Before Science

at one point they were pretty much interwoven. And so we're gonna tease this idea of science and scientists out today. Yeah, because obviously we've always been curious as a species. We've always gazed up into the sky and wondered what's going on there, or gazed out into the dark beyond the campfire and wondered exactly how that worked, looked at our own bodies and tried to figure out what was wrong

with this and how we might fix the problems. But there is a certain point in the past one can argue in which we can really say that the the the scientist emerges from culture and and it's not just a matter of being curious, and it's not just a matter of even engaging in investigations, in experiments in an attempt to understand these things. But there's actually a split when people start becoming scientists and wielding science in an attempt to understand the world around us and better the

world around us. Right, there's a formalizing of the physical sciences that is really the term actually a scientists is only one d and eighty years old. And um, we're going to explore this concept through a TED talk by

Professor Laura Snyder. She's a Fulbright scholar and professor of philosophy at St. John's University, and she gives us rousing TED talk, a rousing Ted talking imagine about the origins of this term and tying it back to this idea, this central idea that science is not just for scientists. So she gives a very nice wide angle view of how the physical sciences that we think about today or scientists really owe a lot of its success um to a night back in eighteen thirty three. Yes, but well

we'll discuss that later. First, I think we should talk about this, uh idea of a philosophical breakfast club at Snyder terms. Um, this this meeting of the minds where the seeds of the modern concepts of science were first cultivated. Yeah, early nineteenth century, and you had four high school students who were forced to stay in Saturday school all day

by the that's not breakfast club right now. This breakfast club consisted of four individuals though, and they were Charles Babbage of the Babbage Engine, you know, first mechanical calculator and prototype of the modern computer. John Herschel, astronomer, also co invented photography. It's say, Richard Jones, the economist, and

William Hewell noted scientists at the time. That's right, And I just wanted to add to that Babbage, of course, that he, you know, the first prototype of the modern computer. He was also aided by the first computer programmer at A Lovelace. And this may have actually her inclusion in this may have actually colored the more participation of women later on in these societies, um or science societies, I

should say, but we'll get to that first. I wanted to say that these guys who would meet for breakfast and discuss science and what was wrong with it and what was right about it and what they needed to do, they really contributed a lot to sort of the foundation of what we think of as modern science today. Yeah,

they were really laying it out, picking it apart. I'm assuming they were having some caffeinated beverages in there to to stoke things and get things going, because they were a very energetic group of people, not only in their their outside lives but also just in this uh this called breakfast club. Is they're they're laying the groundwork for

really what we think of a science today. When people say, oh, I love science, or they're going to a tumbler page about about effing loving science, it's kind of worn out of their discussions about what what works, what has worked in other areas, and what is going to work best moving forward. Yeah, and we're talking about eighteen thirteen UM, and they are discussing some principles here, like the scientific method, although at this point it was not called the scientific

method um exclusively. It was more of the inductive method. And there was also something called the deductive method at the time. So scientific method now, you know, there arely two hundred years before you have people like Francis Bacon

that we're proposing an inductive scientific method. You start with observation and experiments, and you move on to generalizations about nature, formalization of natural laws, and you can always revise how to reject the results, right, yeah, yeah, But then eighteen o nine you have this economist bed in the name of David Ricardo, and he really starts causing some trouble because he's saying, oh, actually we should use a deductive method in economics, in the in the economic sciences, and

then various people to Oxford are agreeing with them, and they're saying, yeah, actually, you know, maybe the deductive method is best, which you just spread at all the science sciences, and our friends on the breakfast club here they say, absolutely not right, because what we're talking about with the

deductive method is taking a top down approach. Our general general premise has proven out as opposed to just sort of taking these observations in this data as you would with the inductive method and trying to figure out what shakes out of that and continuing to go back to those results and revising and rejecting, which is really the seeds of what we know of as the scientific method.

So yeah, those guys, if they hadn't debated this, if they hadn't written very persuasive arguments, persuasive papers about this. They may not have influenced as many scientists as they did. I mean, Charles Darwin is among the group of scientists at that time or what's known as natural world hobbyists, because they didn't have the term yet to read one of the papers and said, ah, yeah, I'm on the right path here, and this is how I should conduct

my research. And of course that's key. They were not only simply hanging around having breakfast and discussing these things. Then they moved on these ideas, they published their thoughts, they spread the word, and they were very vocal to their peers. Now, another area where they had a huge influence was the kind of establishment of open source science, uh, and that this is the idea that that science isn't merely for the benefit of a king or a queen.

It's it's something that can actually benefit everyone, society as a whole right, or even one's own personal gain. In other words, if you had enough money, if you had enough nobility, then you could as a hobby, you know, study something and find these results out for yourself and and maybe a nobleman's cocktail party whatever that was back in the day you could recall everybody with all this information. But yeah, they took information and they felt like it

was important to spread it to the wider community. In a good example of this that Snyder brings out is that back in the day, ship captains needed to know information about tides in order to safely dock at ports, and Harvard Masters would gather this knowledge and sell it to the ship captains, which seems kind of crazy to us now because this is something that's so like, yes, of course we know about all about the tides, but Hewell's worldwide study of the tides resulted in public tide

tables and tidal maps, and then that freely provided the Harvard masters knowledge to all ship captains. So it's sort of like I think about it now, like you go online, you get the weather report for the next ten days. You don't have to pay for that. Well, I guess in theory you don't have to. Some people would argue that via your internet connection you're paying for but this

is information that's really open to all. But can you imagine having to go to a specific person and saying I need the weather for the next ten days and planning this huge event, and it's the big secret that they keep from you. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, we would live in a totally different world. Another thing that they did is they began to lobby the government for money for research. Now, before this, you had to really fund everything yourself, including

the equipment that you would use. And the big example here would is Babbage's Babbage Engine. They said, they went to the to the British government, they said, hey, this machine for number crunching would be a huge benefit to not not only the government, but also to the people in general. Like this, this is a very useful device. You should give us some money to make this reality. Yeah. And then another thing that they did is that they

helped to create various scientific societies. So before you know the establishment of some of these societies, you had something like the Royal Society of London, which was essentially a hangout for literary men and nobility. Um. Then they created the British Association and that encouraged active researchers who actually published their works. Yeah, not just socialites essentially hanging out and an old boys society here, but people are actually

contributing to scientific understanding. And they brought back a Q and a session after papers were read. So in other words, there's a which I love. They had gotten rid of that earlier because we just ungentlemanly, why would you, Why would you you muddy the situation by allowing criticism. Just just let the man up there, let him share his findings, and that'll be the end of it. No, that's not how science works. So they brought the Q and A sessions back. Yeah, and women were given a foot in

the door. And you have to wonder again, it's just because of Ada Lovelace and some of her work that she did with Babbage. This encouraging of everyone to participate in science. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back, we'll discuss a little more this birth of the scientists, if you will. All right, we are back. The night is j three. There is a great gathering of philosophical and scientific minds at the

British Association for the Advancement of Science. One man dares to stand up and wonder why scientists keep calling themselves natural philosophers. And that man is Coleridge. Yeah, Yeah, the poet Sam Taylor Coleridge. And he's he's basically saying, look, you're not philosophers like what I love about this. He's basically kind of like trying to break up with the scientists.

It's kind of a reverse of what you see or what what the what we saw World Science Festival this year when you had sort of the scientists sort of picking on the philosophers and being up in arms against the floscos. Here we see a self professed philosopher saying, no, this is a philosophy is about armchair stargazing. Basically, you know, we're not out there digging around in the dirt. This is a This is the the occupation of a learned man who is just setting among his books and uh

and and contemplating just how reality works. And you're selling it by calling yourself a natural philosophers. Yeah. And now the room does not take that kindly. I mean, essentially they start doing But he will remember he's been, you know, trying to organize this idea of science and scientists for nearly twenty years. At this point he stands up. He seizes this opportunity and he says, you know, I pretty much agree here, and if you'll you'll hear me out.

I think that he has something to say. He said, if philosophers has taken to be too wide and lofty. A turn them by analogy with artists, we may form scientists and boom, the term is born. But it's not just the term, it's the idea now is taking shape and form of that this person who is no longer just called a natural world hobbyists like Darwin would have been considered world is really like today you say I want to be a scientist when you grow up, that's great.

But if you were to say I want to be a natural world hobbyist when I grow up, it would be a bit of a of an upset. I think parents might weep. Yeah, yeah, get a real job, right, Yeah. So this is an interesting dividing point. And just the words we used to describe what we do and and and how those words and the definitions of that occupation end up defining the movement and uh and you know we we we see it continue to stay with with science sort of build up like this, uh, like this

slime mold that moves through the halls of reality. That that that based on scientific method and uh and in a rigorous experimentation and examination of the natural world attempts to understand exactly what environment we're dealing with and sharing this information, sharing this information, yeah, with with the greater public. Now, what happens that the British Association for the Vancement of Science decided that they would begin to give grant money.

So it's not just government institutions dealing out grant money. Now we actually have you know this, this independent institution, um saying that basically on the advice of this philosophical breakfast club, these four guys from Cambridge, that they're going to start to give grants for research and astronomy. That's hides fossil fish and according to Snyder, ship building in a lot of different areas. That really began to expand

everyone's knowledge about the physical world. Yeah. Once again, not just the occupation of independently wealthy learned men and not simply for the benefit of kings and queens. Yeah. I mean, can you imagine a world without this formalized idea of science, that these formalized structures and support that are underpinning all of this, I mean, our inventions. You would have to

wonder how many of those would have been created and supported? Um, what sort of data would be shared without this formalized system and I feel like we get a glimpse of it perhaps sometimes when you look at the outliers, you see you glimpse into the world of pseudo science and junk science, and and you get perhaps a glimpse of a little more of what the world would be like.

Uh if we didn't have this tint of science, Erector, well, I mean you could say, you could make the point here that are a life expectancy is actually directly related to this idea of science coming on board and helping to separate pseudoscience from science. Um, so our quality of life as well. So it's it's very important this moment back in eighteen thirty three, which really helped the trajectory of science that we see today, because we have seen

incredible things. I mean, she's just in the last thirty years, um, you know, this hundred and eighty years since this term has been created has seen incredible things as well. Now. Laura Snyder in her talk also mentions that this, uh,

this also inevitably led to a cultural divide. Yeah. She says that um, Babbage, Herschel, Jones, and Heuel this philosophical breakfast club, they did not foresee this consequence of this revolution um, and they would have been really dismayed by this disjunction today that we have between science and the rest of culture. And she goes on to say that it's really shocking to realize that only twenty eight percent of American adults have a basic level of science literacy.

And she's saying, we're talking about questions like did humans and dinosaurs inhabit the Earth at the same time, Okay, I just want to make sure we're clear on that. And what proportion of the Earth is covered in water? Now that was like nine nine, so if you're counting

swimming pools, maybe exactly. But she's saying, you know that they did not see that this would happen, that that that scientists would become slowly walled off from each other, she says, and that's where she comes back to this idea that science isn't just for scientists, it is for everyone. And that's the lesson that we need to take from this historical perspective. Yeah, that science should not be this

this fortress. Uh. And and then everyone else is living outside the walls of it, because then you depend more and more on individuals who can communicate between the people inside the wall and the people on the outside, and you really need more move you need you need those open doors of communication. I mean that that's why you see a you know, increased emphasis on storytelling and science.

Being be able to tell the story of the science, be able to communicate to normal individuals outside of the science is what you're doing, why it's important, and how it benefits everybody. And we've talked about this idea that we're all natural scientists anyway, that we are all prepackaged and ready to go with science. That you see three and four year olds who are like Euclidean geometry masters.

They're using the dimensions of a wall to navigate space and all sorts of different clues from the physical world. And that's you know, we have accounting sense even when we're we're you know, babies, We can tell if there's more in one group or less than another. So again, all of this is inherent to us and it should not be looked at as being separate from us. Yeah, exactly. You know, again, there were there, We've always had people who are essentially scientists, way back to the ancient, ancient

days of humanity. It's us only in relatively recent times that we've had a structured system of investigation and experimentation, uh, that we actually call science. So should we come up with a new term to just sort of merge the human and the scientist? I don't know what would that be? Okay, uatist sounds good. It sounds a little bit like Hubris. But but but I'll accept it. Science the science them like science them in the faith. No science and human

All right. I'll bet you guys out there have better recommendations for a word that could encompass all of these ideas. And you can let us know by finding us in all the usual places where it's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where we throw all of our material up, including old episodes of the podcast, all the ones that you cannot find on iTunes any longer. You can also find us on Facebook. You can find us

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