Plausible Fallacies and Inconvenient Truths

Sophisticated technology has existed for millennia for metals and ceramics. Throughout time, intelligent craftsmen and scholars created plausible explanations for the observations and developed techniques. This creation of plausible explanations continues to the present day in rapidly developing fields, like Materials Science and Engineering. Many of the ideas are known to be fallacious, but they persisted because they were plausible and useful. They continued to be taught as long as there was nothing to replace them. Recognizing them as fallacies provides research opportunities. Replacements of fallacies are paradigm shifts that often result in major advances. But many discoveries of science lead to inconvenient truths that are not used and not widely known. They require midcareer learning or an influx of a new generation of trained scientists, possibly from other fields.

Speaker: John Cahn, Univ. of Washington

Room: Sibley Auditorium