Scientifically Thinking

ldquo;Scientifically Thinking couldn’t have come at a better time. This book goes beyond works that highlight the tricks our minds play on our perception of reality—it offers a tried and true solution for our propensity to believe what we want to believe—and all in a well-written, painstakingly fair, and entertaining read. If everyone read this book, the world would be a far better place.”

—Elicka Peterson Sparks, PhD, author of The Devil You Know: The Surprising Link between Conservative Christianity and Crime and Intimate Partner Violence: Effective Procedure, Response and Policy 

“Stanley A. Rice is a biologist who is a wonderful teacher. When he thinks about the nature and methodology of science, he is interesting, funny, serious, profound, irreverent—in short, everything to make the learning experience worthwhile and lasting. If you cannot take one of his classes, then do please read his Scientifically Thinking, the subtitle of which tells all.”

—Michael Ruse, author of *The Problem of War: Darwinism, Christianity, and Their Battle to Understand Human Conflict

• “Our minds have evolved to take shortcuts. In order for our ancestors to survive in the wild, their brains were pre-wired to rapidly respond to natural threats like snakes. We have retained that ability and have a neural shortcut that warns us of dangers before the brain fills in and sharpens the peripheral areas of our vision. Our brains simplify big data, look for linear trends, and make up things to fill gaps in that information. In Scientifically Thinking, Rice argues that these mental shortcuts lead to bias and misconceptions. Errors like these are increasingly important in today’s politically divided world. According to Rice the best way to overcome this bias is to think scientifically. What we need most is not the knowledge that has come from science but the scientific way of thinking itself. In a breezy and sometimes lighthearted manner, Rice tells us how to think scientifically. Along the way we are introduced to his research (botany), to thigmotropism, to ants walking on stilts and stumps, and to spontaneously generated maggots.” *
   

• —Prof. Marc Zimmer, author of *Illuminating Disease

Auteur

By Stanley A. Rice

Texte du rabat

Shows the many advantages of thinking like a scientist and argues that today's problems require a scientific approach.

You don't have to be a scientist to think like a scientist. Anyone can do it and everyone should. This book will show you how. The advantages are many: from detecting bias to avoiding error and appreciating the richness of the world. Author Stanley Rice, himself a scientist, explains that science is essentially organized common sense. While the brain is hardwired for common sense, unfortunately, it also relies on a number of misleading tendencies. Instead of reasoning objectively it tends to rationalize. Often it sees what it wants to see rather than what is really there. And it is adept at both self-deception and deceiving others. Rice notes that these tendencies were useful in the past as the human race evolved in an often-hostile environment. But today bias and delusions put us at risk of worldwide catastrophe.

The author invites readers to participate in the adventure of scientific discovery. He provides many interesting and humorous examples of how science works. He shows how hypothesis testing can be used to tackle everyday problems like car trouble or seeing through the specious appeal of a fad diet. Beyond practical applications, science meets the basic human need to satisfy curiosity: it tells verifiable stories about the universe, providing humans with fascinating narratives supported by testable facts. The author also explores some of science's biggest ideas, including natural selection (creating order out of randomness) and interconnectedness (Earth's systems are intricately intertwined).

Read this book and learn to think like a scientist. It will guard you against being manipulated by politicians, corporations, and religious leaders, and equip you to deal with the world's most pressing problems. And you will have a lot of fun doing it.

Échantillon de lecture
INTRODUCTION - WE NEED SCIENCE,  AND WE NEED IT NOW

We humans can be justifiably proud of our brains. No other species has ever had such large brains and so much intelligence. But there is a major problem. Our brains evolved. The brains of our most successful ancestors were not necessarily the ones that understood the truth but the ones that allowed their possessors to prevail in the struggle for existence. As a result, our brains did not evolve to reason but to rationalize, or to see the truth but to create it. Our brains are the playthings of bias and illusion. We use our brains to manipulate others and to deceive ourselves. We often see what we want to see rather than what is really there. All of us.

Illusion and bias are not necessarily bad things. Illusion and bias can be simple and useful. Without these illusions and biases, our brains might be overwhelmed by the complexity of the world. Illusions and biases have allowed our brains to make quick decisions in order for us to survive a sudden threat or to take advantage of a sudden opportunity. An attack by a predator or an enemy is not the best time for rational thought. Our ape brains have been immensely successful in large measure because they can make profitable use of reality and truth but are not constrained by them.

Our biased and deluded brains served us well enough in the past. We did not need to understand the truth so long as we could be successful in the game of evolution. But today, our biases and illusions put us at risk of worldwide catastrophe. We are drowning in yottabytes of information. We do not need more information but a new way of thinking that will liberate our minds from bias and illusion.

Some of the mistakes created by our biased brains affect us only individually. Mistaking correlation for causation can make us waste time and money on health fads that are illusions. But other mistakes that we make collectively can endanger the whole world. Our species is the victim of its own success, and now we have overrun the earth. Every natural habitat, even those we have set aside as parks and reserves, has been altered by our presence and our economic and political activities. Errors made by one individual, one corporation, or one nation can now affect the whole world. Today, all individuals and all countries and all economies are so interconnected that if one group acts like cavemen, they can drag much of the rest of the world down with them. They can be religious extremists trying to wage holy war, or they can be executives of “too big to fail” corporations who use misinformation to increase their profits, or they can be politicians who create their own “facts” in order to win campaigns, and their effects will be felt worldwide. With over seven and a half billion people in the world, there is no room for delusion anymore. Having an ape brain couldn’t happen at a worse time. Illusions and biases served us well in the past, but today they have brought us to the brink of disaster.

One example of how our brains mislead us is the illusion of the cornucopia of nature. It just seems natural to assume that the world is big enough to supply all of our desires and absorb all of our wastes. Maybe it was like that back in the Stone Age. When a caveman threw bones away—“away” meaning outside the camp—the great maw of nature could decompose them. But there are now over seven billion of us, each of us using immense amounts of material and energy and generating toxic wastes. There is no such place as “away” where our wastes can …