Science of Discworld III Read Online Free

events, and to compare those with the apparent record of sedimentation in the rocks. Many dates were then revised. When continental drift came in from left field, entirely new ways to find those dates arrived, and were quickly used. More dates were revised.
    Scientists – collectively – want to find their mistakes, so that they can get rid of them.
    Religions, cults, and pseudoscientific movements want to close down lines of enquiry. They want their followers to stop asking questions and accept the belief system. The difference is glaring. Suppose, for instance, that scientists became convinced that there was something worth taking seriously in the theories of Erich von Däniken, that ancient ruins and structures must have been the work of visiting aliens. They would then start asking questions. Where did the aliens come from? What sort of spaceships did they have? Why did they come here? Do ancient inscriptions suggest one kind of alien or many? What is the pattern to the visitations? Whereas believers in von Däniken’s theories are satisfied with generic aliens, and ask no more. Aliens explain the ruins and structures – that’s cracked it, problem solved.
    Similarly, to early proponents of divine design and their modern reincarnations creationism and ‘intelligent design’, the latest quasi-religious fad, once we know that living creatures were created (either by God, an alien, or an unspecified intelligent designer) then the problem is solved and we need look no further. We are not encouraged to look for evidence that might disprove our beliefs. Just things that confirm them. Accept what we tell you, don’t ask questions .
    Ah, yes, but science discourages questions too, say the cults and religions. You don’t take our views seriously, you don’t allow that sort of question. You try to stop us putting our ideas into school science lessons as alternatives to your world view.
    To some extent, that’s true – especially the bit about science lessons. But they are science lessons, so they should be teaching science. Whereas the claims of the cults and the creationists, and the closet theists who espouse intelligent design, are not science. Creationism is simply a theistic belief system and offers no credible scientific evidence whatsoever for its beliefs. Evidence for alien visitations is weak, incoherent, and most of it is readily explained by entirely ordinary aspects of ancient human culture. Intelligent design claims evidence for its views, but those claims fall apart under even casual scientific scrutiny, as documented in the 2004 books Why Intelligent Design Fails , edited by Matt Young and Taner Edis, and Debating Design , edited by William Dembski and Michael Ruse. And when people (none of the above, we hasten to point out) claim that the Grand Canyon is evidence for Noah’s flood – a notorious recent incident – it’s not terribly hard to prove them wrong.
    The principle of free speech implies that these views should not be suppressed, but it does not imply that they should be imported into science lessons, any more than scientific alternatives to God should be imported into the vicar’s Sunday sermon. If you want to get your world view into the science lesson, you’ve got to establish its scientific credentials. But because cults, religions and alternative belief systems stop people asking awkward questions, there’s no way they can ever get that kind of evidence. It’s not only chance that is blind.
    The scientific vision of the planet that is currently our only home, and of the creatures with which we share it and the universe around it, has attained its present form over thousands of years. Thedevelopment of science is mostly an incremental process, a lake of understanding filled by the constant accumulation of innumerable tiny raindrops. Like the water in a lake, the pool of understanding can also evaporate again – for what we think we understand today can be exposed as nonsense tomorrow,