Response Paper for Module 2

*This collection of Response Papers consists of my reflections on the weekly assignments for my Applied Clinical Psychology course I took on January 2023.

I initially drafted this paper with separate titles, a separate response for each of the articles. But as I wrote, I thought it would be better to write it as a cohesive essay, and refer to the articles along the way.

I really enjoyed reading the articles in the way they were listed. We first read the importance of scientific integrity and the importance of reporting findings even they do not support our interests or are things we disagree with. We continue on to read about wonder and the balance a scientist should keep between openness to new ideas and skepticism. Reading Rosenhan’s and Spitzer’s articles were eye opening as to how one can be misled into viewing things in a way they actually are not and how there can be a second perspective, or rather an explanation to the same story. The New York Times article criticizes how commonly the phrase “I feel like” is being used and how it gives people an out which I thought was a good observation. It mentions how it’s almost become a synonym for “I think” or “I believe” (which themselves are drastically distinct from each other).

What mainly got me thinking was Carl Sagan’s article Wonder and Skepticism. I loved how his journey began with wonder. I think it’s important to be able to keep that. It reminded me Feynman’s words about beauty. An artist might see beauty when s/he sees a flower; a scientist might see things like why a flower evolved to appear beautiful, the cells it’s made of, the way it drains water from the soil, how it reproduces, and so on. All of which can be perceived as beautiful in its own. In fact, the more one knows about something, the more beautiful, or awe inspiring it should become. Awe can but is not necessarily a result of mere mystery. Our awe or wonder -as Sagan puts it- can and even should multiply the more we know. So, I disagree with the notion that we reduce things when we explain them in scientific terms. Reduction comes after the explanation, like an added sauce.

He later mentions examples of two phenomena, one of which has to do with special relativity, and the other with quantum mechanics. “Like it or not, that’s the way the world is,” he says to those who find scientific explanations ridiculous. I’m against both parties who think that a phenomena loses its wonder just because it is explainable scientifically: the layman or the conservative who fears that the mystery will be gone if things are explained, because that’s solely what s/he sees as important: the mystery; as well as the scientist who looks down on people for not seeing the actual scientific reason behind things and will have a reductionist approach and solely sees the explanation as important.

Being in love, or the love of a mother for her children, for example, can be explained by hormones and evolutionary psychology and by purely scientific terminology, but does it mean it’s only consisted of that, or should it? And if so, how do we know exactly?

As I was reading Sagan’s article, something bugged me. Sagan says that “if we absolutely stop all chlorofluorocarbon and allied chemical production right now (as we're in fact doing), the ozonosphere will heal itself in about a hundred years”. Well, how do we know that, though? Has it been tested? No. But it’s an educated guess, a logical reasoning, use of logic to arrive at a possible outcome. Isn’t that exactly what metaphysics does? Just a couple of paragraphs before he quotes Robert W. Wood: “The difference between physics and metaphysics is that the metaphysics has no laboratory.” I don’t understand the insistence on such a division, especially when we see how science can get things wrong as well.

If, as Feynman suggested, truth will always come out, and if it is well-established that science or scientists can sometimes get things wrong (as Broca did with his skull research, or as the eugenics movement), and is cumulative, it certainly does not have the whole truth, and never will. I’m aware that it doesn’t claim to do so. But, if that’s the case, how can we uphold science as a better source of true answers or of what is right and wrong?

I absolutely agree when Sagan says that a scientists should not trust what is intuitively obvious. He later says “intuitively obvious gets you nowhere” which is what I don’t agree with. Sometimes it doesn’t but sometimes it does and sometimes it’s intuition that gets us to the right place. And sometimes it’s science that gets us to the wrong place.

So, if it’s the case that science can mislead, is subject to correction, and will continue to grow and develop, I don’t understand why we keep saying “trust science” as if it is a mantra?