As the last remnants of Christmas turkey fall to sandwich and soup, forget not Bertrand Russell’s musings on the fate of turkeys subscribing to Francis Bacon’s philosophy of inductivist scientific reasoning.
- They don’t see it coming (photo WikiCommons)
On his first day at the farm, the turkey noted he was fed at 9.00 am. After this procedure had been repeated for many weeks, the turkey relaxed a bit, safely drawing the conclusion ”I am always fed at 9 am”. Regrettably for the turkey, this conclusion was proved wrong on Christmas eve when, rather than being fed, he got his throat cut. Which just goes to show that any number of true observations can still lead to a false conclusion; the turkey’s argument was simply not logical.
Since the mid 1980s, I've worked in university and industrial research, as a manager and editor in technology and environment for an international industry association, and held senior business development, strategy, and procurement posts in industry. I hold a PhD in chemical engineering from Birmingham University, an MBA from Warwick University Business School, and an MSc in Science Communication from Imperial College. In 2008, I left industry to focus full-time on my passion for science and technology, and to share that enthusiasm with others as a freelance science communicator. I live in London with my wife Erin.
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