Thread: The Scientific Method - Why Science is Truth

I understand Dajo's feeling towards the use of the word truth.. Because even science itself can believe something to be true only to write itself off many years later.

Yes science and the scientific method helps find basic "truths" of life, the universe and everything but it can and will be wrong at points..

He makes much sense when he says science can only help us find or understand what we are searching for or have the proper equipment to find and understand..

Hard to find the soul for instance when we have no devices geared specifically for finding it.

Indeed, science is the search for truth, but most people mistake science as the truth. As if science can't progress.

Originally Posted by DeathCell

I understand Dajo's feeling towards the use of the word truth.. Because even science itself can believe something to be true only to write itself off many years later.

That's the point though, as really also added - they are relative truths at the time that are still given room for development and modification. Science never claims to be undeniable - that is the reason why falsification is involved in the scientific method.

Yes science and the scientific method helps find basic "truths" of life, the universe and everything but it can and will be wrong at points..

This is why falsification is integral to the scientific method.

Hard to find the soul for instance when we have no devices geared specifically for finding it.

Precisely. Thus why many believe it to be a fabrication, along with many others things that are no means to demonstrating evidence for. However, this does not mean that scientists say there is certainly no existence of them, just that there is no means to prove it.

Originally Posted by ChaybaChayba

Indeed, science is the search for truth, but most people mistake science as the truth. As if science can't progress.

Exactly!

~

Science may not be truth, but scientific theories are correct in their regions of prediction. For example, Newtonian orbital mechanics do very accurately describe the orbits of the planets, except for a minute precession of Mercury. New science does not destroy old science; it generalizes it. General relativity did not destroy Newton's gravity, it showed precisely that Newtonian gravity just boils down to taking only the first term from a Taylor expansion, so it actually defined precisely when you can continue to use Newtonian gravity, and where you need to step up to the next term in the expansion.

Another example is the Standard Model. Whatever replaces it will still have to make the same predictions as the SM below, say, 100 TeV. It may turn out that the particles we see in today's accelerators are just lower harmonics on strings. But the point is, we do not discard the SM. Electrons may be strings but we don't need to know that for, say, electronics. So the SM is correct to within a well-defined error limit. Another example is the age of the universe. We know that it's 13.7 ± (something small) billion years old, and no new discoveries can possibly put it outside that scientifically established error, ever.

You see, the science of the past 200 or so years has already effectively explained about 99% of middle-scale physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Now we're just defining the relatively unimportant last 1%. So don't hold your breath for anything really earth-shattering to happen, because it's mostly set in stone.

What we will start to see for the rest of the existence of humanity is not new science, but rather new engineering. We will expand the boundaries of what can be made small, and what can be made large. We will have nanotech devices that can do seemingly magical things, but still abide by regular, old 1930's era quantum mechanical chemistry. We will also see large structures built in space and on other planets, but they will still only rely on basic 19th century mechanics to operate.

Originally Posted by esfx

You see, the science of the past 200 or so years has already effectively explained about 99% of middle-scale physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Now we're just defining the relatively unimportant last 1%. So don't hold your breath for anything really earth-shattering to happen, because it's mostly set in stone.

That's about as likely as The Rapture. If it were conceivable that there is a fixed sum of knowledge in the first place, I would invert those numbers: we are only beginning to grasp enough of physics, chemistry and biology (not to mention etc.) to generate serious quantities of data, and not until we improve our data analysis by a few orders of magnitude can we even begin to know how much we don't know.

Originally Posted by Taosaur

That's about as likely as The Rapture. If it were conceivable that there is a fixed sum of knowledge in the first place, I would invert those numbers: we are only beginning to grasp enough of physics, chemistry and biology (not to mention etc.) to generate serious quantities of data, and not until we improve our data analysis by a few orders of magnitude can we even begin to know how much we don't know.

You seem to think that science is about collecting data. Well sure, we haven't tracked the motion of every particle in the universe yet. But in terms of interactions, yes, we pretty much got it nailed down. For example, consider how much (little) has changed in the science (not engineering) of electronics, chemistry, physics, etc, over the past 100 years. Well, basically nothing. Maxwell's equations are correct in all but the most ridiculously extreme circumstances. Chemistry hasn't changed one iota in 70 years, and I already mentioned the Standard Model.

Let me ask you this: What, precisely, do you expect to change in our knowledge of the universe?

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

About once a century, people start to make this claim. Every time they do, a few short years later someone discovers something that blows the roof off of our current understanding of reality. We don't even know if our laws of reality hold true outside the context of our locale.

Actually, that only happened once, in the late 19th century. The scientific culture was different then.

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

The chances are that the potential for novel discovery is virtually infinite.

Novel discovery =/= radical transformation. I never said there wouldn't be discoveries, but they will be confined to ever smaller regions of the universe, in the sense of energy scales, space scales, or time scales. For example, if string theory is proved correct, that will just be a small addendum on the SM. It will not affect our lives in any way, probably ever.

Originally Posted by esfx

You seem to think that science is about collecting data. Well sure, we haven't tracked the motion of every particle in the universe yet. But in terms of interactions, yes, we pretty much got it nailed down. For example, consider how much (little) has changed in the science (not engineering) of electronics, chemistry, physics, etc, over the past 100 years. Well, basically nothing. Maxwell's equations are correct in all but the most ridiculously extreme circumstances. Chemistry hasn't changed one iota in 70 years, and I already mentioned the Standard Model.

Let me ask you this: What, precisely, do you expect to change in our knowledge of the universe?

Chemistry most definitely has changed, and pretty drastically in recent years. Case in point; just within the last few years a method for reversing the Casimir effect has been discovered.

Originally Posted by esfx

Actually, that only happened once, in the late 19th century. The scientific culture was different then.

Nope! See; Copernican Revolution

Originally Posted by esfx

Novel discovery =/= radical transformation. I never said there wouldn't be discoveries, but they will be confined to ever smaller regions of the universe, in the sense of energy scales, space scales, or time scales. For example, if string theory is proved correct, that will just be a small addendum on the SM. It will not affect our lives in any way, probably ever.

This is your opinion and nothing more. The defining characteristic of scientific revolution is that the extent and specifics of any sort of a shift in our scientific paradigm cannot or are not predicted before they happen. There is absolutely no way for you to know that our understanding of science won't completely change course in 100 years or tomorrow.

Originally Posted by esfx

You seem to think that science is about collecting data. Well sure, we haven't tracked the motion of every particle in the universe yet. But in terms of interactions, yes, we pretty much got it nailed down. For example, consider how much (little) has changed in the science (not engineering) of electronics, chemistry, physics, etc, over the past 100 years. Well, basically nothing. Maxwell's equations are correct in all but the most ridiculously extreme circumstances. Chemistry hasn't changed one iota in 70 years, and I already mentioned the Standard Model.

What you're expressing is the Modern fallacy, that we live at the end of history, having corrected the errors of our naive forebearers, and all that remains to the perfection of human knowledge is the dotting of 'i's and the crossing of 't's. This view was losing currency in the 1930s and its coffin was nailed shut with the detonation of the atom bomb. It's a specific instance of the general phenomenon the Greeks called 'hubris.' History strongly suggests that truths we now take to be complete and self-evident will prove as provincial as a flat earth or indivisible atom given time. What has changed fundamentally in the last 70 years? How about solidity and location? Scientific orthodoxy maintained into the '50s or '60s that forms consist of some elementary particle occupying a specific space. Of course, it's still true and useful but, like Newtonian physics, incomplete.

Originally Posted by esfx

Let me ask you this: What, precisely, do you expect to change in our knowledge of the universe?

I expect that the more we look into the nature of things, the more provincial and provisional--the less complete--our current understanding will appear. There's no point where we will have it 'mostly figured out.' As has been the case for as long as we've been sapient, our notion of what constitutes the universe will continue to expand for as long as we're willing to investigate, meaning the pool of data from which we infer and about which we theorize will grow as well.

Originally Posted by esfx

Novel discovery =/= radical transformation. I never said there wouldn't be discoveries, but they will be confined to ever smaller regions of the universe, in the sense of energy scales, space scales, or time scales. For example, if string theory is proved correct, that will just be a small addendum on the SM. It will not affect our lives in any way, probably ever.

Again, you have it backwards. More likely our whole current understanding will become relevant to an ever smaller frame of reference proportionate to our total knowledge in the future, for as long as our curiousity persists. How will we operate differently in an immaterial, non-causal, infinite universe? We can't know, anymore than someone 500 years ago knew what it would mean to live on a globe rather than a table.

I agree with you, Onus, but I would avoid the term "Truth." That is a pretty loaded term as people have already pointed out. I'm sure you could come up with a more appropriate term (assuming this wasn't your whole point to begin with, you instigator ).

Science still relies on observation, which is severely limited and subjective. While we are always improving our ability to observe, we will never be able to come close to absolute truth. However limited it may be, I agree it is currently the best system available for us to use in our endless pursuit of truth.

I think people often underestimate the importance of the very first steps of the scientific method. "Define the question" and "form a hypothesis" seem to be the limiting tasks in science right now. These initial steps are often the most difficult, and the most reliant on our human bias and beliefs. This is also the time for the looneys, the believers, and the fringe thinkers to throw out every possible idea, no matter how crazy. Then, we can look for ways to prove or disprove it (and throw it back in their faces ). I see too many self proclaimed scientists who are seemingly annoyed when people come up with unproven ideas. It seems like they are somehow insulted by ideas. It has to be an idea before it can become science. I think we need the believers, the fringe thinkers, the charlatans and the crazies. They pose the questions, and dare science to prove them wrong.

Originally Posted by Robot_Butler

I agree with you, Onus, but I would avoid the term "Truth." That is a pretty loaded term as people have already pointed out. I'm sure you could come up with a more appropriate term (assuming this wasn't your whole point to begin with, you instigator ).

~

Originally Posted by esfx

You see, the science of the past 200 or so years has already effectively explained about 99% of middle-scale physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Now we're just defining the relatively unimportant last 1%. So don't hold your breath for anything really earth-shattering to happen, because it's mostly set in stone.

About once a century, people start to make this claim. Every time they do, a few short years later someone discovers something that blows the roof off of our current understanding of reality. We don't even know if our laws of reality hold true outside the context of our locale.

The chances are that the potential for novel discovery is virtually infinite.