EPA is not required to reprove the existence of the atom every time it approaches a scientific question

Like most of you, I only know a few famous quotes concerning courts of appeal (life is too short, it is not ?)

There is Mr Dooley's devastating quip that "while the Constitution might follow the Flag , the Supreme Court follows the Election Returns".

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr 's clarion call to start the Holocaust, when in the infamous case of Buck versus Bell, he declared "three generations of imbeciles is enough" as the Supreme Court of America okayed the Science of Negative Eugenics and Hitler applauded.

Now a brand new quote is entering "The Book of Famous Law Quotes" .

It is only a week old but every commentator - sans, significantly, the Denier media - has seized upon it:

"The EPA is not required to reprove the existence of the atom , every time it  approaches a scientific question."

Ditto the IPCC .

Or any other major scientific decision-making body, trying to synthesize the results of thousands of reports; reports that have been already peer-reviewed by other scientists and critics, both before and after their publication.

Fittingly, since this is the 21st century after all, the Federal Court of Appeals firmly rejected the mid-19th century science of Determinism as created by Pierre-Simon LaPlace , preferring the late 19th century science of Statistical Probability as created by Ludwig Boltzmann.

Now if only we can finally get  21st century high school teachers to do the same .....

Pierre-Simon Laplace & Denier-Determinism rebuked by US Federal Court of Appeals

It seems eternal vigilance is the price we must all pay for freedom from the scourge of Denialism.

Around the clock, around the world, thousands of ordinary citizens are scanning their newspapers, their computer screens and TV sets to catch the latest outrage of denialism and stem it before it spreads.

I didn't catch the recent decision of the US Federal Court of Appeals, in which it ruled that the EPA is not required to re-prove the existence of the atom , every time it approaches a scientific question.

But I subscribe to an email feed from  Watching the Deniers  (and so should you) and Mike there had caught the story.

 I dutifully read it with (admittedly) scant interest, until I hit that stinging quote about the atom.

The implied rebuke to Late Modernity's mixture of Positivism, Scientism and Determinism (the core of Denialism) could not be missed by someone attuned to the history of science.

I heard definite echoes of Pierre-Simon Laplace's famous Demon being referenced here.

Here is what I put in my comment to Mike's article in Watching the Deniers : (early morning typos corrected !)

Michael Marshall says:

July 3, 2012 at 9:54 am

 The man spanked the hardest by this court decision is long dead. His name is Pierre-Simon LaPlace, the father of Determinism and hence at least a godfather to Denialism.
In the heyday of Scientism ,1875-1965, it was exalted that one day Man would achieve his goal and by knowing the position and direction of every atom in the universe, would know all of the past and all of the future.
Today no scientist who believes in global warming believes this any more . Along with this court, they accept that we must base decisions on strong probability instead of absolute certainty.
Kudos to which ever justice who wrote this decision – they obviously recalled the undergraduate science of their youth with fearsome, biting, accuracy !


The deniers are very well funded and we can't match their il-gotten lucre, but we can exceed them in our fervour.....