Antiscience

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Antiscience is a position that rejects science and the scientific method. People holding antiscientific views do not accept that science as an objective method can generate universal knowledge. They also contend that scientific reductionism in particular is an inherently limited means to reach understanding of a complex world.

History

In the beginnings of the scientific revolution, scientists such as Robert Boyle found themselves in conflict with those such as Thomas Hobbes, who were skeptical of whether science was a satisfactory way to obtain genuine knowledge about the world.

Hobbes' stance is sometimes regarded as an antiscience position:

In his Six Lessons to the Professors of Mathematics,...[published in 1656, Hobbes] distinguished 'demonstrable' fields, as 'those the construction of the subject whereof is in the power of the artist himself,' from 'indemonstrable' ones 'where the causes are to seek for.' We can only know the causes of what we make. So geometry is demonstrable, because 'the lines and figures from which we reason are drawn and described by ourselves' and 'civil philosophy is demonstrable, because we make the commonwealth ourselves.' But we can only speculate about the natural world, because 'we know not the construction, but seek it from the effects.'^[2]

It was also Hobbes who "put forth the idea of the significance of the nonrational in human behaviour."^[3] Jones goes on to group Hobbes along with others he classes as 'antireductionists' and 'individualists,' such as Wilhelm Dilthey, Karl Marx, Jeremy Bentham and J S Mill, and then he adds Karl Popper, John Rawls, and E. O. Wilson.^[4]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, claimed that science can lead to immorality. "Rousseau argues that the progression of the sciences and arts has caused the corruption of virtue and morality" and his "critique of science has much to teach us about the dangers involved in our political commitment to scientific progress, and about the ways in which the future happiness of mankind might be secured".^[5] Nevertheless, Rousseau does not state in his Discourses that sciences are necessarily bad, and states that figures like René Descartes, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton should be held in high regard. In the conclusion to the Discourses, he says that these (aforementioned) can cultivate sciences to great benefit, and that morality's corruption is mostly because of society's bad influence on scientists.

William Blake reacted strongly against the work of Isaac Newton in his paintings and writings, and is seen as being perhaps the earliest (and almost certainly the most prominent and enduring) example of what is seen by historians as the aesthetic or romantic antiscience response. For example, in his 1795 poem Auguries of Innocence, Blake describes the beautiful and natural robin redbreast imprisoned by the materialistic cage of Newtonian mathematics and science.^[6] In Blake's painting of Newton, he is depicted "as a misguided hero whose gaze was directed only at sterile geometrical diagrams drawn on the ground".^[7] Blake thought that "Newton, Bacon, and Locke with their emphasis on reason were nothing more than 'the three great teachers of atheism, or Satan's Doctrine'...the picture progresses from exuberance and colour on the left, to sterility and blackness on the right. In Blake's view Newton brings not light, but night".^[8] In a poem, W.H. Auden summarises Blake's anti-scientific views by saying that he "[broke] off relations in a curse, with the Newtonian Universe".^[9]

One recent biographer of Newton^[10] considers him more as a renaissance alchemist, natural philosopher, and magician rather than a true representative of scientific illuminism, as popularized by Voltaire and other illuminist Newtonians.

Antiscience issues are seen as a fundamental consideration in the transition from 'pre-science' or 'protoscience' such as that evident in alchemy. Many disciplines that pre-date the widespread adoption and acceptance of the scientific method, such as geometry and astronomy, are not seen as anti-science. However, some of the orthodoxies within those disciplines that predate a scientific approach (such as those orthodoxies repudiated by the discoveries of Galileo) are seen as being a product of an anti-scientific stance.

Friedrich Nietzsche stated within The Gay Science that “in Science, convictions have no rights of citizenship, as is said with good reason. Only when they decide to descend to the modesty of a hypothesis, of a provisional experimental point of view, of a regulative fiction, maybe they be granted admission and even a certain value within the realm of knowledge—though always with the restriction that they remain under police supervision, under the police of mistrust. But does this not mean, more precisely considered, that a conviction may obtain admission to Science only when it ceases to be a conviction? Would not the discipline of the scientific spirit begin with this, no longer to permit oneself any convictions? Probably that is how it is. But one must still ask whether it is not the case that, in order that this discipline could begin, a conviction must have been there already, and even such a commanding and unconditional one that it sacrificed all other convictions for its own sake. It is clear that Science too rests on a faith; there is no Science ‘without presuppositions.’ The question whether truth is needed must not only have been affirmed in advance, but affirmed to the extent that the principle, the faith, the conviction is expressed: ‘nothing is needed more than truth, and in relation to it, everything else has only second-rate value.”^[11]

The term 'scientism' derives from science studies and is a term spawned and used by sociologists and philosophers of science to describe the views, beliefs and behavior of strong supporters of science. It is commonly used in a pejorative sense, for individuals who seem to be treating science in a similar way to a religion. The term reductionism is occasionally used in a similarly pejorative way (as a more subtle attack on scientists). However, some scientists feel comfortable being labelled as reductionists, while agreeing that there might be conceptual and philosophical shortcomings of reductionism.^[12]

However, non-reductionist (see Emergentism) views of science have been formulated in varied forms in several scientific fields like statistical physics, chaos theory, complexity theory, cybernetics, systems theory, systems biology, ecology, information theory, etc. Such fields tend to assume that strong interaction between units produce new phenomena in higher levels that cannot be accounted for solely by reductionism. For example, it is not valuable (or currently possible) to describe a chess game or gene networks using quantum mechanics. The emergentist view of science ("More is Different", in the words of Nobel physicist Philip W. Anderson)^[13] has been inspired in its methodology by the European social sciences (Durkheim, Marx) which tend to reject methodological individualism.^{[citation needed]}

Political

Left-wing

One expression of antiscience is the "denial of universality and... legitimisation of alternatives",^{[citation needed]} and that the results of scientific findings do not always represent any underlying reality, but can merely reflect the ideology of dominant groups within society.^[14] In this view, science is associated with the political Right and is seen as a belief system that is conservative and conformist, that suppresses innovation, that resists change and that acts dictatorially. This includes the view, for example, that science has a "bourgeois and/or Eurocentric and/or masculinist world-view".^[15]

The anti-nuclear movement, often associated with the left,^[16][17][18] has been criticized for overstating the negative effects of nuclear power,^[19][20] and understating the environmental costs of non-nuclear sources that can be prevented through nuclear energy.^[21] Many scientific fields which straddle the boundary between the biological and social sciences have also experienced resistance from the left, such as sociobiology,^[22] evolutionary psychology,^[23] and population genetics.^[24] This is due to the perceived association of these sciences with scientific racism^[25] and neocolonialism.^[24] Many critics of these fields, such as Stephen Jay Gould, have been accused of having strong political biases,^[26] and engaging in "mob science".^[27]

Right-wing

The origin of antiscience thinking may be traced back to the reaction of Romanticism to the Enlightenment, this movement is often referred to as the 'Counter-Enlightenment'. Romanticism emphasizes that intuition, passion and organic links to Nature are primal values and that rational thinking is merely a product of human life. There are many modern examples of conservative antiscience polemics. Primary among the latter are the polemics about evolutionary theory^[28] and modern cosmology teaching in high schools, and environmental issues related to global warming^[29][30] and energy crisis.

Characteristics of antiscience associated with the right include the appeal to conspiracy theories to explain why scientists believe what they believe,^[31] in an attempt to undermine the confidence or power usually associated to science (e.g. in global warming conspiracy theories).

Religious

In this context, antiscience may be considered dependent on religious, moral and cultural arguments. For this kind of religious antiscience philosophy, science is an anti-spiritual and materialistic force that undermines traditional values, ethnic identity and accumulated historical wisdom in favor of reason and cosmopolitanism. In particular, the traditional and ethnic values emphasized are similar to those of white supremacist Christian Identity theology, but similar right-wing views have been developed by radically conservative sects of Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. New religious movements such as New Age thinking also criticize the scientific worldview as favouring a reductionist, atheist, or materialist philosophy.
A frequent basis of antiscientific sentiment is religious theism with literal interpretations of sacred text. Here, scientific theories that conflict with what is considered divinely-inspired knowledge are regarded as flawed. Over the centuries religious institutions have been hesitant to embrace such ideas as heliocentrism and planetary motion because they contradicted the dominant understanding of various passages of scripture. More recently the body of creation theologies known collectively as creationism, including the teleological theory of intelligent design, have been promoted by religious theists in response to the process of evolution by natural selection.^[32]

Areas

Historically, antiscience first arose as a reaction against scientific materialism. The 18th century Enlightenment had ushered in "the ideal of a unified system of all the sciences",^[33] but there were those fearful of this notion, who "felt that constrictions of reason and science, of a single all-embracing system... were in some way constricting, an obstacle to their vision of the world, chains on their imagination or feeling".^[33] Antiscience then is a rejection of "the scientific model [or paradigm]... with its strong implication that only that which was quantifiable, or at any rate, measurable... was real".^[33] In this sense, it comprises a "critical attack upon the total claim of the new scientific method to dominate the entire field of human knowledge".^[33] However, scientific positivism (logical positivism) does not deny the reality of non-measurable phenomena, only that those phenomena should not be adequate to scientific investigation. Moreover, positivism, as a philosophical basis for the scientific method, is not consensual or even dominant in the scientific community (see philosophy of science).

Three major areas of antiscience can be seen in philosophy, sociology, and ecology. The following quotes explore this aspect of the subject.

Philosophy

Philosophical objections against science are often objections about the role of reductionism. For example, in the field of psychology, "both reductionists and antireductionists accept that... non-molecular explanations may not be improved, corrected or grounded in molecular ones".^[34] Further, "epistemological antireductionism holds that, given our finite mental capacities, we would not be able to grasp the ultimate physical explanation of many complex phenomena even if we knew the laws governing their ultimate constituents".^[35] Some see antiscience as "common...in academic settings...many people see that there are problems in demarcation between science, scientism, and pseudoscience resulting in an antiscience stance. Some argue that nothing can be known for sure".^[36]

Many philosophers are "divided as to whether reduction should be a central strategy for understanding the world".^[37] However, many agree that "there are, nevertheless, reasons why we want science to discover properties and explanations other than reductive physical ones".^[37] Such issues stem "from an antireductionist worry that there is no absolute conception of reality, that is, a characterization of reality such as... science claims to provide".^[38] This is close to the Kantian view that reality is ultimately unknowable and all models are just imperfect approximations to it.

Sociology

Sociologist Thomas Gieryn refers to "some sociologists who might appear to be antiscience".^[39] Some "philosophers and antiscience types", he contends, may have presented "unreal images of science that threaten the believability of scientific knowledge",^[39] or appear to have gone "too far in their antiscience deconstructions".^[39] The question often lies in how much scientists conform to the standard ideal of "communalism, universalism, disinterestedness, originality, and... skepticism".^[39] Unfortunately, "scientists don't always conform... scientists do get passionate about pet theories; they do rely on reputation in judging a scientist's work; they do pursue fame and gain via research".^[39] Thus, they may show inherent biases in their work. "[Many] scientists are not as rational and logical as the legend would have them, nor are they as illogical or irrational as some relativists might say".^[39]

Ecology and health sphere

Within the ecological and health spheres, Levins identifies a conflict "not between science and antiscience, but rather between different pathways for science and technology; between a commodified science-for-profit and a gentle science for humane goals; between the sciences of the smallest parts and the sciences of dynamic wholes... [he] offers proposals for a more holistic, integral approach to understanding and addressing environmental issues".^[40] These beliefs are also common within the scientific community, with for example, scientists being prominent in environmental campaigns warning of environmental dangers such as ozone depletion and the greenhouse effect. It can also be argued that this version of antiscience comes close to that found in the medical sphere, where patients and practitioners may choose to reject science and adopt a pseudoscientific approach to health problems. This can be both a practical and a conceptual shift and has attracted strong criticism: "therapeutic touch, a healing technique based upon the laying-on of hands, has found wide acceptance in the nursing profession despite its lack of scientific plausibility. Its acceptance is indicative of a broad antiscientific trend in nursing".^[41]

Glazer also criticises the therapists and patients, "for abandoning the biological underpinnings of nursing and for misreading philosophy in the service of an antiscientific world-view".^[41] In contrast, Brian Martin criticized Gross and Levitt by saying that "[their] basic approach is to attack constructivists for not being positivists,"^[42] and that science is "presented as a unitary object, usually identified with scientific knowledge. It is portrayed as neutral and objective. Second, science is claimed to be under attack by 'antiscience' which is composed essentially of ideologues who are threats to the neutrality and objectivity that are fundamental to science. Third, a highly selective attack is made on the arguments of 'antiscience'".^[42] Such people allegedly then "routinely equate critique of scientific knowledge with hostility to science, a jump that is logically unsupportable and empirically dubious".^[42] Having then "constructed two artificial entities, a unitary 'science' and a unitary 'academic left', each reduced to epistemological essences, Gross and Levitt proceed to attack. They pick out figures in each of several areas – science studies, postmodernism, feminism, environmentalism, AIDS activism – and criticise their critiques of science".^[42]

The writings of Young serve to illustrate more antiscientific views: "The strength of the antiscience movement and of alternative technology is that their advocates have managed to retain Utopian vision while still trying to create concrete instances of it".^[43] "The real social, ideological and economic forces shaping science...[have] been opposed to the point of suppression in many quarters. Most scientists hate it and label it 'antiscience'. But it is urgently needed, because it makes science self-conscious and hopefully self-critical and accountable with respect to the forces which shape research priorities, criteria, goals".^[43]

Genetically modified foods also bring about antiscience sentiment. The general public has recently become more aware of the dangers of a poor diet, as there have been numerous studies that show that the two are inextricably linked.^[44] Anti-science dictates that science is untrustworthy, because it is never complete and always being revised, which would be a probable cause for the fear that the general public has of genetically modified foods despite scientific reassurance that such foods are safe.

Antivaccinationists rely on whatever comes to hand presenting some of their arguments as if scientific, however a strain of antiscience is part of their approach.^[45]

Opposition to reductionism and positivism

On the limitations of models

A common antiscientific point of contention arises from the fact that mathematical models do not capture the full reality of existence, as can be seen in this quote:

The formulas of mathematical models are "artificial constructions, logical figments with no necessary relation to the outside world". These models always "leave out the richest and most important part of human experience...daily life, history, human laws and institutions, the modes of human self-expression".^[46] A failure to appreciate the subtle complexity of social worlds, means they get excluded from the formulas, even though, "no easy reductionism will do justice to the material". This approach often fails to concentrate "on social structures, processes, and actions in a specific sense (inequality, mobility, classes, strata, ethnicity, gender relations, urbanization, work and life of different types of people, not just elites)", and so tends to generate mostly meaningless oversimplifications.

It is also a common antiscientific point to state that verbal (say, literary and non-mathematical) models are poor representations of reality. If it is clear that a particular statistical or psychological study about romantic love or religious ecstasy (see neurotheology) captures only a tiny fraction of such human experiences, literary accounts and simplified verbal models also cannot adequately convey their full complexity. Both verbal and mathematical models are (partial) maps of reality, providing different points of view, but inherently incomplete descriptions of the territory of human and universe existence (see map–territory relation).

Scientism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Scientism is the ideology of science. The term scientism generally points to the cosmetic application of science in unwarranted situations not amenable to application of the scientific method or similar scientific standards.

In philosophy of science, the term scientism frequently implies a critique of the more extreme expressions of logical positivism^[1][2] and has been used by social scientists such as Friedrich Hayek,^[3] philosophers of science such as Karl Popper,^[4] and philosophers such as Hilary Putnam^[5] and Tzvetan Todorov^[6] to describe (for example) the dogmatic endorsement of scientific methodology and the reduction of all knowledge to only that which is measured or confirmatory.^[7]

More generally, scientism is often interpreted as science applied "in excess". The term scientism has two senses:



1. The improper usage of science or scientific claims.^[8] This usage applies equally in contexts where science might not apply,^[9] such as when the topic is perceived as beyond the scope of scientific inquiry, and in contexts where there is insufficient empirical evidence to justify a scientific conclusion. It includes an excessive deference to the claims of scientists or an uncritical eagerness to accept any result described as scientific. This can be a counterargument to appeals to scientific authority. It can also address the attempt to apply "hard science" methodology and claims of certainty to the social sciences, which Friedrich Hayek described in The Counter-Revolution of Science (1952) as being impossible, because that methodology involves attempting to eliminate the "human factor", while social sciences (including his own field of economics) center almost purely on human action.
   
2. "The belief that the methods of natural science, or the categories and things recognized in natural science, form the only proper elements in any philosophical or other inquiry",^[10] or that "science, and only science, describes the world as it is in itself, independent of perspective"^[5] with a concomitant "elimination of the psychological [and spiritual] dimensions of experience".^[11][12] Tom Sorell provides this definition: "Scientism is a matter of putting too high a value on natural science in comparison with other branches of learning or culture."^[13] Philosophers such as Alexander Rosenberg have also adopted "scientism" as a name for the view that science is the only reliable source of knowledge.^[14]
   

It is also sometimes used to describe universal applicability of the scientific method and approach, and the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or the most valuable part of human learning—to the complete exclusion of other viewpoints, such as historical, philosophical, economic or cultural worldviews. It has been defined as "the view that the characteristic inductive methods of the natural sciences are the only source of genuine factual knowledge and, in particular, that they alone can yield true knowledge about man and society".^[15] The term scientism is also used by historians, philosophers, and cultural critics to highlight the possible dangers of lapses towards excessive reductionism in all fields of human knowledge.

For social theorists in the tradition of Max Weber, such as Jürgen Habermas and Max Horkheimer, the concept of scientism relates significantly to the philosophy of positivism, but also to the cultural rationalization for modern Western civilization.^[7][21] British novelist Sara Maitland has called scientism a "myth as pernicious as any sort of fundamentalism."^[22]


Definitions

Reviewing the references to scientism in the works of contemporary scholars, Gregory R. Peterson^[23] detects two main broad themes:


1. It is used to criticize a totalizing view of science as if it were capable of describing all reality and knowledge, or as if it were the only true way to acquire knowledge about reality and the nature of things;
   
2. It is used, often pejoratively,^[24][25][26] to denote a border-crossing violation in which the theories and methods of one (scientific) discipline are inappropriately applied to another (scientific or non-scientific) discipline and its domain. An example of this second usage is to label as scientism any attempt to claim science as the only or primary source of human values (a traditional domain of ethics) or as the source of meaning and purpose (a traditional domain of religion and related worldviews).
   
The term scientism was popularized by the Nobel Prize winner F.A. Hayek, who defined it as the "slavish imitation of the method and language of Science".^[27] Karl Popper defines scientism as 'the aping of what is widely mistaken for the method of science'. ^[28]

Mikael Stenmark proposes the expression scientific expansionism as a synonym of scientism.^[29] In the Encyclopedia of science and religion, he writes that, while the doctrines that are described as scientism have many possible forms and varying degrees of ambition, they share the idea that the boundaries of science (that is, typically the natural sciences) could and should be expanded so that something that has not been previously considered as a subject pertinent to science can now be understood as part of science (usually with science becoming the sole or the main arbiter regarding this area or dimension).^[29]

According to Stenmark, the strongest form of scientism states that science has no boundaries and that all human problems and all aspects of human endeavor, with due time, will be dealt with and solved by science alone.^[29] This idea has also been called the Myth of Progress.^[30]

E. F. Schumacher, in his A Guide for the Perplexed, criticized scientism as an impoverished world view confined solely to what can be counted, measured and weighed. "The architects of the modern worldview, notably Galileo and Descartes, assumed that those things that could be weighed, measured, and counted were more true than those that could not be quantified. If it couldn't be counted, in other words, it didn't count."^[31]

Intellectual historian T.J. Jackson Lears argues there has been a recent reemergence of "nineteenth-century positivist faith that a reified 'science' has discovered (or is about to discover) all the important truths about human life. Precise measurement and rigorous calculation, in this view, are the basis for finally settling enduring metaphysical and moral controversies." Lears specifically identifies Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker's work as falling in this category.^[32] Philosophers John N. Gray and Thomas Nagel have leveled similar criticisms against popular works by moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, neuroscientist Sam Harris, and writer Malcolm Gladwell.^[33][34][35]

Genetic biologist Austin L. Hughes wrote in conservative journal The New Atlantis that scientism has much in common with superstition: "the stubborn insistence that something...has powers which no evidence supports."^[36]


Relevance to debates about science and religion

Several scholars use the term to describe the work of vocal critics of religion-as-such. Individuals associated with New Atheism have garnered this label from both religious and non-religious scholars.^[37][38] Theologian John Haught argues that Daniel Dennett and other new atheists subscribe to a belief system of scientific naturalism, which holds the central dogma that "only nature, including humans and our creations, is real: that God does not exist; and that science alone can give us complete and reliable knowledge of reality."^[39] Haught argues that this belief system is self-refuting since it requires its adherents to assent to beliefs that violate its own stated requirements for knowledge.^[40] Christian Philosopher Peter Williams argues that it is only by conflating science with scientism that new atheists feel qualified to "pontificate on metaphysical issues."^[41] Philosopher Daniel Dennett responded to religious criticism of his book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by saying that accusations of scientism "[are] an all-purpose, wild-card smear... When someone puts forward a scientific theory that [religious critics] really don't like, they just try to discredit it as 'scientism'. But when it comes to facts, and explanations of facts, science is the only game in town".^[42]

Non-religious scholars have also linked New Atheist thought with scientism. Atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel argues that neuroscientist Sam Harris conflates all empirical knowledge with that of scientific knowledge.^[43] Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton argues that Christopher Hitchens possesses an "old-fashioned scientistic notion of what counts as evidence" that reduces knowledge to what can and cannot be proven by scientific procedure.^[44] Agnostic philosopher Anthony Kenny has also criticized New Atheist philosopher Alexander Rosenberg's The Atheist's Guide to Reality for resurrecting a self-refuting epistemology of logical positivism and reducing all knowledge of the universe to the discipline of physics.^[45]

Michael Shermer, founder of The Skeptics Society, draws a parallel between scientism and traditional religious movements, pointing to the cult of personality that develops around some scientists in the public eye. He defines scientism as a worldview that encompasses natural explanations, eschews supernatural and paranormal speculations, and embraces empiricism and reason.^[46]

The Iranian scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr has stated that in the Western world, many will accept the ideology of modern science, not as "simple ordinary science", but as a replacement for religion.^[47]

Gregory R. Peterson writes that "for many theologians and philosophers, scientism is among the greatest of intellectual sins".^[23]


Philosophy of science

In his essay Against Method, Paul Feyerabend characterizes science as "an essentially anarchic enterprise"^[48] and argues emphatically that science merits no exclusive monopoly over "dealing in knowledge" and that scientists have never operated within a distinct and narrowly self-defined tradition. He depicts the process of contemporary scientific education as a mild form of indoctrination, aimed at "making the history of science duller, simpler, more uniform, more 'objective' and more easily accessible to treatment by strict and unchanging rules."^[49]


[S]cience can stand on its own feet and does not need any help from rationalists, secular humanists, Marxists and similar religious movements; and... non-scientific cultures, procedures and assumptions can also stand on their own feet and should be allowed to do so... Science must be protected from ideologies; and societies, especially democratic societies, must be protected from science... In a democracy scientific institutions, research programmes, and suggestions must therefore be subjected to public control, there must be a separation of state and science just as there is a separation between state and religious institutions, and science should be taught as one view among many and not as the one and only road to truth and reality.


— Feyerabend, Against Method, p. viii^[50]

Rhetoric of science

Thomas M. Lessl argues that religious themes persist in what he calls scientism, the public rhetoric of science.^[51] There are two methodologies that illustrate this idea of scientism. One is the epistemological approach, the assumption that the scientific method trumps other ways of knowing and the ontological approach, that the rational mind reflects the world and both operate in knowable ways. According to Lessl, the ontological approach is an attempt to "resolve the conflict between rationalism and skepticism". Lessl also argues that without scientism, there would not be a scientific culture.^[51]


Religion and philosophy

Philosopher of religion Keith Ward has said scientism is philosophically inconsistent or even self-refuting, as the truth of the statements "no statements are true unless they can be proven scientifically (or logically)" or "no statements are true unless they can be shown empirically to be true" cannot themselves be proven scientifically, logically, or empirically.^[52][53]


Rationalization and modernity

In the introduction to his collected oeuvre on the sociology of religion, Max Weber asks why "the scientific, the artistic, the political, or the economic development [elsewhere]… did not enter upon that path of rationalization which is peculiar to the Occident?" According to the distinguished German social theorist, Jürgen Habermas, "For Weber, the intrinsic (that is, not merely contingent) relationship between modernity and what he called 'Occidental rationalism' was still self-evident." Weber described a process of rationalisation, disenchantment and the "disintegration of religious world views" that resulted in modern secular societies and capitalism.^[54]


"Modernization" was introduced as a technical term only in the 1950s. It is the mark of a theoretical approach that takes up Weber's problem but elaborates it with the tools of social-scientific functionalism… The theory of modernization performs two abstractions on Weber's concept of "modernity". It dissociates "modernity" from its modern European origins and stylizes it into a spatio-temporally neutral model for processes of social development in general. Furthermore, it breaks the internal connections between modernity and the historical context of Western rationalism, so that processes of modernization… [are] no longer burdened with the idea of a completion of modernity, that is to say, of a goal state after which "postmodern" developments would have to set in. …Indeed it is precisely modernization research that has contributed to the currency of the expression "postmodern" even among social scientists.


— Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity

Habermas is critical of pure instrumental rationality, arguing that the "Social Life–World" is better suited to literary expression, the former being "intersubjectively accessible experiences" that can be generalized in a formal language, while the latter "must generate an intersubjectivity of mutual understanding in each concrete case":


The world with which literature deals is the world in which human beings are born and live and finally die; the world in which they love and hate, in which they experience triumph and humiliation, hope and despair; the world of sufferings and enjoyments, of madness and common sense, of silliness, cunning and wisdom; the world of social pressures and individual impulses, of reason against passion, of instincts and conventions, of shared language and unsharable feelings and sensations…


— Aldous Huxley, Literature and Science

Media references

• As a form of dogma: "In essence, scientism sees science as the absolute and only justifiable access to the truth."

Criticism of science

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Personification of "Science" in front of the Boston Public Library

Criticism of science addresses and refines problems within science in order to improve science as a whole and its role in society. It is distinct from the academic positions of antiscience or anti-intellectualism which seek to reject entirely the scientific method.

Philosophical critiques

"All methodologies, even the most obvious ones, have their limits." ―Paul Feyerabend in Against Method

Philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend advanced the idea of epistemological anarchism, which holds that there are no useful and exception-free methodological rules governing the progress of science or the growth of knowledge, and that the idea that science can or should operate according to universal and fixed rules is unrealistic, pernicious and detrimental to science itself.^[1] Feyerabend advocates a democratic society where science is treated as an equal to other ideologies or social institutions such as religion, and education, or magic and mythology, and considers the dominance of science in society authoritarian and unjustified.^[1] He also contended (along with Imre Lakatos) that the demarcation problem of distinguishing science from pseudoscience on objective grounds is not possible and thus fatal to the notion of science running according to fixed, universal rules.^[1]

Feyerabend also criticized science for not having evidence for its own philosophical precepts. Particularly the notion of Uniformity of Law and the Uniformity of Process across time and space, as noted by Steven Jay Gould.^[2] "We have to realize that a unified theory of the physical world simply does not exist" says Feyerabend, "We have theories that work in restricted regions, we have purely formal attempts to condense them into a single formula, we have lots of unfounded claims (such as the claim that all of chemistry can be reduced to physics), phenomena that do not fit into the accepted framework are suppressed; in physics, which many scientists regard as the one really basic science, we have now at least three different points of view...without a promise of conceptual (and not only formal) unification".^[3] In other words, science is begging the question when it presupposes that there is a universal truth with no proof thereof.

Historian Jacques Barzun termed science "a faith as fanatical as any in history" and warned against the use of scientific thought to suppress considerations of meaning as integral to human existence.^[4]

Sociologist Stanley Aronowitz scrutinizes science for operating with the presumption that the only acceptable criticisms of science are those conducted within the methodological framework that science has set up for itself. That science insists that only those who have been inducted into its community, through means of training and credentials, are qualified to make these criticisms.^[5] Aronowitz also alleges that while scientists consider it absurd that Fundamentalist Christianity uses biblical references to bolster their claim that the Bible is true, scientists pull the same tactic by using the tools of science to settle disputes concerning its own validity.^[6]

Philosopher of religion Alan Watts criticized science for operating under a materialist model of the world that he posited is simply a modified version of the Abrahamic worldview, that "the universe is constructed and maintained by a Lawmaker" (commonly identified as God or the Logos). Watts asserts that during the rise of secularism through the 18th to 20th century when scientific philosophers got rid of the notion of a lawmaker they kept the notion of law, and that the idea that the world is a material machine run by law is a presumption just as unscientific as religious doctrines that affirm it is a material machine made and run by a lawmaker.^[7]

Epistemology

David Parkin compared the epistemological stance of science to that of divination. He suggested that, to the degree that divination is an epistemologically specific means of gaining insight into a given question, science itself can be considered a form of divination that is framed from a Western view of the nature (and thus possible applications) of knowledge.^[8]

Polymath and Episkopos of Discordianism Robert Anton Wilson stresses that the instruments used in scientific investigation produce meaningful answers relevant only to the instrument, and that there is no objective vantage point from which science could verify its findings since all findings are relative to begin with.^[9]

Ethics

Joseph Wright of Derby (1768) An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump, National Gallery, London

Several academics have offered critiques concerning ethics in science. In Science and Ethics, for example, the professor of philosophy Bernard Rollin examines the relevance of ethics to science, and argues in favor of making education in ethics part and parcel of scientific training.^[10]

Social science scholars, like anthropologists like Tim Ingold, and scholars from philosophy and the humanities, like Adorno in critical theory, have criticized modern science for subservience to economic and technological interests.^[11] A related criticism is the debate on positivism. While before the 19th century science was perceived to be in opposition to religion, in contemporary society science is often defined as the antithesis of the humanities and the arts.^[12]

Many recent thinkers, such as Carolyn Merchant, Theodor Adorno and E. F. Schumacher considered that the 17th century scientific revolution shifted science from a focus on understanding nature, or wisdom, to a focus on manipulating nature, i.e. power, and that science's emphasis on manipulating nature leads it inevitably to manipulate people, as well.^[13] Science's focus on quantitative measures has led to critiques that it is unable to recognize important qualitative aspects of the world.^[13]

Methodology

Cognitive and publication biases

While many scientists and skeptics point out cognitive biases that may permeate commonsense thinking and cause illogical conclusions, the same biases are much less likely to be examined within the scientific community. Critics argue that the biggest bias within science is motivated reasoning, whereby scientists are more likely to accept evidence that supports their hypothesis and more likely to scrutinize findings that do not.^[14] Scientists do not practice pure induction but instead often come into science with preconceived ideas and often will, unconsciously or consciously, interpret observations to support their own hypotheses through confirmation bias. For example, scientists may re-run trials when they do not support a hypothesis but use results from the first trial when they do support their hypothesis.^[15] It is often argued that while each individual has cognitive biases, these biases are corrected for when scientific evidence converges. However, systematic issues in the publication system of academic journals can often compound these biases. Issues like publication bias, where studies with non-significant results are less likely to be published, and selective outcome reporting bias, where only the significant outcomes out of a variety of outcomes are likely to be published, are common within academic literature. These biases have widespread implications, such as the distortion of meta-analyses where only studies that include positive results are likely to be included.^[16] Statistical outcomes can be manipulated as well, for example large numbers of participants can be used and trials overpowered so that small difference cause significant effects or inclusion criteria can be changed to include those are most likely to respond to a treatment.^[17] Whether produced on purpose or not, all of these issues need to be taken into consideration within scientific research, and peer-reviewed published evidence should not be assumed to be outside of the realm of bias and error; some critics are now claiming that many results in scientific journals are false or exaggerated.^[16]

Reproducibility

The behavioral science and social sciences have long suffered from the problem of their studies being largely not being reproducible.^[18] Now, biomedicine has come under similar pressures.^[19] In a phenomenon known as the replication crisis, journals are less likely to publish straight replication studies so it may be difficult to disprove results.^[20] Another result of publication bias is the Proteus phenomenon: early attempts to replicate results tend to contradict them.^[21] However, there are claims that this bias may be beneficial, allowing accurate meta-analysis with fewer publications.^[22]

Metascience critiques

There are some critiques of science from metascience, that broadly accepted form of scientific publishing produces mostly insignificant, unreliable and false results, because of studies design and prevalence of scientific misconduct.^[23] Because of small statistical power as much as 95% of neuroimaging-base studies could be false.^[24] 85% of biomedical research efforts is probably wasted, according to one analysis.^[25] In psychology about ⅛ of papers consist statistical error, which could changes conclusions of those papers.^[26] Most of economic hypothesis could be false.^[27] Also due to replication crisis and omitting from publication negative finding results,^[28] most discoveries in science are inflated.^[29]

Feminist critiques

Feminist scholars and women scientists such as Emily Martin, Evelyn Fox Keller, Ruth Hubbard, Londa Schiebinger and Bonnie Spanier have critiqued science because they believe it presents itself as objective and neutral while ignoring its inherent gender bias. They assert that gender bias exists in the language and practice of science, as well as in the expected appearance and social acceptance of who can be scientists within society.^[30][31][32]

Sandra Harding says that the "moral and political insights of the women's movement have inspired social scientists and biologists to raise critical questions about the ways traditional researchers have explained gender, sex, and relations within and between the social and natural worlds."^[33] Anne Fausto-Sterling is a prominent example of this kind of feminist work within biological science. Some feminists, such as Ruth Hubbard and Evelyn Fox Keller, criticize traditional scientific discourse as being historically biased towards a male perspective.^[34][35] A part of the feminist research agenda is the examination of the ways in which power inequities are created and/or reinforced in scientific and academic institutions.^[36]

Other feminist scholars, such as Ann Hibner Koblitz,^[37] Lenore Blum,^[38] Mary Gray,^[39] Mary Beth Ruskai,^[40] and Pnina Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram,^[41] have criticized some gender and science theories for ignoring the diverse nature of scientific research and the tremendous variation in women's experiences in different cultures and historical periods. For example, the first generation of women to receive advanced university degrees in Europe were almost entirely in the natural sciences and medicine -- in part because those fields at the time were much more welcoming of women than were the humanities.^[42] Koblitz and others who are interested in increasing the number of women in science have expressed concern that some of the statements by feminist critics of science could undermine those efforts, notably the following assertion by Keller:^[43]

Just as surely as inauthenticity is the cost a woman suffers by joining men in misogynist jokes, so it is, equally, the cost suffered by a woman who identifies with an image of the scientist modeled on the patriarchal husband. Only if she undergoes a radical disidentification from self can she share masculine pleasure in mastering a nature cast in the image of woman as passive, inert, and blind.

Language in science

Emily Martin examines the metaphors used in science to support her claim that science reinforces socially constructed ideas about gender rather than objective views of nature. In her study about the fertilization process, Martin describes several cases when gender-biased perception skewed the descriptions of biological processes during fertilization and even possibly hampered the research. She asserts that classic metaphors of the strong dominant sperm racing to an idle egg are products of gendered stereotyping rather than a faithful portrayal of human fertilization. The notion that women are passive and men are active are socially constructed attributes of gender which, according to Martin, scientists have projected onto the events of fertilization and so obscuring the fact that eggs do play an active role. For example, she wrote that "even after having revealed...the egg to be a chemically active sperm catcher, even after discussing the egg's role in tethering the sperm, the research team continued for another three years to describe the sperm's role as actively penetrating the egg."^[30] Scott Gilbert, a developmental biologist at Swarthmore College supports her position: "if you don’t have an interpretation of fertilization that allows you to look at the egg as active, you won’t look for the molecules that can prove it. You simply won’t find activities that you don’t visualize."^[30]

Media and politics

The mass media face a number of pressures that can prevent them from accurately depicting competing scientific claims in terms of their credibility within the scientific community as a whole. Determining how much weight to give different sides in a scientific debate requires considerable expertise regarding the matter.^[44] Few journalists have real scientific knowledge, and even beat reporters who know a great deal about certain scientific issues may know little about other ones they are suddenly asked to cover.^[45][46]

Many issues damage the relationship of science to the media and the use of science and scientific arguments by politicians. As a very broad generalisation, many politicians seek certainties and facts whilst scientists typically offer probabilities and caveats. However, politicians' ability to be heard in the mass media frequently distorts the scientific understanding by the public. Examples in Britain include the controversy over the MMR inoculation, and the 1988 forced resignation of a government minister, Edwina Currie, for revealing the high probability that battery eggs were contaminated with Salmonella.^[47]

Some scientists and philosophers suggest that scientific theories are more or less shaped by the dominant political, economic, or cultural models of the time, even though the scientific community may claim to be exempt from social influences and historical conditions.^[48][49] For example, Zoologist Peter Kropotkin thought that the Darwinian theory of evolution overstressed a painful "we must struggle to survive" way of life, which he said was influenced by capitalism and the struggling lifestyles people lived within it.^[9][50] Karl Marx also thought that science was largely driven by and used as capital.^[51]

Robert Anton Wilson, Stanley Aronowitz, and Paul Feyerabend all thought that the military-industrial complex, large corporations, and the grants that came from them had an immense influence over the research and even results of scientific experiments.^{[1][52][53][54]} Aronowitz even went as far as to say "It does not matter that the scientific community ritualistically denies its alliance with economic/industrial and military power. The evidence is overwhelming that such is the case. Thus, every major power has a national science policy; the United States Military appropriates billions each year for 'basic' as well as 'applied' research".

Rethinking the Mars terraforming debate

by John K. Strickland
Monday, August 20, 2018

Original link:  http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3551/1#.W3xFvKlO_U8.google_plusone_share

In late July, Bruce Jakosky and Christopher Edwards published a paper titled “Inventory of CO₂ available for terraforming Mars,” which was sponsored by NASA. The paper analyzed the amount of volatiles, primarily carbon dioxide (CO₂), on or in Mars currently, and concluded reasonably that there are not enough volatiles available on Mars to terraform it sufficiently for a person to not need a pressure suit. Jakosky is the principal investigator for MAVEN, the NASA Mars orbiter studying the planet’s atmosphere. He and his co-author wrote what is technically an accurate paper, in spite of what was an existing mild controversy over the amount of some volatiles in the soil and regolith of Mars. The timing of this paper was reasonable, since by 2018, MAVEN data, as well as othee orbiting radar data and related geologic modeling, was available and allowed more accurate estimates of amounts of remaining carbon dioxide and other volatiles.

All of this particular argument actually is “sound and fury signifying nothing,” since the debate is all focused on the wrong volatile and totally ignores the potential of importing volatiles to Mars.

Unfortunately, quite a few in the science and space media, and other more sensationalistic outlets, took the ball and ran with it like the apocryphal rider who “rode madly off in all directions.” The results turned a technical paper into the basis for a vicious debate over whether terraforming Mars is possible at all. Some of the writers implied that the researchers were speaking officially for NASA in saying that terraforming Mars was impossible. Most of the media writers totally ignored a key phrase in the paper’s abstract: “using present day technology.” Is there really anyone who thinks we can terraform Mars right now? In its later phases, the debate and coverage turned into a series of snide and unfair attacks on Elon Musk, who is well known for his interest in terraforming Mars, and who made an incautious but probably jesting remark about the use of nuclear devices to melt the Mars polar caps several years ago. Some of the more outrageous, unfair and untrue article headlines included:

“Sorry Elon, NASA says plans to terraform Mars won’t work”

“Elon Musk’s Dream Has Just been proven Impossible”

“NASA says we can’t terraform Mars”

“It’s Official – We can’t Terraform Mars”

Now, it may seem premature to be arguing over our ability to terraform Mars when humans have not even landed there yet. Fortunately, we already have a huge amount of information on Mars and its atmosphere, so many of the arguments are on solid technical ground.

However, all of this particular argument actually is “sound and fury signifying nothing,” since the debate is all focused on the wrong volatile and totally ignores the potential of importing volatiles to Mars. A “volatile” is any substance which can be turned into a gas easily or is normally a gas. Good common examples are water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, ammonia, and nitrogen. The current focus on carbon dioxide is about its role as a greenhouse gas that could raise the temperature of Mars. While releasing the known amounts of frozen carbon dioxide could raise the temperature and pressure significantly, terraforming Mars requires more than merely making Mars warmer. The day side of the moon can reach 120 degrees Celsius, but with its vacuum, it is not very conducive to life.

The surface pressure on Mars now averages about 0.6 percent of our own sea level pressure, or about 0.087 psi (600 pascals), and is thus a “physiological vacuum”. This means the pressure is less than a tenth of the “Armstrong Limit” of about 0.9 psi (6,200 pascals) where blood boils and far below what is needed to survive even with pure oxygen. You would need to wear a pressure suit to survive on the surface, just like on the Moon. Fortunately, though chilly, the temperatures on Mars are much milder than those on the Moon.

In addition, the surface of Mars is exposed to about 250 millisieverts (mSv) per Earth year of solar and galactic (cosmic) radiation, composed partly of dangerous high-speed atomic nuclei that can leave a trail of dead brain cells behind. Due to these particles, cosmic radiation is more dangerous than “regular” radiation. Crews and early civilian settlers would need to live underground in heavily shielded, pressurized habitat buildings to prevent the cosmic ray nuclei from reaching them. For reference, you would experience some radiation sickness if you got a dose of 1000 mSv all at once. In interplanetary space, you would get about 657 mSv per year without shielding, but on Mars, the planet itself blocks half of the radiation and the thin atmosphere absorbs another 20 percent of what remains. At this lower but constant rate, you would not get sick but there would be cumulative cell damage and a slow increase in cancer risk. On Earth, at sea level, we have in effect a layer of air equivalent in mass to 10.3 meters of water over our heads, which absorbs virtually all of the dangerous high-energy particles. On Mars, that layer is equivalent to about 20 centimeters of water, barely enough to shield anyone from a dangerous solar “proton storm” radiation outburst.

A reasonable mix at about 10 psi would obviously be 70 percent nitrogen and 30 oxygen oxygen, providing the needed 3 psi of oxygen. This would be similar to being at about 3,000 meters on Earth, which the majority of people can obviously tolerate.

So there are three main reasons we need significant air pressure on Mars: to remove the need for pressure suits when working outside (and so that we would no longer need to live in pressurized habitats), to allow water to exist as a liquid on the surface, and to block the ubiquitous cosmic radiation so that buildings can be right on the surface and so that people can work on the surface without being irradiated. We can look at this issue from two points of view: radiation blocking mass and air pressure. So how much air mass and pressure do we really need?

From the radiation perspective, this is primarily a matter of sheer mass. On Earth at sea level, we have enough air over our heads so that only a tiny fraction of the natural background radiation most people get per year, totaling 3 to 6 mSv, is from space. To duplicate that very good level of protection on Mars requires a comparable amount of air mass (10.3 metric tons) over every square meter of Mars surface, ignoring the great altitude differences. Multiply this by the number of square meters of Mars surface and you get the required air mass: 1.493 trillion metric tons. This amount would create about 6.14 psi of air pressure or about 0.42 of Earth sea level pressure. More importantly, essentially all of the dangerous cosmic radiation from space would be blocked. This compares to the paltry 25 trillion metric tons of air currently in place at Mars, almost all of it CO2.

Some may note that for the same air column mass (the mass of air over a given surface area), we are not getting as much air pressure as we do on Earth. With Mars lower gravity, about 38% of Earths, it takes more air mass per square meter than it does on Earth to produce the same amount of pressure. So with the radiation threat now (theoretically) dealt with, how much air pressure do we need and what kind?

Right now, the air you are breathing is about 78 percent nitrogen and only about 21 percent oxygen. Carbon dioxide is a trace gas, at only 0.04 percent. You actually breathe 25 times more argon than carbon dioxide. If you are old enough, or are a space history buff, you may remember the Apollo 1 fire. The first Apollo spacecraft being prepared to be launched with a crew had about 16 psi of pure oxygen inside it during a pre-launch test, and all of the metal and plastic surfaces were saturated with oxygen. The capsule interior was like a fire bomb waiting for one tiny spark. The three astronauts were quickly asphyxiated by smoke within a minute of that spark and most of the interior of the capsule was incinerated. This horrific accident illustrates how dangerous high levels of oxygen are.

So future colonists would have little use for an atmosphere of almost all carbon dioxide, and they would not want an atmosphere mostly of oxygen due to the huge fire risk it would create. It turns out that the oxygen in any future nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere should be less than 50 percent of the total air pressure, but with the 42 percent pressure described above, we would still need a future 50-50 oxygen and nitrogen mix. (The amount of nitrogen delivered should be related to the future oxygen component.) So if we increase the air column mass to about 12.3 metric tons over each meter of surface, we get almost exactly half sea level pressure, or about 7.35 psi. To create this half-atmosphere of pressure (almost all of nitrogen) we need to add 1,784 trillion tons of nitrogen. However, this is equivalent to an altitude on Earth of about 5,200 meters, the altitude of the highest community on Earth in the Andes.

We assume, once we have a half-atmosphere of pressure, early settlers would be using oxygen helmets when working outside, and living inside slightly pressurized habitats, which could then be on the surface, with a nitrogen-oxygen mix. In addition, those in charge of the terraforming process would want to find ways to slowly add oxygen to the atmosphere, such as using the oxygen in some of the carbon dioxide and the existing water on Mars. This may take a long time, but adding oxygen will also add to the atmospheric pressure. Eventually, perhaps after centuries, there would be enough oxygen to breath and green plants could grow outside, but not so much as to be dangerous. A reasonable mix at about 10 psi would obviously be 70 percent nitrogen and 30 oxygen oxygen, providing the needed 3 psi of oxygen. This would be similar to being at about 3,000 meters on Earth, which the majority of people can obviously tolerate. For example, the town of Leadville, Colorado, is at an altitude of 3,100 meters. This is why we want the nitrogen in place first as it is a non-reactive gas.

Now, of course, many people will wonder where do we get all of these trillions of tons of nitrogen to import onto Mars. The planet has very little of it: just a few percent of what is needed, as most of it was lost during the last 3.5 billion years. However, It turns out that the outer solar system has huge amounts of nitrogen, both as a gas, such as on Titan, and as a semi-solid slush or ice on Pluto, Triton, and very probably the other large Kuiper Belt dwarf planets. Small asteroids would not have significant amounts of nitrogen as their gravity would have been too low to hold an atmosphere. We should be able to mine some of this nitrogen and move it to Mars where it can help support life. The current atmospheric loss rate from Mars would be very low.

Right now, it is true we have no means of moving the nitrogen, but chances are, with the new private investments in fusion power, that we will have it before we are ready to start terraforming. Fusion rocket powered tugs would only need to thrust for a few days to a couple weeks to send huge loads of nitrogen—as much as 100 million tons in each load—into the inner solar system at low speeds and carefully intersect the atmosphere of Mars. Ten such loads would deliver a billion tons of nitrogen, as much mass as a cubic kilometer of water, and 10,000 loads would deliver a full trillion tons.

The use of the nitrogen dumps using the existing atmosphere as a brake does away with the need to use either asteroid impacts or nuclear bombs to melt Mars ice, both very temporary and extremely undesirable methods.

The image at the top of this article shows a load of 100,000 chunks of nitrogen (shown as cubes but they could be in huge plastic bags.) Each chunk is about 10 meters across and weighs about 1,000 tons. By aiming these large loads of nitrogen ice so that they come in exactly horizontally at the high atmosphere of Mars over the desired areas, instead of impacting on Mars surface, there are no craters formed and all of the nitrogen is turned into gas and added to the atmosphere over an entry path of hundreds of kilometers. Very large amounts of heat, but no dangerous radiation, are created by these entries, which would occur many times a day and go on for over 100 years.

The entries could be targeted over the ice caps or glaciers and would easily melt them totally, as each entry produces as much radiant heat as a hydrogen bomb but with no dangerous radiation. Thus, the ice cap melting can be done by these repeated entry events, instead of a few, very dangerous cratering events. The fusion tugs back away from their loads before entry and head back to the outer solar system at high speed since they now have no load. Climatologists may have to hurry to get valuable ice cores of all the ice cap areas before they are melted to form a new, but initially shallow, Boreal Ocean and other bodies of water.

Thus, the whole argument over how much carbon dioxide is on Mars now is totally irrelevant, since we need to import the nitrogen, which is far more important than the carbon dioxide. The use of the nitrogen dumps using the existing atmosphere as a brake does away with the need to use either asteroid impacts or nuclear bombs to melt Mars ice, both very temporary and extremely undesirable methods. The paper’s authors probably had no idea of the media firestorm their paper would create, but it left no “out” allowing the possibility of terraforming, such as pointing out that there were other sources and kinds of volatiles besides those on Mars. This almost invited the irresponsible media writers to make the claims that terraforming was impossible.

There was another issue raised by the paper and media debate. The paper’s authors confused chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) gases with perfluorocarbons, which have been identified for a quarter century as the preferred greenhouse gas to use by respected Mars authorities like Christopher McKay. The media did not seem to notice this during their intense focus on the carbon dioxide issue. No one supports using CFCs today, but the mixture of several different perfluorocarbons that has been devised has no chlorine atoms and thus would not damage a future ozone layer over Mars. The essential element in these molecules: fluorine, certainly exists on Mars but we will need to figure out what minerals to extract it from.

Another issue no one discussed is the chance that the desired increased in Mars atmospheric pressure could lead to a great increase in water vapor in the Mars atmosphere. This seems to be exactly what we want, but it could also result in a lot of snow on the surface outside the polar areas, which could actually reduce the planet’s temperature by increasing its albedo or reflectivity. Having additional carbon dioxide and perfluorocarbons present early on before the pressure on Mars was raised would be a good terraforming strategy. This might warm Mars sufficiently so that the snow potentially enable by the higher pressure would melt sooner and run off or sink into the ground. Once the pressure has been raised, the perfluorocarbons would become the main greenhouse gas mixture, eventually protected from photolysis by the new ozone layer high above. Both the perfluorocarbons and the carbon dioxide would remain as trace gases in the Mars atmosphere. Our advanced climatological modeling can help tell what the best course is.

It is important to realize that without full terraforming, with at least a half-atmosphere or more of pressure, the fanciful images of skyscrapers and shimmering domed cities on the surface of Mars are not realistic. Once there are enough humans living under Mars surface, the public pressure for terraforming will build and action will be taken. Eventually creating a living world on the surface of Mars—to act as a backup for Earth’s biome, not as a replacement for it—is a great dream, and a valid one.

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John Strickland is a member of the National Space Society Board of Directors but as an independent writer, he speaks for no organization. His opinions are his own.