Posted by bob on May 31, 2000, at 23:22:03
In reply to Re: Ahh, science, posted by Adam on May 31, 2000, at 18:01:10
(sorry, but I just HAD to click that new button ;^)
> Newton thought force at a distance was mediated by the Holy Spirit.
Who's to say it doesn't? ;^)
Again, the frontiers of physics are always an interesting place to look. It seems like every physicist who gains any sort of notoriety, whether in the general press or even just among fellow physicists, has to take a crack at Einstein's "God does not play dice" ... and it usually comes in the boorish form of "Not only does God play dice, he [blah blah blah whatever]." Personally, I think Niels Bohr got the best shot in when he replied, "Stop telling God what to do."
> I think scientists and those who critique science would do well to dispense with the whole idea of "Truth" from the outset. Doesn't Relativity, the Uncertainty Principle, and what is known of the limitations of conscious thought and memory give us enough cautionary information to realise that Truth, beyond being unattainable, may not exist?
But that's the problem with trying to nail down the capital-T Truth. First, by looking to relativity, the uncertainty principle, and such, you're looking at flawed, incomplete visions. By definition, Truth will not be found, in its totality, in them.
As for the limits of the mind, there is a branch of psychology known as radical constructivism. Some of its root assumptions: that our knowledge of reality is a construct of the mind; that as such, skepticism is the first requirement for improving one's knowledge of reality; perhaps most fundamental--and I harrangued about this a bit up above--that how we come to know is completely disjoint from what truly is (the "epistemology is not ontology" spew).
So, to say that Truth is unattainable is fairly consistent with a radical constructivist perspective--we might obtain it, in parts or in whole, but we'd have no way of telling. To say, then, that it may not exist since we cannot come to know it is to again confuse knowing with being.
That is perhaps the greatest beauty (now, how's that for an objective term?) of modern science as a way of knowing the world. Science requires that any mental model hold up to empirical testing in order for that model to have value. The testing matters more than the model, and so the model-makers may take flights of fancy in their work ... as long as the flight gets tested.
What's the objective purpose in naming model constructs things like "Truth", "Beauty", and "Charm"? How patently ridiculous is it to talk about time as a dimension in the same manner of our three physical dimensions, let alone another 6 or so that seem to have broken apart and curled up "inside" of particles, rather than the particles existing inside the dimensions?
Occam's Razor is another good one. "When two theories describe the same phenomenon equally well, the simpler explanation is correct." Says who? (Yeah, I know, William of Occam.) Where's the objectivity in that? Occam's Razor is more of a principle of the prejudices in human meaning-making than, perhaps, it may be of Reality. It's indelibly stamped upon computer/human interface design ... if something can be done with two clicks one way and with one click another, you go with the single click. (yes, it's a principle, not a reality ;^) CarolAnn brought up chaos theory -- here we have an example of complexity, not simplicity, and yet it produces elegance in the end, and we find such elegance to correlate highly with what is true.
Mind you, we're still talking about Science here.
Perhaps the most celebrated example of the application of Occam's Razor is in the overthrow of the Ptolemaic solar system by the Copernican solar system. In case you don't know the story, because Ptolemy's system put the earth at the center of it all, it required the addition of "epicycles"--circles within circles--to account for irregularities in the orbits of celestial bodies. For example, Mars doesn't just march in an orderly fashion across the sky with the constellations throughout the year -- there are times when it moves in the opposite direction of everything else (retrograde motion). In fact, as observations got better and better through more and more data taken with better and better instruments, the epicycles started needing epicycles.
The story goes that along came Copernicus, who placed the sun at the center of the solar system and, in this one act, introduced a simpler system (i.e., one without epicycles) and therefore on closer to the truth.
The truth of the matter is that the Copernican system placed the sun at the center of the universe (a believe many scientists held until the late 1800s, since nobody had introduced the idea of galaxies yet), and that it required even MORE epicycles than the Ptomelaic system.
Most of the confusion in both systems came about because their proponents insisted that celestial bodies must travel in circular orbits, since the cirlce is the mathematically simplest and purest closed path of the conic sections. After 40 years of brute calculations, Kepler finally put that all to rest by figuring out the planets travelled in elliptical orbits. No epicycles. But simplicity all the same.
The geometry of Einstein's general relativity makes those paths even simpler -- into straight lines -- but then you've got to be able to grasp the concept of curved space to be able to see those straight lines (not me, my brain hurts when I try).
Anyway, the point is that scientists still dream of simplicity (or, for some, complexity) and elegance as being equal to Truth, but there's always (at least, tho sometimes only) one skeptic around to remind them about the need for their dreams to match with empirical evidence.
Point within a point: science, being a human endeavor, is value-laden. Brute data is objective. Interpretation, again, is value-laden. Humans have many systems of knowing besides science. That they don't all rely on brute data to keep us "grounded in reality" is to our great benefit ... particularly since the day we received the brute data on the efficacy of atomic weapons fifty-five years ago.
Enough ramblin' for one night ;^)
bob
poster:bob
thread:34863
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000526/msgs/35454.html