SCIENCE!

[elanid]

I'm supposed to be doing my homework, but I'd rather not (c'mon, you guys, I have a Chinese midterm, give me a break :P), so instead, I'm going to write about evolution.  One of my classes this year is an upper-division biology class, Experimental Ecology & Evolution (E3, for short, and I love it more than any class ever), which is giving me uppity

Comments

[brugenmeister]

Part 2

[sarahbrand]

You're accusing me of making assumptions, but I think you have to make assumptions to get anything done. (More on this in a bit.) If I reject Occam's Razor, for example, it gives me license to completely make stuff up, which is not generally conducive to reasoning out anything that is correct or true.

I actually do hold to determinism, now that you bring it up. Free will is basically an illusion resulting from lack of perfect knowledge. (Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen is the best illustration I can think of for this.) And I'm okay with that.

And what does science do? It maps causes and their effects or vice versa -- through either inductive or deductive reasoning. It can never reach the full picture, because the number is infinite, right? Yet it assumes -- ASSUMES -- there are causes and effects that it can map.

Right. That's the reason that introductory physics problems tell you to assume five million things so that you can actually solve for x. But once you've made those assumptions, you can solve for x. And, if the effect of the

[brugenmeister]

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[brugenmeister]

Response part 2

[brugenmeister]

And actually, this is the crux of the argument.

Scientific discourse says "Being is because..."

Science is the study of the "because". Ironically, monotheistic religion also says "Being is because..." but it goes on to conclude that "Being is because of God."

The existential alternative is "Being is."

And this is not as simple a statement as it may seem. Thousands upon thousands of books have been written elaborating upon that single statement "Being is."

[sarahbrand]

Again, I am a bit out of my depth, not being formally trained in philosophy, but I'll do my best.

when you're dealing with life, nothing is ever simple.

But why can you say that life is complicated? Because you've observed it to be so. Occam's Razor doesn't mean you throw out factors that make a situation more complex, it means that you don't throw in things that you don't actually need in order to answer the question. It's theoretically possible that there are invisible fairies in my brain making all the neurons spark the way they should, but why on earth would I need to believe such a thing

[elanid]

Your very thought is limited by the language by which you express it.

I'm still working on a big response, but I'll just note that this may be to some extent true, especially if one is not thinking deeply about whatever the topic under discussion is, but it's clearly not absolute - otherwise, how would people invent new words, new technologies, and new ideas? Not to mention coming up with language in the first place!

[sarahbrand]

(continuing from above)

About gravity: it's basically geometry. Incredibly complex four-dimensional geometry, but all the same. As far as I can tell, you're not even trying to understand it, and your seeming unwillingness to do so, even as you continue to claim that its nature supports your argument, is not helping your case.

Thus the scientist presumes they can explain the way things really are to someone who is ignorant of the way things really are in order to enlighten that individual.

Yes, and? There's nothing stopping the latter individual from checking the scientist's work and determining whether the scientist's conclusions are in accord with his/her own observations. (For this reason, I would also dispute your earlier characterization of scientists as priests.) Furthermore, I'm not sure what's wrong with observing things and then communicating those observations to other people. Isn't that what writing (for instance) is all about?

I apologize for the mix-up between Heisenberg and the observer effect, but the one is really

[brugenmeister]

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[elanid]

And as for new ideas, I think Shakespeare once said something about there being no such thing as a new idea, but I don't want to get into that.

Oh, please, a quote from maybe-Shakespeare does not constitute evidence, and if you want to make that exceedingly foolish claim, I would greatly appreciate it if you would deign to support it.

[brugenmeister]

Yeah, I probably shouldn't have mentioned that without the quote. And it's only a foolish claim under an ontology of "Being is because..." Seeing as the because is unconstituted, then knowledge can be created (out of thin air

[sarahbrand]

What does it matter that some man once said something? According to science, that means squat.

Well, yes, because people can say things that are dead wrong. But let's take an actual Shakespeare quote - Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy, for instance. Someone who has never had occasion to contemplate suicide, nor known anyone driven to that level of despair, will not understand it. But to everyone else, it resonates, because it accords with their own observations about life.

So, Shakespeare's statements are not evidence for their own truth (and really, how could they be?); rather, the truth of his statements is a conclusion that the reader draws, using his/her observations as the evidence. Just because a statement isn't considered evidence for the purposes of a particular type of discussion, it doesn't follow that it is meaningless

[lordubiquitous]

"...I think Shakespeare once said something about there being no such thing as a new idea..."

Did you perhaps mean the quote: "there is nothing new under the sun"?

Cause it's not Shakespeare. It's from the Bible.

[lordubiquitous]

Don't mind me. Should've read Sarah's post before I replied.