The Partial Observer Redux

A few years ago I started writing a blog, The Partial Observer, for the Bangor Daily News, the 2nd largest subscription newspaper in Maine, and the one we had delivered daily when I was a kid growing up here. At that time, the BDN had an open blog policy, so pretty much anyone who wished to string sentences together could have a blog. My aim was to write pieces on life as a working scientist, but also personal reflections, and occasionally the one thing that everyone likes to prognosticate on, politics. So far as I know I had at least as many dedicated followers as fingers on one hand, but it was kind of fun to write. Ideas to write about were never a problem, but a busy work and life schedule combined with a well-cultivated innate laziness resulted in my blogging career fading out, and the BDN, at some point, seemed to stop supporting its itinerant bloggers, and that stymied my one earlier attempt at a comeback. Now, I just realized BDN has removed all links to old blogs, so the original Partial Observer is lost in the ether, Google couldn't even find it! Well, those blogs do still exist on my computer, so I will trot them out from time to time.

Now that I am easing into career retirement, I have decided to come out of blogging retirement, and have another go. I think the blog will mostly be about science, but perhaps a bit less about life as a working scientist, and more about being a retiring scientist, or perhaps at how badly one can fail at retiring? This is a common problem for scientists and artists.

I will keep the title, Partial Observer, because it’s a realistic counterpoint to the fallacious truthism that scientists should be impartial observers and only let the data decide what the ‘truth’ is. Of course, scientific observation is based on objective truth, and I do believe scientists value objective truth more than most, and the good ‘uns maintain some skepticism until the data is irrefutable. Nonetheless, we are partial in so many ways to our traditions and cultural upbringing, not to mention genetic predispositions and environmental stimuli. Certainly, scientists are as susceptible to egotism as most, and to be good at a scientific pursuit requires some real passion for what you are doing. So, its ridiculous to say that we are ‘impartial’ in any purely 'impartial’ sense. All that said, the natural world is built up from facts that it’s our job to wrangle into truths about how the world works, as objectively as possible.

Interestingly, all current, and for the foreseeable future, versions of artificial intelligence will only further reinforce built-in partiality, but this is a topic for another blog.

So, off I go. I reserve the right to re-visit some old BDN blogs, but will mostly try to create new stuff, and may even throw in the odd poem. Since I don’t do social media, my guess is that my number of dedicated followers, will never grow beyond my conventional number of fingers; although, I will boldly project my goal is to include my toes as well.

Still, much to my surprise, I (David Emerson) am currently number one on Google, the Yoga guy has to sponsor his name to get top billing, so who knows? I sure as hell don't!