A recent interview from Neil deGrasse Tyson on Joe Rogan recently talked about gravity and why we shouldn’t always ask the “why something happens” and that “because it works” should be good enough for real scientists.
This is exactly what Mitch Stokes wrote about in the first part of his book, “How To Be An Atheist: Why Many Skeptics Aren’t Skeptical Enough”. Dr. Stokes refers to the fact that when we ask “why” something happens we “trip” into philosophy or theology. Dr. Tyson agrees with this but takes the approach that by answering enough of the “what” happens we should be happy enough.
Why should we be happy enough? Well, because those answers allow us to land rovers on Mars. We can all agree that’s impressive. However, what Dr. Tyson is saying is that it works and to ask anything else science doesn’t reach into that domain. Again, all true. However, our whitewashed view of science gives us an idea that what science explains what is true in reality, not just what works. We’ve also seen working theories that provide advancement in technology and other theories be overturned in scientific revolution. Just because we claim to have the theory of gravity in our scientific paradigm today doesn’t mean tomorrow’s scientists will scoff at it just as they did a myriad of other “dead” scientific theories.
The following are two clips where we address the subject but there are other short clips we’re we’ve covered more subjects in the Joe Rogan clip:
Scientific Explanation Only Describes, It Doesn’t Explain Why (Ep.23) Scientists Don’t Care If A Theory Is True, Only That It Works – Sober Skeptic
