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LAMPPOST

                                             October 16, 2008

It's often seemed to me that you can
characterize people by the favorite
joke that they like to tell.

I think this one is mine:

   A cop is walking down the sidewalk one
   night, and he finds a drunk on his hands
   and knees crawling around under a bright
   street light.

   The cop asks "what are you doing?"

   The drunk says "Looking for my car keys."
                                                  In telling the joke, this
   The cop looks around and says                  line gets a laugh.
   "You lost them somewhere around here?"
                                                                It's often the
   The drunk says "No, no... I lost 'em over                    case with
   there!", pointing out into the                               Jokes: there's
   darkness.                                                    something
                                                                embedded in
   The cop says: "Then why are you looking                      the middle
   over here?"                                                  that makes
                                                                them work,
   The drunk responds: "The light's                             it's not just
   better here."                                                setup and
                                                                punchline.

And what's really funny about this joke, is
that it describes the scientific method.

You don't first ask yourself what you'd like
to know, you ask yourself what can be known.
Better to have some hope of learning
something, even if it isn't precisely what
you'd like to learn.

                              And I can't claim any
                              originality whatsoever
                              in observing this
                              parallel: I first
                              encountered this joke     Pschology has been
                              in an introduction to     beaten up for being
                              a psychology textbook,    "unscientific" for so
                              where it was used to      long that they go out
                              make the same point.      of their way to
                                                        explain the way
                                                        science works to
                                                        their students.

                                                            In hard science
                                                            disciplines,
                                                            you're expected
                                                            to have figured
         "The sciences, even the best,--                    it out on your
         mathematics and astronomy,--                       own already.
         are like sportsmen, who seize
         whatever prey offers, even                         (E.g. statistical
         without being able to make any                     significance is not
         use of it."                                        always a core part
                                                            of the curriculum.)
           --Ralph Waldo Emerson,
             "Plato, or, the Philosopher"
             p. 309, Viking Portable ed.






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