Forums → WEPR → What is Science?
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Hello!
Most of the threads I have made regarding scientific topics have failed because we all come from different backgrounds, making it hard to find a common topic we can actually debate about. But, looking over the types of people the post in the WEPR, I still feel like there is a general interest in science, so, following Moegreche's lead, this is going to be more of a philosophical discussion.
Feel free to join in even if you have no formal scientific education, everyone's opinion can contribute something worthy here. This is intended to be more of an opinion based thread, I'm interesting in what other people think about science. Feel free to make a new thread, however, if you want to talk about how science is different from religion. While it might come up here and there in this topic, religion is really beyond the scope of this thread.
Okay, now that you've read the fine print, lets get down to business. The first questions I would like to address are these:
1) Where do you think science comes from?
2) What is a typical scientist? How do you think one becomes a scientist?
I would to focus on current science for these questions, by the way. Current being the last 20 years.
- 83 Replies
But what binds elements together, the principle they run by, cause and effect of every energy substance that has existed longer than earth then no science has existed since the big bang. Writing down an equation or observing of a substance is not the extent of science.
That would be the natural world that we use science to learn of, or if you like the learning of those things is science ie knowledge.
Is there any way in principle to directly verify this claim? As a theory, it might offer some incredible explanatory power but the basic claims that support it seem far out of our reach.
Even if it wasn't we aren't limited to direct observation. We can also use indirect observations. What we are doing with science is creating workable models that approximate reality to the best of our ability.
A way to look at it would be if we had a model toy car. We want to make that toy model as accurate as we can to the real car it's modeled after. So as we gain more details on the real car we can improve how accurate our toy model reflects the real thing.
It makes more sense then the atheist version, the universe always was, and randomly, even though nothing AT ALL had happened for an infinite amount of time, it started expanding (because if there had been actions then all the heat would have been wasted as each action releases a small amount of heat that cannot be re-accessed)
No one but the strawman is saying that.
Random question: Is it universal for atheists to accept science or is it just conventional?
No one but the strawman is saying that.
"superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man", and to refute it,"
In order for the Universe to exist now, without a God acting upon it, It has to have existed for an infinite amount of time.
But since the laws of the universe cause every action to release a small amount of heat, in order for the universe to have existed forever, nothing can be allowed to happen.
"because isolated systems spontaneously evolve towards thermodynamic equilibrium, which is the state of maximum entropy."
So therefore, without an outside force acting upon it, what is often classified as a deity, the Universe would've reached maximum entropy â years ago.
~~~Darth Caedus
So therefore, without an outside force acting upon it, what is often classified as a deity, the Universe would've reached maximum entropy â years ago.
No it wouldn't have. If you would like to continue on this I would suggest we take it to a new thread or perhaps the Atheist/Theist thread.
Random question: Is it universal for atheists to accept science or is it just conventional?
No it's not universal. Atheist is just a single position on a deity. You will find many atheists who do accept scientific claims though.
Okay, time to enter the fray. I'll try to keep the snarkiness locked up tight where it can't hurt anyone.
Random question: Is it universal for atheists to accept science or is it just conventional?
Is it universal for forum users to completely disregard the intent of a thread and just post whatever they feel like?
Woops looks like some snark got out, lets try it again...
Science isn't something that is really accepted or rejected.That's not how it works, which means your question doesn't make sense. If it did make sense, the answer would be "no" because practically nothing is universal.
Well it is no wonder it feels like I am giving an answer to the wrong question, I am. Well in that case, the question itself is non-explicit. Science is science though. But if you look at the question "What is Science" you'd expect the actual interpretation.
I don't know about that. I intended the question to be more of a poll, that is, the point of the question was not find out an answer, but to see how different people responded. Personally, I would agree with HahiHa's answer: science is a process. It is a way of generating data, and then deriving concepts and conclusions from the data. And as such, it involves all the things HahiHa mentioned.
Even the question "Where do you think science comes from?" can't refer to the scientific community. The correct question referring to such would be "What do you think science does for people?" or "How does the scientific community effect the world?".
Both your questions are very good, and if this thread continues to survive I wouldn't mind if you asked them again at a latter point (not right now, if I may ask, as I think there is more to get out of the topic at hand). My original question wasn't worded very well, though the idea behind it is somewhat different from the two you proposed. But, we've more or less moved passed the original topics I came up with, and are now discussing the role of replication/reproduction (in the scientific methods sense, not the biological sense).
Okay, back to the good stuff.
First of all, Mage's article was really really good and everybody should read it. Clearly the author was after my own heart. Indeed when I was writing my previous post I used both replicatebility and reproducibility, and it felt wrong somehow.
For those who lack the time to read the article, the gist of it was basically that the results of a study should be reproducible, but it is not as important that the actual experiment can be replicated. The author actually makes a stronger claim, saying that more evidence is generated when results are replicated from a dissimilar study, as this shows that the results are independent of the study methods.
Are we going to reach a point where hardcore physics is simply theoretical and unable to be supported by experimental physicists? If so, what would this say about the conversation so far regarding reproducibility?
Interestingly, Mage's article also introduces an historical example that deals with the measuring of the speed of light. By using some very clever methods, researchers back in the day were able to determine that light was not infinitely fast, even though they lacked the instruments necessary to measure light speed. I would say that science is more limited by human cleverness than technological advances. Just because it may be impossible to conduct a direct experiment involving strings, it may be possible to indirectly study them. By attempting to reproduce results from a variety of indirect studies, you could kind of "triangulate" the actual result.
Is it universal for forum users to completely disregard the intent of a thread and just post whatever they feel like?
I should have expected that. I really should have. I'm sorry anyway.
Science isn't something that is really accepted or rejected.That's not how it works, which means your question doesn't make sense. If it did make sense, the answer would be "no" because practically nothing is universal.
By "universal," I meant: Do all atheists believe the human-forged ideas of science by default? I could have worded that differently, and even that wording sounds odd. But that question has been answered and I'm going to try to make up for my idiocy by participating in this thread the correct way.
It's funny - I was thinking about this very claim earlier today. I'm wondering if we are reaching certain boundaries regarding what we can know empirically. So let's suppose that M-theory is correct and the universe is composed of tiny one-dimensional strings with different vibrational patterns. Is there any way in principle to directly verify this claim? As a theory, it might offer some incredible explanatory power but the basic claims that support it seem far out of our reach.
I don't know much about this. Just a forewarning. Also I like to ramble.
Short answer: I don't think we can know.
Long-ish answer: I'm starting with what HahiHa said here:
I'm just saying our scientific community has the potential to unveil it all, even if it probably will collapse with our society long before it ever reaches that goal.
I don't think we can know because society will go away and with it all of our amazing discoveries. But that got me thinking: What if we somehow had an unlimited timeframe and nothing catastrophic happened to us as we were doing this stuff? Would we eventually figure this out? If you ask me, figuring this out would basically unlock the secrets behind the curtain of everything, because M-Theory essentially demonstrates an explanation of how everything would work. Obviously COMPLETELY disproving or proving it (by dis/proving it I mean 100%, every situation, all the time, and not that 99.99999999% theory stuff) would lead to us figuring EVERYTHING out, or at least a solid way to figure everything out, wouldn't it?
But that brings us back to HahiHa's original point: the potential of humans figuring everything out. Do we really have the potential to do that? I mean, I'm pretty sure we don't have the potential to figure out if it's possible to reach Absolute Zero. I think eventually we could 100% rock-solid disprove it, but I don't know how. We're 99.99999% sure it's impossible, but could we somehow disprove it 100% of the time?
And then that more or less leads to Mage's article. Do we really need to be able to disprove it 100% of the time? Could we just try it once for the near-impossible stuff, confirm it and move on?
Just because it may be impossible to conduct a direct experiment involving strings, it may be possible to indirectly study them. By attempting to reproduce results from a variety of indirect studies, you could kind of "triangulate" the actual result.
This is exactly what I was trying to get at earlier.
because M-Theory essentially demonstrates an explanation of how everything would work.
Before M-theory we had five different string theories. Each of them mathematically were demonstrated to be correct. Now obviously this left us with a problem since we had five competing theory that all appeared to be correct. What M-theory did was unify all five theories. As such it's sometimes called the theory of everything.
A true theory of everything gives full explanation and links together all physical phenomena. Much like how M-theory unified the five string theories. In actuality we will probably end up with multiple theories that can compliment and work with each other giving us a bigger and bigger picture as each is developed and refined and new ones are formed.
Obviously COMPLETELY disproving or proving it (by dis/proving it I mean 100%, every situation, all the time, and not that 99.99999999% theory stuff)
It wouldn't be functioning as a theory then. A theory has to remain falsifiable to allow for modification and to allow for it to make predictions about the natural world. This is part of the utilitary nature of theories.
Before M-theory we had five different string theories. Each of them mathematically were demonstrated to be correct. Now obviously this left us with a problem since we had five competing theory that all appeared to be correct. What M-theory did was unify all five theories. As such it's sometimes called the theory of everything.
A true theory of everything gives full explanation and links together all physical phenomena. Much like how M-theory unified the five string theories. In actuality we will probably end up with multiple theories that can compliment and work with each other giving us a bigger and bigger picture as each is developed and refined and new ones are formed.
It wouldn't be functioning as a theory then. A theory has to remain falsifiable to allow for modification and to allow for it to make predictions about the natural world. This is part of the utilitary nature of theories.
This is probably naive of me asking, but what if we eventually created a master theory comprised of smaller theories that infinitely explained everything? Is that even possible, and at that point would it be possible or even necessary to transfer everything into laws? As far as I know, laws are indestructible explanations for physical phenomena, right? That was what I was trying to get at, more or less.
but what if we eventually created a master theory comprised of smaller theories that infinitely explained everything?
Theory of everything.
Is that even possible
Some say yes, some say no.
Is that even possible, and at that point would it be possible or even necessary to transfer everything into laws? As far as I know, laws are indestructible explanations for physical phenomena, right?
Theories don't become laws. They are separate things. A law is a concise description of an action or set of actions. In contrast to a theory which is an explanation of related facts. They do share commonalities in that we can use both of them to make predictions about the natural world and they are both supported by observation and experimentation. A law can be made obsolete with new data.
No it wouldn't have. If you would like to continue on this I would suggest we take it to a new thread or perhaps the Atheist/Theist thread.
It can fit here, as we moved away from the athiest/theist part in to science. (sorta)
the way i see it, only a few options are possilbe.
universe existed for â years, without anything happening, until outside force acted upon it.
universe existed for a finite amount of years, and was created by an outside force
big bang changed the laws of the universe and/or completely reset entropy.
~~~Darth Caedus
It can fit here, as we moved away from the athiest/theist part in to science. (sorta)
Well... no.... This thread (if you've read the first post) is intended to be about the process of science itself, not scientific topics or theories. The whole m-thoery thing was initially brought up not to discuss its merits or whatever, but as an example of how a scientific discipline could reach an "end".
In actuality we will probably end up with multiple theories that can compliment and work with each other giving us a bigger and bigger picture as each is developed and refined and new ones are formed.
Very well put. This also, in a way, answer's Salvidians modified "do atheists believe in science" question. Most (all?) of the big, well known scientific "theories" that people like to throw around (for instance, evolution) aren't really one concise thing, but actually a general "icture" painted by a lot of separate theories, made by many different people at different times. Furthermore, one not need accept all of the individual components to be able to see the larger picture. In time, some of the components will be disproved and switched out or modified, and the big picture will be repainted slightly. Sometimes some of the components are actually contradictory or redundant. So it goes.
That's kind of my problem with this theory of everything. I get its really a semantic thing, but come on. Everything? More like a unification of a few very specific concepts in physics that a minority of scientists actually understand. Where does genetics fit in? Plate tectonics? Ecology? Nowhere? Then its not a theory of everything. Science is mostly NOT physics. If M-theory were to be proved, most scientists I know would say "neat" and then go back to counting pollen.
It can fit here, as we moved away from the athiest/theist part in to science. (sorta)
I see it like aknerd... no it does not fit in here.
Where does genetics fit in? Plate tectonics? Ecology? Nowhere? Then its not a theory of everything. Science is mostly NOT physics. If M-theory were to be proved, most scientists I know would say "neat" and then go back to counting pollen.
Ah, but here we come to the idea that basically, everything is physics. In the end. Plate tectonic is relatively easily explained with the physical dynamics of our planet (using geology too, component of stones etc. which comes down to physics on a molecular level). Biology is more complicated but eventually it boils down to microbiological processes, molecules, and if we keep going smaller we end up in the smaller physical domains of study.
I could imagine it ending on a theoretical level where we only have one absolute smallest particle/thing, that in the simplest model has two states. So a binary system. It would build local differences, which create local disturbances and reactions on a higher level, and on a higher level again, etc. etc. Because after all, most of our matter boils down to the Periodic System, which boils down to the same building blocks in different numbers, you know what I mean.
Hit submit too soon...
Fazit of it all, if it is really something like a binary system in the end, or even slightly more complicated, we could explain everything as a derivative of the interactions of those smallest particles.
Of course, from a practical aspect, different branches of science would still use different approaches, calculations, methods, which works better in day-to-day research. You'd almost need a planet-sized computer to compute everything with only one master equation.
It can fit here, as we moved away from the athiest/theist part in to science. (sorta)
if you wish to continue on this topic create another thread. I will be happy to get into more detail there.
Science is mostly NOT physics.
This is the only part of that I didn't follow on. How is the study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world (science), mostly not about the natural science involving the study of matter (physics)?
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