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Værker af John Hands

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Fødselsdato
1945
Køn
male
Nationalitet
England, UK
Land (til kort)
UK

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It's very opinionated but still an great review of the state of science. The author is really touchy and a curmudgeon but who cares, he's clearly done the legwork on this one. Given how short it is it's amazingly comprehensive. His opinions about theories are, well, his - you're welcome to your own.
 
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Paul_S | 7 andre anmeldelser | Dec 23, 2020 |
This whole book, however interesting, starts from a conceptual fallacy: that science must be empirically verified and lead to predictions. Hands’ definition of science is: “The attempt to understand and explain natural phenomena by using systematic, preferably measurable, observation or experiment, and to apply reason to the knowledge thereby obtained in order to infer testable laws and make predictions or retrodictions.” This sounds reasonable, but in his screening of the sciences he foremost stresses the empirical aspect. When you think about it, this way you already eliminate a considerable portion of science. And that is exactly what Hands does in this book.

Starting from his extremely strict definition, he is on a collision course with two domains where science does not work as empirically as he likes them to be: cosmology and evolutionary biology. He leaves hardly anything intact about cosmology, the theories about how our universe came into existence from the Big Bang until a few minutes later: according to him, that is a bunch of theoretical bogus for which there is hardly any empirical evidence. And in evolutionary biology, he points to numerous non-empirically founded assumptions and incongruities.

I must confess that I am not qualified to refute his criticism with concrete scientific arguments: Hands, in my opinion, has done his best to study the many areas he covers; he is a chemist by training, but has also thoroughly studied physics, biology and neurology, etc. He is said to have worked on this book for 10 years, and it shows.

Hands undoubtedly points to some weaknesses in scientific theory development, but he wrongly assumes that science can and should only be "evidence-based". In the more practically oriented sciences such as medicine and psychology I can follow that up to a point, but for the others, science is, in my opinion, just as much a reasoned and transparent attempt to capture a number of phenomena in a theory that provides insight. Such a theory is by definition preliminary, and should be supported by evidence as far as possible. But setting the bar so high on the empirical level is asking for problems.

The book also exudes a high degree of ‘self-made man’- and ‘lone cowboy’- tone. Let me explain: Hands offers an accumulation of definitions that are applied very strictly, he derogatorily presents the relative consensus in a particular scientific domain as 'the orthodox model', accuses academics of a condescending attitude towards dilettantes (like him), and does not show an ounce of humour. Moreover, with his nagging criticism, he unwittingly opens the door to conspiracy theories and also to aberrations such as creationism.

Actually, I should only give this book 1 star, but I'm going to be lenient, because of the tremendous effort he has done to dive into very difficult matters, and - with my apologies - because of a personal weakness for people who sail against the current. If there is one merit of this book, it is that Hands succeeds in making you think about what we too often accept as evident. Lice in the fur, they always are necessary, but Hands should have made his book less into a ranting exercise.
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Markeret
bookomaniac | 7 andre anmeldelser | Nov 1, 2020 |
There are many bad reasons to challenge scientific orthodoxy, so it is probably understandable that a lot of its defenders are rather quick to deride critics as cranks, charlatans, shills, fanatics, etc. It's still a shame, though, and I'm always glad to see evidence of serious and agenda-free scepticism. Cosmosapiens is admirably ambitious, and covers plenty of interesting ground. I suspect that some of Hands's criticisms of scientific overconfidence are well-founded.

Unfortunately, Cosmosapiens isn't everything it could have been. Most of Hands's criticisms of scientifix orthodoxy are impossible for me to independently evaluate with any confidence. This is probably inevitable, though I wish he had taken more care to avoid the trap of being sufficiently long-winded to be boring, but still too shallow to convey useful understanding. And there were times, especially later in the book, when it was clear to me that Hands was at best failing to engage deeply with some of the ideas he rejected, and at worst strawmanning them. Which, of course, weakens my confidence in the accuracy and fairness of the other sections.

The sections in which Hands argued in favour of particular conclusions, rather than simply pointing out flaws in mainstream ideas or methods, seemed quite weak to me. I couldn't help but wonder what the sceptical Hands of the first two-thirds of the book would have said of the rather rushed, shallow account he gives of his favoured ideas regarding reflective consciousness, cooperation, complexification, the uniqueness of humanity, and so on.

I don't really blame Hands for running out of steam -- even with all its flaws, researching and writing this book must have been an exhausting task, and he deserves credit for what he did achieve. Perhaps, though, he would have done better to restrict Cosmosapiens to a critical review of scientific orthodoxy. He could then have advanced his own ideas, and defended them in detail, in a separate book. I began by praising Hands's ambition, but ultimately I think he tried to do too much in one go.

The prose, structure etc. are fine, but not good enough to save the book from being quite a slog. (It's very long -- excluding notes, glossary, etc. the page count is
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Markeret
matt_ar | 7 andre anmeldelser | Dec 6, 2019 |
Me: 'Whatever happened to Occam's Razor? This stuff makes Plato's Forms look like one of the most sober and parsimonious metaphysics imaginable! I would like to point anyone interested in this stuff to an amazing non-performance of a book called "Cosmosapiens" by John Hands. Hands has the nerve to subject all these theories (the Big Bang, Inflation, multiverse theories and much more) to the actual evidence we have, rather than arcane mathematical models that try to extrapolate from it in various directions, or else wild speculation (or both). None of them come out well. The universe looks as if it is much other than these theorists try to paint it. Here's a clue: multiverse theories usually try to blunt the implications of something called the Goldilocks Effect. What sorts of conclusions is Hands trying to avoid?'

Socrates: 'There is a world of difference between the Multiverse as mathematical probability explaining phenomena here and the Multiverse as topic for speculative writing. Your problem is with the latter, not the former. Speculation produces much tosh but allows creativity to flourish. Meanwhile, maths is maths, physics is physics and we slowly explore the data and the consequences of the data. But unless you are familiar with and can manipulate 22-dimensional matrices in your head, you are just somebody n the crowd watching a game you cannot fathom and relying on commentary.'

Me: 'As indeed are you by such a measure, unless you can perform those feats yourself! But seriously, do you think ANYONE can do 22 dimensions in their head? Moreover it's not required - even the most arcane string theorists only run to about 13, from memory. Moreover, one can get fairly well educated about such matters without just 'relying on commentary', so I stand by my comments, and question whether "the Multiverse as mathematical probability explaining phenomena" is seriously distinct from sheer speculation. The nature of the various notions of the multiverse makes that a serious question.'

Bottom-line: 'Bullshit! There is no alternate version of me on any plane of existence that listens to Rick Astley, watches reality TV, shows clear signs of having latent psychic energy, eats smashed avocado on toast, or prays to any god. Being just a regular 'Joe' (in this case 'Manuel'), I have always sensed the multiverse hypothesis had validity. If true, and the number was infinite and consciousness was unbound by the physical, is it possible every time we make a personal decision we move to another universe that supports the decision? Just sayin'. WTF did I do wrong to end up in this Trump crappy universe?'
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Markeret
antao | 7 andre anmeldelser | Dec 11, 2018 |

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Statistikker

Værker
12
Medlemmer
162
Popularitet
#130,374
Vurdering
½ 3.5
Anmeldelser
8
ISBN
36
Sprog
5

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