In those days - now receding fast! - when real science was happening at a large scale, as a social system; its progress functioned by individuals trying and failing to understand, comprehend, make-sense-of existing theories - then coming-up with something better (or at least, something which solved the problems of the earlier theory).
When we learn something like a scientific theory, we are supposed first to understand it - and this is what school and college education are about.
But some theories are hard to understand, or cannot be understood.
A failure to understand may be due to various deficiencies in the understander: e.g. lack of ability, lack of effort, lack of necessary knowledge...
However; some theories are hard to understand because they have errors, and are not coherent (with themselves, and with observations) - indeed this is a common, usual, situation.
In other words; some theories cannot be understood, because they do not make sense. Yet these incoherent and un-understandable theories are nonetheless taught and propagated in many ways, built-into research programs, fund-raising, prestige and career structures, used to justify public policies and marketing etc.
In such cases where incoherent and un-understandable theories are built-into The System - and these situations are very common! - then people do Not really understand them (because incoherence cannot be understood) - but nonetheless think that they do understand.
The situation is harmful, potentially lethal; because people either do not understand but pretend to understand, or else they convince-themselves into supposing that they do understand something which they do not!
Then, ignorance and delusion replace understanding, and on a large scale...
Welcome To Our World!
Such a situation, in which a majority of people, usually the most influential and powerful people, falsely believe that they understand some theory that actually does not make sense - can be stable and resistant to change, lasting over long periods.
Indeed, large-scale fake understanding of the incoherent is normal - which is why real science was only an influential social system for a relatively short time - about three or four hundred years, starting from the 1600s.
To make progress entials people acknowledging that they do Not understand, that they have been propagating and enforcing error; that their theories are incoherent in ways that are significant and are causing some significant problems.
Such an acknowledgement is apparently impossible to most people - indeed it apparently needs people to be strongly motivated by the desire to seek and know truth; which is not usually a strong motivator in humans. So there never are many real scientists in any society or situation; and often there are none - in which case truth will not primarily be pursued, and other motivations will prevail.
For this acknowledgement of error actually to lead to progress then requires replacing the old erroneous theory with another theory that is better...
However, the new theory will also have errors! And some of these errors usually seem obvious to those who desire to stick to the old theory.
Indeed, any proposed new theory, designed to solve particular problems of the old theory, may overall be worse - that is, the errors of the new may be more significant than the errors of the old!
Nonetheless; the "errors" pointed-out by critiques of the new theory may not be errors; but instead are simply false implications of the erroneous old theory. And this happens A Lot, when a critic does not really understand either the theory he is defending, nor that which he is attacking!
How then can we know which theory is better?
Only by understanding both old and new theories, including their errors - and making a comparison.
And, as I said at the beginning: Understanding Is Difficult - requiring (at least) a combination of Motivation, Ability and Effort.
Understanding can only be done by individual persons; and for any person it is a significant sacrifice to deploy motivation, ability, and effort to understand both the old theory and the proposed new theory ...
And therefore most people will resist even trying to understand either the old or the new theory - yet most people will claim to understand both theories nonetheless!
Also; there may be good reasons to resist making this attempt at understanding, and wasting our finite and precious resources of time and energy.
We may therefore resist evaluating a new theory for good reasons - because understanding is difficult and we judge the person proposing the new theory to be one who does not even understand the old theory!
Or perhaps we regard them as someone who lacks the knowledge, experience, right-attitudes, motivations (etc) to devise and understand a new and better theory.
(For instance; we may regard the propagator as too ignorant on the subject, indifferent to truth or even an habitual liar; or as someone pursing another agenda - ideological, careerist, or whatever. We may regard that person as evil - and "using" the discourse to pursue evil ends...)
All this emphasizes that science is, and always has been, difficult! But also that its difficulties are only seldom and partially conceptual - and that it is often (usually?) difficult to understand a theory because of its errors: because that theory is incoherent.
In other words; the amount of ability and knowledge required to recognize error, and devise something better; may be much less than commonly assumed - because when theories are badly wrong, then most of the knowledge is irrelevant, and much of a person's ability is confused and corrupted by attempting (and claiming) to understand the un-understandable!
The real difficultly of understanding is therefore in trying to make sense of something that does not make sense - and such is the nature of most of public discourse; and such situations of institutional error and incoherence are indeed normal, and usually impossible to remedy.
But any individual person who is truth-motivated and has sufficient ability and knowledge (which may be much less than usually supposed), and who makes the effort to understand; can do better for himself.
An individual can know better than anyone else who has not made that effort; when, as so often, nobody else actually-has made that effort*.
This is, I believe; an encouraging, as well as realistic, conclusion.
*Note: Of course, to do better than everybody else around at knowing the best theory, entails that your motivation must be better than theirs! Perhaps not all that difficult nowadays - but nonetheless a vital factor. Furthermore, any theory has errors, so your theory will have errors. When science is functioning as a social system, there will be "other people" who are competent and motivated to discover the errors in your theory; in a honestly comparative spirit, understanding and evaluating with respect to rival theories. But when you are doing sicence for yourself; nobody else will make the effort to understand your theory; so you will need to do all the critique youself. And need means need - it must be done. This underlines why a strong and relevant truth-motivation is so vital - because self-critique is usually painful!
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