Science rewrites itself

January 21, 2008

Researchers in Franklin and Marshall College have a paper in Science ( Natural Streams and the Legacy of Water-Powered Mills, abstract only unless you’re a AAAS member) suggesting that the current model of water flow over land mass — at least certain kinds of land mass — is fundamentally flawed thanks to a primary misconception. The New York Times summarizes:

Decades ago, when geologists were developing ideas about how water typically flows across land, many of them studied the streams of the Mid-Atlantic States, concluding that they naturally move in ribbonlike channels cut through silty banks. [ ... ] Now, though, researchers at Franklin and Marshall College are challenging it. They say the streams studied by their geological predecessors were not “natural archetypes” but rather the artifacts of 18th- and 19th-century dam building and deforestation.

In other words, geologists believe they were studying natural behavior, but now some of them believe geologists mistook human-influenced behavior for natural behavior. The iconic “meandering stream” is may not be natural. Discovering your assumptions are wrong and you need to go back and start over is not uncommon in scientific study. What we know today we may not know tomorrow.

I am also reading a book called Warped Passages by theoretical physicist Lisa Randall. In this book she attempts to explain — in layman’s terms — the edges of physical research: higher-dimensional existance, “brane worlds,” “curved dimensions,” etc. A lot of these theories are new since I graduated from college; they could help explain a great deal of deep weirdness. When people say “for that to be true the rules of physics would have to be re-written,” Lisa Randall — tenured at Harvard, Princeton, and MIT — is one of the ones doing the rewriting. Again, what we know today (there are only three spatial dimensions) we may not know tomorrow.

I bring this up because it’s good to have reminders now and again that science is a process, and it’s a process that sometimes uncovers that we don’t know as much about the basics as we think we do.

Photo: Crystal River Mill by Rob Lee.

Posted in Science