[mxlm]

 It sounds like the English lit guy just wanted to say, well, hold on a minute; we might not have things as straight as you think.

He could have just saved himself some time and quoted JSM

Ages are no more infallible than individuals; every age having held many opinions which subsequent ages have deemed not only false but absurd; and it is as certain that many opinions, now general, will be rejected by future ages, as it is that many, once general, are rejected by the present

GB's most recent post is correct, of course.

[Goober5000]

And yet there's no denying that things have been steadily made less incorrect, which is the point I made above.

Dismissing existing scientific knowledge on the basis that 'science was wrong in the past' remains an absurdity. Science is still wrong today, it's just less wrong than it was.

And yet neither I, nor Asimov, nor the English lit guy advocated dismissing any scientific knowledge a priori.

I'm afraid, it's you Goober who failed to grasp how science is "reinvented".

Um, no.  Go back and reread my post.  The five-step process that I described is a quite common occurrence in scientific progression.

The details, of course, may be different.  Phlogiston was heading in the wrong direction, and in any case it got the combustion process backwards.  Luminiferous aether was based on an incomplete understanding of the phenomenon of light, caused by relying too heavily on the wave nature.  Newtonian mechanics is an approximation that works excellently for day-to-day physics but fails at high velocities and low masses.  Nevertheless, the history of all three theories follows the same model.

He could have just saved himself some time and quoted JSM

Not sure who JSM is, but that quote is a reasonable generalization.

[Inquisitor]

That "straw man" is precisely the argument that gets used here, with alarming regularity, in evolution, climate. Yucca Mtn debates, etc, ad infinitum.

A straw man should not actually reflect working reality, last I checked. Eschewing all because one part is "wrong", chucking out the whole of knowlegdge on the premise that one part of that knowledge is faulty, is not how we make progress in science and engineering. Its like going back to horse and buggy because your car won't start in the morning. This car won't start, all cars must be bad, I must get rid of all cars. That's the logical fallacy.

[Mr. Vega]

I hope people actually read the article, because it's actually a counter to the old argument that 'well, everything we USED to think is wrong, so everything we think TODAY is wrong too'.

It's a good find, and (as one would expect from Asimov) very realistic and positive about the scientific process, which is basically a way to steadily make things less incorrect.

I read the article and I actually strongly disagree with Asimov here, not because he's wrong (he isn't) nor because I'm a fan of English lit majors (I'm not), but because Asimov doesn't seem to be treating this guy fairly.  He transforms the English lit guy's argument into a straw man, demolishes the straw man, then at the conclusion of the letter ends up agreeing with the guy after all.

Look at what Asimov says at the beginning of the letter: "It seemed that in one of my innumerable essays, I had expressed a certain gladness at living in a century in which we finally got the basis of the universe straight."  It sounds like the English lit guy just wanted to say, well, hold on a minute; we might not have things as straight as you think.  In every century, people think they have the universe figured out, whereas in every subsequent century, that turns out to not be the case.  Yes, they have knowledge; yes, that knowledge is of great applicability and practical benefit; no it's never the whole story.

Asimov construes this as a binary right/wrong issue, whereas there's no indication that the English guy said that was the case.  Look at his response: "[I]f you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."  That's putting words into the guy's mouth.  And then look at what Asmiov says later: "In short, my English Lit friend, living in a mental world of absolute rights and wrongs, may be imagining that because all theories are wrong, the earth may be thought spherical now, but cubical next century, and a hollow icosahedron the next, and a doughnut shape the one after."  This is a flat-out mischaracterization.

The other thing that Asimov mischaracterizes is the replacement of old scientific concepts with new ones: "Even when a new theory seems to represent a revolution, it usually arises out of small refinements. If something more than a small refinement were needed, then the old theory would never have endured."  More often than not, the "old theory" continues to endure despite mounting evidence against it: it's not replaced as soon as it becomes obsolete, it continues to have its loyal adherents long afterwards.  The history of scientific discovery usually happens like this:

• A new theory gains acceptance
• That theory is refined with additional data
• Even more data is found that "stretches" the theory somewhat, and has to be shoehorned in
• The theory is modified in different, sometimes convoluted ways to accommodate "edge cases" of data
• The theory is overhauled and replaced with a fresh, comprehensive theory.

This happens in science all the time.  The study of combustion produced phlogiston, then phlogiston sources and sinks and dephlogisticated air, then oxidation.  Astronomy produced the geocentric model, then cycles and epicycles, and then the heliocentric model.  The study of light produced luminiferous aether before quantum mechanics.  Newtonian physics gave way to relativity.

In fact, I am positive the same thing is happening today.  Look at the problems we now have with gravity: we don't know the gravitational constant to the same accuracy as other physical constants; the "Pioneer anomaly" causes space probes to inexplicably accelerate at the edge of the solar system; the angular approach to the Earth seems to very subtly affect the strength of gravitational slingshots.  And look how we've tried to explain it: dark energy and dark matter.  Gee, that sounds an awful lot like phlogiston and aether.  I'm certain that within the next hundred years there will be so many problems that we'll have to revise our understanding of gravity.

And finally, look what Asimov says at the end of the letter: "Naturally, the theories we now have might be considered wrong in the simplistic sense of my English Lit correspondent."  He seems to tacitly agree with the English lit guy anyway, even though the view was only "simplistic" in Asimov's retelling.

Some things, such as mathematics, can be said to be right or wrong.  All that can be said about science is that it is accurate or inaccurate.  Asimov recognizes this; the English lit guy recognizes it too.

This Lit Major quoted Socrates saying that wisdom is realizing that actually you know nothing. That the one thing we can say about our current knowledge is that it is wrong. That sounds pretty black and white to me.

Explain to me exactly how Asimov is mischaracterizing him please.

[Goober5000]

This Lit Major quoted Socrates saying that wisdom is realizing that actually you know nothing. That the one thing we can say about our current knowledge is that it is wrong. That sounds pretty black and white to me.

Explain to me exactly how Asimov is mischaracterizing him please.

I already devoted the whole post you quoted to explaining that.  But if you'd like a TLDR version, it is this: the construing of "wrong" to mean "absolutely incorrect" in the binary sense of true/false, correct/incorrect, black/white, is a misinterpretation.  (One that you apparently seem to share.)

This ought to be obvious from the Socrates quote.  If you interpret it in a binary sense, it leads to a logical contradiction: "I know that I know nothing" is logically equivalent to "This statement is false", which is nonsense.  Obviously, Socrates's statement was metaphorical.  Perhaps Socrates meant that his knowledge was insignificant in comparison to the sum of all knowledge; perhaps he meant that he was just starting to learn; perhaps he was expressing doubt at what he already knew.

All of these are statements along the lines of "my current knowledge is incomplete".  This is what the English lit guy was trying to tell Asimov: every century's knowledge is made more complete, or revised, or altered by the century that comes next.  And that is the conclusion that Asimov arrives at at the end of the essay.  Ironically, Asimov blames the English lit guy for not getting it, when he really got it all along.

[Ghostavo]

I'm not sure how we can be sure of what the Lit Major was trying to tell if we don't have the letter he sent Asimov.

We can only go by what Asimov tells us.

[Goober5000]

True enough.  And yet look what Asimov says about the letter:

I RECEIVED a letter the other day. It was handwritten in crabbed penmanship so that it was very difficult to read. ... In the first sentence, the writer told me he was majoring in English literature, but felt he needed to teach me science.

It seemed that in one of my innumerable essays, I had expressed a certain gladness at living in a century in which we finally got the basis of the universe straight.

The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong.  It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong.  The young man then quoted with approval what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphic oracle had proclaimed him the wisest man in Greece. "If I am the wisest man," said Socrates, "it is because I alone know that I know nothing."

Everything else Asimov writes in this essay is either interpretation or exposition.  Regardless of whether the English lit guy was friendly or hostile, regardless of his poor penmanship, Asimov gives us sufficient information about the letter to indicate that the English lit major wasn't treating knowledge as the binary right/wrong that Asimov paints it as.

[Ghostavo]

I'm not sure how you can make that leap with Asimov saying the other guy had a binary distinction between wrong and right.

After all, he goes quite a long way explaining the whole thing.

[Mr. Vega]

I think you're giving the Lit Major too much credit.

[Inquisitor]

And I think you're (Goober) missing the point entirely, and frankly the english lit major may not have even existed

Doesn't matter. The debate style of "this thing is wrong, so everything must be wrong" gets played out over and over and over again. Right here, in debates on just about anything scientific that has the hint of political controversy. It gets played out on talk radio, on CNN, on Fox News anytime anyone talks about global warming, for instance.

The point is the knowledge isn't binary. the point is the only choice isn't to "go back to horse and buggies"  to quote a recent thread.

The point is that you don't throw the baby out with the bath water, because there's still a good bit of use to have from any block of knowledge.

So stop yapping about the poor, possibly mythical lit major

[Nuke]

And I think you're (Goober) missing the point entirely, and frankly the english lit major may not have even existed

he was a robot

[Thaeris]

...Three Laws Safe? 

[Flaser]

...Three Laws Safe? 

Three Laws Compliant. They're never safe.

[Turambar]

...Three Laws Safe?  

**** that ****ing movie in its ****ing ugly movie face.


seriously, i saw a copy of the book with will smith on the cover and it almost motivated me to murder.

[headdie]

...Three Laws Safe?  

**** that ****ing movie in its ****ing ugly movie face.


seriously, i saw a copy of the book with will smith on the cover and it almost motivated me to murder.

it did twist a few things for Hollywood purposes didnt it, though if you listen carefully the film does touch on the 4th law which gets brought up in the foundation books amongst others

[Scotty]

If you haven't read the book, it's a good movie.  It's better to evaluate this one on its own merits, rather than the accuracy of the adaptation.

[Turambar]

If you haven't read the book, it's a good movie.  It's better to evaluate this one on its own merits, rather than the accuracy of the adaptation.

they could have changed the title and it would have been fine. 

If they were going to call it I, Robot, it should have been Will Smith vs Logic instead of Will Smith vs Evil Robots.

[BloodEagle]

If you haven't read the book, it's a good movie.  It's better to evaluate this one on its own merits, rather than the accuracy of the adaptation.

I haven't read the novel. I've seen the movie. The movie sucked. I mean, it really sucked. I was tempted to gouge out all of my sensory apparatus with the sheer force of my will, at one point.

[Thaeris]

Hmmm. I thought the film was fairly entertaining, actually.

[Narvi]

Yeah, me too.

What were you expecting, anyway? I, Robot was a frigging short story collection.