Thursday, January 4, 2018

I think Sheldon Cooper said that what he liked most about theoretical physicists was they could go their entire career without having to prove a single thing. There's a lot of truth in that fiction, but does that it comes from fiction mean it's not true? :)

I can see where I lost some readers in my metaphor weeks ago, comparing theoretical physicists to science fiction authors. The word fiction has a literary sense, as in science fiction books, but it also has another sense, as in fact or fiction. The word theoretical also loosely means fictional, or more precisely, unproven. When I suggested that Hawkings was a science fiction author, it was a play on words meaning science that was unproven (fiction), not literally the literary "space opera" science fiction.

Science fiction authors predicted the cell phone, DNA, SCUBA gear, rockets, submarines, tanks, and the atom bomb decades before scientists proved any of it, but we don't call (literary) science fiction authors "scientists" (nor should we). One of the most unfair facts of life is literary fiction remains fiction even after its theories are proven, where theoretical science drops the word synonymous with fiction ("theoretical") and becomes science. And perhaps even more unjust, even if every theory a scientist has is proven wrong (thus being indistinguishable from fiction), they are still 'scientists'.

My point was that when you put the word theoretical next to anything else, it renders it fictional, as in not a fact, or unproven (not to be confused with the literary sense of fiction). More importantly, we should not let this fool us into giving their theories the weight of science, or power over our economy.

An expert at surgical theory is different than a surgeon. An expert in game theory is not necessarily the best poker player. An expert in bomb theory is not the guy to call instead of the bomb squad. And a theoretical physicist is... well, they can go their entire career without having to prove a single thing, which is why blindly taking their advice is as dangerous as, well, taking advice from a science fiction authors.