Jump to content

Strange

Moderators
  • Posts

    25528
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    133

Everything posted by Strange

  1. Yes. That is certainly one way of looking at it. It might be slightly more accurate to say it has some properties in common with waves and some properties in common with discrete objects ("particles") and if we measure one of those properties it looks more wave-like or particle-like, depending what we measure. I would say it is wrong to think of it as flipping between particle and wave, depending on what we measure.
  2. Remember what I said originally about science not being concerned with truth ... ? That is the problem when you try and say that a scientific theory is "more than just the calculations it yields". You have no way of testing whether either of these theories are "true" by your definition (the everyday definition) of the word. Which is precisely why the idea of science as a search for truth fell out of favour. I only introduced the idea of "scientific truth" to try and explain the difference between the way science really works and the way you think it works (or think it should work or think scientists think it works or think it should work or ... whatever). As I say, scientists may use words like "prove" or "truth" in informal conversation but they know they don't really mean anything (or, at least, that they imply a complex set of meanings that will be understood by the other party - unless the other party doesn't know how science works ...) And that may be an even better example than you think. In semiconductor physics we use the concept of holes (an absence of an electron where you would expect one to be) as real objects: they are charge carriers with measurable mass and velocity. They are an important part of [our models of] how transistors work. But it seems that they don't exist. There is: http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/82164-the-quote-function-a-tutorial-in-several-parts/
  3. Of course. There are many cases where we have multiple theories which are "true" in this sense. For example, Newtonian gravity and GR. Or classical electromagnetism and quantum theory. But these pairs of theories cannot both be "true" in your sense of the word. It is quite possible that neither is true in that sense.
  4. I wonder if he would say that to a room full of philosophers (or even biologists). (Not that I have much time for Dawkins' attitudes to religion.) Congratulations on discovering the Quote button though. I don't who "you nutters" are supposed to be. The instrumentalist and the (shhh) idealist would say that we have good reasons for believing that our theories approximate a good description of our observations. (And will quietly smirk at the naivety of the realists who claim to be rational but have an unsupported, and unsupportable, belief in some sort of untestable reality. Which is really nuts.)
  5. There is no question, just the list of assertions that you always post. If the implied question is, "am I right or wrong", then this has been answered every time you start this same thread: you are mostly wrong.
  6. Good point. And, ultimately, this is why questions of realism, instrumentalism or idealism are largely irrelevant to science.
  7. So one way of producing an answer is to estimate the volume of the urn - perhaps using a series of approximations about the radius at different heights - and then estimate the volume taken by each marble - again using a model of how they might be packed. If the model/theory is good it will give you a good approximation of the answer (to stick with your metaphor, you may only be able to test this by making a similar looking urn and filling it with marbles - if you don't have access to the actual number). A bad model/theory will give you an inaccurate result (e.g the model says 42 but when you build your replica it holds 142). A "wrong" theory will give an answer like -1 or "potato". So, yes, there are things we can observe and we use those observations to build models (size of urn and marble) that can, hopefully, tell us things about the universe we cannot observe directly (number of marbles in the urn). But where we don't have access to the underlying reality, those models may or may not describe what is really happening - however accurate they are. There is another level of metaphysics, which is whether the urn and marbles have any real existence outside our observations of them. That level of truth is unknowable.
  8. How about "neither"? Does "neither" work for you? But, seriously, ajb is right: it is not just about true or false statements about reality (those may be evidence used to support or refute a theory) it is about explaining those facts. Or, better, creating explanatory models. So, evolution happens. That is a true fact (like "gravity exists"). But the theory of evolution is a model (or a set of models) that attempt to explain the processes by which this happens. And asking whether this theory is "true" is, as the quote you posted earlier pointed out, fairly meaningless because it depends on exactly which part of the model you are talking about. At the broadest level of "population variation is acted on by natural selection" I doubt anyone (rational) would question it. However, once you get into the details of exactly which traits are inherited and how, or which factors are selective, what the relative importance of different sources of variation are, and what other factors may be involved then it becomes increasingly less clear cut as to which bits are consistent with the evidence ("true", if you insist) and which are not. That is just another silly strawman argument.
  9. So, what's the question? Or are you just using different random topic titles to post exactly the same thing as you always post?
  10. That's right. The reason that I put the word "truth" in scare quotes is because the word is rarely used in science. If it is used in popular science writing or journalism, then it is used in (roughly) the sense I suggested. This is very different from the commonly accepted sense of truth and certainly from the religious meaning. Most people would take it to mean something that is unchanging and irrefutable. If it is true today then it must be true tomorrow, and so on. (You hadn't defined what you mean by the word, so I had to guess.) Science is not like that. Scientific theories are not regarded as being "true". At best, they are provisionally correct for a limited domain of applicability, according to our current knowledge, within certain error bounds, etc. All the above caveats are (or should be) implicit in any discussion of science. They should not need tacking on to the end of every single statement. Science is also able to have multiple valid, but inconsistent, theories at the same time. Newtonian gravity and GR cannot both be "true" and yet they are both accpeted, mainstream, useful theories that are used every day. I really don't know what the point of this thread is any more. I think everyone agrees that science is not done in the caricature process you described at the beginning. So what else is there to say? You seem to have moved on to whether theories describe reality or are just models. But that was the topic of the thread this was split from. Perhaps you should take the discussion back there?
  11. Because they are denying the evidence simply because of their personal beliefs. That is the antithesis of science. But perhaps you have put your finger on part of the reason for the problem creationists have with science. They think their beliefs are "true" in some absolute sense (independent of any evidence). Whereas, the scientific definition of "truth" is more like "consistent with what we observe" (and, for realists, this will be extended to "consistent with reality"; I won't mention idealists as it might annoy you).
  12. There is a "Report" link at the bottom of every post. Feel free to use it. I do have a bad habit of letting the important points get lost in meta-comments. I apologise for that. How about addressing this: You insist science is about testing theories against reality (or maybe you are only saying that [in your opinion] most scientists think that) but if it is impossible to test a theory against reality, then that is untenable position.
  13. I did. And that is the problem with your insistence that science is about "truth"; if you can't test whether a model is just an abstraction or describes reality then how can you say that science is about reality rather than abstractions? And, of course, there is no way of testing that. (Which is why realism vs idealism is relevant.) You are the one who, when swansont pointed out that fields are an abstraction, said, "How many chemists hold that theories of molecules are nothing more than a useful calculating device? What about biologists and germs, say?" So perhaps you need to remember that these decisions can be made on a case by case basis. (But some people would say that molecules, germs and even chairs are just models of reality. Some people will insist that fields and chairs are equally real.) Based on your comment (I haven't and almost certainly won't be able to watch the video) I think he is wrong and I would like to discuss this with him. (So, yes, I would give him exactly the same treatment: tell him I think he is wrong and discuss his views.) You do love your extremes. The real world isn't like that. Really? And many other posts. Maybe the problem is that you may know a little bit about the philosophy of science but you know nothing about science or how it is actually done. This means you are like someone who read a book on first aid telling a bunch of surgeons what they are doing wrong.
  14. There have been a lot of attempts to develop theories like this (Stephen Wolfram is perhaps the most high profile). As far as I am aware none of them have achieved anything significant.
  15. Please provide an overview of your theory here. I see that your link is to a ZIP file. Anyone stupid enough to download a zip file from an unknown source on the Internet is probably not going to be able to give you any useful feedback on your theory.
  16. How is that relevant to the subject of the thread?
  17. As you provide you text in the form of graphics it is too difficult to respond to your claims. Also, you provide no sources for your data.
  18. Doesn't sound worth the time.
  19. Those who are realists (which probably includes those who have never thought about it) would say yes. Those who are idealists (which, I guess, would be most of those who have studied philosophy) would say no. I have no idea what the relative numbers are. But then neither do you! Both the realists and idealists would agree with that. (Which is why science works, independent of any metaphysical discussions as to the nature of reality.) They would disagree about what that "something" is. The realists would say they have a better model of reality, the idealists would say we have a better model of what we observe (reality beyond that being unknowable). Again, the realists would agree they have a greater truth content. The idealists would just smile smugly.
  20. So the whole purpose of this thread is for you to point out that the model that none of them proposed is wrong. With the possible exception of Popper. But did he really not know that his was an unrealistic and idealised description?
  21. I wouldn't describe it as back-pedalling. More an attempt to come to terms with the ridiculous caricature that you suggest is the way science does or should work. No one else proposed this model except you in your first post so I have to assume it is your model. That is what I and others have been trying to explain to you. It is a bit weird to have you parroting it back. Theories are not "true" or "false", they are better or worse models. Some of them become such poor models that they are abandoned. Again, you are the only one proposing this simplistic model. And you seem to be both ignorant and dismissive of what scientists actually do. That is probably a better characterization. No, that is the sort of ridiculous strawman argument you are fond of. I try and avoid those. I don't see anyone getting defensive. You seem to be one of those people who likes to think they are winding people up and getting a strong reaction (there is a word for that, on the Internet). Sorry to disappoint you; people are just pointing out that you are making some dubious arguments against a position that no one holds. You are the only one claiming that things have to be always true or always false. "I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that…"
  22. You appear to be arguing against a strawman here. No one is supporting the simplistic model that you propose (you can tell you are making a stawman argument when all those attacking you are in agreement with you ) But, of course, it is OK for you to mischaracterise the actual science with overly simplistic descriptions. So it sounds as if the earlier characterization of you arguing from a position of ignorance was accurate after all. When the results predicted by the model do not match observation. You gave the example of Newtonian gravity not correctly predicting the precession of Mercury. This shows that Newtonian gravity is "wrong" (inaccurate, incomplete) in some sense. In your fantasy version of science, this would mean that Newtonian gravity would be instantly discarded. But of course it isn't because it works (is "true") for a large domain of problems. The other possibility is that a model just cannot predict the observations at all. For example, the steady state model of the universe was eventually abandoned when there was a critical mass of evidence that it could not explain. There wasn't the silly "throw away the theory because one observation is contradictory" reaction that you argue for, but the detection of the CMB was pretty much the nail in the coffin (the straw that broke the camels back, anyway). You seem to only support that by expressing your opinions on what some scientists thought. Many of them from a period in the past when the common assumption probably was that science was an attempt to discover the truth. His point seems to be less about the nature of testing than the fact that creationists are attacking something very vague (the "theory of evolution", which is a family of interrelated theories and hypotheses) rather than focussing on specific bits of the science. This is hardly surprising as (1) few of them understand the science and (2) there isn't really any contradictory evidence.
  23. Does he present any evidence for this? Can you explain how.
  24. I can't really see any hostility. (Edit: OK, one post.) So that's a no then. You do insist on making these all-or-nothing judgments. Nothing is as black and white (or true and false) as you claim. Who said they were ignorant? You make some interesting points, even claiming that they are "provocative", and then have a hissy fit when people disagree. That's a bit sad, but never mind. It takes all sorts. Do you want to answer my question in post #37 ?
  25. What defines a millennial? Shouldn't it just be people who are 15 years old (or 14, if you are being pedantic)?
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.