What is this "science" of which you speak? Geoff: OK, first off - no running to find a dictionary (either printed or online) to post a definition. This thread isn't here as a place to argue about what science is and isn't. It's about what people think it is (and isn't). On Saturday I was present when someone accused science of being: - a religion - a conspiracy - a lie - a way of spreading communism - made up as it goes along OK, that last one is actually fairly accurate, but with one hell of a negative spin on it.  franklin1950: to me science is the search to discover . and to apply what is found . scientific discovery is not the villan . politics , special intrest groups , sources of finance and others control the direction and use.  StuckInTheSixties: Science is the open-minded search for the explanation of how everything works based upon the best, currently available empirical evidence.  Morsy: Science is designed to discover information about the natural world. The aim of science imo is to collect facts (data). It is continually evolving as new scientific studies find new data.
AnnaCC: i'll go with what karma posted. science is the rigorous study of evidence. science should be a way of life. i think, therefore i am. Geoff: Perhaps the wording I chose for the title is having the effect of deterring the nutcases. I'd have expected at least one negative comment by now.  hitsugaya252: I don't think you'll find one either geoff. Holding a scientific device to run internet and critisizing it? Zoey234: Universes, Multiverses and Hyperverses; Fermions, Barions and Mesions - Science does not remove the Terror of the Gods.  MrSteveA67: One problem seems to be that people ignore the scientific method and call some conclusion scientific and seem to believe science is like democracy. The scientific method requires observation of some phenomenon, and observation requires oneself be present. Hence the claim that science is "objectively" true is false except to whatever extent people can agree to treat something as objectively true (but truly, the only verifiable scientific fact about that is that someone appeared to agree). It appears to boil down to science being simply ones own beliefs and experiences regarding them, though hopefully they're of some form that appears to be reliable, consistent and reproducible. There's really nothing in science that requires agreement between people to exist ... whether or not two people happen to agree upon something, in itself could be considered to be scientific evidence of something (an apparent agreement). If a news article claims that 50,000 scientists agree upon something, the true scientific observation is just that there was a media article claiming that 50,000 "scientists" agreed upon something. To whatever extent other implications of that prove to be true would remain to be seen, though one might say that if most every news article read said the same thing, then there might be some confidence in a manner of how news is reported and that could be considered something directly and scientifically verified, with high confidence, for oneself ... whether or not that something about which those claims were made could be verified first hand, is a different subject and in order to verify what consistency the news has of reporting facts could itself be considered to be something worthy of scientific scrutiny. In the wrong context, most any statement could be considered false though. Everything has meaning within a context and it's the contexts and assumptions that give things truths or create an appearance of conflict. There's really nothing to be gained by trying to say something is truthful or has some additional form of credibility or reliability, beyond the fact that someone is trying to imply that there exists such. For example, if someone says "This statement is a lie", it could be interpreted as a paradox, but that only arises if one attempts to interpret the statement as a simultaneous and self-reflecting truth, but there is nothing paradoxical about the fact that someone could make such a statement - it's simply a sentence that needs hold no meaning beyond being a reference in memory. Here's something along similar lines. In the below image, the dancer can be seen to spin in either direction and it seems real "out there", but there's actually no information in the image itself as to her spinning specifically either direction ... that context is "internally" provided and projected into the environment. She's really spinning neither or both directions, depending upon the context and that's similar to how quantum mechanics shows statistical wave collapses that depend upon a conscious interaction to provide. (With some practice, you can control which direction she's seen to spin) Geoff: hitsugaya252 - The encounter which prompted this thread was not made online, but in a pub. With someone who refused to consume alcohol. Which in itself should have been a warning that they were a weirdo. Geoff: Steve, your entire post - and in fact every post of yours that I've ever read can be summed up with one of your closing lines: "quantum mechanics shows statistical wave collapses that depend upon a conscious interaction to provide" If you still hold to the Copenhagen interpretation, then it explains a lot of your view of modern science. Schrödinger himself thought that the Copenhagen interpretation was a crock. Edit - Typo Geoff: And just so you all know, science is nothing more than a process of testing and (if necessary) rejecting hypothesis. You come up with an in idea of how some aspect of the universe works (or if you're ambitious - the whole universe), you then find some way to test your hypothesis. Sometimes this hypothesis comes from study of other research, occasionally in an entirely separate field. If the evidence supports your hypothesis then it is ripe for further study. If the evidence does not support your hypothesis, you either adjust the hypothesis and try again, or you reject it. A hypothesis becomes accepted if enough of your peers consider it to be consistent with available evidence. If new evidence comes to light, old hypotheses are re-examined in the light of this evidence. Ergo: Science is not subjective. Science is not a massive repository of knowledge. And science is most definitely not a religion. //Edit - Typo Geoff: "I don't like scientists on my committees. They never stand firm on any position. Give them a little more information and they change positions like that **snaps fingers**" - Reported (and paraphrased) comment made by a former dean of Warwick University (the source claimed it was made in jest). //Edit - typo MrSteveA67: I simply showed a direct example of how internal, consciously controllable/alterable states can be placed into an external context that can be detected. The 'raw information' of the spinning woman doesn't actually have her spinning either direction - the mind interprets the image to be a woman and the image is suggestive of a 3-D rotation so the mind interprets her to be spinning, which would have a depth component if we had distance information, but there's actually no depth image in the picture. If you believe there is, can you point out how to look at the image and determine which direction "she"'s spinning? If you believe that because half the people might agree with you at any moment, that means your "physical experiment" is proven true, then that's what you'll believe (and the other half of the people must be blind?) So you can say it's crock, and that's fine. I try to respect freedom of speech and religion, but I don't consider your opinion to represent a truth for me other than that's your stated opinion. Here's another one to think about - can you prove the color black physically exists? If we had a photometer and completely blocked it from detecting any light/photons, so that it measures no energy, can the photometer itself be said to be "seeing the color" black? If there's no energy, then according to conventional views in science I'd assume it should be considered to not be detecting anything at all and not be detecting some intensity of "black photons". Does the color black travel at light speed? It seems that the evidence would be that, no, it travels faster than light speed! In fact, we can even indirectly demonstrate this a few ways - though light can't escape a black hole, darkness can and also, if according to conventional theories, gravity traveled at light speed an light was trapped in a black hole, then gravity would be as well , so darkness must be faster than light and not affected by gravity as light, otherwise it would be trapped along with light and no detectable volume should exist. I think there's a physical "velocity" faster than that too, though it's equivalent to subconscious/unconscious influences ... how many layers of those forms of velocities could there be? It may never be known for certain - relative to conscious interactions, they're effectively instantaneous and determine physical laws for conscious interactions. Yes, my views aren't conventional and you have to have the correct context to make sense of them, but they're also extremely logical and precise and the foundation of pretty much anything at all. Notice that there's a conflict in believing that both internal and external unknowns exist - if you happened to see an event that was inexplicable, where does the unknown lie? Would it be an internal "misunderstanding" or an external "illusion"? Notice that acting upon it either way implies you've made a decision and have ascribed it to be one of these two. For example, if you saw something resembling what you believed to be a ghost, you could assume your mind is/eyes are playing tricks on you (internal unknown) or you could assume that some light or reflection etc. (all following perfectly logical rules) happened to create an image resembling a ghost. Notice that nothing externally declared that you had to believe either, though it could be said various reflexive assumptions came to play in an almost subconscious manner to make the decision and someone could be prone to interpreting things differently (that's been shown to be the case), but if those affect ones actions and consequently how events evolve over time, that could lead to a quite diverse set of evolutionary experiences over time. I don't agree with every comment made in this (for example, when they say "no external input" to chaotic evolution, that's not true - at a minimum, we need an input for time ... where does time come from?) Geoff: OK, you miss the point, again. I wasn't mentioning anything about visual interpretations. I purely focused on your rambling about consciousness collapsing quantum wave functions. Obviously a throwaway line you included without actually understanding it. You compound this by proving that you don't know what a privative is. Darkness is nothing more than the absence of light, like cold is not the opposite of heat, but it's absence. You may have difficulty spotting the difference, but those for whom science is a profession, don't. Black is a mental interpretation of visual input based on frequencies light coming into the eye (or its absence). MrSteveA67: What energy is it that's being pointed to when someone measures black? (There's already no guarantee people see the same colors either and evidence that people don't either - look at synesthasia or color blindness as well) - how can you point to where a photon doesn't exist? In science history now, in simple a couple hundred years or so we've somehow managed to measure billions of light years in space?! How? I thought we were to suppose to be limited to light speed measurements. There are many problems in mathematics as well. Ok, how about this - can you physically prove the past exists? Lets say you see a ball roll from point A to point B and someone enters the room and they see the ball at B. If you tell them the ball rolled from A to B, but they say it's actually just sitting at position B, is there someone who must be wrong? If there can only be one version of reality for everyone and we all have to agree upon it, then what/who would have to define that? The United Nations, Stephen Hawkings, or you? If we look at the scientific method, it requires that there be an observer in the picture (no trying to claim invisible unicorns exist etc. ... we're talking what should be the verifiable facts in science)? So if you saw the ball roll from A to B, but someone else only saw it at B and if we don't have an ability to go into the past or reconstruct evidence from the present etc., then the only possibility to me seems to be that both observers are correct and that reality between them doesn't agree and each has a unique perspective (or they're simply misrepresenting things). Of course, I can only say it 'as I see it' though but maybe you've got an "objective" perspective that can see the past for others, mind read, detect things that are invisible for others etc.? I'm not saying that's impossible, but if so, then science needs to be extended to include such phenomenon and the mechanics of these. If we're to stick with more conventional science it should be simply what someone observes directly and has evidence for and not hypothetical and potentially conflicting extrapolations. In a similar sense, if you're unconscious and the ball rolls from A to B, and then you wake up, what should be your view, that you remember, while you were unconscious that the ball rolled from A to B or simply that when you awoke you saw the ball at B? Quantum mechanics is with measurements on the scales of individual photons and there's no more 'wiggle room' left for light speed measurements in quantum mechanics, hence it's simply showing the reality of conscious interactions and memory etc. MrSteveA67: These are the types of things that metaphysics and religious discussions are about. It's still a part of science, but not the 'regular old Newtonian stuff' ... it's logic, information, perception, memory, consciousness etc. So the picture does go beyond simply what can be immediately seen and felt and there's more than just what physical sciences can prove exists. The thought processes and expectations arising from assumptions over experimental setups etc. all exist as part of that and science isn't just something that can only be done "out there". That's where the individual journey is ... and results aren't required to agree, hence, I'm really just trying to point out that there's more to the picture. You don't have to agree with me and I guess that's something I should learn better for myself (Sorry if I get argumentative at times) MrSteveA67: Well, feel free to add some more entertaining comments. I'd say that rehashing the same old 'Steve you don't know anything - get with it' comment, yet again, would be boring. If you want you can dig through my comments and even add your own further insights. Could be there's a way to tie a lot of things together for many people actually, instead of having so many different fields seem to be at odds with each other. I believe this is much of what has people frustrated with physical sciences because the scope is very limited and doesn't address a lot of other aspects of experience, but I believe you can tie together a lot more into a single science that describes relationships between many of these ... who knows, maybe there's even a 'roadmap' of the metaphysical too and even make a lot of logical sense? That could be something interesting and potentially "less boring" for you, though I know people can have different interests. Read some of my above comments and see what areas I could be overlooking and feel free to add more. Maybe we can get science back to something with a bit of respectability? StuckInTheSixties: It's amazing how much text you use to say so little. Sort of like verbal-styrofoam. | Science Chat Room Similar Conversations |
