Michael Shermer, “Why People Believe Weird Things” (Pseudoscience, Superstition, and other Confusions of Our Time), Henry Holt & Co, 2002, 313 Pages
The chapters in most of this book began as essays originally published in Skeptic magazine, which Shermer edits. Shermer concludes that people believe weird things (untestable things) because they want to. It feels good. It is comforting. It is consoling. Skeptics are butting up against ten thousand years of history and possibly one hundred thousand years of evolution (if religion and belief in God have a biological basis, which some anthropologists believe they do).
My Notes:
Pg. XVII: Skepticism is not a position; skepticism is an approach to claims, in the same way that science is not a subject but a method.
Pg. XXII: Evolutionary psychologists make the very reasonable argument that the brain (and along with it the mind and behavior) evolved over a period of two million years from the small fist-sized brain of the Australopithecine to the melon-sized brain of modern Homo sapiens. Since civilization arose only about 13,000 years ago with the domestication of plants and animals, 99.99% of human evolution took place prior to this last 13,000 year period.
Pg. 26: A 1990 Gallup poll of adult Americans showed percentages of belief in the paranormal that are alarming:
Astrology 52%
Witches 19%
Dinosaurs and humans lived simultaneously 41%
Communication with the dead 42%
ESP 46%
Aliens have landed on Earth 22%
Noah’s flood 65%
Ghosts 35%
Pg. 31: Science, despite being influenced by culture, can be considered cumulative and progressive when these terms are used in a precise and nonjudgmental way. Scientific progress is the cumulative growth of a system of knowledge over time, in which useful features are retained and nonuseful features are abandoned, based on the rejection or confirmation of testable knowledge. By this definition, science (and technology by extension) are the only cultural traditions that are progressive, not in any moralistic or hierarchical way but in an actual and definable manner. This is what sets science apart from all other traditions, especially pseudoscience.
Pg. 41: Even though Darwin replaced the theory of special creation with that of evolution by natural selection, much of what came before was retained in the new theory—Linnean classification, descriptive geology, comparative anatomy, and so forth. What changed was how these various fields were linked to one another through history—the theory of evolution. There was a cumulative growth and paradigmatic change. This is scientific progress, defined as the cumulative growth of a system of knowledge over time, in which useful features are retained and nonuseful features are abandoned, based on the rejection or confirmation of testable knowledge.
Pg. 60: In the end, history rewards those who are “right” (at least provisionally). Change does occur. In astronomy, the Ptolemaic geocentric universe was slowly displaced by Copernicus’s heliocentric system. In geology, George Cuvier’s catastrophism was gradually wedged out by the more soundly supported uniformitarianism of James Hutton and Charles Lyell. In biology, Darwin’s evolution theory superseded creationist belief in the immutability of species. In Earth history, Alfred Wegener’s idea of continental drift took nearly a half century to overcome the received dogma of fixed and stable continents. Ideological immunity can be overcome in science and in daily life, but it takes time and corroboration.
Pg. 84: Life span is the age at which the average individual would die if there were no premature deaths from accidents or disease. This age is approximately 85 to 95 years and has not changed for centuries, and probably millennia. Life span, like maximum life potential, is probably a fixed biological constant for each species. Life expectancy is the age at which the average individual would die when accidents and disease have been taken into consideration. In 1987, life expectancy for women in the West was 78.8 years and for men 71.8 years for an overall expectancy of 75.3 years. Worldwide, in 1995 life expectancy was estimated at 62 years. In the U.S., life expectancy was 47 years in 1900. By 1950 the figure had climbed to 68. It is unlikely, however, that life expectancy will ever go higher than the life span of 85 to 95 with the bell curve topping out at 115.
Pg. 108: A frightening parallel to the medieval witch crazes is what has come to be known as the “recovered memory movement.” Recovered memories are alleged memories of childhood sexual abuse repressed by the victims but recalled decades later through use of special therapeutic techniques, including suggestive questioning, hypnosis, hypnotic age-regression, visualization, sodium amytal (truth serum) injections, and dream interpretation.
Pg. 118: The cultic flaw in Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism is not its use of reason, emphasis on individuality, view that humans ought to be motivated by rational self-interest, or conviction that capitalism is the ideal system. The fallacy in Objectivism is its belief that absolute knowledge and final Truth are attainable through reason, and therefore that there are absolutes of right and wrong knowledge and of moral and immoral thought and action. For Objectivists, once a principle has been discovered by (the Objectivists’ version of) reason to be True, the discussion is at an end. If you disagree with the principle, then your reasoning is flawed. If your reasoning is flawed, it can be corrected, but if you don’t correct our reasoning (i.e., learn to accept the principle), you are flawed and do not belong in the group. Excommunication is the final solution for such unreformed heretics. (Google Ayn Rand to read about "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.")
Pg. 124: Science is not the affirmation of a set of beliefs but a process of inquiry aimed at building a testable body of knowledge constantly open to rejection of confirmation. In science, knowledge is fluid and certainty fleeting. That is at the heart of its limitations. It is also its greatest strength.
Pg. 156: In 1991 a Gallup poll found that only 9% of Americans believed that Man has developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life. God had no part in this process.” Why, then, is there a controversy? Because 99% of scientist take the strict naturalist view shared by only 9% of Americans. This is a startling difference. Yet science is the dominant force in our culture, so in order to gain respectability and, what is more important for creationists, access to public school science classrooms, creationists have been forced to deal with this powerful minority.
Pg. 167: Scientific Process: Based on well-established facts, testable hypotheses are formed. The process of testing “leads scientists to accord a special dignity to those hypotheses that accumulate substantial observational or experimental support.” This “special dignity is called a “theory.” When a theory “explains a large and diverse body of facts,” it is considered “robust”; if it “consistently predicts new phenomena that are subseq1uently observed, then it is considered “reliable.” Facts and theories are not to be used interchangeably. Facts are the world’s data; theories are explanatory ideas about those facts. “An explanatory principle that by its nature cannot be tested is outside the realm of science.” Thus, science seeks only naturalistic explanations for phenomena. “Science is not equipped to evaluate supernatural explanations for our observations; without passing judgment on the truth or falsity of supernatural explanations, science leaves their consideration to the domain of religious faith.”
Pg. 242: Shermer discusses the controversial 1994 book “The Bell Curve” and appears to consider the depiction of black American’s IQ as 15 points inferior to Caucasian’s a lot of bunk. He states that part of the problem of race classification is that within-group variability is greater than between-group variability. In other words, individuals within a group vary more than individuals between groups. Recent research shows that if a nuclear war exterminated all humans but a small band of Australian Aborigines, a full 85% of the variability of Homo sapiens would be preserved (Cafalli-Sforza 1995). Additionally, he mentions that funding for the book came from the Pioneer Fund which is also a big fund source for holocaust deniers. The Pioneer Fund was established in 1937 by textile millionaire Wycliffe Preston Draper to fund research that promotes “race betterment and that proves blacks are inferior to whites, the repatriation to Africa of blacks.
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