Entrevista com Bricmont

Aqui está uma entrevista que fiz com o físico Jean Bricmontda Universidade de Louvain, na Bélgica, para a matéria sobre o ensino de astrologia em universidades brasileiras, publicada no Valor e republicada aqui neste blog. Bricmont é co-autor do livro Imposturas Intelectuais - o Abuso da Ciência pelos Filósofos pós-Modernos. (Desculpem-me os que não lêem inglês, mas estou sem paciência para traduzir)


Recently, Universtity of Brasília (UnB) created a course in astrology. UnB has even a group of studies on paranormal fenomena. What do you think about that?
Bricmont: I think it is a bad decision- one can of course study paranormal phenomena, but it has to be done scientifically. As far as I know, the scientific studies of those phenomena have yield negative results.

Is astrology a science?
Bricmont: no - insofar as no empirical argument in favour of its claims has ever been given, as far as I know.

Is it possible to define what science is?
Bricmont: More or less, yes. It is not necessarily easy to make a sharp distinction between science and non science, but it is rather easy to make such a distinction when the difference is big. To make a comparison, it is not possible, except by convention, to say exactly where the border between Asia andEurope is. But if you go from Paris to Tokyo, you can tell which cityis in Europe and which one is in Asia. To turn to astrology, there is a simple test: ask their defenders to make a reasonably large sample of predictions, in a controlled experiment, that do better than chance. Scientist do that all the time. If they cannot pass this test, why should we believe them? And if we have no reason to believe them, why should we teach what they say?

Is there a limit to what can be taught in the universities?
Bricmont: of course - there simply isn't the time or the money to teach everything - every possible superstition that has ever existed? In general, it is even impossible to teach all important aspects of science, because of lack of time or of money. So, if only for practical reasons, a selection of topics must be made.

How can this limit be stablished and by whom?
Bricmont: Ultimately, by elected representatives (say, the parlament). But it is wise for those elected people to rely on the advise of experts. Which experts? Well, those who are able to pass the test I mentioned above, for example. Otherwise, anybody can call itself an expert. Of course there is a problem here - it may be the case that the population wants and votes for, people who don't want to listen to "my"experts. This is of course more or less what happens with creationist politicians in the US, for example. I would expect that, in the long run, the population would suffer from those choices, but this is not obvious and it is not guaranteed that the population will realize the connection between its beliefs and their consequences. To that problem,I have no satisfactory answer.

In what level can a course on literature be diferent from astrology - I mean in terms of how "scientific" are those both courses?
Bricmont: Well, a course on literature can be scientific in some sense, I mean, stating certain facts right, for example. Then there is the problem of interpretation, commentary etc. I don't think the latter are completely arbitrary, but, of course, it is difficult to say what the "correct" commentaries on a piece of fiction are. Nevertheless, you can give evidence for your claims, even if it is not conclusive. If, on the other hand, you speak of your tastes, then of course, we move in the domain of the subjective. I don't think the tastes of the professor should be the main point of a course on literature. But it is very different from astrology- the latter makes empirical claims about the world that are not supported by evidence. People who make commentaries on a piece of fiction usually give evidence for their claims, or, if they express their tastes, usually admit that other opposite tastes are equally acceptable. But, when one makes empirical claims about the world, one cannot accept that both the claim and its opposite are equally valid - e.g. astrologers do not admit that the proposition "astrology is an illusion" is as valid as their claims.

Pushing this discussion ahead, how scientific are disciplines like> administration, economics and psychology, for instance - all taught in undergraduate and graduate levels?
Bricmont: some of them not much; it is not as clear cut a case as astrology; I mean some parts of economics can be scientific: some maths, some history or descriptions (I tend to believe that claims made by economists go far beyond what is supported by evidence, but that does not mean that more moderate claims could not be scientific); same for psychology (but here a problem is that a lot of psychology taught in universities is simply psychoanalysis).