What is science's ultimate foundation?

Great Debates
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http://phyun5.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node6.html#SECTION02121000000000000000

  1. Observe some aspect of the universe.
  2. Invent a tentative description, called a hypothesis, that is consistent with what you have observed.
  3. Use the hypothesis to make predictions.
  4. Test those predictions by experiments or further observations and modify the hypothesis in the light of your results.
  5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until there are no discrepancies between theory and experiment and/or observation.
    Science, philosophy and religeon are not the same thing. It’s like comparing apples and …I don’t know…infinity. Science is an explanation on HOW the universe works. It is useful for explaining things like an object will always fall at 9.8 m/s2 in Earths gravity. Religeon is useful for attempting to explain WHY the universe is the way it is. One is based on repeatable observation, the other is based on faith.
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It looks to me like jawdirk has been infected with post-modernism. One part of post-modern philosophy is the deconstruction of written text. This idea says that you can never know what an author means because you always read into it your biases. Of course, deconstructing post-modernists argue this endlessly in written treatises. This also known as 'sawing of the limb on which you are sitting."

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I doubt if I’ll have time to fully participate in this thread but there is one point I’d like to make.

**
False. If there are two competing theories that “contradict” each other, the proper scientific response is simply to make a new observation regarding a point of “contradiction.” That observation will agree with one theory and contradict the other.

**

This fundamentally misunderstands what proper science is trying to do. Science is about discovering a pattern in data and using that pattern to make predictions. It is not, strictly speaking, about discovering “reality” or “truth.”

For the scientist, things like Occam’s razor, are practical precepts, not philosophical principles. Scientists choose the simplest theory that explains that data because it is practical to do so. Simple theories are easier to work with than complex ones, so if a simple theory predicts the data as well as a complex one, use the simple one. Maybe invisible pink unicorns (or mimes) are somehow involved, but until their inclusion in the theory generates a different prediction, why bother with them?

One way to express this is that a difference that makes no difference, is no difference. This is, in a sense, an anti-philosophy, or at least an anti-metaphysics because it allows scientists to distinguish scientific questions from questions that are the purview of some other discipline.

For example, if a fundamentalist Christian says, “The earth was created 7000 years ago but it was created in such a way that it seems like it’s billions of years old,” the scientific response is, “Maybe so, but it doesn’t matter to me since there is no experiment that I can do to either prove or disprove your theory.” If someone says, “There are no natural laws, everything happens by the direct will of a Supreme Being,” the scientific response is, “Ok, fine. Then scientific theories allows us to predict what this being will do in any given circumstance. To an observer, this looks the same as having “natural laws” so whether your hypothesis is correct isn’t a scientific question.”

Nor are scientists (at least not wise scientists) claiming to discover ultimate truth. There are lots of perfectly good yet demonstrably false scientific theories in current use because they adequately explain the data and allow accurate predictions. Newtonian mechanics are virutually always used to calculate orbits and trajectories even though we know that Newtonian mechanics is “wrong.” The entire science of chemistry is about generating adequately predictive scientific models that are easy to use yet “false” in the sense that, whenever possible, they ignore more “fundamental realities” like quantum mechanics or particle physics.

Even the concept of the heliocentric solar system was first introduced as a theory that aided in computation rather than as a theory that was “true.” We tend to forget that the original theory of a stationary earth being circled by the sun and planets was a perfectly good scientific theory that comported with what was observed at the time. Do we observe the earth tearing around in a circle and spinning? No. It’s seems pretty stationary to us. Therefore, the sun and planets must be moving and we must be still.

Eventually, more and more detailed observations required revising this geometry to explain the observations and the concept of epicycles was invented. This introduced great complexity into the calculations that went away by using a heliocentric model.

The point here is that science isn’t properly concerned with questions of metaphysics. Whether scientific theories reflect “ultimate reality” is a meaningless question from the standpoint of science.

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Check. Relies on DanielWithrow’s second axiom, which you denied. Hmm, ob…ser…va…tion? Sounds like you rely on the third axiom here, too!

Check. First axiom.

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I don’t have time right now for full-scale participation in this thread and, even if I did, I would lack the credentials since my reading in philosophy of science is minimal. It would be nice to see jawdirk return to clarify his/her own position. So just a few points.

DavidSimmons, not all postmodernist philosophy is deconstructive though deconstruction is certainly an influential postmodern philosophy. There are postmodernist philosophical positions–Rorty’s is a good example–that articulate pragmatic solutions to the philosophical quandaries created when one rejects either God, or some other transcendent notion of divine providence, as the ultimate foundation for a philosophy of knowledge, or being, or mind, or what have you. Although we could argue quite a lot (and quite productively perhaps) about specifics, pragmatic postmodernist positions of one form or another can work well in conjunction with the kind of scientific pursuits that Truth Seeker likes to call “proper.”

TruthSeeker, I think you do a good job here of distinguishing between a certain kind of scientific practice, and philosophy. The problem is that not everyone recognizes the same distinction. Here on this very board, in the Religious Litmus Test thread, we have our very own Sam Stone arguing that science has replaced god as the ultimate source of truth in the modern world.

Now while Sam’s philosophical credentials are, to be sure, debatable, his comments give us an indication of why a philosophy of science, including postmodernist contributions to the latter, is a good thing.

My impression is that some feel that postmodernism presents a political or ethical threat to truth, or to the common good, however that may be understood. Personally speaking, I think there’s something to that position, and that’s why I try to read as much philosophy as I can and to familiarize myself, as best I can, both with postmodernist arguments and their alternatives. So in a general sense I’d say, yeah, there are some problems with an unqualified postmodernist stance (depending of course on which postmodernist stance you’re dealing with)–but the best way to address such problems is philosophically (that is, by taking part in informed philosophical debate or, at least, reading such debates).

I think it’s a mistake, though, to simply demonize postmodernist philosophy as though it were looney and had nothing valuable to offer. IMO it actually has quite a lot of value; and even if it didn’t, demonizing something one doesn’t fully understand is a meaningless and even dangerous enterprise.

Consider this. Postmodernists are sometimes perceived as threatening scientists’ ability to tell us things we need to know about the material world. Yet I’m willing to bet that if you polled the world’s postmodernists and asked them what they thought about global warming, the majority would say that, from what they’ve read, they believe it exists and that something should be done about it.

On the other side of that issue are people like George Bush and Dick Cheney who, to my knowledge, are not postmodernists, but who seem to see no compelling reason to take serious measures towards cooperating with the rest of the world to reduce emissions and so forth.

I’m guessing, in other words, that if you’re concerned about the environment you’re better off in the company of a postmodernist philosopher than you are in the hands of someone who has a vested interest in the status quo.

What I’m trying to say here is that postmodernists, by and large, are self-consciously progressive thinkers who are motivated by ethical considerations (even though they’re often very busy questioning the foundations of existing ethical positions).

Debate with them by all means. Reject their arguments if you wish. Remonstrate with them, if you think it’s important, about the political and other ramifications of their arguments.

But in doing so, make sure that you take time to understand where they’re coming from.

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eris Do you appreciate the difference between an “axiom” and a “hypothesis?”

**
Actually, Dick would be a radical postmodernist but he’s afraid of Lynne.

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Wade!

Aside from questions like the meaning behind all human beliefs or belief systems, is the short answer to the question found in the mystery of human consciousness [the essences of]?

Walrus

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My dispute was with this statement by jawdirk:

This postmodern attitude is nothing but extreme skepticism dressed up in new clothes. Carrying jawdirk’s argument another notch, I can say that he supports only what is are personally beneficial to him. And the professor from whom he heard this philosophy only supports those ideas that will get him tenure so that he has a lifetime sinecure.

Such a view, in my opinion, doesn’t do what philosophy is here for. It ultimately leads to a crabbed life in which nothing matters because it’s all one big selfish game. Philosophy was originated to try to make life better by answering some basic questions.

I’ve read Rorty and he makes a lot of sense when he questions the basis of knowledge. But good scientists have known that all knowledge is tentative for just as long as philosophers have. And besides, scientists have increased our understanding of the physical world while the philosophers after all these years (how long since the pre-Socratics, Thales, Pythagoras, Zeno et al - 2600 years or so?) are still plowing the same old ground.

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>>Any given body of data (no matter how large) will always be
>>agreeable with an unlimited number of alternative theories.
>>Invariably there are many theories that explain the exact same
>>data, and at least some of the theories will contradict each other.
>>Some of these empirically indistinguishable theories may be
>>elegantly simple and others may be outrageously complex, but
>>multiple alternatives exist for any set of data.
>>
>>When the right ad hoc hypotheses are made, the theory of the
>>moon being made of cheese becomes empirically identical to the
>>moon being rock-like. This sort of thing is not limited to ridiculous
>>theories about the moon’s composition. It’s possible to modify
>>virtually any theory so that it’s consistent with whatever data that
>>might come up.
>
>Yes, ‘alternatives’ exist. But the probablilities, based on massive numbers of other >observations, are not identical.

Glee, you almost made it sound as if you were referring to something I hadn’t already addressed. I never claimed that if theories are empirically identical then they are rationally identical. Indeed, I claimed just the opposite and used an example to prove my point. I explicitly said, “Of course, it is possible to rationally discard this absurd theory [referring to the moon being made of cheese], but the point is one cannot do this merely by pointing to the data.” And that point still stands. You need some sort of nonempirical principles if one is going to pick a theory from among its empirically indistinguishable siblings and justify the claim that the theory is correct. You mention probabilities. Unfortunately, there is that there is no rigorous logical procedure (an example of a rigorous logical procedure would be the quadratic formula or Horner’s algorithm) to determine the extent to which data confirm a theory. Ultimately, scientists instead intuitively feel how rational theories are, rather than having a precise logical method for such judgments.

Some have mistaken my position as a sort of skepticism of science. Granted, the view seems, at least on the surface, to provide shakier ground for science to operate. But science can still be a rational pursuit. Just as we have rational, though ultimately nonempirical, reason for rejecting the belief that the moon is made of cheese, so too can we rationally reject and accept scientific theories. As with many professional scientists, I too accept realism.

msmith537:

>Science, philosophy and religeon are not the same
>thing. It’s like comparing apples and …I don’t know…
>infinity. Science is an explanation on HOW the
>universe works. It is useful for explaining things like
>an object will always fall at 9.8 m/s2 in Earths gravity.
>Religeon is useful for attempting to explain WHY the
>universe is the way it is. One is based on repeatable
>observation, the other is based on faith.

Science and religion may be more similar than you think msmith537. Yes, there are differences in the topics covered, but the methods need not be as divergent as you seem to imply. For instance, how can one go about justifying one’s religious belief? One way is to point out some data that can be repeatedly exist, and show that one’s religious belief offers explanatory power. For instance, a theist can point out that nature consistently operates in highly sophisticated mathematical patterns, and say that this is because a rationally orderly God created the universe. This isn’t a rigorous proof, but it can offer some limited degree of rational support, and the philosophical principles I mentioned need to be used to pick out one belief from among it’s empirically identical siblings.
Truth Seeker:

>>Invariably there are many theories that explain the exact
>>same data, and at least some of the theories will contradict
>>each other.
>
>False. If there are two competing theories that “contradict”
>each other, the proper scientific response is simply to make
>a new observation regarding a point of “contradiction.”

That observation will agree with one theory and contradict the other is not always possible, as I pointed out in my “moon is made of cheese” theory. I can easily modify it so that it’s empirically identical. But let’s use another example. An unknown force created the universe and everything in it (fossils, memories, corpses, gray hairs, everything) five minutes ago. You can’t point to any piece of data to disprove the theory. Anything you point to, whether it be a wrinkle, tombstone, or anything else, was created five minutes ago with all its deceptive appearances. This can easily fit every piece of empirical data you can think of. It is completely empirically identical with the universe being billions of years old. Is the five-minute hypothesis rational? No. It’s absurd. But we can’t reject it merely by pointing to the data. Hence the requirement of nonempirical principles.

>>When using values to select a theory, we must have some
>>philosophical basis for believing that nature’s preferences
>>are similar to ours. And for many of these principles there
>>is no logical rule to imply their reliability. For example,
>>in picking out a theory from among it’s empirically
>>indistinguishable competitors (and when all other
>>factors are held constant), the notion that reality favors
>>simple theories over complex ones is nevertheless a
>>philosophical principle.
>
>This fundamentally misunderstands what proper science is
>trying to do. Science is about discovering a pattern in data
>and using that pattern to make predictions. It is not, strictly
>speaking, about discovering “reality” or “truth.”
>
>For the scientist, things like Occam’s razor, are practical
>precepts, not philosophical principles. Scientists choose
>the simplest theory that explains that data because it is
>practical to do so. Simple theories are easier to work with
>than complex ones, so if a simple theory predicts the
>data as well as a complex one, use the simple one.

You’ve made the fallacy of hypostatization, treating an entity (science) as if it were a person (“…what science is trying to do.”). If you were trying to convey I was misunderstanding what scientists try to do (science is an abstract concept and has no will of its own), then you are mistaken. Most professional scientists do believe they are discovering the truth about nature. For instance, they believe that there really are such things as atoms, DNA, and so forth. They don’t use such theories just because it’s convenient to describe a pattern. They accept them because they believe them to be true. But if one is going to do that, one must follow the type of method I described when picking between empirically identical theories. (Most scientists believe that the universe much older than five minutes old etc.) Given that, things like Ockham’s razor really are philosophical principles.
WJ!:

>Wade!
>
>Aside from questions like the meaning behind all
>human beliefs or belief systems, is the short
>answer to the question found in the mystery of
>human consciousness [the essences of]?

I was thinking more of a basic principle of belief. But the answer to that could conceivably lie in the mystery of human consciousness, or the essence thereof.

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** David Simmons **: *" My dispute was with this statement by jawdirk:

"So to answer the OP, the foundation of science is in social contracts. Scientists bolster the discoveries of their peers when it is personally beneficial to do so. "*

Well I have no interest in making jawdirk’s case for him, but I’d like to point out that my dispute with what you’d said was that not all postmodernism is deconstructive. What’s above is a case in point: deconstruction isn’t to do with self-interest or social contracts.

“Carrying jawdirk’s argument another notch, I can say that he supports only what is are personally beneficial to him.”

I have a feeling that if jawdirk were here he–assuming that he’s a he–would be saying that he doesn’t deny that.

" And the professor from whom he heard this philosophy only supports those ideas that will get him tenure so that he has a lifetime sinecure."

Sorry, Dave (if I may), but that just won’t fly. First of all, tenure is not a “lifetime sinecure,” thank you very much! And even if it were you’re assuming that espousing postmodernism is the easiest way to get tenure in a philosophy department these days. I rather doubt that.

In any case, the point of philosophy of science, as I understand it, is not in the least to pit the professional integrity of philosophers against the professional integrity of scientists. The idea isn’t to show that scientists are corrupt, but that scientific research–what gets done, what gets funded–is subject to variables beyond the pure quest for knowledge.

“[Such a philosophy] ultimately leads to a crabbed life in which nothing matters because it’s all one big selfish game.”

No, I think you have to get an MBA for that one ;).

“But good scientists have known that all knowledge is tentative for just as long as philosophers have. And besides, scientists have increased our understanding of the physical world while the philosophers after all these years (how long since the pre-Socratics, Thales, Pythagoras, Zeno et al - 2600 years or so?) are still plowing the same old ground.”

Oh dear! I don’t think what philosophers have in mind is a pissing contest of this sort. And anyway philosophy still plowing the same old ground for 2,600 years? I don’t think so. For one thing, Zeno was a stoic (when I come across someone arguing for stoicism on these boards–or anywhere else–I’ll send you an e-mail).
No, I think we were getting somewhere with Truth Seeker’s distinction between the object of practical science and the object of philosophy.

But I’m glad that you read some philosophy, Dave. If you’re interested in checking out what a non-postmodernist philosopher has added to human understanding in recent years, read this book.

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Well as a matter of fact what I said was that “One part of postmodern philosophy is the deconstruction of written text.” So it looks to me like you’re disputing something I never said. Deconstructionism seems outlandish to me and I might go a little overboard about is on occasion. You’ll just have to get used to it. Like I have to get used to the plain fact that my despising deconstructionism won’t make a damned bit of difference.

Not a single spark of anything except “what’s in it for me?” Radical skepticism is more widespread than I feared it was.

Hyperbole is the spice of argument. If you’re a tenured, postmodern philosophy professor I assume you work hard at it.

I don’t think it follows from what I said that I’m “espousing posmodernism [as] the easiest way.”

I don’t think that anyone would argue that scientists are all after the pure quest of knowledge. Just the same I do think that the statement “Scientists bolster the discoveries of their peers when it is personally beneficial to do so.” implies a certain amount of bad faith. It seems to me that even today, with big science and all, when one competing speculation is shown to be better than another, those who were for the one that lost out do, in fact bolster the discoveries of their peers, and I’m not sure that is “personally beneficial” to them.

Wish I’d thought to say that!

I’m probably infected by the ideas in the book The Truth About Everything by Matthew Steward, Prometheus Books. He is an Oxford Philosophy PhD. who feels that way. I’m only a dabbler in the formal study of philosophy so I’m out of my depth in academic discussions of the field. But I’m of the firm opinion that postmodernism is a bankrupt idea. If it contains the idea that we can’t communicate accurately (deconstruction) and leads people to think that everything people do is for a selfish reason then I’m sure of it. I still think this leads to the idea that nothing is worth doing because it’s all a meaningless jumble and that is pretty close to stoicism as I understand it.

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Sorry for my interminable absence.

I can see that my position does need clarification.

I’m not trying to say that science doesn’t work (that’s stupid), or that scientific discoveries arise purely through social agreements.

What I’m trying to say is that the process of science is not necessary for the results it produces. Science does produce profound discoveries, and it does result in the recording of knowledge, but to a large degree, the social practices surrounding science, including scientific method, are unnecessary – effective, but not the only thing that could be effective.

There is a myth that if one has a special sort of brilliance, and stays in our finely crafted education system, works hard, does the homework, and studies for all the exams, he has a chance of becoming one of those geniuses that makes an important scientific discovery. This myth is that the education and the science are primarily responsible for the discovery.

I say that geniuses are primarily responsible for the discovery, and they are occasionally able to benefit in some way from science.

What most scientists do is quite different from the myth of the scientific genius. Most scientists work 40 hours a week (or whatever) in order to produce new and improved consumables. These are the people who are closest to scientific method, and their work and their discoveries are intimately bound to social and economic influences. There is a range of these scientists that stretches from those with a more theoretical bent to those with a more practical bent, but their task is really to satisfy 1st world consumers. This is the meat of science.

I think a lot of innovative scientists follow a method something like this: Observe a phenomenon after 100 hours of fiddling with some aparatus and then try to duplicate it. If they succeed, they try to explain it to their friends. If that works they create an experiment and then fiddle with the experiment until the data comes out well. Then they publish a paper. Then they use the aparatus from their previous experiment and fiddle with it some more until something interesting happens, then repeat.

The key point is that the fiddling has nothing to do with scientific method, or really even with science. It has to do with desires, feelings, and keen intuitive observation. These things, in my opinion, should not be called science, because they were done before science, and they will always be done as long as people live. Many people want to claim that science in some way builds the appropriate intuition. This claim is very similar to the claim that the spiritually pure see more deeply into the mind of God. It isn’t science and it isn’t religion. It is intelligence.

But science has been very successful. Those who are trained in science really do have a leg up. They do know where to look for new things, and they are taught many important ideas such as mathematics. Intelligence isn’t enough either. It takes intelligence and a knowledge of what to think about. The knowledge, as it turns out these days, is most often recorded by scientists. But perhaps there are better methods. Soon we will discover that the scientific paper is not the best way to store information so that it is readily accessable. Soon we will discover that our education system is much too slow to be of any use to intelligent people, and that the scientific process is good but not necessarily best.

I believe that ultimately we will find that understanding what is important to people will yield better results than science, in the problem of reaping intelligence.

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I just wanted to address this specifically. I think the appropriate perspective on philosophy is that it is the infancy of new ideas and the thinking that yields a deeper and broader understanding of other subjects.

Here is an analogy. You are saying something like: it is the workers who have built all these freeways and houses and apartment buildings and skyscrapers. What do we need the children and pregant women for? They don’t build anything!

There is a pretty good case that Descartes was the father of science.

However, basically I agree with you. The important thing is the observation and recording of the physical world. That is what science provides. My point is just that it is not the only thing that could provide that.

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“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”

  • Galileo Galilei
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**
Science has no will of its own? Pull the other one! You learn something new every day. Who says pedantry is useless?

If anyone else had trouble following my figure of speech, please let me know.

**
First of all, what some scientists believe about science and ultimate reality is irrelevant. Some people believe their religions represent ultimate “scientific” truth but that doesn’t make them correct. Second, if pressed, I bet most scientists would carefully hedge as to what their theories actually say about ultimate reality. The problem is that you are using “truth” in a scientifically meaningless sense. DNA is a theory. Many, if not all, believe that DNA really exists, as I’m sure everyone reading this board does. Ultimately, however, that belief is irrelevant. It simply isn’t necessary because whether DNA really “exists” has no impact on its utility as a theory. DNA is a working hypothesis, subject to being disproven.

**
It’s not absurd and my old buddy science doesn’t “reject” it, she simply has no opinion. ‘Sci’ (that’s what we used to call her back in the hood) would say, “Is there some way to distinguish between these two theories? Do they make different predictions?” If not, – and by definition in this case they do not – which theory is “correct” is not a scientific question. From the scientific perspective, the position that the universe is as old as it appears to be is adopted as a working hypothesis because it is simpler. I may even be the only one “really” in this five-minute old universe. But remember, a difference that makes no difference is no difference. Even a solipsist can do science.

36

Yes, Truth Seeker, I do. A hypothesis is tested. An axiom is untestable. Hypothesis are formed using explicit or implicit assumptions and axioms.

You used the word contradict in the sense of opposite or incompatible. Daniel’s second axiom was that the universe is logical. This is no hypothesis, this is an underlying assumption that contradiction reveals an error.

You also mentioned the use of observation. Daniel’s third axiom was that what we observe is in some sense accurate. I challenge you to deny that axiom and go do science. Please, you’ll save philosophers a boatload of trouble.

Finally, you mentioned the use of patterns, and implied repeated patterns for the study of events. This requires Daniel’s first axiom.

37

jawdirk, can you provide anything remotely resembling a citation that suggests that most scientists sit around working 40 hour weeks trying to produce consumables? And that if they do, they call it doing science as opposed to applying science? And that the rest of us scientists sit around twiddling with various equipment until we see something, then twiddle again to make sure we see it, then dream up an explanation, then twiddle again, and eventually twiddle our way through to a paper?

38

Truthseeker, I’m pretty sure I understand the difference between an axiom (a statement assumed to be true) and a theory (a testable, falsifiable statement).

You seem to think that I don’t. Can you, therefore, suggest some experiments that test the validity of the following “hypotheses”?

Remember that your experiment can’t assume the truth of the hypothesis.

For example, when you’re trying to prove that our senses provide a reasonably accurate source of information about an objective universe, you can’t use evidence received through your senses as part of the experiment. To do so assumes that the hypothesis is true. And that’s a no-no.

I believe that some mathematician proved that for any closed system, there must be at least one statement P for which there is no proof within the system. The axioms I described above are, I think, a rough listing of the statements P for scientists. An accurate list of axioms would be much more precise and much longer.

Don’t get me wrong: I think these are great axioms to operate with. And I don’t see alternate systems like Zen Buddhism (which rejects axiom #3) providing us with SUVs and cable television: science seems unique in its predictive ability to me.

In the defense of other systems, of course, I don’t see Zen Buddhism providing us with SUVs and cable television. :slight_smile:

Daniel

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Unfortunately, no one seems to be able to agree on what the correct answers are.

Sometimes the love of wisdom is confused with the love of proving the lack of wisdom in others, and in the love of convincing others that one has wisdom. It can happen without one even realizing it.:frowning:

I think science is the attempt to describe one’s perceptions.

40

FNRFR, if you think so, please help me see it here. :slight_smile: