The power of a good theory

There's a new set of articles buzzing around Facebook that seem to indicate that the case is "closed" on the allegedly faster-than-light (or "superluminal;" I learned that word this past year, though it seems my computer's dictionary hasn't) neutrinos. After all the controversy, CERN's Sergio Bertolucci has made the excellent point that the story has "given people the opportunity to see the scientific method in action."


I hope, in particular, that this story shows the public the power of a good theory.


I am a theoretical physicist, working on the side of the scientific method--essentially, model development and exploration--that most of the public (most notably, students) would rather gloss over. There's a lot of math, a lot of words, no "real-world" laboratory set-up, and very few cool pictures (and the cool pictures that do exist are computer generated and therefore to be considered suspect). "Show me how it works!" the experiment-preferring public cries, followed by squeals of joy when it looks like the prevailing theory (in this case, relativity) might be overturned by new "real" evidence (in this case, faster-than-light neutrinos).


Why do so many people seem averse to theory? Why is there such a furor when a prevailing theory seems to be disproved? I can't answer those questions for sure (especially since I have loved theory since I finally cracked SOHCAHTOA at a church chalkboard late one cold October night in my junior year of high school), but I do have a few ideas.

1. Many people don't like math: They don't like having to follow it or do it.
2. Experiments are "cooler" than theory (until, of course, you have to mathematically analyze the data, which is why I think many students prefer demonstrations, not experiments). 
3. Many people have been taught that the only kind of science is experimental science. (I think this statement is incomplete, as described below.)
4. Many people simply do not understand the power of a good theory.

Theories are more than esoteric cogitations of "the way things ought to be." They're a logical exploration of the implications of our underlying assumptions--assumptions which usually come from previous experimental results. Sometimes, the explorations are short-lived: For example, we spent one day on relativistic quantum mechanics in graduate school, just long enough to find the infinity that showed its invalidity. Sometimes, the explorations take a long time: We're still figuring out how to successfully formulate string theory. But once we've formulated the principles, we apply a reasoning process (ideally in the form of mathematical proof/derivation), and arrive at applications that have some testable qualities. These three pieces (well-formulated and well-founded principles, sound reasoning process, and testable applications) are essential to any good theory.

Take, for example, electromagnetic theory (which I get to teach at the junior level again this coming fall). All of the principles of the model (stationary point charges emit electric fields radially outward, a constant straight current produces circular magnetic fields around it, and changing electric or magnetic flux induces a magnetic or electric field, respectively, and magnetic "charges" don't exist) are based on experimental observations over hundreds of years. We (theorists) take those principles to develop applications of them, most notably optics, radiation, materials properties, circuits, and relativity.

We develop those applications as a way of saying, "If the underlying principles of this theory are correct, and the reasoning we've employed is sound, then in this situation (say, a particle approaching the speed of light) we should observe this behavior (say, the particle being unable to exceed the speed of light)." If you put it the other way, we're saying, "If we observe a certain behavior (say, a particle seeming to travel faster than the speed of light), then either the underlying principles are incorrect, or the reasoning we've employed is flawed."

And therein lies the power of a good theory: When you've confirmed the underlying principles time and again, and checked and rechecked the reasoning that leads to the applications, the theory (the principles, reasoning, and application) helps us know when to doubt a scientific claim.

When these results came out last year claiming superluminal speeds, most theorists knew not to be alarmed but rather to approach them with caution. Why? Because we have a powerful theory that says otherwise. It's not a matter of blind dogma to say that neutrinos can't exceed the speed of light, it's the result of a powerful theory that will require more than one experiment to topple. To put it another way, let's trace the story backwards: These neutrinos seemed to be travelling faster than the speed of light, which is supposed to be impossible according to the theory of relativity, which is not something that Einstein simply cogitated one day. The theory of relativity is built on the nature of electromagnetic waves, which are themselves a result of Maxwell's equations, which are built upon centuries of experiments. (I refer to the timespan not to say that we should favor old over new, but to contrast the amount of experimental support.)

So will this confirmation of electromagnetic theory result in a greater appreciation of theory for the common culture? Probably not. But at least theorists have a good recent example of the power of their work.

"Top ten things I hate about election time," revisited four years later

Four years ago, I generated a pretty feisty discussion with a Facebook note, "Top ten things I hate about election time - #1". This note was the culmination of a series of notes decrying the unfortunate aspects of national elections in the USA. Some items on my list were funny, some were serious, some were simply gripes. But each was born out of my genuinely held feelings, opinions, and experiences.

The final item on the list, "Christians telling other Christians how they have to vote," generated the most controversy among my friends and family, even garnering comments from people I had never met. (Apparently, notes defaulted to "global" sharing back then.) To summarize the arguments of those I had offended, I had to make the abortion issue my number one political priority, as a Christian.

This argument took me by surprise. I had not mentioned abortion (in any light or from any perspective), nor did I even refer to any particular candidate who was up for election (such as, I don't know, the big one). Regardless, though, everyone assumed I was referring to the Christian right's then-ubiquitous campaign against abortion in the context of choosing a President.

I actually had in mind the now-all-but-forgotten Florida Marriage Amendment, which was being supported vocally on Sunday morning by the leaders of the church of which I was a member at the time.

Much has changed in the last four years:

1. I am no longer a member of that church (their attempt at polarizing their congregants' votes that year being one of the reasons that ultimately culminated in my departure in late 2010), though I have cautiously attended services there the last few weeks.
2. I have since then become much more educated on the history of the Christian right, and now see where many of the excesses that I wrote about stem from.
3. I hear significantly fewer references to Romans 13 made in church.
4. Despite the protests that were offered on my 2008 note, I hear much less about abortion in presidential debates, campaign ads, and even in church on Sunday morning.
5. Instead, I hear much more about the economy and the government's relationship to the poor---now finally being given some explicit argumentation from Christian principles (if not Scripture). (Not surprisingly, there is equal Christian argumentation on both sides.)
6. And, perhaps most important (and the reason I'm writing this post), the Christian right may now be forced to reexamine their unquestioning support of Republican candidates.

This reexamination comes from the choice they now have to make---in some small sense---between their political agenda and their convictions about the gospel laid out in Scripture. I'm referring (as you might have guessed) to the evangelical conviction that believing a false gospel is a serious problem. Evangelicals---especially the more fiery ones, who are usually also fiery on political issues---rely on texts like Galatians 1:6-9 and 1 John 1:18-27 as a litmus test to distinguish genuine Christianity from heresies the way Archimedes relied on his principle of displacement to distinguish authentic gold from a forgery. And these evangelicals believe the warnings in these texts are dire:

"But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse!"

"Whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ... is the antichrist... No one who denies the Son has the Father."

Many evangelicals---including these fiery, Republican evangelicals---believe that Mormonism falls under this category of "another gospel" that "denies that Jesus is the Christ." These evangelicals take the deity of Jesus very seriously---as they should, if they believe it to be true---and reject any gospel---like that of Mormonism---that denies it.

So, they have some distress as November approaches: Do they stay true to their social and political convictions, and vote for someone whom they believe (based on such a dire, central conviction in their religion) is in this heretical hotseat? Do they stay true to their evangelical profession that "the gospel is central" and vote for the other candidate who at least claims to believe the same gospel they do? Or do they wander in a political wilderness, wishing they were back in the Egypt of the 2008 election? (It's strikingly similar to the Jeroboam vs. Rehoboam "election.")

I suspect that most will take the first route. Their priority in elections, after all, has been to oppose the social and political evils that they perceive to be so great. "The gospel is the church's responsibility," I suspect they might say, "not the President's."

I could not be happier with this answer.

Because really, evangelical Republicans' rationalization for sticking with the Republican candidate simply goes to demonstrate what I wrote four years ago: We have to not only cultivate our beliefs, but also cultivate the priorities we place on those beliefs, in the contexts in which we live them out. These evangelical Republicans are willing to favor their stance on political and social issues over their commitment to a pure gospel in the context of this election. That cannot possibly be an easy decision to make, but in the end, it is certainly a reasonable one.

But in making that decision, in assigning those weightings, they must be willing to respectfully allow other Christians to assign their weightings differently---in this decision, and in the myriad others that we face in this world of issues and questions that cannot be resolved to a one-dimensional spectrum, or a single choice between two equally nuanced options. We need to acknowledge that these determinations are not easy, that there is a struggle involved. We should never present the end result as the only logical outcome that we arrived at in a straightforward and nearly instantaneous manner.

I therefore propose two considerations for the next six months.

1. Let's adopt an attitude of sharing in the struggle, instead of arguing over the answer. It is not a straightforward manner to decide whom to vote for, what party to align oneself with (or declare independence from parties), what stance to take on a political issue, what stance to take on a theological issue, what career to choose, where to attend church, etc.
2. If you feel uncomfortable voting for someone, then don't. If you feel uncomfortable voting for either presidential candidate, then don't vote for either. Still vote---for whatever you feel comfortable---but leave that line blank. The Republican party has long relied on the support of much of the Christian church, and their drift away from the abortion issue (which the Christian right said was so important to them four years ago) indicates that now they're assuming that support. But what if some Christians voted for every issue/candidate with whom they felt comfortable, but left the presidential line blank? What if the number of abstentions on the presidential selection on ballots became a statistic referred to on the news? What if it became a concern, to both parties?

Handling controversy in our fields as Christian scholars

With the close of the recent faster-than-light neutrino debacle, I find myself contemplating how Christian scholars can responsibly respond to other Christians' questions about controversial events/findings in our fields. In particular...

1. When other Christians ask us questions about these controversies, how can we tell if they are genuinely interested, or simply tapping us for information?
2. How do we caringly but fairly defend our field if other Christians seek to use these controversies in attacks against the mainstream incarnations of our fields?
3. How do we explain our qualifications to judge these controversies?

For example, in response to the claims of faster-than-light neutrinos, I as a physicist faced the following issues:

1. Should I attempt to re-explain the findings in response to questions, or simply point the askers to the already-existing (and very well-written) popular documentation of the claims?
2. If a young-earth creationist sees this as a "failure" of physics that would justify his challenge to the estimated 13.7-billion-year age of the universe, how do I lovingly put the claims---and the likelihood of their accuracy---into perspective?
3. In such conversations, how do I humbly but accurately describe my experience with related matters, and mark out the boundaries my understanding of a sub-field of physics that I'm not terribly familiar with?

The one who gets the learning

A theme in studies of student learning in higher education is that the one who does the work is the one who gets the learning. This is the main impetus behind the push away from lectures and toward interactive engagement: If the professor is the one who creates the outline, completes the sample problem, and derives the important conclusions, then the professor gets the learning, and the students get to watch. If the students are to learn, they must be the ones to do the work that leads to understanding.

I am convinced that the same is true in the setting of Sunday morning at church. If the pastor spends all week outlining and cross-referencing the text, examining applications, and drawing the important conclusions, then the pastor has received the learning, not the congregation.

This is not to say there is no place for lectures. Lectures can (and I emphasize "can") be motivating and can lead to initiative on the learners' part. But to have lecture be the only mode of learning that takes place is to fall short of setting up the learners for success.