To Guess or Not to Guess; What are We Talking About?
Scientific knowledge depends on “…imagination to create from [experimental data] the great generalizations – to guess at the wonderful, simple, but very strange patterns beneath them all, and then to experiment to check again whether we have made the right guess.”
“There is no quesswork in science.”
The first quote is from the Nobel Prize winning physicist, Richard Feynman (pictured) in Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by It Most Brilliant Teacher. You often find statements such as the second quote in articles written by science educators.
So which is it? Do scientists engage in guesswork and is guessing a good or bad thing? Both viewpoints are right; the apparent discrepancy arises because “guess” has different meanings in the two cases. The science educator wants to emphasize that scientific reasoning is based on evidence – data from experiments or observations – not on wild, random, stabs in the dark that are untethered to actual facts. Getting this point across is a high priority, particularly in pre-college science classes.
Feynman, on the other hand, takes the science educators’ lesson for granted. “The test of all knowledge is experiment,” for him basing decisions on empirical data is practically a definition of science. So he goes beyond to muse about how scientific reasoning, specifically his own, actually works; what happens in the mind that generates the concepts? And like many others who have thought deeply about this matter, he effectively concedes that he has no idea: “imagination,” whatever that is, is responsible. Scientists guess at theories and figures things out somehow, yet nobody can say how it all happens. In this context, “guess” is short-hand for the unknown, unconscious processes that generate creative ideas.
It’s pretty hard to argue with Feyman’s position, but you have to be sympathetic to the science teacher’s plight. I’m sure they wouldn’t want to start announcing that guesswork is, after all, perfectly ok in science without drawing the fine distinction between admissible and inadmissible connotations of guessing, which could be very tricky to do satisfactorily. However, not resolving the contradictory points of view must add to the fuzziness that characterizes so many people’s impression of science. Maybe teachers could stress the crucial roles of evidence and reasoning in science without setting up “guesswork” as a counterfoil? How about emphasizing that naive, unquestioning “belief” is a more irrational, less-scientifically justifiable mindset?