# What's wrong with this definition of science? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 7, 2002, 9:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-this-definition-of-science/107685 "2002-05-07T09:30:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2002, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-this-definition-of-science/107685/141 "2002-05-17T04:37:05Z")
Sorry, **erl** , but it is not quite clear yet. I am reminded of our past exchange with universals vs particulars. Your position, as I recall it, included that something is a universal or it is a particular. Levels of abstraction and of specifity were not acceptable. Either or. Doubt or certainty. Doubt. Levels of doubt. Certainty. Levels of certainty. By degrees. Regulated. Even when we follow out a line of reasoning based on assuming some things _as if_ they were true. We hold that point of doubt unmoving, still, for the moment. We look at the doubt in front of us, and accept the results of the instrument, or of Theory B, as being _reasonably certain_. We may come back and look at it more throughly later. We may later ask, are we really measuring what we think that we are measuring, or are there other explanations for these readings? But for now, we hold our doubt at bay. It isn’t gone. It is transiently ignored like solving a set of partial differential equations. Hold x constant for now and solve for y. But x really varies. Yes, but hold it for now. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2002, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-this-definition-of-science/107685/142 "2002-05-17T10:45:35Z")
I don’t care about levels of doubt; they don’t contradict what I’m trying to say. > [@](#): > > Yes, but hold it for now. Exactly. When we are doubting Theory D there is no room to doubt theory C which preceeded it. > [@](#): > > Even when we follow out a line of reasoning based on assuming some things as if they were true. Yes! I know. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2002, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-this-definition-of-science/107685/143 "2002-05-17T12:03:44Z")
So where’s the objection to constant doubt? ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2002, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-this-definition-of-science/107685/144 "2002-05-17T13:14:52Z")
**Simultaneous** doubt. You can doubt whatever you want, whenever you want, unless you want to doubt everything at once, which doesn’t make any sense. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2002, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-this-definition-of-science/107685/145 "2002-05-20T03:05:37Z")
Perhaps I can say this better. _Constant_ doubt in Theory A is not sensible because Theory B _requires_ Theory A. It isn’t that one must doubt Theory B because it is founded on Theory A and Theory A is doubted, it is that the understanding of Theory B is based on Theory A being correct. There is no way to doubt Theory A and accept, in any way, Theory B. Now, the other part of this is another way of seeing that Theory B isn’t doubted because Theory A is, even if you reject the above phrasing. As we’ve seen in at least one specific case here, temperature, we still believe in Theory B when Theory A fails and needs to be corrected. In fact, all we really do is reinterpret Theory B in light of the adjustments to Theory A. Now, let’s consider this a moment. On one hand I say that Theory A cannot be doubted from within Theory B because Theory B requires Theory A. And yet within the same breath (or at least post ;)) I say that when we change Theory A we don’t adjust Theory B, betraying that the two are dependent. I’m pointing out an apparent contradiction before you raise objection. The contradiction is only there when Theory B _actually_ depends on Theory A: something I’m not claiming. Instead, I am claiming that our _interpretation_ of Theory B depends on Theory A. When we discovered that molecular motion is the cause of heat, we still thought thermometers were measuring heat. We just shifted our interpretation of what exactly “heat” is. But because “heat” is implicit in Theory B, whatever Theory A says heat is is contained within it form our understanding. We may always back out and say, “This is what Theory B says. Of course, Theory B is formed from Theory A, and Theory A may be doubted.” But you’ll note that any comment on Theory B is formed from _outside_ the construct of the theory! _That_ is why I reject constant doubt, because constant doubt requires simultaneous doubt, and simultaneous doubt _is not a part of the theory_. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2002, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-this-definition-of-science/107685/146 "2002-05-20T23:12:37Z")
Ah **eris** , we come back to old stomping grounds … You are so linear sometimes. Events happen simultaneously and influence each other. Nature, knowledge production, perception, are all nonlinear events. Ideas compete and influence each other as they develop. “We” (any scientific community) hold many ideas in consideration at the same time. Some of these constructs produce conclusions that are tentatively accepted and used as inputs for a “higher level” of analysis. And these levels produce results that are the fodder for a higher level of analysis yet. Doubt is retained even if tentatively restrained. The more the results of restrained doubt produce higher level constructs that resonate with the data, the more doubt is reduced in all levels below. Reduced but retained. Some of these constructs are in simultaneous competition. We hold conflicting ideas as possibilties at the same time. (“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!”) We “know” that at least all but one of them is false. All of them may be false. But as we consider each of them we tentatively restrain some doubt to see where the line of reasoning (and, perhaps, research) will take us. We follow the lines out. The path that contains the least doubt overall holds sway. For the time being. Until another line holds less doubt, either because line A has been falsified, or because new line B is less doubtful and resonates better with all available data. ---
**Author:** ![Jerevan\_Somerville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c37758/32.png) [@Jerevan\_Somerville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jerevan_Somerville)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2002, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-this-definition-of-science/107685/147 "2002-05-23T14:19:40Z")
Well, I seemed to have missed quite a lot. **Libertarian** : thanks for your answer to my question. I will have to ponder that a while, but on first glance I do not find it a satisfying answer to the word “fundamental” in my question. The idea of a “perfect” description seems to me a difference in degree, not kind. {skipping over the doubt-certainty debate between **eris** and **DSeid** , since I have said my piece on that topic} **Mr S.** : your follow-up arguments and supporting info are interesting, but again I think my points have been missed, perhaps because I haven’t been clear. I was not arguing that the development of the thermometer was, or was not, a scientific act. I was just pointing out (as quoted, in your post of 20 May, ~4:30 AM) what I saw as contradictions in your own position and arguments. My position on instrumentation has been two-fold: (1) I do not think it is necessary to a definition of science; (2) I do not think it is something separate from the human senses, but rather inter-dependent with them. And again, in your attempt to pin down a definition of science you have, it seems, already made certain assumptions about what is/is not science. For instance: > [@](#): > > …since the dawn of time, people have noticed that water changes state at a certain temperature. When it gets cold, water turns icy; when you heat it, water boils. Would we consider these observations to be “scientific?” Hardly. Then what is a thermometer, if nothing other than an attempt to quantify a “non-scientific” observation about a regularity in Nature, so as to create a sort of standard vocabulary with which differences in temperature can be articulated? Basically, you are trying to define the word by using the word. In this case, you are arguing that instrumentation is necessary to science from the assumption that endeavors without instrumentation are non-scientific. I think I made my own definition of “science” (or lack thereof) clear in my long, quasi-historical post a few weeks ago, and then in my follow-up to **Spiritus Mundi** ’s semantic objections to it. While my summary is perhaps a bit simplistic, it does frame my views on the subject well enough; to expand on them further would require me to write a book. Due to the importance of the word/concept of “science” to our history and culture, it has over time developed numerous inter-related but not identical meanings. As a result, y/our attempts to find a core definition thus far have failed because the current definitions – from any one of which a person may argue his/her position – do not all overlap at the same place. And that, I think, is all I had left to say about this. Thanks for the lively discussion. It has been extremely thought-provoking. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-this-definition-of-science/107685.md?page=7)