Freedom of Science

Why do Doctors of Philosophy do not like to be called Doctors of Philosophy? Doctors of Philosophy who run Cosmic Variance remove my comments because I call them Doctors of Philosophy! This must indicate some deep trouble with how modern scholasticism works.

Why are Doctors of Philosophy so offended when they are called Doctors of Philosophy? After all their job title is Doctor of Philosophy. Physicist is the marketing name they use to project a scientific image.

Let’s see. The most famous Doctor of Philosophy Doctor Gravytee is a Doctor of Philosophy but he never studied philosophy. His education consisted of cramming how to solve partial differential equations. Poor Doctor of Philosophy Doctor Gravytee had to spend countless months and years to learn how to solve partial differential equations that I, a civilian, can solve in a minute by using my computer.

After spending 15 years cramming how to solve ugly stuff by hand that can be solved by computers easily Doctor of Philosophy Doctor Gravytee gets his license to practice his trade.

What is his trade?

Data analysis. After much difficulty he finds a job in one of the middle of the road learning institutions supported by NASA funding and he is assigned to analyze a minor patch of the so-called cosmic background white noise. Routine stuff. Basically it is glorified computer graphics.

What he does has nothing to do with philosophy. But he is a Doctor of Philosophy.

Years pass. He is discontent. All he does is data analysis. He cannot earn any fame because he is not practicing at one of the top tier Ivy League institutions favored by Big Media to write bestsellers on cosmogonic speculations.

Eventually lady fortune smiles at him and he gets a job at a major center of learning with high visibility.

Now he is expected to philosophize on old fundamental philosophical questions such as the beginning of the universe, the divisibility of matter and such.

But he had no philosophical education. He knows no history which is the foundation of philosophy. All he knows is professional mythology such as Newton is the greatest genius ever lived, space is not absolute and space does not exist only spacetimes exist, Einstein’s General Relativity is awsome, time travel is routine in stringy worlds, 11 dimensions are a darling of the media and so on. But how can he manufacture a headline grabbing philosophical comment to earn his fame?

He is not trained for it. Doctor of Philosophy Doctor Gravytee knows no philosophy whatsoever. So he fakes it.

Thank god, philosophy is easy to fake. All he has to do is to associate the cosmic background radiation with the most absurd notion he could cook up. So he declares that the universe is a football.

Well, unfortunately, a further investigation reveals that this brilliant philosophical idea has already been marketed back in 2003 by Doctor Gravitas, another Doctor of Philosophy hungry for headlines. 

So Doctor Gravytee declares that the universe is a soccer ball. Whoops! This philosophical gem has been in the headlines during the 2001 cosmological season marketed by Doctor Gravitonis to great effect.

Doctor Gravytee does not give up. He works hard into the night in his office by watching old episodes of Star Trek and a great philosophical idea is revealed to him while his state of consciousness oscillated in the Twilight Zone spacetime.

All cosmological great ideas are based on some grammatical error and Doctor Gravytee’s idea is no exception. Doctor Gravytee writes up his philosophical paper and submits it to Nature: The Universe is a Football in 11 Dimensions but in Three Dimensions that We Know and Love the Universe is Visible to us as a Soccer Ball!

Nature loves it. The magazine Nature that is not *the* Nature. Nature the Nature digs not scholastic philosophical sophistry such as 11 dimensions cooked up by groggy scholastic tubesters. But the New York Times science editors love philosophical puns and Doctor Gravytee’s paper to be published in Nature is leaked to the New York Times which headlines it as: The Universe is a Football Scientists Prove in an Upcoming Article in the Prestigious Science Journal Nature…

Note the word “scientist.” And note the perfect synergy between Doctors of Philosophy, the content providers to global publishers, and the Big Media. They love each other.

And Doctor Gravytee is happy to enjoy the fame which he thinks is long overdue. After all a Doctor of Philosophy is a Doctor of Philosophy even though he knows no philosophy.

The article in the most prestigious journal Nature goes on and on presenting the most sophisticated topological arguments most mathematically expressed by Doctor Gravytee about how a football and a soccer ball are topologically identical therefore the universe is elegant, it has 11 dimensions and this also proves that string theory is an experimental science. Marvelous! A big fat book contract cannot be far off.

So I believe that there is no justifiable reason why Doctors of Philosophy should be offended because I call them Doctors of Philosophy. They should not feel that they are minor peons in the great global publishing hoax. Just keep playing the game.

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