What’s the difference between science and engineering? If you listen to a lot of the talk about education lately, it doesn’t seem like that much. STEM — Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics — is all the rage in the “you get an education in order to get a better job” contingent. Yesterday we celebrated Inventors’ Day in the US, and the date was pegged to Thomas Edison’s birthday. Inventing is definitely an engineering sort of pursuit; an inventor is often trying to “engineer” a new solution to a problem. Today, though, is Darwin Day. Like Inventors’ Day, it’s linked to a birthday — in this case, Charles Darwin.
While Inventors’ Day is celebrated in different countries on different dates, depending on each country’s choice of most significant inventor, Darwin Day is a worldwide celebration of the man, and of science itself. Engineering is the sort of thing that has a day-to-day, local effect. From a new dam to a sturdier bridge, engineering is the sort of thing. Science is both bigger and smaller than that. There aren’t very many fundamental scientific discoveries that change the way people understand the world, but when they happen, a slow process begins to reshape everyone’s thinking. And it’s always the same basic process.
The first step is that a scientist makes something known. Maybe he publishes a paper, or a book. Maybe he does a public demonstration. Maybe at some point in the future it will be over social media. But the form of the thing is consistent. It’s basically “look closely at this, notice carefully what’s happening here, and you can see for yourself that what everybody’s been telling you is wrong.”
Notice the form of that kind of statement. The first thing is people have a particular assumption about the way the world is, and it comes from being told something. Not from their own observation; from somebody else talking them into it. Now what do we know about people whose mission is to talk you into something? First of all, there’s a payoff for them. For them it’s a transaction; an economic episode. They’re after a reward, whether it’s your money, or counting you on some sort of list they get credit for, or maybe the even more abstract idea — which exists only in their minds — that agreement with them and their idea is just somehow necessary. They may even convince themselves (and try to convince you) that what they’re doing is for your own good. This aluminum siding for your house is going to reduce your heating bills, or make your neighbors respect you, or let you recoup the cost in only 150 years because you won’t have to pay for paint, and after that just think what you’ll be able to do with that extra cash!
A more insidious kind of appeal, as you might know, is to things that nobody can observe — so they must be exactly as your persuader claims! Someone trying to persuade you using this kind of appeal will usually refer to somebody else who persuaded them, and maybe lots of other people. Maybe that somebody else wrote a book. Or maybe nobody really knows who wrote the book but come on, look at all the other people we already persuaded. You don’t want to be the one to call them wrong, do you?
Okay, so the appeal from a would-be persuader is a transaction. There’s something in it for them, and because they think in terms of transactions — of deals, economics — their appeal is essentially that there’s something in it for you too. But it’s rarely something you can observe for yourself. The payoff from buying the new aluminum siding, or the replacement windows, or the stock in ACME, Inc., is always based on something like a set of very attractive numbers. Speculative numbers, to be sure. But once they’re written down, maybe in a spreadsheet, they can look pretty darned convincing. Or if it’s not numbers, maybe it’s what’s going to happen to you after you die. Can’t observe that, obviously, but maybe somebody wrote a book. Or come on, look at all the other people we already persuaded. Whatever it is, it can always be reduced to simply talk. Rhetoric. We know a little bit about rhetoric, how it works, and how it can be used, even by unscrupulous persuaders.
Rhetoric is something you can study for years; even your whole life. But there’s one fundamental thing about it that you can grasp in just a moment: it’s just talk. A skilled rhetorician might appeal to what you can see “with your own eyes,” but before letting you try it, they’ll be very careful to put limits on how you’re supposed to look, what you’re supposed to see, and suggest interpretations you ought to apply to what you might see. Letting you observe unmolested, and giving you the tools to observe carefully and come to your own conclusions is never part of the deal, whether we’re talking about a used Chevy, joining a church, or voting.
But observing, and observing carefully, is the deal with science. You can always see the difference right away. Raise an objection to a rhetorician; a persuader, and what you get is a vigorous argument. Raise an objection to a scientist and what you get is “go check for yourself. Here’s how to do it.” If you do check for yourself, and observe carefully, and bring back your findings, a scientist will say “good job, let’s see if that means my previous conclusion needs to be changed.” Persuaders, who are just talkers; rhetoricians, always want to have a “debate” about things, including science. If that’s what they want, that’s when you know they’re just trying to sell you something.
Darwin wasn’t trying to sell anything. He was observing, carefully — you can learn how to do it precisely and accurately; it’s not that difficult — and telling the world “if you look carefully at what’s real, then I have a better explanation than what people have been trying to convince you of.” Except he never really expressed that last part; he just said “I have an explanation. Go check for yourself and see if it makes sense to you, too.
That’s science for you. Some people are still “debating” about whether the world is round, or whether evolution is a real, functioning process. It’s because they’re trying to sell you something. You can check these things yourself. All you have to do is observe carefully.
Happy Darwin Day! Make the most of it!
