Stargazing Guy

– Carl Sagan’s Fine Art of Baloney Detection, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Here is the ninth, and final, tool.

Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified.

Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much.

Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle — an electron, say — in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof?

You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate sceptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.

Here is a thought experiment, proposed by Sagan in The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark as described in the chapter “The Dragon In My Garage”.

If someone told me “A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage” I’d want to see it! I’d be there in a shot … but claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder.

An excerpt of the above chapter is available to read here.

This now makes all 9 tools. You have the facts (1 of 10), you had a substantive debate (2 of 10), you’ve covered arguments from authority (3 of 10), you have several hypotheses (4 of 10), you aren’t overly attached to any one hypothesis, especially if it’s your own thought (5 of 10), you have the numbers (6 of 10), the need to have every link in the chain working (7 of 10), Occam’s Razor (8 of 10) and tool in this blog, falsification (9 of 10).

The final blog in this series (10 of 10) will try and summarise the baloney detection kit and give you a quick peak into the next series – yes, more Sagan!

Credit: Carl Sagan with a Viking lander / https://airandspace.si.edu/multimedia-gallery/saganvikingjpg

PS: I love coffee. BuyMeACoffee, leave a message with a date and time and we can share it, remotely, at the same time, and think about the Cosmos.

In the meantime, take care of yourself and if you can, someone else, too, because as Adam Smith said, “we naturally desire not only to be loved but to be lovely”.

Contact Stargazing Guy for any copyright-related requests or queries @ stargazer1@stargazingguy.co.uk