Releasers - Anne Kilmer couldn't possibly be more wrong!

[Bob Kriegel]

I don't really want to get into the middle of the debate on releases; I do
not side strongly with either camp.  But some are wagging the big sticks of
SCIENCE and TRUTH and that I do have something to say about.

A multitude of lessons from the history of how science is actually
performed (as opposed to our idealized notions about how it should work)
teach us that a scientist's biases and existing worldview have a profound
impact on what hypotheses they propose, what experiments they conduct, how
they interpret their results and what grand theories they devise to explain
their results and order their world.  These also tend to guide who they
respect and who they disrespect.  There is nothing sacred about logic
either.  It can be used as an analytical tool or as a club.  If you think
science is strictly about truth and is devoid of politics or religion I
suggest you learn what the phlogiston theory was, or better yet read Thomas
Kuhn's, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions".  If you must stick to
leps read Judith Hoopers, "Of Moths and Men".  Hooper's book has the best
treatment of the history of post Darwinian evolutionary theory that I've
ever read.  Its all about truth -- yeah right.

Also, the axioms of "play it safe" and "do no harm", do not ensure that no
harm is done.  They are often used as a CYA excuse for taking no action.
But inaction IS a decision, and it HAS consequences.  We are only human.
That means we always have insufficient knowledge to know the full
consequences of our decisions and of our actions.  We can only do our
honest best with what we know today.  Try your hand at advising farmers for
a couple of years and you'll learn how painfully true this reality can be.
Alternately, if you have an early successional habitat and you want to keep
it that way to foster a particular set of species, then you have to do
something.  The mantra of "do no harm" will only ensure that succession
will have its way and you won't have yours.

And as for mathematics and biology, don't get me going.  Biology as a
science relies heavily on mathematics from statistics, cladistics and
modeling to Bayesian hierarchical inheritance systems and Markov chains to
geographical information systems, intensive data-mining used in genomics
and on and on and on.  "But they deal with probabilities not absolute
laws".  Biology studies life and life is a fleeting series of [often
independent] probabilities, chum.  Fractals and chaos theory teach us that
what appears absolute on one level of abstraction is often only partially
ordered when viewed from a different level of abstraction.  And if you
think such realities only apply to biology and not hard sciences like
chemistry or physics, I suggest you try modeling the conformation of
molecules in a chemical reaction or seriously consider the Heisenberg
uncertainty principle.

Life is a balance.  And balance is a process, a question without an
absolute answer -- get used to it.

Ahhh, I feel much better now.  By the way, for anyone who is interested,
and is in northern climes I have a new predictor this spring.  If you are
searching for Erebia discoidalis, try targeting your sampling efforts
between 150-200 degree days base 50F.  I know its not much of a window, but
that's biology.

Bob Kriegel
Bath, Michigan


 
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