The Decline of Science: Will the "Biotic Pump" Idea be Accepted?
The Decline of Science: Will the "Biotic Pump" Idea be Accepted?
You probably know the work of Sabine Hossenfelder, a brilliant theoretical physicist who is having remarkable success with her videos on YouTube. In this recent clip, she comes out as another disillusioned scientist, one of the many who tried to innovate or, at least, work on something interesting. The result is that they find themselves stifled, ignored, and sometimes actively sabotaged by an ossified academia.
You may imagine how difficult it is to propose an innovative idea, such as the "biotic pump," to an academy that has been mostly reacting as if the very concept was an insult to its ancestors.
This subject was discussed at the recent meeting in Munich "Embracing Nature's Complexity." I had the strong sensation that I was witnessing the birth of a new concept, one of those "new truths" that Thomas Huxley defined as destined to "be born as heresies and die as superstitions" -- Will the biotic pump (itself part of the wider concept of "biotic regulation") ever arrive to overcome the stage of a heresy to be fought and destroyed? I think there is still a chance to overcome the resistance of the ossified, but it will not be easy.
I feel very sad and bad about the countless millions of people who spend their lives pushing ropes because that's the only option available to people who actually care about things.
Some other options open to us are...
Pounding screws
Herding cats
Kissing butts.
The story in the video is a sad one, and I'm pretty sure that anyone who has been around some of these larger organizations has probably met many with similar stories.
I clicked through to the linked article on the biotic pump concept, and I must confess that I don't see why this idea should be considered controversial. The described behavior of water vapor is precisely that which is responsible for the formation of clouds. And as for pulling air in from the ocean, I can attest to seeing that right here where I live on the California coast. In summer, the ground a dozen miles inland heats up early in the day, radiates that heat into the air, which then rises, pulling cooler air in from the coast below it. That's why we have so much fog and overcast right on the coast this time of year.