Notes
1. Stuart Firestein, Ignorance: How It Drives Science (New York: Oxford University Press; 2012).
2. Stuart Firestein, Failure: Why Science Is So Successful (New York: Oxford University Press; 2016).
3. David J. Glass, Experimental Design for Biologists, 2nd ed. (Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press; 2011). See also D. Glass and N. Hall, “A Brief History ofthe Hypothesis,” Cell 134:378-381, 2008.
4. David Deutsch, The Beginnings of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World (New York: Penguin Books; 2012).
5. The phrase “curiosity-driven” has been used as a modifier of “basic research” (see, e.g., A. Amon, “A Case for More Curiosity-Driven Basic Research,” ACSB Award Essay, November 2015, www.molbiolc.org). Amon uses it to differentiate basic science research from applied science research, rather than to differentiate curiosity- driven research from hypothesis-based research, which is what Firestein wants to do. In her essay, Amon advocates using the hypothesis in science, and, except for the term “curiosity-driven,” my views are compatible with hers. Nevertheless, I use “curiosity-driven” throughout this book in the sense that Firestein intends it.
6. http://www.ted.com/talks/stuart_firestein_the_pursuit_of_ignorance.html.
7. Numerous readable accounts of the neurobiology of marijuana and the endocannabinoid system can be found online; e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Tetrahydrocannabinol.
8. Institutes of Theology from the Posthumous Works of Rev. Thomas Chalmers (1849) by Chalmers and his son-in-law biographer William Hanna.
9. Attributed to Albert Einstein.
10. Francis Bacon, The New Organon (Novum Organum): On the True Directions Concerning the Interpretation of Nature, “Aphorisms (Book One).” Originally published in 1620; James Speeding (Translator), Kindle Book, Amazon Digital Services, 2009.
11. ibid, section LXIX
12. ibid, section XLVII
13. ibid. see section LXXXII for a lucid if poetic account of how science should proceed; not by “groping in the dark” taking experience “as it comes,” but viewing experience “duly ordered and digested.” Not simply collecting data, in other words, but seeking understanding.
14. Richard S. Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1980), pp. 410-414.
15. Isaac Newton to Edmund Halley, June 1686 letter collected at the Newton Project, http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/NATP0032516. Wesfall, ibid, pp. 269-273.
16. Wesfall, ibid, pp. 269-273.
17. Frank Wilczek, A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature’s Deep Design (New York: Penguin Books; 2015), pp. 81-83.
18. 'Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1970).
19. L. G. Brock, J. S. Coombs, and J. C. Eccles, “The Recording of Potentials from Motoneurones with an Intracellular Electrode,” Journal of Physiology 117:431-460, 1952.
20. Martin Rees, “Tracking Subatomic Physicists,” Science 343:1434-1435, 2012. Note that Rees seems to be using “curiosity-driven” in the sense mentioned in Note 5, but this highlights the potential confusion associated with the term.
21. Lisa Randall, Higgs Discovery: The Power of Empty Space (New York: HarperCollins; 2 012).
22. Bradley E. Alger, “Retrograde Signaling in the Regulation of Synaptic Transmission: Focus on Endocannabinoids,” Progress in Neurobiology 68:247-286, 2002.
23. https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1907/press.html.
In the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony Speech outlining the achievements of Michelson that warranted his receiving the Prize, Michelson is cited for his invention of a very accurate interferometer and some of the uses to which it had been put, including especially the precise measurement of the official standard meter rod.
“Your interferometer has rendered it possible to obtain a non-material standard of length, possessed of a degree of accuracy never hitherto attained. By its means we are enabled to ensure that the prototype of the metre has remained unaltered in length, and to restore it with absolute infallibility, supposing it were to get lost.”24. Except as indicated, all quotations in Section 10.C are from the sources mentioned in Note 3.
25. Nicholas N. Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, 2nd ed. (New York: Random House, 2010), new section: “On Robustness and Fragility” (Incerto).
26. Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (New York: Bloomsbury Press; 2010).
27. D. Castelvecchi, “Feuding Physicists Turn to Philosophy,” Nature 528:444-445, 2015; D. H. Bailey and J. M. Borwein, “Data Versus Theory: The Mathematical Battle for the Soul of Physics,” https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-h-bailey/data-vs-theory- the-mathem_b_8886292.html, 2015; A. Frank and M. Gleiser, “Crisis at the Edge of Physics: Opinion,” The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/ opinion/a-crisis-at-the-edge-of-physics.html?_r=0.
28. G. Ellis and J. Silk, “Comment: Scientific Method: Defend the Integrity of Physics,” Nature 516:321-323, 2014.
29. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief. Quotation is from Samuel Taylor Coleridge from Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, 1817, Chapter XIV
“It was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.”
30. Albert Einstein, quoted in Ronald W Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times (New York: Avon Books; 1971).
31. “Shut up and calculate.” Although the quote is widely attributed to Richard Feynman, the physicist N. David Mermin looked into the issue and discovered, evidently to his surprise, that he, Mermin, had originated it. See http://gnm.cl/emenendez/uploads/ Cursos/callate-y-calcula.pdf.
32. D. Albert, “Explaining It All: How We Became the Center of the Universe,” New York Times, August 12, 2011; Review of David Deutsch, Beginnings of Infinity, https:// www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/books/review/the-beginning-of-infinity-by-david- deutsch-book-review.html.
33. Bryan Magee, Philosophy of the Real World: An Introduction to Karl Popper (La Salle, IL: Open Court; 1985), p. 47.