Soft Hard Science
Last Friday, I happened to catch Science Friday, one of my favorite-est NPR programs. In the second hour, Ira was interviewing some folks who produced a play (“Serendib“) about a team of scientists studying monkeys in Sri Lanka. It sounds like a wonderful play and I should like to see it, but what inspired this post was something one of the guests had said. He made a comment about how a longitudinal study of monkeys (this research was started 40 years ago), is not considered (by some) to be “hard” science and therefore of little “value” — presumably because it lacks finely tuned instruments and huge data sets. I was reminded of an article on a recent physics experiment that turned up the weird factor of the already bizarre world of quantum mechanics. This article reports on some Frenchmen who successfully performed Wheeler’s Classic Delayed Choice experiment.
In lay lay terms, we know that light is both wave and particle, depending on how we measure it (see clip below). In this landmark experiment, the Frenchmen changed the outcome after they’d set up to measure particles (single slit) or waves (double slit) and then switched back and forth! The true significance of this is more profound than my feeble brain can grasp, but this much I know: the debate of “hard” or “soft” science is now swimming in the light of irrelevance — what do huge data sets and precision instruments really tell us when the results they produce are merely functions of our choices before and AFTER an experiment???
Which leads us to Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research ;->
April 17th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Great post, and timely, too, as I know you’re working on your dissertation. In some ways, the “‘hard/soft” divide reminds me somewhat of the debate over whether qualitative research is as powerful or predictive as quantitative research. And, as you note, it’s really about choices made ex post facto.
Interesting, you can try a little quantum physics yourself here.
April 19th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
I saw that Quantum Eraser in the Linkademic widget the day after i posted and before I saw your response, and I wondered if that was a coincidence??? Anyway, I’m keen on trying that out eh!
quanti-quali-quanti-qauli… 2 sides of the same coin that is sloughing off electrons into my pocket that is sloughing off electrons into my skin that is sloughing off electrons into a delicious quantum soup… butterflies and hurricanes…