SingleDad wrote:“Einstein did both. He built upon Newton’s understanding, and replaced its underlying paradigm.”
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Let’s use the example of cartographers. In the old days, they could experimentally verify that Spain is west of Greece. This is a fact, but the maps were essentially flawed because they assumed that the earth was flat! Yes,when Magellan actually experimentally verified that the earth was round, Spain was still west of Greece, but you need a friggin’ globe now and not a map! Another example, the sun still rises and sets just like it did when the medieval foks thought the sun revolved around the earth. They knew many things about the sun’s behavior and used their knowledge accordingly. They could use celestial events to plant crops etc… BUT the earth actually revolves around the sun. Does this mean that the winter Solstice doesn’t exist any more? Of course not, but we have a completely different explanation or paradigm shift to explain the same events. By no means does the heliocentric model extend the earth centered one! It uses the same data that was accurately gathered, but it explains it completely differently. BTW, the older astronomers had equations to explain the motions of stars,too. They weren’t just recording data. The equations worked to some degree, they just less accurate and explained less (like Newton’s theories).
Just because you can predict the result of an experiment doesn’t mean that much.Experimental observation must be explained by a paradigm.Science can claim to have best method to make new paradigms,but how can it prove it?
And even if it is the best, how good does that make it? Science still contradicts previous theories unpredictably and you can’t tell me which truths (explanations) that will stand the test of time.
Balanced by common sense, ethics, creativity, intuition, and memory.
Never said this wasn’t so. But it is one possible view of reality.
Look at it this way. It is perfectly true that the earth turns westward on its axis. But it is equally true that the sun rises in the east. Just because you know about the rotation of the earth doesn’t mean that you can deny that the sun rises in the east. It does. The earth also rotates. Both are true. One is a scientific fact; the other is a fact of common sense.
I absolutely disagree. I take the Chomskian line that says that psychology and sociology are not sciences in that they are trying to predict phenomena which are unpredictable because controlled by free will. They are only valuable pursuits in that they collect data which helps us understand, but not predict. And therefore (this is where I disagree with Chomsky) since humans have free will, we have no determinist psychology. We are sufficiently different from one another that ethics are not a matter of science. The natural world is innocent of ethics of any kind. Only human sentience can consider ethics.
You are fooling yourself. All you can do with reason and the sciences is bring up a list of facts. You need something else to give those facts ethical weight. Even Chomsky, who believes that we can get a list of distinctive human needs from biology, acknowledges that we still need to give those facts ethical weight. If we determine that humans have a distinctive need to be free, for example, we still need to make the arbitrary and therefore sentient and free-will determination that human needs ought to be met. Natural science contains no ethics at all, which is why we can’t say that lions are evil for hunting wildebeests even though we might say that it would be evil for us to do so. It’s also the reason why social Darwinism is such an appalling philosophy - because it contains no ethical weight, being based solely on natural science.
Happily, that is the message of reason *in a context of humanism and equilibrium
[/quote]
. Reason unchained and used as a philosopher’s stone believes that it is always right. The Enlightenment released reason into the context of humanism, leading to the insight you mention. Unfortunately, we’ve since deified it. Treating reason as the supreme value and the ideal determinant of our actions is no less a violation of human freedom than doing the same with the Bible.
Actually, predicting the results of an experiment IS how you determine truth, at least scientifically speaking. If you’re going to redefine “fact” to mean something other than what we can test, and by testing prove, then there’s really no discussion about science going on at all.
As to how science can prove a new paradigm, or “a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated”. The best way to prove a paradigm is contained right in it’s definition: experimentation.
Trying to distinguish between “building upon previous theory” and “introducing a new paradigm” is not really that deep of a question. Either way, Science is dynamic, changing, and, at its heart, uncertain. You won’t find any “absolute” Truth in science; however you will find little-t truths that can only be refuted by better science, not by appeal to any other method of thought.
You can’t prove it. But Science is confident because of a centuries-long string of success in rationally comprehending the world of experience. Yes, some scientists are arrogant, and believe they have found the big-T Truth, but such arrogance is a human failing, not a metaphysical one.
So what? The universe does not reveal its secrets on a silver platter. We have to struggle to understand them. What you describe is a feature of science: It is self-correcting when new information and new thinking becomes available.
Here is my favourite quote on the subject:
JDeMobray, Lets say that my paradigm is that Appollo pulls the sun across the sky so that he can have a few drinks in the underworld. Appollo goes bar hopping and eventually makes his way to the “other side” of the Earth, he then decides he wants to visit the first bar and drags the sun across the sky. Not a very compelling theory, but it can be verified by watching sun rise and set. My paradigm might be disproven eventually, but what replaces it? What gaurantees that this theory won’t eventually be disproven by more observation?
SingleDad, if you really believe that there’s no Truth to science how can it be “self correcting”? This seems to imply an underlying Truth to me. The idea that science is progressing slowly but surely towards something. I don’t think that individual scientists are vain for thinking that, it seems to be the underlying (perhaps unstated) paradigm of science. Without this underlying Truth, don’t you have the “intellectual anarchy” that gives you the heebie jeebies?
Well, the part of your theory that is testable by an ancient Greek is borne out by science. i.e. The sun appears to move accross the horizon before setting, then rising in the east again the next morning. As for why that happens, you’re making the mistake of confusing science with faith. Saying that it happens because Apollo pulls the sun across the sky in his chariot (Helios, btw, not Apollo), and saying that it is science is incorrect. You need to form an experiment by which we can observe Apollo, or his chariot.
Science is defined as “knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method.”
What you have expressed there is a theory. It’s not a scientific theory because it was neither obtained or tested through the scientific method.
Also, please stop saying the word ‘paradigm’ so much. 
Sorry, it just reminds me of a lot of people I work with who like to us big fancy words 
j/k.
“It is not the task of science to explain the world, but what we can say about the world.”
Niels Bohr.
I hope this doesn’t post twice but I think the maintenance interrupted my response.
DeMobray,
Ok, I’ll stop using paradigm if you come up with a word you like better.
Fine, I’m not saying that my theory was scientific, just verified by observation.BTW, I could make up further corollaries to explain why the sun moved slightly(Apollo/Helios was drunk and wasn’t driving straight).
I’m just trying to show that a theory with predictive capacity that’s verified by observation isn;t neccessarily Truth. If the scientific method isn’t based on the predictions of experimental observation then please clear that up for me.
If you want me to show you Appollo why don’t you show me gravity? Had Newton actually seen gravity? (I’m not arguing with gravity here, just trying to show how metaphysical it appeared) A lot folks at the time had trouble dealing with the whole “action at a distance” idea. He couldn’t really say why objects were attracted to each other, he described HOW they were attracted to each other. He assumed there was a “force” to explain his very compelling mathematical model of planetary motion.He dould have replaced the concept of gravity with a god that “wanted” things to stay together and the equations would have still worked. To my knowlege, gravity has yet to be fully explained.
Unexplained forces would not negate scientific knowlege, I just want to address Science’s underlying metaphysical assumptions.
According to General Relativity, when you’re in a strong gravitational field, does an object change its shape and slow down? Or does space itself change shape and change the way we measure the object?
According to one formulation, the object’s attributes are invariant and space and time vary. In another formulation, space and time are invariant, but the object attributes vary. These two formulations appear to contradict themselves! Which one is the (celestial horns) TRUTH?
Doesn’t matter. The two theories are mathematically equivalent. As long as you use each one consistently, they both give the same answers. However, due to the vagarities of the math, some problems are more easily expressed and solved in one formulation than the other.
Science does not give us the TRUTH. It gives us ways to make predictions and consistent descriptions.
Reason allows us to make consistent distinctions.
Logic lets us make distinctions based on a process of reasoning: predicate calculus. We can take two statements, A and B, and every person who applies logic from the same premises will pick the same statement, or declare that they are equivalent.
Logic also lets us make distinctions between sets of premises or axioms. We can, if we’re clever enough, conclusively demonstrate that an axiom set is self-contradictory and thus unsuitable for the realm of reason.
Empiricism allows us to test an idea against the reality of our senses. If the idea makes valid predictions of our observations then we can distinguish it from an idea that makes invalid predictions.
But the distinctions that logic and empiricism give us are not distinctions based on the TRUTH. They are distinctions based on our senses and a set of rules of deduction.
The same is not true of Faith. There is no way of using Faith to consistently distinguish between two statements; indeed there is no agreement on the “correct use” of Faith.
Is Jehovah or Allah the TRUE God? Is there a procedure by which any sane and well-meaning person can conclude that one or the other is true, or that the two are exactly equivalent? No.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not putting down Faith. Some of the people I most admire from history (notably Martin Luther King and Gandhi) received profound inspiration from their Faith. The fact that their ideas have tremendous rational power is not diminished by their origins.
Asking for absolute TRUTH from any process of thought, Science, Faith, subjective quality or tea leaves, is fruitless. No thought process can reliably and consistently separate the TRUTH from everything else.
Free the Indianapolis 500!
SingleDad quote:“Empiricism allows us to test an idea against the reality of our senses. If the idea makes valid predictions of our observations then we can distinguish it from an idea that make invalid predictions.
But the distinctions that logic and empiricism give us are not distinctions based on the TRUTH. They are distinctions based on our senses and a set of rules of deduction.”
I have a hard time buying that the empiricism’s assumptions that our senses are consistent enough to be a test mechanism and that they reflect a real external reality as simply an arbitrary axiom (as in Geometry). This is Truth with a capital T here. Most scientists believe in this with all their heart and soul (if they have one).
It seems to me that this assumption is accepted with blind faith. Sure it’s a broad one that permits more possibilities than “everything in the Bible is true”, but it’s an assumption nonetheless.
Therefore scientists aren’t simply tossing theories around they honestly want to know what is “really” going on.
Science is self-correcting in that by testing our theories against the world, and discarding those that don’t fit the world we experience, we come to an ever-more accurate explanation of how the world works.
However, I don’t know what you mean by “capital-T” Truth. One could say that if you performed every imaginable test of every possible theory, you would eventually have a completely accurate description of how the world and everything in it works. You could call that “Truth” – but I’m not sure you could ever reach that point. Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves.
Of course, the “chariot in the sky” example seems to make the point that there can be a completely solid theory that explains every detail of a phenomenon, that is still not “True,” in the sense that it’s not the real explanation – our science says it’s a chariot, but it’s really a huge star that we orbit. The bias in this question is that you KNOW that the chariot explanation is wrong, because you can stand outside the system and see that it is not the Truth. But, I would argue that a complete theory, one that fits all of the facts of the world, is completely isomorphic to Truth. If this hypothetical “perfect theory” is arrived at, then it IS the truth. There is no other vantage point for us, no place “outside the system” that allows us to determine if we really have the right answer or not. Our only tool is the continual testing of theory versus experience.
Well this is a great topic so I figured I’d throw in a word or two.
About the given dictionary definition of truth: I think the problem here is that the original question should be “can science ever find the ULTIMATE truth”. When I think of what is meant by “ultimate truth”, I think of the all encompassing formula/explanation/understanding of life. This is bigger than reality, bigger than one’s perception.
Thus I’m going to go out on a limb and answer the original question - “NO”. Science can’t.
Science can explain the route a stimulus takes as it travels through our perceptual system: the stimulus (light rays from a tree, sound waves, a particular smell in the air, etc.) generates a response from certain types of neurons in our sensory organs, where the stimulus is converted to an electrical signal (a voltage)and passed through a complex network of neurons via chemicals (forgive the vagueness here, it’s been awhile since I studied this, but it shouldn’t affect my conclusion)whereby it eventually reaches various nerve centers in the brain, and creates a sensation in the individual which he/she at this point can now attempt to articulate so that those attempting to study this sort of thing can better understand perception. Scientists then use electrodes to study which nerves have been activated in this process, and comparing these findings with the subjects subjective report of the sensation in the hopes of cracking the neural code of life.
However, science has been unable to explain the actual subjective experience. They can’t explain a sensation such that one whose never experienced it will understand it from the explanation alone.
What about depression? Science can observe the unusually high rate of particular neurotransmitters in a depressed person, but can you ever really understand depression from observing biological activity? What about desires, weaknesses, feeling good on a sunny day? Before I go any further, please let me make it clear that this is not intended to sound religous. This is not an argument for the existance of god. At least not in any traditional sense.
The movie “Mindwalk” (from which I take my signature quote) explores this question. Scientists can break down the world, study its pieces, reduce everything to clockwork, but can the work of Newton, Einstein, Descartes, Stephan Hawking, etc. ever explain a parent’s altruistic love for a child, the torment one goes through before committing suicide, the polar bear club? How about daredevils desire to cheat death? an artists passion to create works of art? It is in these things that lie the answers to ultimate truth.
How about the atom? Once thought the tiniest unit of existance. But as science got closer, it found smaller particles, made up of smaller particles still. You never do get to any actual particle. Instead you approach infinite nothingness. No matter how far you explore, you can always get further, explore one step closer, dissecting what you’ve found into smaller and smaller parts. Can science ever reach an end to this seemingly boundless inward exploration?
“I feel just as reduced being called a system as I do a clock.” - Thomas Harryman, Mindwalk.
“What is Truth?” – some Imperial timeserver stuck with a potentially dangerous overseas assignment
I don’t believe science is the tool needed to uncover capital-T Truth. However, if lower-case truth is the same as accuracy and precision, then science seems to be the best tool we have yet developed to reach that. Science is, perhaps sadly, mundane and utilitarian. Any attempt to find a Meaning behind the objectively observable Universe has to be done with something other than science.
Dr. Fidelius, Charlatan
Associate Curator Anomalous Paleontology, Miskatonic University
“You cannot reason a man out of a position he did not reach through reason.”
Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind. -Albert Einstein
DrF, you mean I was right?
Well, I’ll be damned!
Ok, I realize now that I should have tried to define what I meant by Truth a little more carefully. All I meant was, can we say that what is thought to be true today will be thought to be true tommorrow. In other words, truth (with a small t) becomes Truth if it can withstand the test of time. I don’t think Science has any way to say which truths will never be refuted.
Mainly I feel that this idea that Science advances by slowly getting closer and closer to some objective reality (relativity as an extension of Newtonian mechanics) is false. I gather that some people who have posted don’t suffer under this illusion, but I think that the vast majority of scientists,science students, and the general populace do. Not that we don’t have more information or better explanations than a hundred years from now, but many of the best ideas have had to push previous ones aside.
Yes science can be pretty damn useful and insightful. But it is also culturally biased, essentially unaware of its own super rational assumptions, and by and large more of a patchwork of various things that worked (temporarily)than a single continous thread.
m3:
Well, one does have to be careful. You can fool the senses; that’s how David Copperfield makes a living. But if you’re careful, and you take steps to make sure you’re not fooling yourself, and you augment your senses with carefully constructed instruments, then yes, you can accept the evidence of your senses as axiomatic. In fact you have no other reliable basis for distinguishing fact from fiction.
Believe what? That Science = TRUTH? <shrugs> Lots of different scientists out there, with lots of different philosophical and religious viewpoints. This is not a question that can be decided by popularity. As Wally points out, Niels Bohr most certainly did not hold to such a view, nor do I.
Keenan:
The “chariot in the sky” is neither solid, nor does it explain every detail of a phenomenon. For instance, it’s impossible to generalize any prediction from the “chariot” to the observed properties of the moon.
It is on this basis, from inside of the system, that we make the distinction between “chariot-ism” and Newtonian or Einsteinian gravitation. There is no outside from which stand to judge the Truth.
Kenny:
Can anything? I think you’re posing a question that is by definition unanswerable: “bigger than one’s perception.”
Science hasn’t yet created such an explanation. You would have to prove that science cannot make such an explanation, and some other thought process can.
You are mistaking reductionism for Science. Reductionism is one particular technique among many. Holism is another technique. As long as you’re making predictions that can be tested against perception, you are doing empirical Science. You don’t have to use reductionism.
Again, not yet. If there is an end in perceptual reality, why can Science not find it? If no such end exists, why must you require that Science find it?
DrFidelius:
If “meaning” is there to be found, why can’t science find it? If we create meaning, why can’t we use science to create it?
matt_mcl:
Remember that the Einstein was not a theist in the traditional sense. My understanding of his point of view leads me to believe he was referring to creativity and inspiration, both of which are most welcome in the world of Science.
m3:
Science cannot and will not. There always could be a new observation, a new paradigm (sorry JDeMobray ;)) which may give us a better explanation.
But my assertion is that no thought process exists which can offer a way to distinguish between such timeless, irrefutable TRUTH and non-TRUTH.
Of course not. I’m asserting the opposite, that there is no way to reliably find such “Truth”.
So what? Metaphysics is not decided by popularity.
You make some claims about science that need more foundation:
“It is also culturally biased.” Prove it!
“Essentially unaware of its own super rational assumptions.” What are those assumptions? Prove that they’re fundamental to Science and not opinions of various scientists.
So what? You want things wrapped in a pretty package with a bow? Ain’t gonna happen, my friend. Not with Science. It takes work, and thought and creativity. It’s not done yet.
I sucked up to Wally and all I got was this lousy sig line!
Sorry… not just opinions of various scientists.