The Burgess Story Essay -- Paleontologists Science Scientists Essays

The Burgess Story "I don't like to say bad things about paleontologists, but they're really not very good scientists. They're more like stamp collectors. - Luis Alvarez, Physics Nobel Laureate - Luis Alvarez evidently had some very definite ideas about what a good scientist does, and it is especially telling that such a comment comes from a physicist. What could Alvarez have had in mind when he made this remark? He may have been making a mental comparison of the approach commonly used in physics -- that of laboratory experimentation -- with the way the study of paleontology is conducted, A paleontologist is very much a historian -- someone who is involved in the "reconstruction of past events ... based on narrative evidence of their own unique phenomena" (Gould 278). In Alvarez's eyes then, good science is characterised by the experimental approach of experiment, quantification, repetition, prediction, and restriction of complexity to a few variables that can be controlled and manipulated" (Gould 277). This seems to me too narrow a definition.