Can science REALLY explain Reality?

[inocente]

Originally Posted by AlanFromWichita

...

OK. I didn't read "poof" as "proof."

OK.

I don't know what point I'm making. I just love to talk about this stuff.

I've always been a bit surprised that the science and engineering behind the design and fabrication of chips isn't better known. It contains some amazing stories which would make a great book and spin-off TV series. You’re a good writer, ever thought of doing it?

I didn't say it was "rudderless." Only that philosophy leads to scientific interest. For example, "I wonder what it would be like to take a ride on a light beam," seems very "philosophical." But Einstein asked himself that question, and the world will never be the same.

OK, but no doubt he also wondered what it would be like to win the lottery, and how to remove the cabbage between his teeth, yet somehow they are not philosophical.

But more directly, Einstein was the one who said, "science without religion is lame." He was not a theologian; he was a scientist. What better qualified scientist says that science is not enhanced by religion?

This is often quoted, but Einstein was never on the side of theism, let me clue you in:

The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. … For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. - http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20...ience.religion

It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropomorphic concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near to those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order and harmony which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. - http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_...ion_.281999.29

For any one who is pervaded with the sense of causal law in all that happens, who accepts in real earnest the assumption of causality, the idea of Being who interferes with the sequence of events in the world is absolutely impossible. Neither the religion of fear nor the social-moral religion can have any hold on him. A God who rewards and punishes is for him unthinkable, because man acts in accordance with an inner and outer necessity, and would, in the eyes of God, be as little responsible as an inanimate object is for the movements which it makes. - http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_...God_.281997.29

Oh? When was the last time you had a discussion with people who honestly believe Genesis is 100% literal and historic? Mine was last year, and my hair hasn't completely grown back.

But also, I found this from inocente’s Anthropology By Dummies - "Genesis is a literary artifact around which Homo sapiens continues to form various tribal beliefs. It has helped drive a modern development, unthinkable in all tribes outside the loose affiliation known as Christianity, that there are different simultaneous realities, such as a religious reality alongside a completely different scientific reality. This bizarre hokum is a form of “double-think”, originally conceived as a terrible warning by George Orwell, a member of an atheist tribe."

[AlanFromWichita]

Originally Posted by tonyrey

If everything of which we may be aware is theoretically open to scientific investigation
scientific investigation itself is open to scientific investigation - which implies that it can explain itself. Do you believe that is feasible?

Originally Posted by Crescentinus

A better question is, can science explain science?

Science examines itself all the time. Used correctly, it knows its limitations and is cautious about making conclusions that don't result from the knowledge at hand. It reexamines how it discovers and concludes things all the time. Even when we believe we have found conclusions -- e.g. electrons are the smallest "particle" no wait a minute "wavicles," or space is cartesian, or there is dangerous global warming from bovine flatulence (sorry had to throw that in ) -- later discoveries cause us to reexamine everything. For those who don't know what I mean, I'm meaning that Newtonian physics was THE scientific way, truth, and light. Then comes Uncle Al asking the highly explosive question, "what would it be like to ride on a light beam?" Newtonian physics is but an approximation of what we know now, rather than the gospel end-all of science.

Oh wait. I forgot. Science is "real" and "objective" and doesn't conclude things without proof. If we'd known Einstein was going to disrespect all of reality by speaking of a reality "beyond science" at the time, we should have killed his parents so that nobody like him would be born. Oh wait -- is that science, philosophy, or religion that protects itself in this manner? Anybody who thinks their discipline is the cat's meow and others are lower than it, watch out! Watch out! One day the rocks will come to life.

Alan

[inocente]

Originally Posted by Solus vistor

I did not write that any one scientist was confused, only that the totality of them, when trying to put together their perspectives, like those blind men not beinbg able to see that they were all experiencing the same elephant. However, as said, one should not try to explain a metaphor.

I believe I understood but still think religion is actually quite straightforward to study. The leading edge of any endeavor probably always looks like confused blind leading the blind, but that aside differences are limited by the fact that in order to be classed as science, conclusions must be supported by and not contradicted by the evidence, and it's quite easy to collect evidence on religion.

I apologise again if I upset you with the wording of that metaphor, and/or with my attempts to react to your objections. So, please, let us leave it at that.

You didn't upset me (a few posters can, but only a few). Apologies, I must have come on too strong. It's just banter.

[AlanFromWichita]

Originally Posted by inocente

OK, but no doubt he also wondered what it would be like to win the lottery, and how to remove the cabbage between his teeth, yet somehow they are not philosophical.

Ah, thanks for reminding me.

When my cousin Ooga Magook first told me of the cabbage problem, there were several rival camps. Some were convinced that the particles were placed by Sun, and to remove them except in the natural process of eating and swallowing other things would cause Sun to bring about storms or drought -- or maybe both at once. Others believe that if a single piece stayed in place for two full Moons in a row, the person must be severely beaten in the mouth area, as the teeth are clearly evil. Others thought that Sun gave us our option on this, and we may decide individually whether to severely beat each other in the mouth area, based on our individual beliefs. Finally they decided to develop something called "language" so they could symbolically beat each other in the mouth even over the Internet.

I confess this isn't an original story. I modeled the name "Ooga Magook" after the character in the Allan Sherman song "Good Advice" -- which any inventor, scientist, or philosopher worth his/her salt needs to watch at least once in a lifetime.

Alan

[sw85]

Originally Posted by inocente

Surely this is irrelevant though. Putting a man on the moon, ridding the world of smallpox, and thousands of other examples demonstrate that science doesn't just *appear* to do things, it gets results, it gets the job done (and this then also extends to fundamental research, since the common success factor is the methodology).

The proof of the pudding then is in the utility, not in assumptions. (In any case I'd debate the assumptions as stated, since our senses are only independent of reality if we define reality as independent of our senses, which seems a bit circular.)

All these things do is validate science as a methodology in light of a given (non-scientific) epistemological assumption. They do not and cannot validate it as an epistemology.

Let me give you an example. Metal detectors are very, very good at detecting metal. That's a methodological claim. An epistemological claim would be "Therefore metal is all there is." This is kind of the claim scientism makes: science is very good at describing the natural world; therefore the natural world is all there is.

So yes, it's irrelevant to the question of science as a methodology, but not irrelevant to the question of scientism as an epistemology.

Originally Posted by inocente

Agreed, I’m not arguing for scientism. For instance, scientists in charge of morality would be plain kooky. But solipsists might be just as bad - http://www.autodidactproject.org/quote/hitch1.html

OK, but who here is arguing for solipsism (besides the occasional leftist who isn't knowledgeable enough to confess scientism)?

Also, "would be" plain kooky? Make no mistake my friend, they *are* kooky, and worse. The recent article about "post-natal abortions" is a perfect example of what happens when you trust ethical reasoning to philosophically illiterate and morally degenerate scientists.

Originally Posted by inocente

We never need assign purpose, we can instead simply observe that life relies on blood moving around the body, that the blood is moved by the heart, that a heart with certain attributes moves the blood more effectively and so on.

This doesn't wave away teleology, it just involves going to torturous extremes to avoid speaking teleologically.

Originally Posted by inocente

It seems innocent enough to say informally that the purpose of a heart is to pump blood, but then someone will say there would be no purpose in doing so unless life also has a purpose, so then an industry develops to assign purposes to life, the universe and everything, and pretty soon people disagree and form different schools of thought, which is why philosophy is so useless at explaining reality.

Well, if you mean philosophy taken as a whole, yes. But then no one believes in philosophy as a whole.

In truth there is one philosophy that acts as a kind of theory of everything. That's the one I call "Christian reaction." Lots of books have been written about how and why we moved away from Christian reaction, and most of them involve people embraced stupid ideas like nominalism, usually for politically-motivated reasons. The solution is to abandon the stupid ideas, not the entire enterprise.

[Sample]

Science doesn't make it impossible to believe in God. It just makes it possible to not believe in God. ~Steven Weinberg.

[Solus vistor]

Originally Posted by Sair

The only issue I would mention is that the thread really seems to be asking, can science theoretically, or in principle, explain all of reality? In other words, is it possible for us to detect and understand everything that exists? …

The supposition that everything is, in principle, accessible to science is tantamount to the claim that natural reality is all that exists.

This is one of the world-view presuppositions I described as Sagan’s in my post # 346. The alternative is the assumption of the exsitence of an Extra reality that is not in principle - it is very important that you mention this explicitly - accessible to science. In order to understand the difference between the two presuppositions one has to agree on what is natural (physical, material) reality that is “accessible by science”. That is a philosophy of science question (see below), not answerable directly from within science (physics) only.

Nevertheless, whatever that answer is, everything that science can even potentially access from within some valid (in a sense that also has to be determined) physical theory should belong to this natural reality “in principle accessible to science”. For instance, life on other planets, galaxies, distant parts of our universe light from which will never reach us, existence of other universes (multiverse), time travel and other things one can speculate about that science could sometimes, somehow explain, confirm - including those mentioned by you - all belong to the realm “in principle accessible to science” with emphasis on “in principle”.

So any non-trivial understanding of the supernatural - including the Christian understanding of God - would not be part of that natural reality. I think this is one of the main delusions (pun intended) of Richard Dawkins and others, namely that they assume “God” is “in principle accessible by science” (like e.g. life on Mars) and then provide arguments that this is most improbable.

As to how science/physics can see reality, let me first quote Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, from their book “The Grand Design”:

"According to the idea of model-dependent realism ..., our brains interpret the input from our sensory organs by making a model of the outside world. We form mental concepts of our home, trees, other people, the electricity that flows from wall sockets, atoms, molecules, and other universes. These mental concepts are the only reality we can know. There is no model-independent test of reality. It follows that a well-constructed model creates a reality of its own."

In other words, there is no need to assume the existence of any theory-independent reality in order to make scientific theories work. It does not follow that such a reality does not exist. It just means that science (physics) does not need the hypothesis of the existence of a theory independent physical world, though the scientist (physicist) will need it in oder to give meaning to his/her pursuit of truth, which is the usual description of his/her work .

This reminds me of the famous Laplace’s answer to Napoleon who asked about God, when listening to his explanation of celestial mechanics: “I did not need that hypothesis” or something similar. Well, today any students of analytical mechanics - believer or non-believer - can explain what Laplace did from within Newtonian physics, without having to assume the existence of God. So this is not an argument against the existence of God any more than what Hawking and Mlodinow claim is an argument against the existence of a theory-independent reality.

Hence, if we believe Hawking and Mlodinow, science works not only without the assumption of the existence of God (as understood e.g. by Christians) but also without the assumption of the existence of any theory-independent reality. The difference is that while on one hand the vast majority of scientists, including theoretical physicists, still believe in the existence of an a priori world their theories model, on the other hand today only a minority of them need to assume the existence of God that none of their physical theories can grasp, not even “in principle”. In both cases motivations that lead us to belief in reality - natural or “supernatural” - lie outside our scientific investigations. “Nori foras ire, in te ipsum redi: in interior homine habitat veritas” (St. Augustine).

In contemporary philosophy of science there are essentially two positions - that of scientific realism (that most of us, including theoretical physicists, subscribe to), and that of constructive empiricism. I shall not elaborate on the latter - this post is long enough without it - except for saying that it seems to be a philosophical completion of the position taken by Hawking and Mlodinow. And that its author, Bas C. Van Fraassen, is a philosopher specialising in implications of quantum physics, and a late convert to Catholicism.

Let me conclude with thanks to Sairs for his insights, and the post that triggered me to try to formulate my own position on these matters.

[inocente]

Originally Posted by sw85

All these things do is validate science as a methodology in light of a given (non-scientific) epistemological assumption. They do not and cannot validate it as an epistemology.

Which begs the question why should we care. Ridding the world of smallpox rids the word of smallpox, with or without epistemological blessing. Feynman was a good educator and his joke about steak and hungry philosophers makes a real point about their relevance in the real world. c.f. 1 Corinthians 1:18-31.

Let me give you an example. Metal detectors are very, very good at detecting metal. That's a methodological claim. An epistemological claim would be "Therefore metal is all there is." This is kind of the claim scientism makes: science is very good at describing the natural world; therefore the natural world is all there is.

It's always going to be the case that starting off with an agenda and then back-filling the logic is bad, whether the agenda is to support or deny the supernatural.

OK, but who here is arguing for solipsism (besides the occasional leftist who isn't knowledgeable enough to confess scientism)?

Some of what some people write sounds a little detached ivory tower to me.

Also, "would be" plain kooky? Make no mistake my friend, they *are* kooky, and worse. The recent article about "post-natal abortions" is a perfect example of what happens when you trust ethical reasoning to philosophically illiterate and morally degenerate scientists.

I didn't know what that term referred to so googled it. I'm not certain, but rather than scientists it seems to have been originated by moral philosophers: “Partial-birth abortion” is a term invented by pro-lifers. But “after-birth abortion” is a term invented by two philosophers, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva. In the Journal of Medical Ethics, ... - http://www.slate.com/articles/health...anticide_.html

Well, if you mean philosophy taken as a whole, yes. But then no one believes in philosophy as a whole.

Then I guess you agree that philosophy is useless at explaining reality.

In truth there is one philosophy that acts as a kind of theory of everything. That's the one I call "Christian reaction." Lots of books have been written about how and why we moved away from Christian reaction, and most of them involve people embraced stupid ideas like nominalism, usually for politically-motivated reasons. The solution is to abandon the stupid ideas, not the entire enterprise.

We seem to have strayed into politics.

[inocente]

Originally Posted by AlanFromWichita

Ah, thanks for reminding me.

When my cousin Ooga Magook first told me of the cabbage problem, there were several rival camps. Some were convinced that the particles were placed by Sun, and to remove them except in the natural process of eating and swallowing other things would cause Sun to bring about storms or drought -- or maybe both at once. Others believe that if a single piece stayed in place for two full Moons in a row, the person must be severely beaten in the mouth area, as the teeth are clearly evil. Others thought that Sun gave us our option on this, and we may decide individually whether to severely beat each other in the mouth area, based on our individual beliefs. Finally they decided to develop something called "language" so they could symbolically beat each other in the mouth even over the Internet.

I confess this isn't an original story. I modeled the name "Ooga Magook" after the character in the Allan Sherman song "Good Advice" -- which any inventor, scientist, or philosopher worth his/her salt needs to watch at least once in a lifetime.

Alan

... so hooked on the cabbage habit were they that abstinence never once crossed their minds, yet brassica caelibatus, the warrior discipline of cabbage denial, was a noble tradition passed down from the times of the Pleasant Uncles, when men were men, women were women and, well, you get the idea. Then, after many dark years, a video was discovered in which The Jinny Hendrix appeared to clean his teeth with his guitar, and stock in Fender did run high for a while until a materials scientist invented dental floss, and then unashamed they all looked up together at Mr Blue Sky [play as loud as neighborliness allows], ushering in the Age of the Dazzling Countenance, when posters would make a point by linking obscure but interesting old songs they found ...

from History of the Gums vol. III

[tonyrey]

Originally Posted by Sample

Science doesn't make it impossible to believe in God. It just makes it possible to not believe in God. ~Steven Weinberg.

His remark about the universe seeming pointless (which he has followed up with more trenchant remarks) makes that an understatement of his real position!

[sedonaman]

You might check out Dr. Anthony Rizzi's The Science Before Science http://bookstore.authorhouse.com/Pro...e-Science.aspx
About the author:

Anthony Rizzi is a physicist with degrees from MIT (B.S., phys.) and Princeton (PhD, phys.) with over 20 years combined experience in experimental and theoretical physics, including solving an 80 year old problem in Einstein’s theory. He also has made important contributions to the Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (LIGO) in Louisiana, has taught graduate courses at LSU, and has done research on manned and unmanned mars spacecrafts. As a staff physicist and design engineer at Lockheed-Martin, he received a NASA Award and a New Technology Award. He now directs the Institute for Advanced Physics in Baton Rouge, LA (www.IAPweb.org), where he continues his gravity wave related research. Dr Rizzi has been featured on EWTN, Focus Worldwide Network, Catholic World Report, Zenit News Agency and Relevant Radio.

[Crescentinus]

Originally Posted by tonyrey

In a nutshell!

Without philosophy, science would be lacking.

[tonyrey]

Originally Posted by AlanFromWichita

Science examines itself all the time. Used correctly, it knows its limitations and is cautious about making conclusions that don't result from the knowledge at hand. It reexamines how it discovers and concludes things all the time. Even when we believe we have found conclusions -- e.g. electrons are the smallest "particle" no wait a minute "wavicles," or space is cartesian, or there is dangerous global warming from bovine flatulence (sorry had to throw that in ) -- later discoveries cause us to reexamine everything. For those who don't know what I mean, I'm meaning that Newtonian physics was THE scientific way, truth, and light. Then comes Uncle Al asking the highly explosive question, "what would it be like to ride on a light beam?" Newtonian physics is but an approximation of what we know now, rather than the gospel end-all of science.

Oh wait. I forgot. Science is "real" and "objective" and doesn't conclude things without proof. If we'd known Einstein was going to disrespect all of reality by speaking of a reality "beyond science" at the time, we should have killed his parents so that nobody like him would be born. Oh wait -- is that science, philosophy, or religion that protects itself in this manner? Anybody who thinks their discipline is the cat's meow and others are lower than it, watch out! Watch out! One day the rocks will come to life.

Alan

The admonition "Used correctly, it knows its limitations" is constantly disregarded by Dawkins and other materialists.

[Solus vistor]

Originally Posted by sw85

Metal detectors are very, very good at detecting metal. That's a methodological claim. An epistemological claim would be "Therefore metal is all there is." This is kind of the claim scientism makes: science is very good at describing the natural world; therefore the natural world is all there is.

A very good example of a non-sequitur "Metal detectors are very good at detecting metal" therefore "metal is all there is." Unfortunately, many a believer falls for this kind non-sequitur: "Science (e.g. evolution) can describe natural reality, ergo there is no God", and instead of attacking the false implication, they attack the premise.

[Sample]

Originally Posted by tonyrey

His remark about the universe seeming pointless (which he has followed up with more trenchant remarks) makes that an understatement of his real position!

It's proper to credit the author of a quote but I am interested in what you think of the nineteen words. Any opinion about the sentence?