Comment on Great Mug
blarghly@lemmy.world 1 day ago
We do not believe that it functions according to predictible rules, we simply look for rules and we have infact found some. That is why we can design a scyscraper and know that it won’t topple without trying it out first.
If we look at the way the universe behaves, quantum mechanics gives us fundamental, unavoidable indeterminacy, so that alternative histories of the universe can be assigned probability.
“it posits that the universe functions according to predictable rules”
Not quite. Cosmologists accept a certain distribution of predictable phenomena within known parameters while leaving the door open to chaos, outliers, the as of yet unknown and unknowable beyond what we understand. From quantum physics to cosmology and the aspirational yet elusive grand theory of everything, science is prepared for a world weirder than we understand, and possibly weirder than we can understand.
Just because empirical evidence and the development of predictable rules are a very fruitful line of inquiry doesn’t mean we believe that is truth.
Philosophers of Science have rather lengthy volumes of work on the subject. I’m just a novice on the topic, but my take on the state of the subject is that we don’t accept science and even it’s laws as absolute truth, just a very practical, reliable, utilitarian form of inquiry and understanding which includes uncertainty (Heisenberg), probability and chaos. Scientists are prepared to abandon everything in exchange for somethign better.
Look at newtonian physics. No one thinks it’s the truth, it’s just simpler and useful for everyday engineering.
There are rules that govern stochasticity, and especially the behavior of large aggregates of things that indivdually behave stochastically. It’s not a tradeoff of 100% locked-down order or headless-chicken chaos. There’s a continuum.
No one thinks it’s the truth
Within a certain range of scale, speed and energy, it’s an excellent approximation of the truth.
Within a certain range of scale, speed and energy, it’s an excellent approximation of the truth.
You could have just said “Yeah.”
we define “science” as the aggregate consciousness of scientific researchers
This is something I wish I could preach convincingly to everyone. The activity of scientists, a social group, are arguing and trying to convince one another that their interpretation of the data acquired by using their tools and methods is what become a scientific consensus.
Forefronting the method (often a vaguely defined one rooted in a hypo-deductive model from about 150 years ago that most people learned in grade school) removes the relationships between people and other people and people and institutions.
I wish I could find the paper but there’s a wonderful enthographic study on how scientists interact with each other to transform the discourse.
xep@discuss.online 1 day ago
Science isn’t a belief system. It’s a way of making sense of natural phenomena.