Science and the Senses

[extropalopakettle]

Would a person with impaired senses be inherently and absolutely less able than an "ordinary" person to have a scientific understanding of certain things?

For instance, are there things that have a scientific explanation which a sufficiently educated person may understand, but which a deaf person would be incapable of understanding?

How about a completely colorblind person? Could a colorblind scientist, who has knowledge of every physical property and process of a normally sighted person's brain ... could he possibly understand what it is like to see colors? If not, why not?

[Lepton]

I think that all the senses can be sufficiently-well abstracted to make the issue irrelevant. For example, I cannot see radio, infrared, ultraviolet, or X-ray radiation, but I will consider "false-colour" astronomical images taken with these types of radiation to have equal footing with visible light images.

[extro...*]

So can a colorblind scientist understand what it is like to see colors as you or I do? I understand he could use instruments to make measurements of amounts of light of different wavelengths (as even a blind person can). But there is a subjective aspect to seeing colors that has nothing to do with light, but has a neural basis. Can he understand what that is like?

[Lepton*]

Almost certainly not. However, I don't think that the senses are as important to science as they once were. While Galileo might've needed keen eyesight, it's no longer important that a scientist can see very well. Sagan wrote a blind astronomer into his novel Contact, for example. The issue might be more important in fields with which I am less familiar, but in places like physics and astronomy, what matters is a person's mental ability, even among experimentalists/observers.

In the building of experimental apparatuses, this becomes an issue; but it is a different subject in which ways sensory-limited people are disadvantaged in the "building stuff" arena.

[Courk]

I don't know how being blind for example would affect someone's ability as an astronomer, since I don't know everything that an astronomer can do. However, I do have to wonder how that would affect someone's desire to even enter that field. Assuming someone who was blind from a very young age, they wouldn't remember or know what stars look like, so I don't know if there would be as much interest on their part. They could read, hear, and learn about stars and planets, but I would think not being able to see them would impact their interest in some way.

[Courk]

Then again, it could be even more appealing, since no one can really see much of the stars. They're only missing out on a tiny little speck of light -- what difference does that really make? A blind person and person who wasn't blind would be on almost equal footing.

[extro...*]

[Bicho the Inhaler]

Some variations:

- Can a person ever understand what it's like to see the world through the eyes of a duck, which (as I'm told) see the world in four primary colors instead of three?

- Can a person ever understand what it's like to experience the world as a dolphin or a bat, whose faculty of echolocation simply has no human equivalent?

There are many ways to reach the conclusion that the human brain is bounded in its ability to represent and comprehend information, and that human language is bounded in its ability to convey information.

We like to think of knowledge as representable in language, since that means we can communicate it to other people. Science must be communicable between people, so it's a requirement that scientific information be represented in language. However, there's no reason to believe that all types knowledge our brains can represent can also be represented linguistically. In fact, this is obviously not the case. As a corollary, there is information that is inaccessible to science as we know it (which should also be obvious).

Our senses can convey to us a lot of information that language can't, so naturally, people with sensory disabilities might be unable to acquire certain types of information. The brain of a deaf or colorblind person, being a human brain, can represent the same things a normal person's brain can represent, but the person has limited means of acquiring information (the person's ears convey no information or the person's eyes convey less information respectively), so there are some kinds of understanding that he just can't get to.

Edit: Let me clarify, to answer your original question, that these inaccessible types of information are not scientific information, since scientific information must be codified in language, at least until we find a fundamentally more powerful way to communicate.

[Jack_Ian]

If a child was born with the red and blue wires crossed in their brain, so that they perceive red where normally blue was perceived and vice versa, would it make any difference?

I expect that they would still be able to name the colours correctly. However, there is also an emotional response to colour which I believe is innate and not learned. Baby seagulls will, for example, peck at a red spot on their parents' beaks to encourage regurgitation.

Would this child be as likely, I wonder, to fear wasps and other brightly coloured insects?

As an example, here is what this picture would look with red and blue swapped:

[Jack_Ian]

Coincidentally, saw this just now.

[Nsof]

I think yes - if the specific science requires the disabled scientist to make observations.
If you want to study logic or math there is no hindrance.
If you want to become an ornithologist there might be problems with observing the mating behavior of birds. One could argue that you can focus on the theories of such science but i believe that part of being an ornithologist is to observe birds and not just read about it.

[Dented Ford]

I would say that a scientist with a sensory defecit (eg Carl Sagan's blind astronomer) can still be a scientist in the true sense of the word. It may mean that some observations are not possible in the same manner as another observer with all normal senses. However, a great proportion of the observations made by scientists have already been processed by automatic systems before being presented in a particular format, often visual, and are translatable into other media. In terms of interpreting data, and conceptualising, there need not be a hindrance - visualising is a word often used, but who can really visualise a Black Hole's event horizon? Conceptualise it, yes. And having no sight might even mean that the conceptual faculties of the blind astronomer are improved.
It needn't be only logic or maths that can be scientifically studied, although certainly the more abstract, then the less the sensory defecit is a problem. Observation of natural history is, as Nsof points out, much more of a problem.
On a slightly different note, what of people with synaesthesia? Could a person who "tastes" words, or "sees" numbers etc find that their strange perception of the world could assist in a truly scientific capacity?

[superstring91]

[worm]

[extro...*]

[Bicho the Inhaler]

[Jack_Ian]

Bicho, I'm not so sure that I totally agree with you.
There are objective measurements that can show the brain's response to images. However, I agree that it would be impossible to attribute any such observed phenomena to "crossed-colour-wires".
It may be that there is a difference, but given our inability to accurately measure such differences coupled with our inability to differentiate those with "normal" connections from those wired differently, means the correct answer is probably "Who cares?".
I am in awe though, of your use "qualia".

[extro...*]

[Jack_Ian]

We only observe shadows.

[Bicho the Inhaler]