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Can Science Ever Be "Settled?"
StartsWithABang writes "From physics to biology, from health and medicine to environmental and climate science, you'll frequently hear claims that the science is settled. Meanwhile, those who disagree with the conclusions will clamor that science can never be 'settled,' and then the name-calling from 'alarmist' to 'denier' ensues.
But can science legitimately ever be considered settled, and if so, what does that mean? We consider gravitation, evolution, the Big Bang, germ theory, and global warming in an effort to find out."
all attempts to disprove it have failed and until evidence can be presented to disprove or bring the results into question it is settled
it doesn't mean "this is doctrine never challenge it" it means challenge it knowing that it has been challenged before and the theory has held
Will never happen
There is always, always, an infintesimally small chance you're wrong. And on a universal scale, that means you will be wrong at some point somewhere.
It would require that the fringes of an issue become so boring, and the overhead of getting involved so high, that no one wants to investigate it anymore.
That is, until "validating boring issues" becomes retro-vogue and bad scientists start arguing bad conclusions.
Newton's laws have been pretty much settled. Einstein found a way to get more precision under certain circumstances, but Newton is good enough most of the time.
Because if God had intended science to work, he would not allow that Dolby guy to be blinded by it!
That's not a summary, that's a click bait.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
It will ensure there's plenty of work to do on both sides.
Where ignorance attempts to shroud the light of reason, the light of reason must endeavour to shine thus more brightly.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Every time I see someone reach for the mantle of objectivity they are pushing something.
If you can't handle other people having opinions, your views are weak.
First class example is that evolutionary criticism (missing intermediate species or disputed claims of finding them, Darwin's doubled-down denial of genetics, etc) is completely forbidden in US schools. Students are smart enough to recognize Stalinism and likely to resist it.
We don't need more commissars in lab coats.
It is quite well settled scientific fact that those who find themselves at a business disadvantage due to the existence of facts they don't like will immediately lobby for legislation to overturn these silly facts in the interest of being pro-business.
Short of that, then the next best thing is to create a controversy. Since it is a creative work, shouldn't the controversy be copyrighted? Or even better . . . patented to protect the idea! Or maybe the observations underlying scientific advancement should be made privately owned, or subject to a government auction. I wouldn't have expected anyone to take these suggestions seriously twenty years ago. But today? Who knows?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
you'll frequently hear claims that the science is settled
No, you don't. Science is, by definition, always ready to accept a better theory. Nothing is settled. It's just that there are, at this moment, no better theories to explain observations.
When a better model (or theory) comes along, nobody is going to hang on to the old model. Science is never settled and always ready to accept change.
That said, in some fields you better come prepared with a very good model/theory to change the current model. Some parts of science are well understood and it takes extraordinary evidence to back up extraordinary claims.
Claiming that a topic is "settled" is, typically, a tactic to shut a viewpoint down as no longer being a live option the community will consider in its collective deliberations.
At best, this is a necessary pruning tactic, so that old, disproven arguments can't be repeatedly raised. Without some mechanism like this, it would be difficult for groups to proceed when they have a majority, but not unanimous, consensus.
At its worst, "settled" talk is a rhetorical trick, to shut someone with a potentially valid point out of a public deliberation. We see this somewhat with climate science (since new data are regularly obtained), and also in law / public policy. For example, Marbury vs. Madison may have "settled" the law regarding whether or not court decision trump the other two branches' judgment in matters of law. But that doesn't mean the position is correct, or that the count-arguments were ever adequately resolved. One could argue that it's a thin veil over the military victor's (the North's) version of history.
Of course it will never be settled. Even if we are capable of comprehending all the laws of the universe and we do eventually figure them out to explain all observable phenomenon, it will always be logically valid to say there is something we haven't observed yet. Induction does not lead to logical truth. It is even possible (but unlikely) that the universe is actually completely chaotic with no laws, and what we see as gravity and the other forces just a really big coincidence.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
It's a process.
I think I read there really is no more "chemistry" left to investigate. Apparently it has moved on to molecular physics. Kind of like Newtonian physics are as settled as can be. The bordlines have moved far beyond them by now.
"The bible says it. I believe it. That settles it."
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
-- Albert Einstein
For well over a thousand years Aristotle's work in the physical sciences (including zooology) was considered settled... until people started testing his theories
We called that period the "Enlightenment"
You approach closer and close to the "absolute truth", but never get there, and every pi microns there is an e chance that there will be a step function and the whole convergence has to start again.
And then the cylons show up (;-))
davecb@spamcop.net
People come up with theories, they get refined, debugged, and eventually tagged as a release candidate.
If the theories seem solid enough, there is a major/product release as something which is solid enough for other people to use in production environments.
As people keep using it, it gets minor patches/revisions. If people find a serious enough flaw/bug, then people start working on creating another major version release (or competing product.)
And, just as in software, if the new version of the theory/science is not backwards compatible to the previous one, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Not a result. Thus, attempts to claim that the science is settled are attempts to shut down the scientific process.
If the results of the scientific process are good, they're reproducible, and there's no point in trying to build up a religious dogma of belief on something that simply is.
Questioning the "settled science" is science. Shut it down at the cost of shutting down science.
The summary confuses "science", as in the process of discovery, and the various discoveries themselves and the knowledge obtained.
Science is settled with respect to we have the process and principles of exploring the rules of the universe. That has nothing to do with whether e.g. climate change exists or does not.
Various topics on the other hand, some are considered accepted fact, and others are not. The chemical composition of water, and the second law of thermodynamics are accepted as being 'settled'.
A process, not a product?
Many things in science are settled beyond any reasonable doubt as false simply because they contradict obvious observed facts. Sorry, Earth is not flat and was not created literally 6000 years ago in literally 6 days.
Yet another bloke claiming settled.
Lovely RED chart at the top imbuing you with an overwhelming sense of overheating.
Then you find the "proof" of warming down at the bottom. A carefully excised anomalous temperature chart that. 0.5C total range with a tail pointing down.
Plot the temperature folks. It ain't hard. BEST has it available for free. http://berkeleyearth.org/data
All you have to do is parse and plot. I have been pawing through the data from each station. Temperature ranges everywhere. Some really cool ones in Eastern Russia. No where can you see increases over the last 150 years. Way to close to a flat line.
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/longhorns-17-badgers-1.html
What the iowahawk talks about in the averages for schools is relevant to the discussion of temperatures.
God: "I don't leave footprints!"
The answer is obviously only when we have observed all that there is in the universe, and given the universe is expanding there is that which we never see: so no.
Once a theory or even a law becomes unfalsifiable its not longer science. Until every observation has been made, it remains possible a contradiction will be discovered. Therefore nothing can ever be settled.
With that said there are lots of cases like inertia where the evidence in support of it is so strong and so complete; we can reasonably depend upon its truthfulness and pretty much reject anyone who disputes it unless they have some really really solid independently reproducible observations to the contrary.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
a scientist who isn't interested in writing the next chapter in the text is a disciple.
A common definition of science is "knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study."
Science is never stable. There is always layer upon layer of detail that is waiting to be discovered. The "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants" is the underlying concept. Our level of scientific understanding is driven by our current understanding and our needs to go deeper. The knowledge can change and grow based on deeper systematic study.
In the middle ages, when transportation was limited to horse, cart and walking. The naivety of a geocentric university was sufficient for the time. And for the most part motion of planets was fairly accurately explained by epicycles. The "Science" of the age was sufficient. As travel and migration required more detailed knowledge, the science improved to explain what was seen. New models were formed, and tides, winds and so on became more accurate and combined into a deeper understanding.
The beauty of science is that as the foundations of one area is broken down and rebuilt, what replaces it must not only encompass what was there, but also link deeper into other areas that caused the original science to fail. It doesn't make the previous science and knowledge bad, just incorrect. One can't deny that a model that explained a known phenomena for that point in history was bad science.
In 40 years time*, we'll look back at the misguided fools at the start of 21st century and our futile and plain incorrect approaches to fusion. We may not be there, but we'll probably dealing with all sorts of funky and interesting materials on the way to get there.
Those of us who will have children should know that their science *will* be different in a lot of areas than our science. That is a good thing.
* Bonus points for replies that say why I chose the "40 years time".
That one is provable definitively every time even after some genius tries to make headlines and get a grant by trying to redefine "down". On the other hand, when you consider that the end of the last Ice Age predated the invention of the SUV by a few thousand years then you kinda have to stay open to different possibilities and keep an eye not just on the data, but also the assumptions that lead to the data. Particularly when there are so many variables and inputs.
I know how tempting it is to "tweak" a model to get the answer you want; I did it in college. And maybe that's part of it; these scientists should get out and actually be employed for a while instead of making a career out of being in an academic environment where the perception of what's at stake is more abstract.
Either way, calling science "settled" should be treated with great care. There was a time when disagreeing with "settled" science meant your ass.
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
Science can never be settled even if all that is knowable about the current set of knowable things is known. There simply may be more knowable things in the future. However there is an argument that says the universe of all things that are knowable must by definition be both finite, and therefore also discrete. So it must be shown eventually that we have found all knowable things, and we know all about all knowable things, and how they interact.
A finite and discrete universe would necessarily lead to the entire future as already planned, and we have no recourse except to experience it regardless of our personal desires or will (since a will to change something would already be in the plan).
A finite and discrete universe also would be required to eventually repeat, and any memories collected in such a universe would eventually be required to be dumped. Especially since remembering an infinite amount of things would not be possible. The question of "What was your first memory?" in an infinite universe would simply be absurd.
The alternative to knowing things about the universe, and how it works, is just to experience it anyway.
College is WAY WAY WAY too late to start handing kids academic journal access. Copyrighted science? COPYRIGHTED SCIENCE!? This isn't real science. Just wait 20 years for the 'real' scientists to take over & you can keep your cute little lab coat you spent $80K/8 years on just so you can skip internal medicine altogether & work for a pharmaceutical company to poop out a new chemical analog that gets you high by curing backpain or whatever but then the class-action lawsuit comes from the stump babys or the new boobies or whatever. Fuck you, currently-still-existing-"science"-community. Fuck. You.
Nothing is ever settled. There are axioms that can be used to conduct further science and base theories on but without constantly proving something we'll never find out if something is wrong.
People who say something is settled want the exact opposite. They don't want anyone to test their hypothesis because the findings might be different, not necessarily the opposite, but at least different from the observed original answer.
The best explanation I've ever heard of for science's progression as explained to a non-scientist is an analogy to the coastline paradox. The coastline paradox goes like this: What is the length of the coastline of Great Britain (or any other island/continent/thing with a coast)? If you use a kilometer long measuring stick, you'll get one answer, but you'll miss some coastline that zigs and zags a bit under the scale of 1 km. Ok, you say, so let's use a half-kilometer measuring stick, or even better a one meter measuring stick, that'll give us a more precise answer! But wait, you'll still miss features that are smaller than a meter. Science operates under the same principle. First, we take a very large look at a question, and find a minimally acceptable answer. Then, as our understanding gets better and we can refine our analysis, we move down to a smaller measuring stick and get a more precise answer, a better model for what reality is. However, just like getting to the meter measuring stick, our answers will never be precisely correct, our models for the natural world will never be completely correct, encompassing every little zig and zag of the problem. Therefore, the models can always get better and there will always be job opportunities for people who ask questions about our world.
This is obvious flame bait.
But adequately settled, like a scientific consensus? Sure that happens often.
The challenge is to provide a theory that is capable of being dis-proven.
As we have seen with the theory that is the obvious subject of the post, there is no way to disprove it since all possible outcomes are claimed as products of the theory. Even when it blatantly fails the empirical test, it still managers to survive as yet another caveat is bolted on to accommodate the failure.
"I predict this will happen"
"Well, it didn't happen, but that's because of this thing here, so I was still right." ad nauseam.
It's like arguing with your ex, there's always a "but" in there somewhere.
I really liked the way one person put it to me a while back. Some people used to have some idea the earth was flat, but then some people realized that wasn't true and said it was a sphere. Well, that was clearly wrong too but a sphere is a lot closer to the truth than flat; treating wrongness as a boolean would just label them both wrong but, one is clearly a lot less wrong than the other.
So to some degree, it was settled...possibilities were excluded. Then, well its clearly not a sphere, it bulges in the middle, I have heard "slightly pear shaped" is a good description.... then you have the satellites that have precisely measured variations in gravitational field...they have an even more complex picture.
Whether it is settled or not depends on to what degree you need the answers.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Knowledge is Infinite, therefore Science will NEVER be "settled."
Science is a process (journey) to reach a goal (destination).
Science is about removing Falsehood.
Gnosis is about adding Truth.
Same goal, different paths. The best way to is to combine complementary paths but the Western world is too stuck on an incomplete Materialistic perspective to understand the Strengths and Weaknesses of BOTH systems.
There are many questions outside the domain of Science. But just because Science and Scientists will NEVER be able to answer them doesn't mean that we don't have other ways to find out the answer.
Everything we know about Gravitation, Evolution, the Big Bang will be turned upside down in ~ 10 years.
Can "science" ever be settled?
No, almost certainly not, since that implies perfect knowledge of all existence--all that is, was, or ever could be.
Can science settle particular questions? Yes.
The point of science is to develop a better understanding of the world/universe/whatever we live in. That understanding can be refined and improved. This question doesn't even make any sense.
Or to put it another way, if someone feels the need to say "XYZ is settled science" that's a clue that it might not be.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Absolutely. Settled doesn't mean True - science is unconcerned with Truth, perhaps even actively opposed to it. Because there is no theoretical way to distinguish between Truth and an extremely accurate and reliable misunderstanding. Accepting something as Truth denies the ability to challenge it - and those challenges are the very essence of science.
Settled means it has so thoroughly withstood all challenges that nobody much even bothers to challenge it anymore, and you'd better have some really solid new evidence to back any new challenge or expect to be laughed off the stage.
This is why the vast majority of anti-AGW positions are considered so ridiculous: The studies they're based on are almost universally either so laughably bad as to be obvious paid "science" propaganda, or are so badly misrepresented that the researchers themselves object to the claims being made by the pundits. Meanwhile the handful of potentially legitimate challenges are largely ignored by the media, presumably because they're either so esoteric they can't be expressed in sound bytes, or so outlandish that only other scientists could take them seriously. Unlike the propaganda being fed to the public, the larger climatology community generally treats those challenges with polite skepticism and constructive criticism because they are at least plausible, even if they need a *lot* more supporting evidence before they could be considered viable alternative explanations.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Am I buying or selling?
Employee Of the Month - Cyberdyne Systems Corporation - September 1997
Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. -- Bertrand Russell
You are not really expecting any useful answer to your question? You do not give a definition of what settled means. If it means a theory has been proven right, then by all means science is never settled. See Karl Popper for details. If it means a theory has been proven useful to us to understand a certain aspect of what we call reality, then yes there are many fields in science which are considered settled.
When I say theory, I mean scientific theory. Not that "theory" which people often use to describe that they have an opinion. If you do not know the difference then see Karl Popper again.
By the way even in religion there is no absolute truth, as the absolute truth varies between people and over time even in one person. So in general settled is only a vague term used in real life to describe some inter-subjective object of thought which is believed not to change. And in that definition many things in science are settled.
My experience has been that people who invoke Hitler, Stalin, etc. when presented with differing viewpoints tend to have room-temperature IQs and body weights that average around 320 pounds. While it's amusing to entertain the notion of subjecting these people to the indignities that they're channeling, the correct response to these sorts of people is to mock them. Mock them, mock their belief systems, and (most importantly) mock their families.
speaks to this issue. Here's a link, and here's their link to the essay.
I could see if some result is not repudiated in thousands of years or more, then it becomes settled for all practical purposes. The scientific method is still very young - only a half millennia with a few spurts in earlier civilizations. A hundred thousand years from know it could be different.
We could very well have been engineered by an advance race of intelligent beings with the technology to do so. The planet may very well have been terraformed by them in 7 days. LOL!
It doesn't have to be an omnipotent being for the events in the Christian bible's book of Genesis to be somewhat accurate. Especially if "Adam and Eve" were prototypes as they engineered their intelligence and "free will" capability. The whole forbidden fruit story may have just been a test. Perhaps the previous prototypes were thrown out until one revision did actually eat the damn fruit. Maybe the two-sex concept was new, and they used bone marrow from one of Adam's ribs as stem cells for Eve. Lots of possibilities. This line of thinking is good because it pisses off both the slashdot and christian crowd.
So evolution as the origin of humans remains a theory.
Science is settled until new contrary evidence comes along to unsettle it.
There is an obvious contextual reference here to the contemporary scientific debate raging around global warming. If I may push back against the OP's question for a moment: The question "is the science ever settled" is not framed in a useful way. I think it is more useful to ask "does the science ever prove a political position"? I frame it this way because typically, when partisans point out that "the science is settled" on some subject, what they are really trying to do is put the weight of scientific authority behind their political positions.
Furthermore, I think this has demonstrable, detrimental effect on science. There has been a recent uptick in global warming disbelief. The typical response to this kind of thing falls into one of two categories: either Americans are unwashed idiots or the effort to disseminate scientific knowledge is somehow flagging in the internet age. But there is a third explanation which receives little attention; namely, the relentless push by partisans to make science speak for particular political ends brings science itself into disrepute. In this view, rising skepticism of scientific consensus comes from backlash induced by, essentially, partisan bullying on scientific issues. With respect to global warming, people see partisans making statements attempting to link currently held scientific views to political ideas that run the gamut from signing bad treaties like Kyoto, adopting economically ruinous policies, or enriching crony operators of new "carbon" exchanges. And then they conclude that maybe the science wasn't all that necessary or important to these partisans after all.
Same agenda-driven bullshit. Different day. Next.
Contrast this with the scientific method: This can be applied widely. But do not confuse a solid body of science like in physics with something that changes when being observed. Unfortunately, envy and the limitations of language (add to this the missing understanding in much of what is published) conspire to make real science look bad in the public eye.
You know it's time for the next revolution when your rulers' names end with roman numerals.
Honestly, how many high schoolers can actually understand a typical journal article? The target audience is experts in the field.
Also, it's quite common for physics or astro articles to appear on arxiv or similar, and a lot of bio articles are open access thanks to a US NIH mandate.
There's little point in trying to figure out when science can be settled in questions like gun control, climate change, and evolution. When one or both sides dig in, there's no way either is going to be convinced. Evolution, for example: the yelling match is only going to stop when the last creationist dies, or when God comes down and tells us "Uh, hello? I TOLD you I made the world in six days. How did you think it was a metaphor? The devil CLEARLY put those bones there! I even sent a bunch of prophets to tell you. Did you not see them in the parking lot of walmarts throughout the deep south?"
"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory, which states that this has already happened." - thhgttg
Hence, never be settled.
So any one prior to the modern school system is a pundit? Which i take is someone who has an interest in a subject, scientific or not. Newton was a "hobbiest", doing it for fun. Einstein was a minor savant, who had a hard time in school, and barely passed the "required" courses, but a savant on theory. So, what makes one's opinion more worthy then another?
Science is a "way of gaining knowledge" not the actual knowledge gained. As a way of gaining knowledge it's methods are not settled but constantly being debated by philosophers since Thales of Miletus (~600bc). Contrary to popular belief the history of science isn't, "..before the late middle ages we were dumb, then science happened and now we really know how the world works..."
So we just ignore all scientific progress from like 1900 to the NIH mandate!? There's shit 3x older than I am that I have to have my friends steal for me just to read. Also, how many highschoolers actually understand calculus? Should we take away calculus? WILL IT HURT THEIR BRAINS TOO MUCH OH NOOO. I might not be with some expensive managed IT firm or anything, but I got where I am today by studying college-level course material when everyone in the grammar 'school' "system" thought I was outright retarded.
In Mathematics we have different techniques to actually prove propositions. Once you have found a valid proof to a proposition, it becomes a theorem and it is settled. There is no possibility to disprove or question that theorem afterwards.
In any other science than Mathematics, ideas are supported by data. If enough data is supporting your idea, it becomes a theory. But as the theory is based on data, it will never be settled. No matter how much data you have to support the theory, there always remains the possibility that a counter-example could be found. The low probability of finding a counter-example in the current state of the sciences is irrelevant to this fact.
My interpretation is that there is enough confidence from the scientific community for anyone who is not a scientist researching the topic to accept the current understanding as fact. It doesn't mean they should think it is a fact, just that they should lead their life and form opinions based on the assumption that it is a fact.
Research should of course continue, probably until the end of time, but at a certain point the general population should no longer question the findings. They simply are not trained enough to form an opinion that differs from the general consensus.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
lawsuit comes from the stump babys or the new boobies
I, for one, welcome our new stump baby or new boobies overlords.
No.
Not in the traditional sense where you gather everyone involved, hear them out, make a decision and then the matter is settled. In science things are settled when nobody sees a reason to argue anymore, the prevailing theory adequately explains everything in its scope. After all it's mostly mathematical formulas which happen to match the real world, if my contact lenses curve light the way optics say they should what's there to argue? In that sense, I find the resistance to evolution incredible because all it really says is that there'll be more of those who reproduce more and less of those who reproduce less. Sounds to me like a "well, duh" statement, particularly when you look at what we have done with domestication. If you shape the environment, you shape the animals and nature's been doing it much longer than us.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Settled Science though is not generally referred to as settled. Who goes around saying that the sun "rising" tomorrow. is settled science.
The problem with much of modern "science" is that it is being done by politicians pretending to be scientists for political purposes and making the claim of certain things being settled.
The best story about "settled science" I've ever heard was about ulcers. Barry Marshall was ridiculed for this hypothesis that peptic ulcers and gastric cancer could be related to bacteria, because other scientists didn't believe that bacteria could live in the stomach with all that acid. So what did he do? He DRANK A PETRI DISH containing the bacteria he suspected of causing the problem and.... he was proven right Got a Nobel prize in Medicine in 2005 because of it too. And that's just one of the reasons when I hear someone screaming "the science is settled", I just laugh.
Science is, by definition, always ready to accept a better theory.
New ideas can meet stiff resistance even in the sciences.
David Attenborough: ''I once asked one of my lecturers why he was not talking to us about continental drift and I was told, sneeringly, that if I could I prove there was a force that could move continents, then he might think about it. The idea was moonshine, I was informed.''
Geological maps of the time showed huge land bridges spanning the Atlantic and Indian oceans to account for the similarities of fauna and flora and the divisions of the Asian continent in the Permian era but failing to account for glaciation in India, Australia and South Africa.
Continental drift
To make the case for continental drift, you shouldn't have to demonstrate a priori that there is a force that can move continents, if you can produce sufficient evidence that the continents have, in fact, moved.
See Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Even if it were settled, why would it have to remain so?
From the Guide:
"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
Three is my favourite number
I was arguing with a Physicist friend of mine who was adamant that most of Physics is known and the rest only knowable via number crunching. The Physicist was adamant that dark matter was real.
When I illustrated that we have no idea what gravity is, the physicist blew up.
Seriously how can we consider our knowledge nearly complete when we cannot understand the mechanics behind gravity ?
It will either be "We didn't listen!" if we ignore it to catastrophic levels, or "It was just a hoax" if we manage to do something about it and avoid catastrophe. Willful Ignorance - http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/willful-ignorance
In general, if someone is saying 'the science is settled', it means they have run out of arguments.
Even though there have been so many scandals in science lately, I still believe it is our greatest hope for future happiness.
In all of these matters, definitions are critically important. For example, the scientific definition of evolution is along the lines of population genetics and how gene frequencies change over time due to reproduction, geographical and mutative influences. Its a very innocuous definition and I am not aware of anyone who questions it.
But, many scientists, conflate the scientific definition, with very little empirical evidence, to include the notion of "goo to you" evolution being an entirely natural and undirected process, starting from a single common ancestor. This is a valid scientific hypothesis, but there's very little evidence for it, and quite a bit of evidence against it. This is where the battles regarding evolution occur. Think about it - why a single ancestor? Why purely natural and undirected? Consider all of the work going on today in labs around the world to genetically engineer various derivative life forms - these are all efforts to unnaturally direct the evolution of life.
Evolution is also mute on the origin of life. Origin of life science has been stalled for decades, and so we don't really know how life originated (or originates since there's no reason why it couldn't happen multiple times). While it may be unscientific to hypothesize a creator, that doesn't mean that life wasn't created by some intelligent agent. (Again, think of all the labs trying to synthesize derivative life forms - is it unreasonable to conjecture that one day a complete life form might be synthesized?)
I think it is unfortunate that this field of science has been hijacked by religionists - atheists as well as creationists, because the science is so unsettled, it can only advance with completely open and critical discussion and evaluation.
Evolution is a fact. The method of evolving is what is in dispute. What kills me is when people assume that there can be only one primary method, ie Natural Selection. I don't see much difference between most 'Darwinists', ie Natural Selection explains everything, to 'Creationists'. They both have very closed minds and are very vocal about it.
AGW is a theory. There are multiple disputes here including the sensitivity of CO2, the time that CO2 remains in the atmosphere, the effects of numerous feedbacks, the adjustments of raw data, the use of proxies for historical temperature, etc. The only side saying the science is settled is the side that has 97 different models using 97 different sets of assumptions, which is kind of funny when you think about it. If the damn science is settled, why isn't there 1 model? If it is settled, why don't we know how long CO2 stays in the atmosphere or a final value for sensitivity? I don't want to pollute the planet I just think your theory is a bunch of bull.
This discussion turned out mostly useless because the concept of "settled" was not well defined. Taking the definition to be "completely describes reality", all evidence points to this being impossible. My question is why is this so? Is this a fundamental property of nature? Has this property itself been studied?
Conceptual, qualitative, or practical? All very different things. Things with mass are attracted to other things with mass. That's settled, because that's how we define it. All the math that goes into that attraction? Will always be open to further refinement. Will a rock always fall if you drop it? Well, antigravity is theoretically possible, so maybe not.
This is about as useful a question as "have you stopped beating your wife."
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
It's the only fair way to settle science!
Two scientists in, only one comes out!
It would also have the added benefit of over time creating a species of super strong buff scientists that are designed for fighting... oh wait...
Humans are simply incapable of agreement, even in the face of observable fact.
Here are some things we know as fact:
1) Geologic timescales can neither be measured nor predicted from 15 years of observation
2) No one pair of variables is dependent absent input from all other variables in a system with billions of variables. In other words, the notion that CO2 concentration is the only variable that drives climate is just stupid. Even expanding that to CO2, H2O, and CH4 and thinking you have the answer is stupid.
3) Humans cannot grasp the enormity of our system, so we invent this thing called religion to explain it. Whether it be a diety, or the first church of AGW, it's all religion and dogma.
4) You are not a scientist unless the answer you give for every question of science is "I don't know."
A different way of saying this is that laws make a statement of what happens without explanation, and theories are explanations of what happens.
Gravity is one of the best examples, but it exists as both laws and theories simultaneously.
The law of gravitation is that two masses will attract to each other with a force proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to their distance. This makes no explanation of what is causing this - just that it occurs.
The theory of gravity is general relativity, which is an explanation of why the attraction occurs.
No, it is how we stretch ourselves.
Every single person here learns word(s)...from everywhere, including this site. Are we supposed to jam them in a can under the sink?
Only a jerk would complain about someone trying to use a new word, a word they might not be intimately familiar with.
Someone used "dimensionful" and I proceeded to use it a bunch of times (in a physics paper) right after I read it.
I come here for the love
That post read like a conversation gone wrong between me and my wife.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
He insists that since scientists just attribute whatever they can't explain to "random chance" (Can't recall ever hearing one actually utter those words) there must be an intelligent designer. Yeah, I'm dropping the class and complaining to the department head. 'Merica.
.... pronounce something you've only seen written! :D
If you have no way of showing that the truth is the truth then how do you know it is the truth?
When there is nothing left that would or could challenge it, then Science would truly be settled.
Long answer is nooooooooooooooooooo.
Religion is something that is stated as fact, and with the label it holds, does not allow changes. If you follow a particular faith, then you follow it, you interpret it, but you don't question it. Science is the exact opposite. There are measured facts. There is information based on the best available information, the best measurements, the best observations, and the best interpretations. You can go a long way with the information that you have. Buildings can be engineered, likewise cars, trains, planes, etc. You can build computers, phones, clocks to very exacting standards based on the available information. Medicine, biology, chemistry likewise all follow. Some people don't care for evolution, but don't mind the latest heart transplant or cure for cancer. They sue if the earthquake comes and the scientist doesn't tell them in advance, or the rain comes on what's supposed to be a sunny day. Science is a thing where the more you know, the less you know about. As more discoveries are made, people learn more, and can do more. Challenges are welcome, since they have to account for everything that comes before. Its easier to re-write books now than ever before. When I was in high school (about 30 years ago), a kid raised his hand and asked 'how does the cell division know its going to be a heart or a hand'. And the teacher didn't know, although the 'discovery' of stem cells actually happened in 1969 (before I was in school). Now they can use a mild acid to create millions of stem cells from a swab from you cheek. This is new. So some science (like classical physics) is really old, but some is really new. Its ok to challenge each with new ideas.
Everything Science Produces is a Theory through the use of application.
To see how this works consider a cave man, who theorizes fire isn't terrifying, but could be controlled for warmth in the cave.
So the brave soul takes some fire from a lightening struck tree and keeps using it to heat the cave by feeding it wood.
His theory is true, and everyone in the cave thinks he is a genius.
Does he understand how fire works, ultimately?
No.
He is considered an expert given the state of knowledge about fire for the time. Should he consider researching it further?
Yes, to continually refine the theory of fire and its applications.
Now I would like you to consider todays science in all of its vast corruption. Article after article says Man Made global warming is settled, all parameters about climate, and its impact for the past 15 years now by these experts have been telling us, if we do not kill 1/3rd of humanity (usually the poor and politically unwanted), we will turn the planet into Venus.
Decades go by, no change in fact it gets colder. Yet they proclaim supreme and ultimate knowledge of the entire Biosphere...short of proclaiming themselves infallible like the Gods.
Meanwhile, any further investigation to the theory of Man Made Global warming would be considered highly disadvantageous to ones academic career, if not fatal.
All of this is of course due in part to Al Gore's carbon exchange credits system they cooked up for an elite few bankers to get wealthy from, and to provide an income for a private army and world government since all nations would be taxed for carbon output.
All of this after decades go by and these people can't even tell you what the weather is going to be like next week, yet they want you to believe that if you do not pay your carbon taxes as a nation, the earth is doomed in about 10-15 years "snow will be a thing of the past".
Even so far as to going to FAKING FOOTAGE in contrived hollywood productions.
Science has lost its way in just about every single area in the the spectrum of research. Nature and other RAGS, publish frequently fake papers based on computer generated fake research and herald them as ground breaking for publication.
By review boards that consider themslves to be also some kind of infallible elite.
Here my words: Scientists of NATURE. You are usurpers and destroyers of science.
The last thing I would want to be is a industrial college complex produced scientist now days, and I work every day to defeat the companies that hire these worthless pieces of sh*t and put them out of business using open source.
Thankfully, with all of the PhD's that are on the dole at Microsoft, for example I (as well as many others) am well on my way to doing that. I and about a million other people world wide that don't need their crappy NSA contrived software, their crappy software products or customer service/monopoly patently illegal business.
In my case, open source allows me to continually review ideas in information science in my daily business and work, free from the crap I would have to put up with if I was in a college setting, including and up to accepting bribes from corporations to fund my lab and pushing pandering white papers on product endorsements that suck it and could not hold a candle to many open source equivalents.
Continual review of a scientific theory in the open, is what science is about. You can never claim something is a fact in science.
The best you can claim is that a theory is able to produce useful affects from nature to either build a product, or reduce human suffering...
Which is what science is suppose to be about ultimately addressing the human conditions of food, water, shelter, so that nobody goes without.
Once those things are taken care of, time and time again it is shown people pretty much almost stop breeding and turn inward to improve themselves intellectually as well as spiritually.
A goal that I guarantee you, absolutely frightens the global elite, and the panders of death, called "science" today.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Anyone who looked out from a high mountain or a mast top and thought about it for a bit would laugh at anyone who suggested the Earth was flat.
That isn't true. The term law was used in the past with the expectation that certain things were settled. The philosophical underpinnings of science have advanced since then and the term law is no longer used.
I find this funny because many of our laws change more frequently than our theories.
There's nothing that makes one more stupid than being too arrogant to learn from one's mistakes. Accept corrections, like compliments, gracefully and move on.
Not so. Arrogance bothers us emotionally and the inability to learn from mistakes bothers us as scientists. Yet I could pick out dozens of people easily who would remain smarter than the vast majority of the population if they never learned another thing.
Stupidity is relative, and at any given moment, we all have different starting points.
Maybe those proto-Tyrannosaurus examples didn't get stuck in the mud for some reason. They could have been in a different habitat, light enough to not get stuck, or there just was not a vast amount of sediment getting laid down where they were living.
Or on the other hand maybe the rocks their fossils are in are just a bit more inaccessable than the ones where those T-Rex's were found. Note that it's more than 30 examples but a lot less than 30 sites.
Anyone who looked out from a high mountain or a mast top and thought about it for a bit would laugh at anyone who suggested the Earth was flat.
You would think so. Its amazing to see how societal belief systems impact the perception of the surrounding world.
... But concerning theories with a lot of evidence supporting them, you had better present a comprehensive argument.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
You seem to be confusing the implications of "theory" with "hypothesis". Theory is the highest title that can be bestowed upon an understanding of the reason that things behave the way they do. Law is the only thing arguably higher, and as a rule that only gets applied to purely descriptive statements, i.e. it describes *how* things have been consistently observed to behave, with no attempt made to explain why they do so. And even then it's not bestowed much anymore.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The Bible doesn't say anything about a flat Earth so societal belief systems don't come into it at all. What does come into it is some Victorian era writing designed to make people feel "modern" by building a strawman and pretending it was the people of the past.
What made Aldrin's calculations by slide rule for docking Eagle with Columbia so impressive was that he couldn't rely on Newton's laws of motion alone. However that was his thesis topic so he was probably better prepared than anyone for docking after the computer had failed.
Nothing is really ever settled until nobody wants to do more research. That may be an open source view of things, but as long as scientific research is being done in an area then you can't claim it is settled. For example, I doubt anybody would say that the Linux kernel is "settled" even though it is in wide spread use and well understood.
Actually, I don't believe schools should focus on specific theories anyway, I believe this is largely a waste of time as students that wish to study these areas can do so as their educational careers advance. It's best to teach the scientific method and critical thinking and adoption of well established theories will follow naturally. I'm annoyed when scientists are pulled into a debate on weighting the "rightness" of any theory. Chances are, everything we know today will be re-written by the next generation and so on. Teach the fundamentals and let the students do the rest.
Yes, it's annoying when I see reports nowadays that attribute freak storms to global warming. I agree that humans are warming the planet but it's completely scientifically vacant to link short term weather to climate change. The science is nowhere near that level of precision to be able to attribute short term weather to climate change. (As of yet)
Honestly, how many high schoolers can actually understand a typical journal article?
Depends on which state they are from.
Texas, nope.
Kansas, nope.
.
.
.
When teaching science to the rest, we have to be clear about the fact that the high school level stuff is simplified, although still useful. And a few decades out of date. If they want the up to date view, go to grad school, specialize in a field and catch up with the current thinking. Until then, its not that we are lying to you. This is just all we expect you to absorb between cigarette breaks in the high school parking lot.
Have gnu, will travel.
A theory is science that's been proven one or more times. A law is science that was proven a very long time ago. But it seems like we need a name for settled theories.
I suggest a scientific "conviction". How do you get a conviction? You prove something beyond a reasonable doubt. Of course, a conviction can be overturned. One piece of solid evidence can do it. But there is strong reason to believe that for most convictions such evidence will never appear.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
Science can be settled. This happens when there is a consensus that the evidence for a theory is overwhelming. When there is a consensus that the current theory doesn't explain observations, then it is settled that a new theory is needed.
The atomic theory of matter is an example. Atomic theory was once nothing more than conjecture. Experimentation and observation determined that matter is made of atoms. All modern industries involved in biology and chemistry as well as manufacturing rely upon this theory. We can now "see" atoms with a variety of different tools, but their presence is still inferred much like I infer that there is a computer screen in front of me because light reflected from it is hitting my retina.
Atomic theory being wrong has the same probability as someone discovering that a 2013 Prius is not made from parts.
hows that for settled?
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Prove that you love your children or your wife?
The shortcoming or fallacy of logic is that there needs to be a proof for everything.
I stand corrected. Choices of pick up, put down, or pick up in such a way that everyone wishes they'd never picked it up at all sound like a pretty fucking silly third choice to me.
Someone proved even any axiomatic system of more than trivial complexity cannot be proved. I understood it the other day and now my head hurts.
Al Gore's global warming science.
That phrase is meaningless since science does not really have an end state where you're no longer allowed to question something. More importantly, it's a totally uninformative thing to say. If you think the evidence for or against something is compelling you should be explaining that evidence, not shutting down debate with some pithy remark. If a person doesn't want to discuss the evidence with you it's unlikely saying something vague like this will turn them around.
Science isn't like religeon or law, there isn't some ultimate arbarter who can settele a debate once and for all. It's up to the individual do decide whether or not he's convinced.
The question is: when does skepticism turn into shilling? There is a point when a subject area becomes so well explored that there is nothing to be gained by taking potshots at the fundamentals. Claims against the foundations become extraordinary and require extraordinary evidence. So, when you hear a lot of noise about a well explored field with claims that the experts are frauds etc... it is pretty easy to infer that the noise is coming from money being spent to raise doubt to protect commercial interests. The link between smoking and cancer was very well established, but many shills were employed to question it in public, as an example. That is not debate, it is a fraud perpetrated on the public.
One model of the Earth's atmosphere is to assume that Earth is a perfect blackbody with no atmosphere. This tells you that, if Earth perfectly absorbed light, the global temperature should be about 279 K, or 6 degrees C. Factoring in an albedo of about 30% (as measured by satellites), however, gets us down to a chilly -18 degrees C. The difference between that and the observed surface temperature is almost entirely due to the 'greenhouse' effect of our atmosphere.
Now, this may come as a shock, but we can't actually calculate every effect of everything on the planet. It's not going to happen soon, either. So climate scientists have been working on successive approximations, essentially. One way to simplify the problem is to consider the atmosphere as a column of air extending from the surface; you can divide this up into layers with various compositions and physical properties, and there are certain radiative transfer equations that would allow you to get a pretty good idea of how exactly the atmosphere acts to trap heat. Somewhere fairly early into these calculations you would start to worry about CO2.
Water vapor absorbs the greatest amount of outgoing long-wave radiation, but we have these huge deposits of liquid water pretty much everywhere and can't do much about that. However, increasing the global partial pressure of CO2 seems to be well within our abilities. Arrhenius was the first to calculate that a doubling of CO2 would raise the surface temperature by several degrees, but here's a basic history of climate models.
What people mean when they say "the science is settled" is that CO2 traps heat in a specific way, which has been observed both in the lab and in situ, and measured to an exacting standard. The effects and degree of that warming are not known to that same degree of accuracy, but people have been working on better estimates for about a century now. Models may change or they may be updated, but the parts that indicate that we are warming are relatively simple, very well-studied, and unlikely to change. No one wants our understanding of CO2-induced forcing to be true, and there has been a great deal of effort trying to disprove it over the last century or so.
You seem to be stupid. Science for you is an answer machine, which can be right or wrong. The truth is that there is no "right", there is only "least wrong". I sympathize if a world of uncertainties seems disturbing, but keep in mind that "least wrong" is often a very, very, very good approximation of "right". In the cases of evolution and climate science, we've been refining the approximations for quite a while now -- hence, "settled science".
Phlogiston was proposed as an explanation of why a fire would stop even though fuel was still present. Then, Priestly and Lavoisier explained the properties and function of oxygen. So, did this kill phlogiston? Not quite; see thermodynamics (2nd Law) and physical chemistry (free energy) which brings back part of the phlogiston explanation. So, the Global Warming / Climate Change people have two interesting things to deal with: Yes, carbon dioxide can act as a "greenhouse" gas. But, why is it that carbon dioxide increases are leading events prior to ice ages as revealed by the ice and sea bottom mud cores? This is why that science is still about as settled as the San Andreas fault.
Citation needed: "studies they're based on are almost universally either so laughably bad"
As a geoscientist with an advanced degree that has spent years studying global biogeochemical cycles and paleoclimate, I would not agree with your statement. There is so little evidence used by climatologists that has a statistically valid set of data in comparison to the time frame of the conclusions that the idea that we actually can predict or even understand global climate is the one that is laughable. Your hyperbole does not convince me that you have any real understanding of these issues.
a purely "scientific" pursuit, entirely separate from culture, religion, politics, natural inquisitiveness, and simple greed.
That way we can gloss-over the entire history and current state of scientific development and discovery, including the nasty little things about "science" and the way people perceive it, thus making it indistinguishable from religion.
Thanks, but no thanks.
It is really not possible to prove hypotheses in science. We can only disprove hypotheses, and "proof" only occurs when all other current hypotheses are eliminated except for one.
We can also create models, often with mathematics, that are just another form of hypotheses. So being "settled" is only a transient state until someone else proposes a consistent model with the evidence.
As such, we must embrace "deniers" that challenge the standing hypotheses and ask them to propose their own testable hypotheses.
Religion is often another hypothesis, but it is often not one that cannot one that can be scientifically disproved. An all powerful deity can alter our reality to erase or manipulate evidence.
If we disallow standing hypotheses to be challenged, then Science becomes an institutional religion. True science must always allow hypotheses to be constantly challenged by well formed alternate hypotheses.
"Settled" is a subjective word, and not a formal description of anything scientific. Scientific theories can be disproved (falsified) but not proved (unlike mathematical theories which can be proved). So science doesn't prove things, and nothing is truly "settled".
But from a practical standpoint, some things are for most purposes settled. For instance relativity (both special and general) is settled to the extent we stake our lives on it holding every time we take an air flight guided by GPS. And before we were staking our lives on relativity's predictions, relativity had survived so many attempts at falsification, most scientists considered it settled.
But the term "settled" has come up recently in the politics of climate science. I would say this climate science is not "settled", certainly not to the extent something like relativity is "settled". But the fact that one can argue that climate science is not "settled science" is basically a red herring, we don't need "settled science" to drive policy - the overwhelming consensus on climate science is a good enough to drive policy.
You do realise that in measuring or analysing if you will anything, you can become incredibly precise, but so wrong you may as well not have bothered.
Throughout my long career supporting decision makers I have always contended that "action defines truth". So, if I am on top of a tall building, the science of gravity is "settled" in that I would not step off the top expecting to hover like Wiley Coyote. In that sense, then settled is a function of the importance of the decision I am making. So, is the science of evolution settled? With respect to actions that allow bacteria to evolve yes, and I use that "settled" state to inform actions regarding overuse of antibiotics. But I seldom make decisions that need to know if Neanderthals could interbreed with Homo Sapiens Sapiens, so that science need not be considered settled. Global warming? Of course it is not "settled". But I do note, and act on, the fact that insurance companies are adjusting rates to reflect the new risks that global warming has introduced (see FL and wind insurance, see MN and house insurance rates). So it is settled in that sense. Beginning of life? Not a scientific question, this is all about where a life deserves protection at the expense of another. Because I believe in the sovereignty of the individual (don't force me to donate my spare kidney, thank you very much), there really is no scientifically answerable question. But there the "settle3d" question is removed from the table by the sovereignty question. My final point? Arguing about when scie3nce is settled in the absence of an actionable question makes as much sense as arguing about angels dancing on the head of a pin.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
Isn't it True most of our Science are Theory?
WE know Gravity is Proven and the Laws of Thermodynamics; we see these laws in action everyday.
But unless we can slice it dice it and see it, it's just a Theory waiting to be proven,
and if we continue to believe in things we cant see or prove, science is just another religion.
Some day in the future "He" will come down and
let us all know how foolish or clever we have been.
Until that day -- settled science might be settled in the context
of known data. Add a body of "new" knowledge and data
then revisit what is known.
Newtonian physics is a good example. It solved most if not all of the
problems at hand within the reach of instrumentation of the day. There
were however a number of later measurements that were unexplained as
methods improved. Orbit of Mercury was one IIRC... at which
point Albert and friends explored new solutions.
Today... with the exception of dark matter and dark energy there are
rare examples of unexplained data. Some particle physics research
has taken a different approach and by the exploration of a model attempt
to discover something that has yet to be observed.
Molecular biology is odd in that we know that we do not know very much at all.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
If people would get over their fear of not knowing Truth, be it scientific or otherwise, then we might not invest so much in it once we believe we have found it, and might have an easier time chaining our beliefs when they become outdated.
If it is settled, it ain't science.
Science produces imperfect models of the world it measures.
If you believe there is no way to improve the measurements or to put forth a better model, you are a believer, not a scientist.
--
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'" - Isaac Asimov
The whole idea of the scientific method is that your theory "HAS" to explain and answer "ALL" questions. If it can't then you have 2 choices. Abandon or modify your theory! Period! If your theory answers ten thousand questions and then question 10,001 comes along and it can't you have to make one of the 2 choices. Settled is a relative term.
Look at quantum theory. 7 freaking decades of use, 7 freaking decades of NEVER failing a test, 7 decades of being correct. It is still questioned by some because it can't scale up. So it is not settled. Useful? Oh yea, bigtime! But settled? No. The whole idea of science being "settled" is for lesser minds who cannot conceive much less accept that everything we know may be wrong.
That is what keeps science real. Keep it real.
gosgog:
Science is perpetually evolving, starting for the most part with observation leading to THEOREMS....(what the hell is a thromes?? a new science?)_ Once the Theorem has been established as fact it then to all intents is proven science. Big problem as I see it between Evolution (for the most part established fact!) and Religions, is the fact that the latter are all Theorems based on a few badly misinterpreted events. However, there exists Spirituality which thus far has never really been explained because it needs and "After DEATH...established fact...(perhaps a muslim bomber will return with a few of his 72 Virgins...heh! Heh!).
Of course there is no such thing as settled law. After 100 plus years, Einstein is still being tested again and again. and anyone who thinks he's a better theory unsettles every theory. Newton, Galileo, even Crick & Watson get questioned again, re-philosophized, and tweaked again .. and again. That's the very nature of science ... Anyone who declares a law (or theory) as settled science either doesn't understand science, or is merely a political hack chasing glory or grants.
Alcaide's Cafe,
Let us see peer review in Religion, let the jews peer review the muslims and the christians, listen to what the budists and hindus to have to say too. See how long it takes for them all to reach a consensus. Science is settled because it embraces, accepts and thrives on new ideas. Don't try to make a religion out of science, you are missing the point.
No theory/science can be settled, except in math. Math proofs, are proofs and valid for eternity. Pythagorean theorem was valid 2000 years ago, and is valid today and will still be valid 2000 years from now.
Physics 2000 years is not valid today. Physics theories today, might not be valid in the future. This is because physics use induction. Math use deduction. Math is the only science that use deduction. All other sciences are using induction - and therefore you never know for certainty.
Sure, as soon as the eventual heat death of the universe stops changing the data!
Why do you need to prove that you love your children or your wife? Your behaviour shows that you do (although you may do it for other reasons). You are a single sample and not a universal model of "loving your wife"
To drive the point home:
Ok, you love your wife, now how much? A lot? A little? Prove it.
The first point is -- it doesn't matter to anyone else, you already _know_ it.
The second point is there are at least 3 different types of knowledge:
* intellectual -- e.g. math, science
* experiential -- as a man you will *never* know what it is like to give birth
* intuitive or subconsciousness (which is mislabeled super-consciousness)
Dismissing intuitive knowledge simply because ones are to fail to understand the concept of a Higher Mind is one of the fallacy of Science & Scientists.
Lastly, ALL Objective truth IS FIRST SUBJECTIVE.
Betteridge says so.
"Nor is tested or even really testable for that matter. There's no way you can do an experiment that even remotely tests man's impact on climate. The systematic interactions of a planet's climate are beyond what we can conceive of, much less understand, right now. The whole of scientific method is positing an idea and then doing experiments that prove and experiments that fail to disprove. Note the later. The scientific method demands attempting to disprove what you posit. Anything less is Cargo Cult Science [wikipedia.org] rather than scientific method. This is the problem I see with current climate science. Everything I read is about is science looking for evidence that it's happening and man made. I don't read much of anything about science looking for evidence that it either isn't happening or isn't caused by man."
Wow this is just really bad. What you are trying to imply is that because the climate is complex, it is impossible to test.This is just not true. And the very assumption that complexity = difficulty is unrealistic as well. See, we have these great things called tools. And tools let us do things we couldnt normally do. Things like lift things heavier that we could normally lift, or see things we couldnt normally see. Or even think things we couldnt normally think. Oh yeah that thing you are using to write your ignorant comments on that magically translates letters into electricity and back to letters again miles away. Thats called a computer! -And it is the science you trust that takes your voice into a little hand-held box and teleports it hundreds of miles away so you can talk to your mom once a day.
-Wow, had to stop myself there, when into full flame mode. Very sorry.
Anyway, we absolutely have the means to experiment on climate. It is very easy to fill a clear conatiner with methane and another with air, put it in the sun for an hour and see what happens. Or take a temperature reading under a tree, cut down the tree, then take another temperature reading. Yes, global climate is complex, but that does not make it impossible. Computer models and satelite imagry have improved weather forcasts over the years.
"Everything I read is about is science looking for evidence that it's happening and man made. I don't read much of anything about science looking for evidence that it either isn't happening or isn't caused by man."
First off- isnt that what you want? For example, someone studying the polar ice sheet hears about this climate change stuff, and decides to look at ice cores for recorded snowfall over the last 400,000 years and compare it to the climatologists models. "Hmm thats weird, there is a sudden slump in the last 100 year. Best I can tell, this seems to show a dramatic decrease in snowfall that matches the climatologists data. Well maybe i am doing something wrong. I am going to publish my data and see if else sees the same data" -that was just my made-up scenario. But that is exactly what you want from the scientific community.
And lastly, if all you see is scientific studies reinforcing the theory that mankind is affecting the climate, why is it so hard to beleive? Scientists were right about alot of other things right?
just comes down to variables.
current science says act A happens when variable A, B, and C are present.
thing is, act A may also rely on unknown variable X, Y and Z being present in addition, or act A fails. but unknown variables X, Y and Z are say, always present on earth, so scientists dont notice.
so then, for science to correctly state which variables must be present for act A, science must know of all the variables which affect act A, and to do so, science must know all variables possible, and thats a tall drink of water.
in other words, for science to state anything with 100% certainty, science must first be privy to everything, so until then, we're bound solely to the realm of approximation for everything. practicality is cool with that though.
And the very assumption that complexity = difficulty is unrealistic as well.
That has got to be one of the stupidest things I have ever seen written. So your claim is complexity makes things easier? Wow. But I'm the ignorant one. Do you even know what the word means?
See, we have these great things called tools. And tools let us do things we couldnt normally do. Things like lift things heavier that we could normally lift, or see things we couldnt normally see.
So we have these tools which means at this moment in time we understand everything there is to know about the universe. Ok, now you're making sense. I get it.
And it is the science you trust that takes your voice into a little hand-held box and teleports it hundreds of miles away so you can talk to your mom once a day.
Once again the level of ignorance is astounding. You seem to have no concept of what science is even about. Here is a hint. It has absolutely nothing to do with trust. Amazingly it has nothing to do with how often I talk to my mother either.
Anyway, we absolutely have the means to experiment on climate. It is very easy to fill a clear conatiner with methane and another with air, put it in the sun for an hour and see what happens.
No, we absolutely do not. Your experiment is so lacking as to be pointless. Climate is literally billions of types of interactions each of which has a significant affect on the overall system. What happens in a couple containers filled with gasses is about as significant as the affect of my pissing in the ocean would be. We don't even know what we don't know. The complexity of what we do know is way beyond our ability to model. Hell we can't even measure much of it to any degree of accuracy. They take a core sample from one or 2 spots and then try to conjecture the entire worldwide atmospheric conditions going back 100,000 years from that. We have too little information and there is so much more we have no information about because we don't even know what to look for or measure. Add to that the period of time we have any kind of accurate data for is extremely limited. Going back more then 50 years is all pretty much conjecture. Also no where did I say anything is impossible. I said we don't know nearly enough right now.
I am going to publish my data and see if else sees the same data" -that was just my made-up scenario. But that is exactly what you want from the scientific community.
No, it absolutely is not. Nor is is it scientific method. Scientific method requires that you actively try and find faults with your law or theory. Climate science seems to have turned into science by consensus. It's settled. Anything contrary to the conventional wisdom is looked upon as either something to disprove or twisted to fit current theory.
And lastly, if all you see is scientific studies reinforcing the theory that mankind is affecting the climate, why is it so hard to beleive? Scientists were right about alot of other things right?
The problem is no one seems to be actively trying to disprove it. That is the whole of scientific method, actively looking for things that don't fit your theory. Science is far more often wrong than right. Hell, it seems they don't even have gravity figured out yet and that's something we can do quantitative experiments with.
Just the idea that anyone can think any science is settled shows an absolute ignorance of what science is.
Who is John Galt?
Jump in an fMRI machine and show them. Or measure your body's chemistry when around them vs. away from them. I don't get your point. Measuring something like love isn't impossible.