Exploration, doubt, positivism and rationality

The popularization of science should not only popularize scientific knowledge, but also popularize scientific spirit, which has become a consensus of the Scientific circle in China. Even the advocates of pseudoscience also rang rang to carry forward the scientific spirit, the pseudoscience personage dressed as a fighter full of scientific spirit, Copernicus, Galileo, and the criticism of pseudoscience turned into a tyrant against the scientific spirit of the church. Obviously, pseudoscience warriors and anti-pseudoscience warriors do not understand exactly the same spirit of science. So what is the scientific spirit? The scientific spirit is multifaceted. The easiest thing to agree on is the spirit of exploration. Always be open to the new, to new knowledge, to new ideas, to new mysteries, to new results. This is the basis on which science develops. Science stems from the innate human curiosity about the unknown. In fact, many animals have curiosity, which is an adaptation to their environment, arguably an evolutionary product. It is in this sense, and in this sense alone, that we can say that every healthy child is a scientist. Children love to explore new things and ask all kinds of questions, but they are also susceptible to absurd explanations and accept unreasonable answers. What they lack is another aspect of the scientific spirit: skepticism. Skepticism means that science neither trusts authority nor tolerates it unconditionally. Obviously, it is unwise to doubt everything cynically, to lose the ability to explore because the mind is closed. But without skepticism, there is no basis for distinguishing right from wrong, and all ideas, reasonable or absurd, can be accepted, and science becomes a dumping ground. But pseudoscientists can also argue that they are sceptical. Indeed, they have the courage to doubt the scientific mainstream: "scientific creationists" doubt evolution, "psychics" doubt the laws of physics, and so on. And we doubt their doubt. What's the difference between these two suspicions? How do we avoid closing our minds and doubting everything? To solve this problem, we must add new connotations to the scientific spirit: positivism and rationality. Positivism requires more than just supporting evidence. Pseudoscientists often claim to have proof and cite evidence in their writings. But anecdotes, rumors, analogies, claims by one authority (often from another or taken out of context), fabricated facts, coincidences, etc., are not acceptable evidence in the scientific community. Empirical evidence requires hard evidence: repeated, independent observations and experiments under tightly controlled conditions, using rigorous methods. Control conditions, repeatability, independence and probability statistics are the hallmarks of positivism and the deadly enemies of pseudoscience. Positivism is inseparable from rationality, that is, it analyzes and deduces the evidence with rigorous logic and selects the most reasonable and possible one among all possible explanations. In the absence of evidence, it can also rule out unreasonable and impossible explanations. Hume once offered a principle of judgment that he called an axiom: "No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, except in cases where the falsehood is more miraculous than the fact it seeks to establish." This is a rational principle. In addition, as a very unusual claimed to have very solid evidence, out of the case is not universal conclusions, related events does not equal causation, cannot prove that must not exist is not equal to exist, the use of scientific terms is not equal to the responsibility of the scientific theory, evidence in the counterclaim that one party, seems inexplicable phenomenon is not equal to cannot explain, and so on, They are also rational principles and powerful weapons against pseudoscience. Every healthy person can master rigorous logical thinking, but every healthy person must undergo proper education and strict training to master rigorous logical thinking. Even trained scientists do not always adhere to the principles of reason. Positivism and rational spirit are the most important but also the most difficult aspects of scientific spirit, which should be the focus of developing scientific spirit. Exploration, doubt, demonstration and rationality are the four inseparable aspects of scientific spirit. To emphasize one aspect in isolation opens the door to pseudoscience or risks impeding the development of science. It is under these four banners that scientific research continuously observes, examines, abandons wrong ideas and adds new knowledge, thus making continuous progress. In the variety of human activities, it is hard to find another one in which continuous progress can be made. Literature and art are not advances, but changes in style. Humanities and religion do not progress, only the evolution of schools. But contrary to what the pseudoscientists claim, scientific progress is not a revolution that overturns everything, but an evolution on the basis of the original. The progress of science is continuous progress. The same is true of the two biggest revolutions in modern science: Darwin's theory of evolution did not overturn everything in natural history and geology, but retained most of the data and theories and reinterpreted them. Einstein's theory of relativity did not overturn Newtonian mechanics, but its expansion and deepening. In summing up his results, Einstein once said, "Creating a new theory is not like destroying an old barn and building a skyscraper in its place. It is rather like climbing a mountain, gaining new and wider horizons, discovering unexpected connections between our starting point and its rich surroundings. But our starting point is still there and can be seen, though it seems small, and a tiny part of the wider vision we gain by overcoming the obstacles in our expeditionary climb." The idea of creating an entirely new science at a single blow is a pipe dream of pseudoscientists, who never actually make any progress because they are afraid to admit, let alone correct, their mistakes. Continuous and coherent progress is the characteristic of science, and also the pride and consolation of scientific workers.