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Post by abacus9900 on May 5, 2011 14:42:55 GMT 1
Science had given us many benefits with which to organize the world around us and relieved, as well as created, great suffering, but can science be legitimately be said to really exist in the absence of conscious observers like us? Can atoms, quarks or any other fundamental bits of matter have 'real' meaning unless forming a part of a system crucially underpinned by consciousness? I do not see how because such abstract ideas are products of human thought and human engineered devices that form a long chain of linked interactions, so that an electron, for example, is a amalgam of interrelated processes and has no independent separate existence. Before the advent of 'scientific thought' religion and magic etc. were used in order to 'explain' the world. Just because scientific theories just happen to closely correlate to observed phenomena does not mean they are any more 'correct' than non-scientific ideas, it just means they happen to 'work.'
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Post by carnyx on May 5, 2011 15:03:44 GMT 1
'Science' stands for the 'Scientific method', which was the method of eliminative inductive reasoning invented by Francis Bacon. That's all!
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Post by abacus9900 on May 5, 2011 16:55:56 GMT 1
And is only valid as its own terms says it is.  |
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Post by speakertoanimals on May 9, 2011 17:43:29 GMT 1
this is just the sad ole chestnut of does a tree falling in a forest make no noise if there is no one there to hear it....................
The key point of science is in explaining the world, and to be an explanation there has to be someone who is understanding that explanation. Which is fairly trivial and obvious.
The key point you have missed comes when we link that attempted explanation to the data, which is what gives science the crown when we compare it to other attempted explanations, such as religion.
So then it boils down to whether or not you believe the real world exists indepedently of us observing it, which (your misunderstandings of the quantum interpretation of that aside) seems to be a reasonable hypothesis.
This is just daft, tobe totally frank. If by correct you just mean feels nice, then anything will do. If you mean by correct, gives correct predictions when you test it against the real world, then science wins hands down. In fact, other attempts never even pass go........................
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Post by abacus9900 on May 22, 2011 22:55:08 GMT 1
Except we need to think 'crazily' to move our understanding of the universe further along. Predictions are the result of fresh thinking which, as an obvious example, Einstein had a gift for so that to keep following the 'orthodoxy' spells the end of science since in reality science is simply an expression of ideas and ideas result as a combination of 'us' and 'out there.' You still seem to have a problem grasping this concept. Essentially, reality is formalized magic, so please never think you have it defined. QM is a clear indication of the craziness of reality at its most basic, therefore, what you consider as 'real' is illusory. Frankly, to be a brilliant scientist you need to think beyond what you were taught at college otherwise you will always be an automaton following a program laid down by others. BE a rebel, that's how things improve. You gave up really using your brain the moment you acquired your degree, content to be a 'convert.' Sound religious? You bet! Why do you think light can be both a wave AND a particle? Yes, because no one model of reality is correct above any other so that to straight-jacket the universe into a fixed definition is silly and shortsighted that does science little service in the long run. The only limitation to the way the universe is does not depend with it but with us.
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