Someone on Twitter this week (let's call her Georgie, not her real name) helped me understand why many of us misunderstand science. More particularly, why conservatives, who know what they know and don't like to be told anything different, often distrust science - among them anti-vaxxers and folk who know Apollo 11 didn't land on the moon but was filmed on a backlot in California like Casablanca.
How Georgie and I started on this doesn't matter. It's just that at one point in our little exchange Georgie remarked that "reason" told us Earth is round.
I couldn't agree with that and pointed out that people who think Earth is flat also have "reasons". Reasons - our reason and reasoning, rationalism and "common sense" - all support things that are incorrect as well as things that are correct, support sense and nonsense alike.
Georgie agreed with that and suggested we should speak of "logic" instead. I felt bad about it, but again I had to disagree. Logic doesn't tell us Earth is round but quite the opposite: logic definitely makes Earth flat because you can walk over it on the level in a straight line. You see the problem?
Actually, the problem is straightforward. The problem is that we think of "science" and "reason" as the same thing when they are not; and we think of both as "logical" when they aren't necessarily. Forget the illogical Cheshire Cat whose grin survives its disappearance: today it's Schrodinger's Cat, alive and dead at the same time.
So many of our mysteries, not to mention our disagreements, are the result of the way we use words, and Georgie helped me find the right words this time. I know because she didn't answer when I wrote:
Science told us Earth is round. Until it did, it was anyone's guess.
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