Friends,
Those of you who are interested in the philosophy of science and the nature of rhetoric will find Jeremy Bernstein’s essay useful. The title is "How Can We Be Sure That Albert Einstein Was Not A Crank?"
In this essay, Bernstein clarifies the distinctions between serious research and crank research. These are similar to the distinctions that Karl Popper made between the falsifiable claims of science and the crank claims of pseudo-science.
Pseudo-science never offers the kinds of concrete predictive claims that we can test. In Popper’s philosophy, all truths are merely temporary because they may be demonstrated as false at any time. In this framework, because pseudo-science never makes claims precise enough to be falsified, the claims of pseudo-science can never be true, not even temporarily. This is a very short outline of far deeper issues. I am not doing real justice to Popper. David Edmonds and John Eidinow (2006) offer a well-written and sophisticated summary of Popper’s views in the book _Wittgenstein’s Poker. The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers_.
Bernstein's essential distinction is this: cranks never provide the evidence for their views. Cranks make truth claims — statements about how things are in reality. They do not offer working models, precise explanations, or predictions that allow others to test their truth claims or challenge them. Instead, they write about the results their claims would lead to if their claims were true.
I’m not describing anyone on this list as a crank. I am summarising the description of crank behaviour in Jeremy Bernstein’s essay, “How Can We Be Sure That Albert Einstein Was Not A Crank?”
I recommend Bernstein’s essay to anyone interested in the recent conversation. It is a great teaching paper for graduate research seminars. Bernstein is more than a fine writer — he is a working physicist and Professor Emeritus of Physics at the Stevens Institute of Technology.
You’ll find the essay in the teaching documents section of my Academia page at:
https://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
Yours,
Ken
References
Bernstein, Jeremy. 1993. “How Can We Be Sure That Albert Einstein Was Not A Crank?” Cranks, Quarks and the Cosmos. New York: Basic Books. pp. 15-27.
Edmonds, David, and John Eidinow. 2005. Wittgenstein’s Poker. The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers. London: Faber and Faber.
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