Monday, 30 May 2011

2011 Edge Question, The Mediocrity Principle, PZ Myers

PZ Myers will be in London 8th June 2011, giving a talk organised by Atheism-UK.

P.Z. MYERS Biologist, University of Minnesota; blogger, Pharyngula

The Mediocrity Principle

As someone who just spent a term teaching freshman introductory biology, and will be doing it again in the coming months, I have to say that the first thing that leapt to my mind as an essential skill everyone should have was algebra. And elementary probability and statistics.


What idea should people grasp to better understand their place in the universe?







And if you understand the mediocrity principle, that's OK.

The reason this is so essential to science is that it's the beginning of understanding how we came to be here and how everything works.

We look for general principles that apply to the universe as a whole first, and those explain much of the story; and then we look for the quirks and exceptions that led to the details. It's a strategy that succeeds and is useful in gaining a deeper knowledge.

Starting with a presumption that a subject of interest represents a violation of the properties of the universe, that it was poofed uniquely into existence with a specific purpose, and that the conditions of its existence can no longer apply, means that you have leapt to an unfounded and unusual explanation with no legitimate reason.


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