So in a previous post, I mentioned that, for some years, I strongly suspected electrons didn't exist. By this I don’t mean that there isn’t a phenomenon we call electrons - rather, I mean that I wasn’t convinced the phenomenon was, say, a particle.
Thing is - this was true even after I had completed physics coursework in college.
So what was the issue, and how did I climb out of this hole?
Well, I have already said what the issue was: I was taught what was known, rather than how it was known. I was taught the properties of an electron, but not how we figured them out. I was taught what electricity does, how to calculate its effects on other things. I was taught how solenoids work, how to make an electric motor, and how the pickups of an electric guitar work.
But, while there a lot of “how” knowledge listed above, the most conspicuously absent was the most important: How do we know what we know? Or, to frame that in a way less likely to lead to a collision with epistemology: Why do we know?
See, this isn't “physics”, it is “philosophy of science”, or “philosophy of physics”, or “history of physics” - it is quite remarkable how inconsistently courses are named, even when they're teaching the same basic shit.
But - I took quite a few mathematics courses, as I minored in mathematics. My most advanced coursework was in partial derivatives.
I don't actually understand partial derivatives, though. I could probably refresh my knowledge of how to interact with them pretty quickly, but, weirdly, the course I took in the subject skimmed over where they actually come from. I haven't needed this knowledge yet, so I've never pursued it, but it is a bit odd that I don't really understand where a partial derivative comes from, but I know a number of techniques for integrating them.
Because, see, in a sense, that's also a “Why do we know this” question. What we know was a long list of techniques for integrating a - actually rather small list of types of equations. Why do we know this?
I can't answer that. I see them turn up in equations in my crackpot nonsense from time to time, and I kind of just mentally label them as “some kind of change” and move on; they're never too important to what I'm trying to understand.
I once watched an in-depth documentary on a development in history, whose central thesis posited the existence of a widespread trade network in a particular region of the world, based on the fact that a piece of pottery turned up in a garbage heap being excavated - and the pottery had to have been sourced from a village a hundred miles away owing to the type of clay used. And this was a serious scholarly work.
It was illuminating.
First, because of the scant evidence used to support a very broad conclusion, which claimed the existence of, not just trade, but widespread trade.
Second - because one data point does not a line make. Maybe that particular piece of pottery was a fluke; maybe some exile from the village it was produced in carried it with him when he left.
And third - because whoever worked on this material couldn't conceive of a more limited trade network between just these two villages, because wow, nobody has ever walked a hundred miles to make trades before. The specific claim was that the distance was too great, and it has to have passed through intermediary villages to get there. A hundred miles is a long walk, mind - three days is probably fair for a fit modern person, longer in wilderness with rougher conditions.
Anyways, my point here isn't to pick on the documentary - indeed, there are good reasons to think a person didn't make that trip as a fluke, because pottery isn't exactly the sort of thing you'd want to carry around for a week in the woods, and you kind of want some kind of cart, and some kind of road. The pottery -suggests- trade. It even hints at widespread trade, because it implies technologies exist to facilitate it.
Rather, the issue is that, as I watched this documentary and got increasingly annoyed by it's assertions, it made me acutely aware of the fact that - this is “Why they know this”, and it wasn't actually a very good reason to know it. Suspect it, maybe. Know? No.
And I looked around at all the things in my mind, and realized - for most of these things, I don't have a “Why I know this” that ran any deeper than “Somebody told me”. And, given that I had just been told something, and told why, and the why was, well, just plain not very good - maybe I should be more critical of everything I know.
I read physics books for fun, and - there were lots of really deep “Why we know this” explanations for a lot of things. But conspicuous in its absence, bizarre in its absence, was information about why we know what we know about electrons, excepting some very specific quantum mechanical properties of electrons. Neutrons, yes; and almost by association, protons. Electrons? Crickets.
However, none of this actually came from “education”, which focused exclusively on imparting “What We Know”, with little or no effort on “Why We Know This”. I don’t have a lot of respect for education as an institution, and this is one of the reasons.
I exempt one particular professor from this criticism; my Calculus instructor, actually. He was alone in proving the things that he taught, and explaining the proof, and why the proof proved what it proved. This wasn’t even done in my proofs class! “Here’s what we know about how to prove things.” A list of ways to prove things. Maybe start by proving that these ways of proving things - I don’t know, actually proves them? But maybe that’s getting close to an epistemological bedrock, I don’t know.
Anyways, my “salvation”, as it were, came about because of - well, my crackpot physics. I was looking to prove it wrong, so started digging into quantum mechanics, to see if there were any forces which obviously proved it wrong. And in doing so, I came across a discussion of superconductors, which I found interesting enough that, well, I started digging in.
The short version of that is - superconductors are an excellent proof that electrons exist, as opposed to being a name for a mysterious phenomenon we have labeled ‘electron’ and thus don’t have to think about anymore. The long version would require me to take another dive - I don’t remember a lot of the particulars, and am mostly trusting that my past self, who did do that research dive, gave the matter due consideration. Perhaps this is a general phenomenon, and most people forget why they know things?
Anyways, at least at that point, I had -a- why. I didn’t have -the- why. I still don’t, actually. There’s probably a YouTube video at this point going through the history of the matter, but, well -
The history of science IS science. An experiment doesn’t stop mattering just because it’s already been done - and clearly we kind of sort of recognize this, because labwork was mandatory for my physics coursework, and people routinely conduct old experiments. But even the labwork experiments only seem to demonstrate “Why We Know This” by accident; they seem more intended to give students real-world experience in “What We Know”.
Which is … well, that isn’t science. It’s the output of science. As an educational focus - it’s crap.
Educators spent years telling me they were teaching me how to think; this teaches you critical thinking, I heard, over and over and over again. But the thing I learned in that environment was mostly - don’t bother, just memorize this crap and move on with your life, because this is about “What You Know”, and if you try to apply “Why You Know” to it, you’ll get questions wrong - as you do, when you’re actually trying to think - and they’ll count it against you.
I learned far more playing video games than I ever learned in an educational environment. I’m actually concerned to some extent that even this has been lost, as video games have endlessly strived to become more intuitive; the basic experience of a video game, to me, is forming theories about how the world works, and then testing them. I’m done with a video game, not when I reach the end, but when I’ve run out of novel mechanics to explore; when I stop being able to form new hypotheses about the game and test them.
And, likewise - I got good grades in physics. I think my average test score in thermodynamics might have been 100%. Don’t think this means I learned anything, though; it was basically just plugging numbers into equations, with an occasional lookup in a table. “What We Know”.
Human beings aren’t books to be written in, to be filled with knowledge, so they can go forth and use that knowledge in the world. Education seems to be oriented a very static view of how the mind works; a book, or a database, which needs to be filled. The mind is a dynamic system, and it functions best, not as a list of facts, but as a process for creating and evaluating them.
“God made the world.” “How do you know that?” “Preacher said.” isn’t any different from “The big bang made the world.” “How do you know that?” “Teacher said.”
And this doesn’t change if the teacher is communicating to students in a classroom by talking and writing on a blackboard, if the teacher is communicating to students through a book that the students read, or if the teacher is communicating to students through a blog post or internet video or tweet. We’re all teachers, we’re all students - and when we are in the teacher role, we really need to focus less on the what, and more on the why.
But - that’s a really big ask. Most of us have no idea why we know what we know, even if we had good reasons to know it when we first knew it. And most of us, for most of what we know, ultimately source our “Why?” in “Because X said so.”
So, in a sense, I’m complaining about something I know won’t change at a societal level. But in another sense - maybe somebody, somewhere, sometime, will read this, and work a little bit harder, and maybe somebody, somewhere, sometime, will learn another “Why”, instead of just another quickly forgotten “What”. I can only hope.