Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and i'm putely
Speaker 1: Douglas Julie, who was the first scientist, who indeed, in fact,
Speaker 1: when did the term scientists even get into a lexicon.
Speaker 1: That's what we're going to talk about here, this idea
Speaker 1: that science and philosophy they have been strange bedfellows for
Speaker 1: a very long time. They've had the symbiotic relationship, and
Speaker 1: at one point they were pretty much interwoven. And so
Speaker 1: we're gonna tease this idea of science and scientists out today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because obviously we've always been curious as a species. We've
Speaker 1: always gazed up into the sky and wondered what's going
Speaker 1: on there, or gazed out into the dark beyond the
Speaker 1: campfire and wondered exactly how that worked, looked at our
Speaker 1: own bodies and tried to figure out what was wrong
Speaker 1: with this and how we might fix the problems. But
Speaker 1: there is a certain point in the past one can
Speaker 1: argue in which we can really say that the the
Speaker 1: the scientist emerges from culture and and it's not just
Speaker 1: a matter of being curious, and it's not just a
Speaker 1: matter of even engaging in investigations, in experiments in an
Speaker 1: attempt to understand these things. But there's actually a split
Speaker 1: when people start becoming scientists and wielding science in an
Speaker 1: attempt to understand the world around us and better the
Speaker 1: world around us. Right, there's a formalizing of the physical
Speaker 1: sciences that is really the term actually a scientists is
Speaker 1: only one d and eighty years old. And um, we're
Speaker 1: going to explore this concept through a TED talk by
Speaker 1: Professor Laura Snyder. She's a Fulbright scholar and professor of
Speaker 1: philosophy at St. John's University, and she gives us rousing
Speaker 1: TED talk, a rousing Ted talking imagine about the origins
Speaker 1: of this term and tying it back to this idea,
Speaker 1: this central idea that science is not just for scientists.
Speaker 1: So she gives a very nice wide angle view of
Speaker 1: how the physical sciences that we think about today or
Speaker 1: scientists really owe a lot of its success um to
Speaker 1: a night back in eighteen thirty three. Yes, but well
Speaker 1: we'll discuss that later. First, I think we should talk
Speaker 1: about this, uh idea of a philosophical breakfast club at
Speaker 1: Snyder terms. Um, this this meeting of the minds where
Speaker 1: the seeds of the modern concepts of science were first cultivated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: early nineteenth century, and you had four high school students
Speaker 1: who were forced to stay in Saturday school all day
Speaker 1: by the that's not breakfast club right now. This breakfast
Speaker 1: club consisted of four individuals though, and they were Charles
Speaker 1: Babbage of the Babbage Engine, you know, first mechanical calculator
Speaker 1: and prototype of the modern computer. John Herschel, astronomer, also
Speaker 1: co invented photography. It's say, Richard Jones, the economist, and
Speaker 1: William Hewell noted scientists at the time. That's right, And
Speaker 1: I just wanted to add to that Babbage, of course,
Speaker 1: that he, you know, the first prototype of the modern computer.
Speaker 1: He was also aided by the first computer programmer at
Speaker 1: A Lovelace. And this may have actually her inclusion in
Speaker 1: this may have actually colored the more participation of women
Speaker 1: later on in these societies, um or science societies, I
Speaker 1: should say, but we'll get to that first. I wanted
Speaker 1: to say that these guys who would meet for breakfast
Speaker 1: and discuss science and what was wrong with it and
Speaker 1: what was right about it and what they needed to do,
Speaker 1: they really contributed a lot to sort of the foundation
Speaker 1: of what we think of as modern science today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were really laying it out, picking it apart. I'm
Speaker 1: assuming they were having some caffeinated beverages in there to
Speaker 1: to stoke things and get things going, because they were
Speaker 1: a very energetic group of people, not only in their
Speaker 1: their outside lives but also just in this uh this
Speaker 1: called breakfast club. Is they're they're laying the groundwork for
Speaker 1: really what we think of a science today. When people say, oh,
Speaker 1: I love science, or they're going to a tumbler page
Speaker 1: about about effing loving science, it's kind of worn out
Speaker 1: of their discussions about what what works, what has worked
Speaker 1: in other areas, and what is going to work best
Speaker 1: moving forward. Yeah, and we're talking about eighteen thirteen UM,
Speaker 1: and they are discussing some principles here, like the scientific method,
Speaker 1: although at this point it was not called the scientific
Speaker 1: method um exclusively. It was more of the inductive method.
Speaker 1: And there was also something called the deductive method at
Speaker 1: the time. So scientific method now, you know, there arely
Speaker 1: two hundred years before you have people like Francis Bacon
Speaker 1: that we're proposing an inductive scientific method. You start with
Speaker 1: observation and experiments, and you move on to generalizations about nature,
Speaker 1: formalization of natural laws, and you can always revise how
Speaker 1: to reject the results, right, yeah, yeah, But then eighteen
Speaker 1: o nine you have this economist bed in the name
Speaker 1: of David Ricardo, and he really starts causing some trouble
Speaker 1: because he's saying, oh, actually we should use a deductive
Speaker 1: method in economics, in the in the economic sciences, and
Speaker 1: then various people to Oxford are agreeing with them, and
Speaker 1: they're saying, yeah, actually, you know, maybe the deductive method
Speaker 1: is best, which you just spread at all the science sciences,
Speaker 1: and our friends on the breakfast club here they say,
Speaker 1: absolutely not right, because what we're talking about with the
Speaker 1: deductive method is taking a top down approach. Our general
Speaker 1: general premise has proven out as opposed to just sort
Speaker 1: of taking these observations in this data as you would
Speaker 1: with the inductive method and trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: shakes out of that and continuing to go back to
Speaker 1: those results and revising and rejecting, which is really the
Speaker 1: seeds of what we know of as the scientific method.
Speaker 1: So yeah, those guys, if they hadn't debated this, if
Speaker 1: they hadn't written very persuasive arguments, persuasive papers about this.
Speaker 1: They may not have influenced as many scientists as they did.
Speaker 1: I mean, Charles Darwin is among the group of scientists
Speaker 1: at that time or what's known as natural world hobbyists,
Speaker 1: because they didn't have the term yet to read one
Speaker 1: of the papers and said, ah, yeah, I'm on the
Speaker 1: right path here, and this is how I should conduct
Speaker 1: my research. And of course that's key. They were not
Speaker 1: only simply hanging around having breakfast and discussing these things.
Speaker 1: Then they moved on these ideas, they published their thoughts,
Speaker 1: they spread the word, and they were very vocal to
Speaker 1: their peers. Now, another area where they had a huge
Speaker 1: influence was the kind of establishment of open source science, uh,
Speaker 1: and that this is the idea that that science isn't
Speaker 1: merely for the benefit of a king or a queen.
Speaker 1: It's it's something that can actually benefit everyone, society as
Speaker 1: a whole right, or even one's own personal gain. In
Speaker 1: other words, if you had enough money, if you had
Speaker 1: enough nobility, then you could as a hobby, you know,
Speaker 1: study something and find these results out for yourself and
Speaker 1: and maybe a nobleman's cocktail party whatever that was back
Speaker 1: in the day you could recall everybody with all this information.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they took information and they felt like it
Speaker 1: was important to spread it to the wider community. In
Speaker 1: a good example of this that Snyder brings out is
Speaker 1: that back in the day, ship captains needed to know
Speaker 1: information about tides in order to safely dock at ports,
Speaker 1: and Harvard Masters would gather this knowledge and sell it
Speaker 1: to the ship captains, which seems kind of crazy to
Speaker 1: us now because this is something that's so like, yes,
Speaker 1: of course we know about all about the tides, but
Speaker 1: Hewell's worldwide study of the tides resulted in public tide
Speaker 1: tables and tidal maps, and then that freely provided the
Speaker 1: Harvard masters knowledge to all ship captains. So it's sort
Speaker 1: of like I think about it now, like you go online,
Speaker 1: you get the weather report for the next ten days.
Speaker 1: You don't have to pay for that. Well, I guess
Speaker 1: in theory you don't have to. Some people would argue
Speaker 1: that via your internet connection you're paying for but this
Speaker 1: is information that's really open to all. But can you
Speaker 1: imagine having to go to a specific person and saying
Speaker 1: I need the weather for the next ten days and
Speaker 1: planning this huge event, and it's the big secret that
Speaker 1: they keep from you. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, we would live
Speaker 1: in a totally different world. Another thing that they did
Speaker 1: is they began to lobby the government for money for research. Now,
Speaker 1: before this, you had to really fund everything yourself, including
Speaker 1: the equipment that you would use. And the big example
Speaker 1: here would is Babbage's Babbage Engine. They said, they went
Speaker 1: to the to the British government, they said, hey, this
Speaker 1: machine for number crunching would be a huge benefit to
Speaker 1: not not only the government, but also to the people
Speaker 1: in general. Like this, this is a very useful device.
Speaker 1: You should give us some money to make this reality. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then another thing that they did is that they
Speaker 1: helped to create various scientific societies. So before you know
Speaker 1: the establishment of some of these societies, you had something
Speaker 1: like the Royal Society of London, which was essentially a
Speaker 1: hangout for literary men and nobility. Um. Then they created
Speaker 1: the British Association and that encouraged active researchers who actually
Speaker 1: published their works. Yeah, not just socialites essentially hanging out
Speaker 1: and an old boys society here, but people are actually
Speaker 1: contributing to scientific understanding. And they brought back a Q
Speaker 1: and a session after papers were read. So in other words,
Speaker 1: there's a which I love. They had gotten rid of
Speaker 1: that earlier because we just ungentlemanly, why would you, Why
Speaker 1: would you you muddy the situation by allowing criticism. Just
Speaker 1: just let the man up there, let him share his findings,
Speaker 1: and that'll be the end of it. No, that's not
Speaker 1: how science works. So they brought the Q and A
Speaker 1: sessions back. Yeah, and women were given a foot in
Speaker 1: the door. And you have to wonder again, it's just
Speaker 1: because of Ada Lovelace and some of her work that
Speaker 1: she did with Babbage. This encouraging of everyone to participate
Speaker 1: in science. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we'll discuss a little more
Speaker 1: this birth of the scientists, if you will. All right,
Speaker 1: we are back. The night is j three. There is
Speaker 1: a great gathering of philosophical and scientific minds at the
Speaker 1: British Association for the Advancement of Science. One man dares
Speaker 1: to stand up and wonder why scientists keep calling themselves
Speaker 1: natural philosophers. And that man is Coleridge. Yeah, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: poet Sam Taylor Coleridge. And he's he's basically saying, look,
Speaker 1: you're not philosophers like what I love about this. He's
Speaker 1: basically kind of like trying to break up with the scientists.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a reverse of what you see or
Speaker 1: what what the what we saw World Science Festival this
Speaker 1: year when you had sort of the scientists sort of
Speaker 1: picking on the philosophers and being up in arms against
Speaker 1: the floscos. Here we see a self professed philosopher saying, no,
Speaker 1: this is a philosophy is about armchair stargazing. Basically, you know,
Speaker 1: we're not out there digging around in the dirt. This
Speaker 1: is a This is the the occupation of a learned
Speaker 1: man who is just setting among his books and uh
Speaker 1: and and contemplating just how reality works. And you're selling
Speaker 1: it by calling yourself a natural philosophers. Yeah. And now
Speaker 1: the room does not take that kindly. I mean, essentially
Speaker 1: they start doing But he will remember he's been, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to organize this idea of science and scientists for
Speaker 1: nearly twenty years. At this point he stands up. He
Speaker 1: seizes this opportunity and he says, you know, I pretty
Speaker 1: much agree here, and if you'll you'll hear me out.
Speaker 1: I think that he has something to say. He said,
Speaker 1: if philosophers has taken to be too wide and lofty.
Speaker 1: A turn them by analogy with artists, we may form
Speaker 1: scientists and boom, the term is born. But it's not
Speaker 1: just the term, it's the idea now is taking shape
Speaker 1: and form of that this person who is no longer
Speaker 1: just called a natural world hobbyists like Darwin would have
Speaker 1: been considered world is really like today you say I
Speaker 1: want to be a scientist when you grow up, that's great.
Speaker 1: But if you were to say I want to be
Speaker 1: a natural world hobbyist when I grow up, it would
Speaker 1: be a bit of a of an upset. I think
Speaker 1: parents might weep. Yeah, yeah, get a real job, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this is an interesting dividing point. And just the
Speaker 1: words we used to describe what we do and and
Speaker 1: and how those words and the definitions of that occupation
Speaker 1: end up defining the movement and uh and you know
Speaker 1: we we we see it continue to stay with with
Speaker 1: science sort of build up like this, uh, like this
Speaker 1: slime mold that moves through the halls of reality. That
Speaker 1: that that based on scientific method and uh and in
Speaker 1: a rigorous experimentation and examination of the natural world attempts
Speaker 1: to understand exactly what environment we're dealing with and sharing
Speaker 1: this information, sharing this information, yeah, with with the greater public. Now,
Speaker 1: what happens that the British Association for the Vancement of
Speaker 1: Science decided that they would begin to give grant money.
Speaker 1: So it's not just government institutions dealing out grant money.
Speaker 1: Now we actually have you know this, this independent institution,
Speaker 1: um saying that basically on the advice of this philosophical
Speaker 1: breakfast club, these four guys from Cambridge, that they're going
Speaker 1: to start to give grants for research and astronomy. That's
Speaker 1: hides fossil fish and according to Snyder, ship building in
Speaker 1: a lot of different areas. That really began to expand
Speaker 1: everyone's knowledge about the physical world. Yeah. Once again, not
Speaker 1: just the occupation of independently wealthy learned men and not
Speaker 1: simply for the benefit of kings and queens. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: can you imagine a world without this formalized idea of science,
Speaker 1: that these formalized structures and support that are underpinning all
Speaker 1: of this, I mean, our inventions. You would have to
Speaker 1: wonder how many of those would have been created and supported? Um,
Speaker 1: what sort of data would be shared without this formalized
Speaker 1: system and I feel like we get a glimpse of
Speaker 1: it perhaps sometimes when you look at the outliers, you
Speaker 1: see you glimpse into the world of pseudo science and
Speaker 1: junk science, and and you get perhaps a glimpse of
Speaker 1: a little more of what the world would be like.
Speaker 1: Uh if we didn't have this tint of science, Erector, well,
Speaker 1: I mean you could say, you could make the point
Speaker 1: here that are a life expectancy is actually directly related
Speaker 1: to this idea of science coming on board and helping
Speaker 1: to separate pseudoscience from science. Um, so our quality of
Speaker 1: life as well. So it's it's very important this moment
Speaker 1: back in eighteen thirty three, which really helped the trajectory
Speaker 1: of science that we see today, because we have seen
Speaker 1: incredible things. I mean, she's just in the last thirty years, um,
Speaker 1: you know, this hundred and eighty years since this term
Speaker 1: has been created has seen incredible things as well. Now.
Speaker 1: Laura Snyder in her talk also mentions that this, uh,
Speaker 1: this also inevitably led to a cultural divide. Yeah. She
Speaker 1: says that um, Babbage, Herschel, Jones, and Heuel this philosophical
Speaker 1: breakfast club, they did not foresee this consequence of this
Speaker 1: revolution um, and they would have been really dismayed by
Speaker 1: this disjunction today that we have between science and the
Speaker 1: rest of culture. And she goes on to say that
Speaker 1: it's really shocking to realize that only twenty eight percent
Speaker 1: of American adults have a basic level of science literacy.
Speaker 1: And she's saying, we're talking about questions like did humans
Speaker 1: and dinosaurs inhabit the Earth at the same time, Okay,
Speaker 1: I just want to make sure we're clear on that.
Speaker 1: And what proportion of the Earth is covered in water?
Speaker 1: Now that was like nine nine, so if you're counting
Speaker 1: swimming pools, maybe exactly. But she's saying, you know that
Speaker 1: they did not see that this would happen, that that
Speaker 1: that scientists would become slowly walled off from each other,
Speaker 1: she says, and that's where she comes back to this
Speaker 1: idea that science isn't just for scientists, it is for everyone.
Speaker 1: And that's the lesson that we need to take from
Speaker 1: this historical perspective. Yeah, that science should not be this
Speaker 1: this fortress. Uh. And and then everyone else is living
Speaker 1: outside the walls of it, because then you depend more
Speaker 1: and more on individuals who can communicate between the people
Speaker 1: inside the wall and the people on the outside, and
Speaker 1: you really need more move you need you need those
Speaker 1: open doors of communication. I mean that that's why you
Speaker 1: see a you know, increased emphasis on storytelling and science.
Speaker 1: Being be able to tell the story of the science,
Speaker 1: be able to communicate to normal individuals outside of the
Speaker 1: science is what you're doing, why it's important, and how
Speaker 1: it benefits everybody. And we've talked about this idea that
Speaker 1: we're all natural scientists anyway, that we are all prepackaged
Speaker 1: and ready to go with science. That you see three
Speaker 1: and four year olds who are like Euclidean geometry masters.
Speaker 1: They're using the dimensions of a wall to navigate space
Speaker 1: and all sorts of different clues from the physical world.
Speaker 1: And that's you know, we have accounting sense even when
Speaker 1: we're we're you know, babies, We can tell if there's
Speaker 1: more in one group or less than another. So again,
Speaker 1: all of this is inherent to us and it should
Speaker 1: not be looked at as being separate from us. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, again, there were there, We've always had people
Speaker 1: who are essentially scientists, way back to the ancient, ancient
Speaker 1: days of humanity. It's us only in relatively recent times
Speaker 1: that we've had a structured system of investigation and experimentation, uh,
Speaker 1: that we actually call science. So should we come up
Speaker 1: with a new term to just sort of merge the
Speaker 1: human and the scientist? I don't know what would that be? Okay,
Speaker 1: uatist sounds good. It sounds a little bit like Hubris.
Speaker 1: But but but I'll accept it. Science the science them
Speaker 1: like science them in the faith. No science and human
Speaker 1: All right. I'll bet you guys out there have better
Speaker 1: recommendations for a word that could encompass all of these ideas.
Speaker 1: And you can let us know by finding us in
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