Spouting a lot of pomo nonsense does little to lessen the power of science...

They Might Be Giants has a new song out called "Science is Real." Lyrics:

Science is real
From the Big Bang to DNA
Science is real
From evolution to the Milky Way
I like the stories
About angels, unicorns and elves
Now I like those stories
As much as anybody else
But when I'm seeking knowledge
Either simple or abstract
The facts are with science

Matt Yglesias doesn't think much of this idea. He harumphs:

it’s disappointing to see TMBG embracing [the] discredited view that “science is a system of statements based on direct experience and controlled by experimental verification.” That’s just not the case.

Oh no? Why not, Matt?

Nothing is ever observed that admits of a definitive, theory-independent observation nor does anything ever happen that can verify or falsify a single proposition in isolation. Obviously, observation and experimentation are integral to the work of scientists, but it’s a lot murkier and more complicated than that.

To quote Alex Trebek: I don't get it. (Actually, I kind of do, but it's just so poorly written that I don't feel like first explaining it and then writing a careful, detailed response. Suffice it to say that it's a pretty piss-poor straw-man argument).

I think it’s unfortunate that people trying to enhance the social prestige of science and scientists (which is basically what the TMBG song is about) have this tendency to want to fall back on this kind of naive realism and positivism as their means for doing so. To understand why science is so impressive what I think you really need to do is not talk about how it’s “real” (whatever that means) but put it as a social practice alongside other social practices aimed at explaining the world. You’ll see that science is impressively progressive—when old theories get overturned by newer ones, our capabilities as a society and as a species are enhanced in really noteworthy ways. There’s no better set of ideas or practices out there.

Ah, yes. Naive realism and positivism. Because if you label people's beliefs with the suffix "-ism," that automatically makes the beliefs less credible and more risible. Because, you know, don't you remember fascISM and communISM? Those belief systems didn't work out, and they had "ism" on the end of their names. Hence, saying "science is real" is stupid. Got it?

OK, OK, I'll explain why Yglesias is being full of shitism.

If Yglesias thinks TMBG is touting science because scientific theorems true in some abstract ontological formal-logical sense, well, he's just not giving them enough credit. We know that science does not equal logic. We know that theories require assumptions. That is called the problem of induction. I learned it at "philosophy camp" at age 13. Duh. And scientists will be the first to remind you that theories can only be disproven, never proven, by experiment. Duh.

The point of science is not that it is self-improving over time (though that is a nice feature). The point is that it works. Science is useful to us. Attempting to gauge the mood of Zeus will not tell us when it is going to rain; meteorology will. That is why we use meteorology to predict the weather now, instead of Zeus. Usefulness is a far better measure of "reality" than some cosmic ontological truth or formal logical axiomatic consistency. TMBG, I am assuming, understand this perfectly well and are not trying to claim otherwise when they say that "science is real."

So to leftist critics of scientific thought, I say: Stop making us sift through increasingly dense thickets of jargon to point out why your stale arguments are stale. We know all you care about is shifting university funding from engineering to the humanities.

(And to rightist critics of science, I of course say: Go ahead and wait for Zeus to make it rain or for Yahweh to cure your Parkinson's disease. It's your funeral...)