On Paradigms, Politics, & Preet Bharara

I have an idea of the thrust of the news between now and Christmas. It may be a good time to talk about philosophy of science.

What we learn in our high school science classes about the nature of scientific progress is that it comes brick-by-brick. We learn that scientists form hypotheses, devise experiments to test them, collect data, form conclusions, around and around. Their results and conclusions are bricks that get added to the wall of science, a wall that gets built higher and higher over time with each generation of scientists.

In fact, however, that is not really how science really advances. So argued Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Using numerous historical examples, he showed that the model I just layed out describes how science works sometimes, for some periods. Yet the real engine of science, Kuhn said, works differently: on occasion results come along that do not fit into the brick wall that everyone else is building. These anomalies do not fit the reigning paradigm (a word Kuhn popularized), and so they get set aside. Then one day a new thinker shows up and says, If I knock down the brick wall as it stands, I can take all the old bricks plus these anomalous bricks and design a new wall which accommodates all the bricks.

Though I forget if this example was used in Kuhn’s book, I can think of a great example. In 1895 the Chairman of the Harvard Physics Department was discouraging any new graduate students from studying physics, on the grounds that all of physics had been figured out. There were just two anomalies no one could explain: the photoelectric effect and the problem of black-body radiation. A decade later Einstein and Max Plank explained them, respectively, in the process gave us the foundation of relativist physics and quantum mechanics. The “wall” on which graduate students had labored since Newton turned out to provide good answers on scales scientists work and live in, and about which they have Newtonian intuitions, but at different scales (subatomic and cosmological) that paradigm fails in favor of these new constructs.

Our society is about to enter a moment now regarding not physics, but politics. Party Line narratives are about to be exploded, in favor of a brand new paradigm that is going to be the greatest political scandal in US history.

It is going to be interesting to see how the Establishment and MSM adjust. Some are going to be foolish, and flog a failed paradigm far beyond what the public sees as reasonable (we may be at that point now with this impeachment-about-nothing impeachment going on, yet the main event has not even happened). The MSM will keep doing what they are doing now, relying on suggestibility, relying on framing and intellectually dishonest discourse, but it will wear more and more thin for all but the most doltish of viewers.

But there are others who will act commendably and with intellectual honor. They will realize that the evidence which is being revealed shatters their worldview, and it is time to develop  a new one. They who do this have my respect, while those who stay flogging the old line are going to soon look like one of those old Borscht Belt Comedians, still trying to make it pay with jokes that went out of fashion in the 1960’s.

Let me pass early commendations to former US Attorney Preet Bharara. On Friday CNN’s Wolf Blitzer had Preet Bharara on as a guest. During their interview breaking news provided an anomaly to Mr. Bharara, who gave a small but classy demonstration of how to do what I am describing (see at around 2:10).

I predict that what you see in this tape is but that first drop of rain from a coming typhoon. Message to MSM: the quicker you learn to do what Mr. Bharara does here (it is called “intellectual honesty”), the better your odds of making it through this tempest. Those who think they can beat this one by deflections, or sideshows, or buckets of chicken, are just going to look increasingly hapless.

I abandoned 1,500 colleagues and 40,000 shareholders at Overstock in order to come public. Please do me a favor and help them out by doing your Christmas shopping at Overstock.com.

Respect to Professor Nancy Cartwright, a renowned figure in the field of Philosophy of Science, under whom I had the honor of studying at Stanford.

This story was first published on Deep Capture. Deep Capture features original investigative reporting on the all-too-cozy relationship Wall Street has with regulators, media, government and the intellectual establishment.