Just a Theory

Tuesday, 02 October 2012

For class, I’ve been reading the soporific book The Theory Toolbox. On page 153, after bloviating for a while on structuralism vs. post-structuralism, the writers ask:

The big bang theory seems to be the accepted scientific version of the birth of the universe: It all started in one huge mass that broke apart in a huge explosion. The universe will expand as far as it can go and then begin again to contract, bringing everything crashing back into one undifferentiated mass. (This theory also helps to explain gravity, entropy, thermodynamics, and a series of other scientific concepts.) Is there anything suspicious about the big bang theory from a “poststructuralist” point of view?

Okay, I know what you’r thinking. You’re thinking: “Well, I can’t really answer that until I’ve read the pages on poststructuralism.” Yeah, that makes sense. In fact, I wasn’t even sure how to respond to the question, either, so I just sat in class and listened to what my fellow students said.

The discussion was very haphazard. One girl didn’t understand how gravity could be pushing everything apart but then, suddenly, one day, will pull it all together again. Another girl said it’s just a theory so we shouldn’t accept it as fact. Clearly, Hamline knows how to churn out intelligent graduates.

In the hubbub, one girl (okay – side note: there’s a lot of girls in my class – they acount for 13 of the 16 students) mentioned that we routinely defy gravity when taking airplane trips. Not many people heard her, because there were, like, five people talking at that moment, so I just let it slide. But then, a few minutes later, the Professor asked us if gravity really held true all the time. She cited, by way of illustration, the fact that astronauts just float in space.

So, I had to raise my hand and say something. I know my formal training is a bit lacking, but I had to say that gravity always applies. Flying in an airplane or floating in space is not evidence that the theory of gravity is wrong, and no one is “defying” or “violating” gravity at any time. Further, the laws of gravity hold true everywhere we’ve observed in the universe, and there is no reason to think they don’t hold true elsewhere. Gravity, I said, doesn’t mean that we are always stuck to the earth, it more correctly states that matter is attractive. An astronaut is falling to the earth at the exact rate specified by the mathematical laws we’ve uncovered, just as sure as an airplane is falling to earth, and the earth is falling to the sun and, heck, the earth itself is even falling toward this pencil.

I know there’s a lot of room for interpretation in these words (e.g., you could argue that “defying gravity” is simply a colloquialism for “not plummeting to the earth like I do when I jump off a diving board”), but my point just was that the sciences aren’t some fuzzy ideas like the humanities are.

I had a similar experience at the start of my last class. The professor asked if there were any absolute facts we could all agree on. Well, no, I guess, because there’s always some looney out there who will insist that the sky is a metal bowl, but I raised my hand anyway and said, “What about mathematics?” The professor said I was wrong, and then said this show that everything is open to interpretation.

I get this when it comes to history and English: Maybe Nixon was the best president America has ever had, maybe Shakespeare was a feminist, maybe Andy Warhol’s painting suck…but I must be missing something when this is applied to scientific laws and math…