Facts - until proven otherwise (repost)

It is a fact! This sentence gives me the shivers. Not the word fact itself, but the use of it. The description of a fact is not so permanent as it sounds: something that can be verified according to established standard of evaluation.

Especially scientists like the use of this word when describing fundamentals. Politicians use it when they do not wish to discuss something in further detail. But once I heard a very good definition of a PhD-student studying constants from a philosophical science dissertation. He spoke of the gravity constant, defined as 9.81 m/s(squared), is a fact. This is true, he said, on Earth... from a human perspective... under normal conditions... at current gravitational conditions... at ground level... ignoring air resistance... and so on. This opened my eyes in the way of not viewing constants as holy numbers or facts, but status quo indicators.

It was a fact the Earth was flat until proven otherwise by Copernicus. Flight was impossible (unless you were a bird) until the beginning of the 20th century, thanks to a couple of persistent bicycle mechanics. The atom was the smallest particle (defined by its name) in existence, until the quarks saw the light of day in 1961. The abandonment of previous facts for new are easily forgotten, because it becomes the next status quo and fact.

My most recent eye opener is the book "1421 - the year China discovered the world" by Gavin Menzies. After reading this I am sadly disappointed in western history education. If I could ask a high school class a question in History today it would not be "who discovered America?", but "was Columbus the third, fourth or later explorer to come to the American continent?" Even though it is fairly accepted that Leif Erikson was fist European to the continent, Columbus still gets credit for this feat. The knowledge of Chinese presence, even settlements, in America is overwhelming prior to Columbus, at least to Asian and local scholars, but the facts remain unchanged. Why? Because it is fact? Is is so provoking to debate a topic stamped as "fact" if there exist evidence of other options?

In my opinion facts are only good estimates for status quo until new data is uncovered - they are not truth, holy, or hammered in stone.

More food for thought
25th January 2010
An expansion to this post: Beginning this year the Dutch physicist Erik Verlinde did what I described with the fact of gravity - redefining it. Perhaps he is right in his theory, perhaps not, but it illustrates the fluid concept of "facts".

3rd February 2010
Another fine example of "facts - until proven otherwise". Diamant is the hardest material - or it was - because looking into meteorites something IS harder than a diamant.

23rd April 2016
Interesting talk about the difference between scientific belief and scientific
method by Rupert Sheldrake. Funny thing that he uses some of the same examples in this post (this talk had not been recorded when I wrote this blog entry).

General introduction - Catch-22 of Innovation

When I entered the natural sciences I could not get the thought out of my head: How many amazing, perhaps revolutionary, inventions continuously are lost due to habits and rules of society, and why?

To give a little introduction, I would like to give an example of such an invention.

When I was 19 years old a local Danish TV program showed a short documentary on Erik Skaarups wave energy converter, he named “Bølgehøvlen” (now named WavePlane). The program planted the first seed of doubt in me whether truly innovative achievements are getting a place in our time.
Erik Skaarup explanation how he as a home inventor came up with the idea of harvesting wave energy in his bathtub made me smile, but it was the opposition his idea met at the most obvious investors (like the Danish government) that dazzled me! The depressing story of how he went from door to door of the investors was long, even with self financed test proofs of pilot models. The potential investor I remember the best was the Danish Ministry of the Environment who argued they did not find it necessary to invest in wave technology since they had wind power technology well developed. A paradoxal statement considering Danish politic has preached green energy and innovative solutions as part of up-keeping the national welfare and work places for decades. The story have not changed over the last 13 years from what I can read from the company website (www.WavePlane.com) who now has most investors in Norway and bases in Australia, Japan and USA. Time will tell if Danish investors made fools of themselves.

Now I have found that hundreds of incredible inventions and inventors, through news but also first hand, who never get to change the world for the better. And why? Is it the patent laws? Eccentric behavior? Lack of scientific proof? Lack of economic understanding from the inventor? Lack of understanding of the impact of the invention of the investor? Or is it because we, as civilization, just can not handle more than one revolution at a time (currently being the IT era)? I think it is all of the above. And in this blog I will try to give examples of these points of view.

To make myself understand this paradox, I created two groups of inventors: the Alchemist and the Scientist. I may be a son to a father of the first category, but am officially working as (and by the rules of) the latter. An Alchemist is a term I use in lack of better because it best fits the personal approach of discovery (home inventors, but more) in lack of better, not to mix up with the medieval magician. It is my opinion that these two groups approach inventions from opposite angles. The Scientist has to skeptically build all his discoveries on theories already established. Theories that are our best bet at describing reality, but far from do so.
An Alchemist plays around, discovers something works, believes in the invention, but then meets the modern age demand of nearly anal demands for documentation. Often this creates a catch-22, that few normal people have time or temper to satisfy. The result is that the invention dies with the owner, in the patent office or in the drawer.

If innovation and miracles are what we need to solve the 21st Century’s challenges, maybe we need to reevaluate our approach to discovery and the space we allow true originality. Welcome to my blog!