“Lost and Found” by bib993 at DeviantArt
Aug 17, 2016
Don’t stop looking.
The Finder’s Fallacy is the downside of the “Eureka!” of discovery. Searching for a needle of explanation in the haystack of data is exhausting, frustrating, often disappointing. Finally to have found a needle, a theory that “works”, is cause for celebration. But the enthusiasm for the new-found understanding obscures a fallacious assumption. The desire to rest on success undermines speculation, postpones discovery, and ultimately erects a dogma that suppresses innovation. The Finder’s Fallacy is just this assumption that “there is only one, and we’ve found it.”
Currently Accepted Theory (CAT)—Newtonian dynamics, Darwinian evolution, etc.—has found one needle and stopped looking. But successful theories have two characteristics: They “work”, i.e., they explain or give meaning to certain sets of data. And they have limits, domains of truth, outside of which they “don’t work”.
The Finder’s Fallacy is the conceit that “this” theory’s domain is infinite and “this” data set is complete and incorrigible. Therefore, “this ” theory is the conclusion of a teleological evolution of ideas: There’s nothing more to discover. This is the fallacy underlying Horgan’s “The End of Science” and Hawking’s “knowing the mind of God.”
But teleological evolution has drowned in a flood of surprises and novelties. Today, diverse voices contend over the discovery of other needles: the physics of complex systems; electrical plasma phenomena; the several schools of catastrophism. More will be found. There has been a long history of theories that “worked” for the data sets of their times … and that were thought to be final.
It’s not that CATs are “wrong”—or “right”. They work well for all the things in modern life for which they work well. But there are things—observations, differently arranged sets of data—for which they don’t work so well, or not at all: the missing neutrinos in the sun and the missing dark matter in galaxies that may not be missing but may simply not be there; the physical and statistical connections of quasars to active galaxies; the quantization of redshifts; the Mesozoic fossils lying undisturbed in the center of the Chicxulub crater; the global themes of myths.
The Finder’s Fallacy will laugh at calls to resume the search. It will howl at announcements of further discoveries. Any new theory that does explain currently unexplained or under-explained data will alter the understanding of previously understood data as well. The newly found second needle will not only sew new clothes, it will sew the old clothes into new shapes. The effect will be not just variations on a style but an entirely new fashion. The desire to enjoy one’s success quickly becomes a fear for protecting one’s turf.
The turf of ideas is not easily protected. Modern academia has done a remarkable job of erecting fences around its cherished dogmas. But that has only ensured that new discoveries will come from outside the fence. In time, the fence will enclose not the choicest turf but the junkyard.
The Finder’s Fallacy is the deadbolt on the door of the mind.
Mel Acheson
