Here's an idea.
Rick from "Rick and Morty" is the ideal scientist.
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"Rick and Morty" is an Adult Swim show about drunken,
belching scientist grandfather Rick Sanchez and his nervous,
squeaky voiced grandson, Morty Smith.
Rick is, by all accounts, an amazingly talented scientist,
able to do nothing short of bend time and space,
travel to alternate dimensions, enter
into the dreams of others, give dogs super intelligence,
combine the DNA of Hitler and Lincoln-- OK,
we're going to talk more about that in a second.
Morty is what you might expect from a nervous teenager.
Worried, reasonably unwilling, and
pulled in a million different directions
by the various authorities in his life--
his parents, Jerry and Beth, his older sister
Summer, his grandfather Rick, and, of course, his own ideas
of what he can or should do, what is good and right.
Which, I mean, depending upon your worldview,
creating Abradolf Lincler, virulent love potions,
or stealing intergalactic cable might not factor strictly
under good and right.
There's a lot of tension between Morty and Rick about the antics
that they get up to.
Those antics are almost exclusively
things which can be and are accomplished because of Rick's
incredible scientific talents.
And so we may be led to ask, what
does Rick think science is for?
Apparently, it's for accomplishing
whatever personal task-- morally sound
or not-- has recently presented itself
to the usually drunk, maniacally self-important,
generally shouting scientist.
Olly from Philosophy Tube sees this
as an argument against scientism, the kind of vague,
no questions asked celebration of science
as the only harbinger of progress and understanding.
Rick not asking if he should, only if he can,
is constantly putting his smarts where his mouth is
and constantly bringing absolute anarchy
to the Smith's front door.
There's supposed to be six people in this house.
However, it might also be arguable
the degree to which Rick is even a scientist.
He totally eschews the scientific method itself.
Instead of making observations, asking questions, formulating
hypotheses, making predictions, testing
against those predictions, gathering data,
and developing theories which then feed back
into the process, Rick just goes ahead
and injects Morty into the body of a homeless man.
OK.
Well, I can't cure death.
This is bad, Morty.
You're trapped in a dead man.
Rick is a shoot from the hip results
now questions later kind of scientist.
His scientific process, if he even has one,
is as anarchic as its results.
We might quite rightfully say that Rick
is an inventor or a mad genius and not
a scientist in the strictest sense of the word.
The show, however, clearly paints him as a scientist.
So we'll consider him on his own terms.
Terms which might be closer to the way science
actually works than we tend to think or want to admit.
And terms which also sort of align
with philosopher Paul Feyerabend's
thoughts on science and the scientific method, wubba wubba
lub dub.
--dub dubs.
Yeah.
"There is no idea, however ancient or absurd,
that is not capable of improving our knowledge,"
Feyerabend writes.
This is the basic starting premise
of his book, "Against Method."
Modern science, especially how it's taught
and the scientific method, he argues,
dismisses too many ideas out of hand.
It gives none fair shakes to concepts
which do not fit neatly within its boundaries.
Feyerabend talks about how scientists
are expected to specialize, to consider their pursuit's
future more than its history, and are encouraged
to treat intersections with other pursuits-- like art,
ethics, or philosophy-- as icing on the cake rather
than structurally integral cake material.
"His imagination is restrained," he
writes about an imagined scientist.
"And even his language ceases to be his own.
This is again reflected in the nature of scientific facts
which are experienced as being independent of opinion, belief,
and cultural background," end quote.
Which Feyerabend and most philosophers of science
would argue is basically an impossible thing.
Science comes packaged with culture as much
as any other pursuit does.
Rick, by comparison, wears the effects of his culture, morals,
and biases on his sleeve.
He is blatant about it.
Why are other scientists normally encouraged
to hide these things?
Well, lots of reasons.
Science discourse has a pretty good corner
on the "we are talking about truth here" market.
For better or worse, as both a pursuit and an industry,
science derives lots of important and necessary power
and authority from that discourse.
Now, just to be perfectly clear, I
am not saying that science is complete hokum.
I am only pointing out its popularity
when we talk about how we create knowledge.
That should be very noncontroversial.
Many people think of science as something humans
do but not something humans sway or control.
Humanity is-- it's not opposite, but it's
kind of parallel to science.
Human-centric stuff is something else entirely,
namely the humanities.
Feyerabend sees this division-- amongst other things-- as silly
and overly restrictive.
It denies the inconsistent mess of scientific progress's
actuality, and most importantly is literally anti-humanitarian.
He proposes an alternative to the scientific method--
anarchism.
"Anarchism," he writes, "while not the most attractive
political philosophy, is certainly excellence medicine
for epistemology and for the philosophy of science," end
quote.
His suggested method is one where anything goes,
any and every form of inquiry, including but not limited
to the scientific method, attempting to develop knowledge
all at once.
All methods smashing into one another.
Some methods and modes of inquiry working counter to one
another, but all of it seen as equally constructing knowledge.
This is connected, it's argued, to the long history
of important scientific breakthroughs made only
because very smart people willingly,
knowingly, and repeatedly ignored
the social and scientific dogmas of their times.
It is, I think, pretty arguable that this could describe Rick.
Unconcerned with expectations or conventions,
he abandons much of the process of science
in his own pursuit of-- well, I guess
that's a little up for debate.
Look around you, Morty.
Do you really think this- wo-- world is real?
Though science aims to be a singular consistent process
wherever it is practiced, it really varies wildly
in application and aim.
A totally dispassionate and objective ideal
of science across all of its instances
is a great thing to aim for, but in modernity might
be a little out of reach.
Science, like everything else, can't totally
escape the graph of politics, culture, ideology,
or economics.
And so it's unlikely, if not a little impossible,
that all science is created equal and completely free
from influence.
So maybe we should just confront this and move on.
Maybe that's exactly what Rick does.
My new catch phrase is, I don't give a [BEEP].
Rick postures as though he is singularly focused on science,
but he works at the fringes of it.
His science is a personal one which
is augmented by countless other lines of inquiry.
His process collides with morality, identity,
and responsibility, the limits of perception,
and the family, the effectiveness of art,
even video games and romance.
To describe his method as anything goes
feels very accurate.
Rick doesn't seem to care about the search for truth.
His process isn't about progress or knowledge,
but about experience.
This is what Feyerabend is ultimately
getting at when he talks about wanting
science and the search for knowledge to be humanitarian.
Though it would be very fair to question whether Rick's method
is humanitarian.
It could really go either way.
Rick exudes self-importance and disinterestedness.
"Rick and Morty" as a show charts
some bleak and iniquitous territory
involving the deaths of innocent people,
moral fundability, and the grim price of whatever happiness is.
But it is arguable, as Film Crit Hulk does,
that "Rick and Morty" has a kind of, quote,
"underlying humanity."
That as a piece of entertainment,
"Rick and Morty" might make its audience very uncomfortable,
but really that's because it's forcing
us to stare certain very human things-- things about ourselves
and our culture-- right in the face.
Nobody exists on purpose.
Nobody belongs anywhere.
Everybody's going to die.
It may, in its own admittedly very bizarre way,
ask us to be compassionate or humane.
So if Rick's methods arent' necessarily humanitarian
in his world, maybe they are in ours?
OK.
Well, sometimes science is more art than science, Morty.
Lot of people don't get that.
What do you guys think?
Is there room for "anarchism" in the scientific process?
Does anything go in the pursuit of knowledge?
And does Rick embody any of those ideas?
Let us know in the comments and I will respond to some of them
in next week's comment response a video.
In this week's comment response video,
we talk about your thoughts related to pics
or it didn't happen.
So if you want to watch that, you can click right here
or find a link in the doobly doo.
In case you missed it, I hosted last week's Mental Floss "List
Show" about failed inventions.
So if you want to check that, we will also put a oink to that
in the doobly do.
It was-- I-- I had a good time.
Maybe you will too.
I hope you will.
This week's episode was brought you
by the hard work of these Amish cyborgs which
definitely do exist.
We have tons of memories together.
We have a Facebook and IRC and subreddit links
in the doobly doo.
And the tweet of the week comes from @PendularWater
who made a Spotify playlist of all of the records
on the record wall sourced from the DiskoV's collection
that I started for that very purpose.
So we'll put links to all of those things in the doobly doo.
Tough, yeah, the whole privacy thing with Spotify recently,
maybe not great.
So yeah.
Tread carefully, I guess.
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