Most of what we do from day to day has *some *grounding in empiricism. We try something, and if it works, we keep doing it. If it doesn’t work, we abandon it and try something else. The only difference between science and daily life is that scientists are *systematic *about their empiricism.
Thought experiment #1: I print a chemistry textbook. For the most part, the content is indistinguishable from existing chemistry textbooks. The only difference is in my Appendix A, showing the periodic table. I have Rhenium in position 74 and Tungsten in position 75. Whether this is a typo or deliberate doesn’t matter. Probably some people would read the book and not even notice. If someone does notice, however, and find it strange, they can replicate the original experiments that determined the atomic numbers of Rhenium and Tungsten and they will find my statements inconsistent with those results and with other textbooks.
Thought experiment #2: I print a copy of the bible. For the most part, the content is indistinguishable from existing bibles. The only difference is in my version of the Book of Genesis, in which the creation is described as having taken place in seven days with God resting on the eighth. Whether this is a typo or deliberate doesn’t matter. Probably some people would read the book and not even notice. If someone does notice, however, and find it strange, what experiment can be done that will show an inconsistency, and I don’t just mean an inconsistency with other bibles?
In my case, it is because on some level - even if I don’t grasp every little nuance - their explanation makes sense. Also, none of it is is preached as some unalterable absolute unquestionable truth. It is presented as a theory, meaning it’s the best explanation we have now, based on what we know now.
Why specify the Bible for your experiment #2? Wouldn’t just about any history book work?
Okay, guys, this thread can go wherever it goes, but, according to Koxinga (who started this thread):
What’s your point?
History books, some of them at least, are based on artifacts and writings made at the time of the historical event. I could, for example, publish a history book that states the Battle of Agincourt was in 1514, either on purpose or through a typographical error. I can imagine the kinds of evidence that could and would challenge such a statement (carbon-dated documents describing the battle, for instance). I don’t know what could possibly challenge a claim that God rested on the eighth day.
It was an indirect reference to some of the points that **Voyager **and Der Trihs have raised about religion, as well as Bryan Ecker’s example of a chemistry textbook vs the Bible, none of which has to do with Joe Schmoe, the liberal arts graduate.
But Joe Schmoe the liberal arts graduate is perfectly capable of understanding the concepts of falsifiability I mentioned. It is perfectly reasonable not to expect him to read and understand a technical paper (and scientists can’t even do that for papers way outside their disciplines) but that isn’t necessary not to depend on authority to accept a particular conclusion. I’m sure there are liberal arts grads who take great pride in not understanding science (the kind of people C.P. Snow talked about) but that is a matter of motivation, not ability. These are the same types of clowns who bounce checks because they consider the simple arithmetic of balancing a checkbook (with a calculator) beyond them.
So, tell me again why Joe can’t understand why people accepted relativity, and why the position of Mercury was the evidence that made them do it. Plenty of liberal arts majors 90 years ago had no problem with this.
Name five of them. 
Seriously, are you merely demonstrating that most conjectures are not scientific?
They had “no problem” with what? Accepting the authority of those who proclaimed the results?
I appreciate what the OP was saying, but inevitably it boils down to the ways rational trust in credible sources is different from blind faith, and all of that serves as examples. I didn’t find much of the thread off topic; am rather enjoying actually, and am not sure what other direction it could take.
So I guess the answer is that many, and even perhaps most, Joe Schmoes, Baccalaureates. don’t just say “Einstein said so.” The stuff they don’t understand they are likely to forget, but the goal of a liberal arts college is not to fill heads with information, but to teach epistemological integrity and intellectual curiosity. If an abundance of said Schmoes find themselves siding with science, it may not be because they trust authority so much as they trust their own rational instincts and, moreover, they know to both test and verify on the one hand and keep things tentative and fornowish on the other.
All of which is instantiated by the examples offered. For who writes the textbooks but people with college degrees?
Having (in my own limited way) gone through the necessary experiments, review and challenges to have a scientific proposition accepted, I think it’s quite clear that believing that evolution, relativity or the mechanism of a myocardial infarction are valid is far different from believing in a two thousand-year-old version of a person’s mystical revelation.
In the former case, someone (typically multiple someones) have gone through the hard work to establish their theory, which has been replicated/challenged/reproven through more hard work. I don’t have to repeat it myself to know that such is the case.
It is drearily common these days for supporters of woo, stung by the quasi-religious aspect of their beliefs, to claim that evidence-minded folk “worship” some aspect or other of science. This is only true insofar as the latter respect the scientific method.
Another common ploy among the woo-prone is to cite some fringe group or isolated case study as “proof” of a claim. Come back at them with evidence that researchers in a big study out of Stanford found no basis for the claim and that a bunch of medical experts also reject it, and suddenly you’re accused of “appeal to authority”.
They’re called “authorities” for a reason. They’ve done the homework, and to a lesser extent others who cite them have done so too.
If I’m to be accused of something, I’d much prefer it be an “appeal to authority” rather than the arrogance of ignorance."
I agree with most of what you say.
Perhaps I’ll end my contribution to this thread with this: I look for evidence and research that is consistent with the modern view of science. I dismiss many religious and pseudo-scientific claims on the basis that the evidence that backs up those claims is flawed, incomplete, unsatisfactory and not compelling. However, some of the ideas of theology appear to me to be well reasoned but they go beyond the realm of science and are of little value to me. Also, I have a broad knowledge in various scientific fields, but my knowledge is not deep, so I still defer to the basic authority of the scientific community.
Unless my life is on the line. Then I want *real *evidence!
Underlined the one piece that grabbed my attention.
I’m not going to say this to slam religion, anyone’s religion.
BUT any lying asshole with an agenda can claim to have a vision or revelation. He won’t prove it, you can’t disprove it. If you even question, it is God’s Holy Word (or Cthulhu). How dare you doubt. There have been Really Bad Things done in the name of religion. Kill the infidel. God wills it. Kill the Commies. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition. Most of them were nothing more than aggression, a grab for power, a hate for someone else, whatever. It’s bullshit of the worst kind. No one dared to question the “wise holy guys”. These days, it’s mostly television preachers saying God wants you to send them money.
ORLY? Bullshit. God needs money? Like he needs a starship? I am intrigued.
If you have enough people who simply believe what the false prophet says, without question, any atrocity is possible.
It’s the unbelievers, the cynics, the ones who demand proof that are the smart ones. They will be less likely to be suckered in.
We need our nonbelievers. They are a sort of reality check for the rest of us. Science allows and tolerates them, even funds them sometimes. Extremist religion (not liberal or moderate, extremist) attacks them, either verbally, or worse.
Believe in God if you want. Disbelieve if you want. If he exists, lack of it will change that. If he does not exist, believing in him won’t change that.
If your only “argument” is to attack the other side, you had nothing.
Edited to make more sense.
I can probably find five, actually. People were excited by relativity, though they didn’t understand it, because they did understand that Einstein predicted that a whole planet was in the wrong place. I believe Einstein is used as a synonym for genius in an early Marx Brothers movie, late '20s or early '30s. And I’m sure they were not the first.
I don’t know if most conjectures are scientific or not, but scientific is not a synonym for true.
The equation in the comic is Planck’s law of blackbody radiation. It was a major breakthrough at the time.
Note: the Law can be formulated, and graphed, in terms of either frequency or wavelength.
Is that so? Well, I’ll have to take your word for it.
(After all, what else can I do?)
I believe MIT has its course on-line now. You can go through some physics classes. You can get some books. You can learn some math.
Sure it is not practical, but that’s only because we have a finite amount of time and an almost infinite amount we can learn. Kuhn noted that the reason text books exist is that the basic knowledge you need for a field has become so great that the layman can’t be expected to pick it up in any depth, unlike the case in the time of Franklin and Priestly. That’s even true when you dive down into a field, where there are specialties the layman only becomes aware of infrequently - sometimes never.
So you can do a lot - but unless you are really crazy to know the details, it isn’t probably worth it.
Well, that kind of gets to my point, doesn’t it? All sorts of laymen, many of them you see on this board, are happy to talk your ear off about expanding universes and branes and multiple universes and Schroedinger’s cat and whatever the hell – but they don’t get down into the details and really know the origin of what they’re saying. Why would they? Unless they’re fully grounded in physics and probably practicing in the field, they’ll hardly grasp the basics. Why not just go with what Stephen Hawking says and just leave it at that?
Sort of a related point–upthread, Bryan Eckers said:
That would be a perfectly relevant example, if this were the nineteenth century and the periodic table was cutting edge science. But unless you’ve got the training and the funds to understand and run your own supercollider, how does this translate into an appropriate analogy to confirm what you’ve been hearing about quantum mechanics?