Don't Know

 

            We really don't know very much.  That's not the problem, however, because as far as anyone can really tell, we have as much time as we need to learn whatever we might care to know.  The problem is, that we tend not to realize how little we know.  A century ago, the head of the U.S. Patent Office figured he might as well close up shop because everything possible had already been invented.  Each generation seems determined to conclude, against all evidence and experience, that we are very near the end of knowledge (even "the end of history"?!?).  This leads our experts to give us conclusions based upon insufficient information.  Not realizing how insufficient their information is, they offer unsubstantiated conclusions as facts.  We, failing to realize just how primitive our science is, let them get away with it, and end up "knowing" all sorts of things that may or may not be true.

 

            From the solar perspective, all conclusions must be tentative.  You never know when new information will be found to challenge current ideas.  The long view is almost always proven correct, perhaps tomorrow, next year, or several centuries down the road.  Whenever.  With infinite time and space in which to play, there is no telling where our next truth may lie.

 

            A near-comic example of modern "truth" is the new conventional wisdom about dinosaurs.  Until very recently, the scant data available on dinosaurs had convinced scientists that all dinosaurs were cold-blooded reptiles.  New information now suggests some dinosaurs were warm-blooded, and that modern birds appear as likely to have evolved from dinosaurs as modern reptiles.  Instead of caution, instead of saying, "current theory indicates" or "the evidence we now have suggests", this generation of scientists "knows" as certainly as did their predecessors.  "We now know dinosaurs were warm-blooded."  We now know all sorts of wonderful things that could easily be disproved next year.  We may all be descended from dinosaurs for all we really know.  (Better than the three-inch tree shrews that now appear to be our dinosaur-era forbears).

 

            A recent poll meant to measure (or poke fun at) the scientific literacy of the general public, offered without qualification a question to the effect of, "Tyrannosaurus Rex was most closely related to modern:  a. birds, b. reptiles, c. amphibians."  The correct answer, "d. we don't know", was not offered.  We now "know" birds are Rex's closest living relatives.  Ah, the arrogance of a little knowledge.  A few experts think something is true, and we are to follow like so many ducklings.  And for the most part we do.  What fun.

 

            Another example, which might have been designed just to fill the skeptic's heart with merriment, is an attempt to show by statistics that human civilization cannot go on indefinitely.  I know of no clearer demonstration of the dictum that anything can be proven by statistics, or, more to the point, that statistics without facts prove nothing.  The evidence in this case is based upon the conclusion, drawn from thin air, that we are unlikely to be living in either the first five percent or the last five percent of the time allotted to us ("there is a 90% chance we are living in the middle 90%").  Thus, if we arbitrarily say human civilization has existed for 5,000 years, and that this period must equal between 5% and 95% of our allotted time, then we have between 250 and 95,000 years left.   By this type of logic, it is even more unlikely that anyone at all lives in Decatur, Illinois, because there is only a .0025% chance of any one human being living there.  The point is, someone has to live in Decatur, just as some generation has to exist at this point on the human time scale, even if that time scale ultimately stretches to infinity.

 

            Even if there were any validity to the blind assertion that we must be between 5% and 95% of the way to our imagined end, we could just as easily (and just as meaningfully) stick in 1,000,000 years, roughly the period since our earliest human-like ancestors emerged, instead of 5,000.  This gives us up to 19 million years left.  Or, why not 4.5 billion years, the current estimate of the time since life first developed on Earth?  This gives us a maximum of 85 billion years, or more time than current theory says the universe has so far existed.  Any of these figures have as much validity for this purpose as any other, namely none.

 

            If we seriously wanted to develop statistics to predict the life of our civilization, we would have to gather real data: survey the galaxy, catalog all civilizations that have come and gone, measure the approximate time each lasted.  Then factor in the ages of those that have come and not yet gone.  Otherwise, we assume a finality we have no right to assume (an additional flaw in the above-mentioned work).

 

            Obviously, we cannot conduct such a survey just yet.  So we have no data, and can make no meaningful conclusion.  In other words, we don't know.  Every expert and every scientist should put these few words in a framed plaque and stare at them devoutly at least three times a day.  There is nothing wrong with not knowing.  There is everything right about trying to find out.  But, there is nothing worse, scientifically or intellectually, than claiming to know what you don't.  And no fool greater than he who fools himself into thinking he really knows something when he don't.

 

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