The Limits of Science

[Hjarloprillar]

Schopenhauer on other hand laughed at the 'elite'
He wrote philosophy in plain English.. and the 'philosophers' vilified him for it.

A trieste of pure excrement by Kant
H0w can i justify mocking a ''great' well he was not so great
He was just a man.

Gink more like you will come . by the hundreds.
you run now and you cant come back.
and there are only so many forums...
fight or run
so tirering.. im going to watch quartermass in the pit again.. then when worlds colide.
the old films are so muchmore than the trash we find in our day

[Ginkgo]

Schopenhauer on other hand laughed at the 'elite'
He wrote philosophy in plain English.. and the 'philosophers' vilified him for it.

A trieste of pure excrement by Kant
H0w can i justify mocking a ''great' well he was not so great
He was just a man.

Gink more like you will come . by the hundreds.
you run now and you cant come back.
and there are only so many forums...
fight or run

I am here to educate. I am here to learn. What about you?

[Hjarloprillar]

Schopenhauer on other hand laughed at the 'elite'
He wrote philosophy in plain English.. and the 'philosophers' vilified him for it.

A trieste of pure excrement by Kant
H0w can i justify mocking a ''great' well he was not so great
He was just a man.

Gink more like you will come . by the hundreds.
you run now and you cant come back.
and there are only so many forums...
fight or run

I am here to educate. I am here to learn. What about you?

the same. but i have to go... i need time away from arguement and thought.

[Ginkgo]

Schopenhauer on other hand laughed at the 'elite'
He wrote philosophy in plain English.. and the 'philosophers' vilified him for it.

A trieste of pure excrement by Kant
H0w can i justify mocking a ''great' well he was not so great
He was just a man.

Gink more like you will come . by the hundreds.
you run now and you cant come back.
and there are only so many forums...
fight or run

I am here to educate. I am here to learn. What about you?

the same. but i have to go... i need time away from arguement and thought.[/quote

I can relate to that. Best of luck. And I mean that in all sincerity.

[skakos]

The problems with the DNA and the wrong arguments used in this thread are:

1. No one is talking about fairies or dragons or teapots. When someone speaks of "this must have a designer" it does not mean that he makes any claim regarding the traits of that designer. So don't invent strawman arguments out of nowhere.

If we use Russell's teapot in relation to science it is important to keep in mind that absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. As far as science is concerned this is not tantamount to saying that this is strong evidence that disproves the hypothesis.

The onus is still on science to come up with the necessary evidence. However, when "someone" says that the lack of transitional evidence of fossils disproves evolution then they mistaking believing this is conclusive evidence. This is an argument from ignorance. It is an argument from ignorance because there is always tendency to pick some aspect of science( biology, astronomy, cosmology, chemistry) that cannot explain the theory satisfactorily as a means to abandon science in favour of pseudo-science that provides an out of nowhere solution for real science in terms of a God of the gaps explanation.

Indeed, absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence.
And we must always keep in mind that given that science uses some very LIMITED ways of reaching the truth, not everything can be discovered by it...

[skakos]

Yes, but "any theory" doesn't try to prove "everything." In other words, there is no one axiom that claims to be able to prove everything.

I wish all scientists had the same humility that you have...

[skakos]

So far all our technology WORKS

Every time.
It is based in what i believe.
You say we build a thermonuclear weapon and detonate it and
---------------------------
All we can be aware of is that one event (a) is usually followed by event (b) There is no logical necessity that shows one event should be followed by its constituent effect.

---------------------------

the weapon explodes causing no effect?
That the weapon does not explode but the effect occurs?'

Do you fly i planes.. cause GE turbines produce zero thrus.

your logic is illogical.

proven by fact that you will get on airplane to fly to where-ever.
that your iphone WORKS.
That if you eat a huge curry you will take a titanic t=dump

metaphysical
Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms

What is there?
What is it like?

----------------------------
What a stupid way to describe Reason

I have a question for you: Do you believe our current theory of physics and particles will ever change?

Well, it is a kind of rhetorical question: THEY WILL CHANGE!
This is what scientific theories do! Change!

And guess what: When they do, the iPhone will STILL work!

Does that tell anything to you?

[Arising_uk]

I have a question for you: Do you believe our current theory of physics and particles will ever change?

Well, it is a kind of rhetorical question: THEY WILL CHANGE!
This is what scientific theories do! Change!

And guess what: When they do, the iPhone will STILL work!

Does that tell anything to you?

Yes, that theories in Physics and Maths, in the main, don't change but are relativised to local contexts. So Euclid's geometry was not wrong but localised to the plane, Newton was not wrong but localised by distance, the theory of electromagnetism and its consequent technologies will be localised by size and thats why your iPhone will still work. Its why we don't use Einstein to lob shells.

I think it wrong to think that scientific theories change per se and willy-nilly, as though there is a historical necessity for such change. But am open to be convinced otherwise as I quite liked Feyerabend and Kuhn.

[Felasco]

The difference I'm pointing out is the religious faith that accepts a 'God' with zero evidence and the faith of confidence that has at least some evidence.

The religious rarely if ever base their views on zero evidence. They instead build their beliefs upon authorities and experiences that others don't find credible.

An example...

We typically associate a high degree of order with an intelligent source. If we land on a new planet and find a complex machine-like object already there, we'll assume that object was created by some intelligent species. Religious people observe the order of reality, and assume an intelligent source.

Another example...

An obscure Palestinian carpenter from 2,000 years ago is still the best known person in the history of Western culture. There's not a single philosopher or scientist etc who has so broadly and deeply engaged the human mind. Some people (not me) find this remarkable story to be credible evidence of something beyond random chance.

I'm not attempting to prove anything here about God, only that the religious belief doesn't arise from nothing.

[Arising_uk]

The religious rarely if ever base their views on zero evidence. They instead build their beliefs upon authorities and experiences that others don't find credible.

An example...

We typically associate a high degree of order with an intelligent source. If we land on a new planet and find a complex machine-like object already there, we'll assume that object was created by some intelligent species. Religious people observe the order of reality, and assume an intelligent source.

And if we land on that planet and find plants and animals we don't assume a 'God' made them.

Another example...

An obscure Palestinian carpenter from 2,000 years ago is still the best known person in the history of Western culture. There's not a single philosopher or scientist etc who has so broadly and deeply engaged the human mind. Some people (not me) find this remarkable story to be credible evidence of something beyond random chance.

That'll make Marx at the very least a secular messiah then, remarkable. Of course theres always Michael Jackson as well.

I'm not attempting to prove anything here about God, only that the religious belief doesn't arise from nothing.

I didn't say it did. I said theres zero evidence for the existence of a 'God' and by this I mean "show me one". My take is it arises from being told about it before one can reason but I accept that its driven by our mortality.

[skakos]

I have a question for you: Do you believe our current theory of physics and particles will ever change?

Well, it is a kind of rhetorical question: THEY WILL CHANGE!
This is what scientific theories do! Change!

And guess what: When they do, the iPhone will STILL work!

Does that tell anything to you?

Yes, that theories in Physics and Maths, in the main, don't change but are relativised to local contexts. So Euclid's geometry was not wrong but localised to the plane, Newton was not wrong but localised by distance, the theory of electromagnetism and its consequent technologies will be localised by size and thats why your iPhone will still work. Its why we don't use Einstein to lob shells.

I think it wrong to think that scientific theories change per se and willy-nilly, as though there is a historical necessity for such change. But am open to be convinced otherwise as I quite liked Feyerabend and Kuhn.

No. Newton's theory was wrong. There is no "field" now. Just curved spacetime. And the example of Euclidian geometry is not an actual example: you can invent any geometry you want by simply changing axioms - Mathematics do not have a very good relation with "reality" (if such thing even exists). My point is that science provides models. Models to describe the things we see. The theories behind these models have nothing to do with "Reality" per se. For example in reality we have lines. It does not matter if they are parallels or not. If they are Euclidian or not. The lines do not care for our models. They just "are".

[Kuznetzova]

No. Newton's theory was wrong. There is no "field" now. Just curved spacetime. And the example of Euclidian geometry is not an actual example: you can invent any geometry you want by simply changing axioms - Mathematics do not have a very good relation with "reality" (if such thing even exists).

Except you have already demonstrated your misunderstanding of Godel's Theorems. Don't respond to me here regarding this topic. Go here and we will really break things down and get our hands dirty. viewtopic.php?f=12&t=10934

My point is that science provides models.

Except this doesn't follow from what you typed directly before it.

For example in reality we have lines. It does not matter if they are parallels or not. If they are Euclidian or not. The lines do not care for our models. They just "are".

You are confusing mathematics with science.

No. Newton's theory was wrong. There is no "field" now. Just curved spacetime. And the example of Euclidian geometry is not an actual example: you can invent any geometry you want by simply changing axioms - Mathematics do not have a very good relation with "reality" (if such thing even exists). My point is that science provides models. Models to describe the things we see. The theories behind these models have nothing to do with "Reality" per se. For example in reality we have lines. It does not matter if they are parallels or not. If they are Euclidian or not. The lines do not care for our models. They just "are".

In this post you have put the word, "reality", in scare-quotes two times. And in the same paragraph you put this little weird disclaimer: (if such thing even exists)
Are you suggesting science is limited because there is no such thing as reality? Are you suggesting that evidence measured in the physical world is useless and should be ignored because there is no real world out there? Are you a solipsist, skakos?

[Arising_uk]

No. Newton's theory was wrong. ...

About what? Its still used to today to lob objects around and plot velocities, etc, it may well be an approximation but for blunt large scale things it works well enough to be right.

There is no "field" now. Just curved spacetime. And the example of Euclidian geometry is not an actual example: you can invent any geometry you want by simply changing axioms ...

Yeah, Euclid's ones and the axiom that changed was the parallel postulate, mainly because this was the one that was not clearly proved by Euclid in the way all his other ones were.

- Mathematics do not have a very good relation with "reality" (if such thing even exists). My point is that science provides models. Models to describe the things we see. The theories behind these models have nothing to do with "Reality" per se. For example in reality we have lines. It does not matter if they are parallels or not. If they are Euclidian or not. The lines do not care for our models. They just "are".

What do you mean by a line in reality?

I agree with you and Kant that there is a noumena. So the reality is phenomena and as such I think the models and theories get closer to this reality by being more useful in predicting its behaviour, hence science and maths are so far the best ways we appear to have of finding the 'truth' 'behind' phenomena.

[Hjarloprillar]

The difference I'm pointing out is the religious faith that accepts a 'God' with zero evidence and the faith of confidence that has at least some evidence.

An obscure Palestinian carpenter from 2,000 years ago is still the best known person in the history of Western culture. There's not a single philosopher or scientist etc who has so broadly and deeply engaged the human mind. Some people (not me) find this remarkable story to be credible evidence of something beyond random chance.

I'm not attempting to prove anything here about God, only that the religious belief doesn't arise from nothing.

I'm a historian.. and the only recorded evidence for jesus outside the bible is of a wandering "rabi"

maybe you should re-evaluate what you define as evidence?

[skakos]

No. Newton's theory was wrong. There is no "field" now. Just curved spacetime. And the example of Euclidian geometry is not an actual example: you can invent any geometry you want by simply changing axioms - Mathematics do not have a very good relation with "reality" (if such thing even exists).

Except you have already demonstrated your misunderstanding of Godel's Theorems. Don't respond to me here regarding this topic. Go here and we will really break things down and get our hands dirty. viewtopic.php?f=12&t=10934

My point is that science provides models.

Except this doesn't follow from what you typed directly before it.

For example in reality we have lines. It does not matter if they are parallels or not. If they are Euclidian or not. The lines do not care for our models. They just "are".

You are confusing mathematics with science.

No. Newton's theory was wrong. There is no "field" now. Just curved spacetime. And the example of Euclidian geometry is not an actual example: you can invent any geometry you want by simply changing axioms - Mathematics do not have a very good relation with "reality" (if such thing even exists). My point is that science provides models. Models to describe the things we see. The theories behind these models have nothing to do with "Reality" per se. For example in reality we have lines. It does not matter if they are parallels or not. If they are Euclidian or not. The lines do not care for our models. They just "are".

In this post you have put the word, "reality", in scare-quotes two times. And in the same paragraph you put this little weird disclaimer: (if such thing even exists)
Are you suggesting science is limited because there is no such thing as reality? Are you suggesting that evidence measured in the physical world is useless and should be ignored because there is no real world out there? Are you a solipsist, skakos?

Disagreeing with me does not mean that I have "shown" that I do not understand something. The incompleteness theorem is all too simple. If you do not see that it poses any limitations to the all-mighty Science then this is not really my fault. Hope Science will someday provide you with all the answers you seek.

Reality is a subjective things, as far as each and every one of us perceive it. There "must" be a "Reality" somewhere, but the only thing for sure is that only philosophy and certainly not science with its models (yes, science created models - I said it, why should it derive from my previous post?!?).

In any case, believing in the power of Science while having in front of you the subjectivity of our senses and limitations like the Incompleteness Theorem, makes you a true Believer. Practice makes perfect.