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How Our Botched Understanding of "Science" Ruins Everything
An anonymous reader writes "Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry writes at The Week, "If you ask most people what science is, they will give you an answer that looks a lot like Aristotelian 'science' — i.e., the exact opposite of what modern science actually is. Capital-S Science is the pursuit of capital-T Truth. And science is something that cannot possibly be understood by mere mortals. It delivers wonders. It has high priests. It has an ideology that must be obeyed. This leads us astray. ... Countless academic disciplines have been wrecked by professors' urges to look 'more scientific' by, like a cargo cult, adopting the externals of Baconian science (math, impenetrable jargon, peer-reviewed journals) without the substance and hoping it will produce better knowledge. ... This is how you get people asserting that 'science' commands this or that public policy decision, even though with very few exceptions, almost none of the policy options we as a polity have have been tested through experiment (or can be). People think that a study that uses statistical wizardry to show correlations between two things is 'scientific' because it uses high school math and was done by someone in a university building, except that, correctly speaking, it is not. ... This is how you get the phenomenon ... thinking science has made God irrelevant, even though, by definition, religion concerns the ultimate causes of things and, again, by definition, science cannot tell you about them. ... It also means that for all our bleating about 'science' we live in an astonishingly unscientific and anti-scientific society. We have plenty of anti-science people, but most of our 'pro-science' people are really pro-magic (and therefore anti-science). "
... half way through the summary
Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
Lets leave the crazy rants to the comment section.
We fell most smart when we are seen "liking" smart things. Hence the idiotic, pseudo-intellectual "I Fucking Love Science" Facebook posts that flood my feed with juvenile memes and puns. Liking smart people like Niel deGrass Tyson does not make you smart. Taking sides on a scientific controversy you do not fully understand does not make you smart (even if you happen to chose the factually correct side). These things are simply part of the cargo cult science has become.
True, bot correlation does not not equal causation either. It is very likely CO2 concentrations are causing global warming. We don't have another planet to test on, but we know CO2 is a green house gas through experimentation. It is not now required to do so on a planetary scale, we've already proved they trap gasses. The authors interpretation of science might require you to test this on a planetary scale, but that is ridiculous.
Excellent trolling, refute the summary of an article about poor understanding of the meaning of science with a Popperian negative-proof masquerading as a strawman. Either you are a grand-master of hyperbole, or you don't bother to read to comprehension before declaring something invalid. Irony, since that's pretty much exactly the OP - many humans really love to declare themselves aligned with SCIENCE! Yet few are actually consistently able to operate scientifically.
Not every opinion is of equal worth. Not every opinion is informed. Not every opinion is distinguishable from a feeling or hunch.
Democracy pertains to politics, where there is no objective reality -- only competing sets of values and subjective opinion.
In more objective areas of life, you live and die based on whether or not your ideas are objectively defensible. Science is a way of knowing: and the worth of an idea is usually based on its ability to explain or predict. That's the key ingredient that most people don't understand.
That's exactly why I suggest that teaching about creationism IS appropriate for a science class. If I were a biology teacher (and my approach were permissible), when the subject of creationism inevitably came up in the class, rather than dismiss it with the arrogant assertion that "this is a science class, we'll not discuss your religion here", I would, instead, follow up with a discussion of Popper's criteria. Then I might request a short essay discussing how well evolutionary theory or creationism met the criteria for a scientific hypothesis.
That, in my opinion, is part of teaching science.
Correlation is necessary but not sufficient to scientific proof of causation. To prove causation you need to have a theoretical model allowing you to construct experiements which, with variables controlled for, produce fresh demonstrations of the posited effect. There have been laboratory experiments demonstrating the "greenhouse" effect of CO2 levels since the late 1800s.
Correlation + theory + well-designed experiments + confirming results = causation
Science often starts with observed correlations. But not always. Sometime the theory comes first. It's only on putting all the parts together that science can speak with confidence about causation. If we use the "corelation != causation" slogan as if it refutes all science which follows from observation of correlations, we entirely miss the point.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
The piece is mumbo-jumbo. Yes, Bacon eschewed the "Aristotelian" search for final causes. Does that mean that Baconian science doesn't try to determine the truth? Of course not.
The history of philosophy/history of science done in this piece is clap trap. He says that Galileo used experiment, whereas Aristotle did not. And that's why Aristotle thought that "heavier objects should fall faster than light ones". Supposedly. The problem: Aristotle didn't use "abstract reasoning" to come to that incorrect conclusion. He just didn't control his variables adequately. Not controlling variables adequately can happen to the very best of experimentalists.
So how does this argument run? Scientific knowledge is knowledge about specific empirical propositions. Therefore, scientific knowledge is not "true" knowledge. Therefore, science is not the pursuit of capital-T Truth? That's a terrible argument. This seems like just a case of begging the question from the author where he has an unargued "definition" of what "Truth" is. Why anyone else is beholden to this definition, of course, is a mystery.
I highly doubt Bacon ever said this. Of course, there is no citation to check. I think the author has confused Bacon's model of Bensalem, where he has the houses of specialists hide their operation from others, so that the others don't come to conclusions based on partial understandings, before the work of the specialists is completed.
Who made these "definitions"? No one in sight.
Oh I see, Dawkins, a great evolutionary biologist, is a philistine. The evidence? I guess because the author disagrees with Dawkins about God. No argument is given.
It can be the perfect setting for morality plays.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
The article is just as bad or perhaps worse than the summary. Most of the summary is just taking snippets out of the article, and some of the more egregious ones that I bothered to check aren't taking anything out of context. And there is plenty of worse content that the summary has left out.
thinking science has made God irrelevant, even though, by definition, religion concerns the ultimate causes of things and, again, by definition, science cannot tell you about them
This particular line of reasoning is the first one I checked on hoping it was just embellishment by the submitter. But it was there. The article loses absolutely all credibility in this one sentence. Science is more than capable of contemplating the cause of anything. It may not be good at anthropomorphizing natural phenomena and giving it intent (like wondering why the universe was created), but that is simply because scientific reasoning easily dismisses such thought as not only irrelevant but ultimately incorrect.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
From TFA:
No - engineering "gives us airplanes and flu vaccines and the Internet". Science gives us the theoretical (in the scientific sense) frameworks and tools that engineering can apply to do that. The author shows at least as much confusion as those he decries, and he does it from the start.
Yes. That quote describes the philosophy known as "empiricism", which asserts that the epistemological purpose and process of science is to derive methods for prediction, as opposed to creating explanations. The modern, Popperian and post-Popperian, understanding of science is that it is based on the philosophy of falsifiability, and is a process of conjecture and criticism, with the goal of creating expanations for how the world works. The explanations do enable prediction, but they're deeper than that, because rules of thumb that provide accurate predictions can exist without explanations of the underlying phenomena, and such rules of thumb are strictly less valuable and less useful than explanations. The most essential difference, though there are many, is that explanations explain their own "reach", making clear the set of phenomena to which they apply, while rules of thumb don't, regardless of their accuracy.
Also, some of the criticism takes the form of experiment, but not all, and in fact not even most. Most conjectured explanations are discarded after only a little analysis, because that's all it takes to show them to be inconsistent with what's already known, or to show them to be bad or shallow explanations for other reasons. Controlled experimentation, per se, isn't even necessary. This is a good thing because in some areas of science, for example, astrophysics, we don't have the ability to experiment on the objects of study. Yet we can still theorize, criticize, examine evidence and move gradually towards ever more accurate and deeper explanations.
The explanations provided by science are, as you say, what make engineering possible, but science is the process of creating ever-better explanations of the universe, not merely of producing reliable predictive rules.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Whereas science needs both hypothesis generation and experimental validation/repudiation of hypotheses.
Hypothesis generation sometimes has to go out there, and invent new concepts that have so far only been thought about, not yet tested.
So to summarize, science needs both creative conceptualization (ontology formation) and experimentation (validation or repudiation of the ontology and/or hypothesis).
These need to go on in circular reinforcement. (Spiral development model).
Experimentation without re-conceptualization will eventually run dry, because it will get stuck in a local-maximum paradigm, and people won't know what new things/aspects to test any more.
Remember, relativity was discovered in a thought experiment by Einstein. Is a thought experiment a real experiment in the article author's view? I doubt it.
Einstein, from the outside, was doing "magic". Speculating about the larger truth.
Relativity was an example of theory creating a completely new set of concepts that were way ahead of the ability to carry out experiments that could validate or repudiate them. It was a well-formed theory, in that it clearly suggested new kinds of experiments that could test it, but it was pure non-experimental theorizing nonetheless.
Darwin also, most likely, happened on his key theoretical insight about natural selection (the simple core of it), by thinking about the generalization of many observations, and having a theoretical insight.
Experimentation has its essential place in science, no doubt (keeps the theorists honest and humble), but it is only half of the game. The other half is innovative philosophy, carefully practiced, in the mind.
Exper
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
to believe that there is a "Philosophical question regarding the origin of the Universe." Is, in itself, a religion.
The question will matter the moment you can tell us why there is a reason for the origin of the universe we currently live in.
"There is no proof, but it's a rational conclusion to believe that something did cause the Universe to exist. "
I philosopher probably would say that, but that would be an another example of why they are useless hanger ons to the historical coat tails of science.
Yes, there is proof. We are walking around in it. And yes, atheists do understand the something caused it. But there is a lot of evidence showing it was a natural something, and zero evidence it was a bi-product of intent.
"The question regarding the origin of the Universe is just one question where bias takes charge and science is put in the background."
False. there is a lot of sciecne regarding the origin of the universe. What we have is a bunch os people who get their panties in a bunch when it's pointed out there is zero evidence to support theire belief.
Lets see:
"Vaccines"
The science is well know. The vast majority of public debate isn't about anything debatable. It's one side making things up and the other using science. i.e. expermint, data, ect.
"GMO foods"
ON one side we ahve science, and verification from every major scientific health group in the world, that it is safe. On the other side you got FUD.
" Global Warming"
ON side has science, prediction, proof, the other side has people screaming nonsense.
Science and bias isn't why we can't have a rational debate.
How would you have a rational debate with someone who claims 2+2 = 5. No natter how many time you showed them it equals 4, they refuse to change? What do you do when the blame the status quo for not accepting his theory?
"Anyone that dares to challenge the status quo is attacked and ostracized."
False. challenge the status quo without good data is "attacked and ostracized." If you statement was true, science and out body of scientific knowledge wouldn't change, but it does change. Every day.
I am replying because it is wrong. Being wrong is not 'challenging the status quo' it's simple just wrong.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on