Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz

Amplify’d from www.guardian.co.uk

There is a philosophy called "pessimistic meta-induction from the history of science", which proposes that, since the most watertight of old theories have been disproved, we must assume today's theories will be disproved, too. This holds for economics, medicine, education – any discipline you'd care to mention. It's a good theory but not quite as appealing as Schulz's rival account, which she calls "optimistic meta-induction from the history of everything". This states that our capacity to err is inseparable from our imagination. "In the optimistic model of wrongness, error is not a sign that our past selves were failures and falsehoods," Schulz writes. "Instead, it is one of those forces, like sap and sunlight, that imperceptibly helps another organic entity – us human beings – to grow up." Schulz doesn't relate whether she converted her colleague Ross Gelbspan to her optimistic meta-induction theory, but I hope she did. He's surely suffered enough. Read more at www.guardian.co.uk

 

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