stuff, but not much clarity, and plenty of acrimonious debates.
Syntax is even more cursed, because you're essentially trying to impose a mathematical structure on language, and somehow claiming that it's "real", but as far as we can tell language is implemented in the brain on top of fairly general purpose neuronal tissue, so it's super unclear just where those mathematical structures are meant to sit, if anywhere - and if they're just an external framework with no close relationship to the actual implementation, why does anyone expect to find a good match? But then you open a textbook on any one of those theories (such as Chomsky's generative grammar), and you find all those weird examples where the theory perfectly describes some distinction that we all maintain without having conscious knowledge of it, which means there's apparently something there!
Mix all of that up with a big spoonful of the perennial debate between innatism and blank slatism, and you get articles like the one above.
Thanks for your comment!
I cannot begin to imagine the true complexity of the relationship between linguistics and neurology, and it sounds truly fascinating. But to truly get into that, one probably needs an additional scientific degree, or maybe two.
Historical linguistics intuitively seems "closer to earth", but this is probably also an illusion. In the 1990s and 2000s in Russia, there were a whole bunch of "folk linguists" who tried to prove ridiculous claims like Russian is the proto-language, and so on. I will discuss some of those "linguofreaks", as they were warmly called, probably in Part 3 of this series.
“A great scientific tragedy: the slaying of a beautiful theory by an ugly fact”.
Great article-- I’ve been looking forward to reading all three for some time but am only now getting around to it --
I love charlatans-- I love their balls and their rule breaking and what they tell us about human gulliblity.
2 questions --
Are the Lamarck experiments not a form of epigenetics? Is the theory of epigenetics confirmed or nonsense?
I’m assuming the Benveniste experiments confirms that homeopathy is nonsense -- am I seeing that correctly?
You are a good science writer — Looking forward to the next parts!
Thanks! These are great questions that highlight the complexity of our world. I will try to answer to the best of my abilities (but I am not an expert in either topic).
1. The writings of Lamarck himself are largely proven wrong. However, for the last 25 years, neo-Lamarckism, a part of epigenetics, has been quite prominent. I believe the main difference is that neo-Lamarckists largely observe the inherited outside of the DNA route differences on the molecular level, and not on the macro level, which Lamarck could not have observed. I believe there is substantial evidence to believe that epigenetic processes do occur. The absolute majority of those are not on the macro level, as far as I know.
2. Homeopathy, as largely understood, is nonsense. Regarding Benveniste, my personal opinion is that he drew faulty conclusions from unusual observations. The observations themselves may have been either real or imagined - this is unclear. Their poor (but not nonexistent) reproducibility suggests that even if they were real, we don't understand what we're actually observing, so we fail to reproduce the exact causes of the phenomenon.
I will write a separate newsletter dedicated to homeopathy in general, because I think I have a fairly interesting take on that.
Thanks! The next part should be out fairly soon!
whoa! You didn’t have to go so far - but thanks. I recently discovered epigenetics (superficially) and was interested to know if it is a real thing - so thanks! And homeopathy - I’ve always assumed it’s nonsense but a real scientist taking similar work seriously made me nervous! thanks!
Apparently, it is. We won't get spaniels born without tails all of a sudden, but some stuff can be explained by these mechanisms.
To paraphrase Henry Ford, who spoke of history: "Science is mostly bunk." Real science is like real democracy: vanishingly rare.
I don't think I fully agree. I would change it to "Pure science is vanishnigly rare". But impure science still can bbe real science.