- cross-posted to:
- pics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- pics@lemmy.world
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Science isn’t an ontology, it’s a method.
God, what no humanities does to a mf
Reminded me of this.
Exactly. I keep trying to get people to understand that it’s a process, just like running is a process.
I have the suspicion, once you’re far enough in any field, you’ll view as a process what colloquially is considered a binary state. You’ll continue talking like it isn’t a process, because you don’t have the time to explain it all the time.
And a method in which beliefs are important. Not the religious ones, of course, but there are other kinds of beliefs.
Believing that science yields universally true results or is the only method of finding truths, however, is an ontology and something you have to believe.
Edit: I’m not anti-science or anything, just a pedant.
Believing that science yields universally true results or is the only method of finding truths
You just described science as though it were a belief system. In reality, science has a presumption that your ideals are false, not true. And a person who could only discover truth through science wouldn’t be able to dress or feed themselves.
I agree with the second part of that sentence, but who would think that they discover universal truths or any truths at all? The whole premise of science is that we cannot verify anything or find any real truth. We can just show that anything else is much more unlikely to be true.
Here is a video by the channel Dr. Fatima (former astrophysicist) which I think has some intersection with this topic. I may have picked the wrong video though because I haven’t watched it in months.
Scientism is the belief that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality.
While the term was defined originally to mean “methods and attitudes typical of or attributed to natural scientists”, some scholars, as well as political and religious leaders, have also adopted it as a pejorative term with the meaning “an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation (as in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities)”.
I saw this earlier and really wanted to pipe up, but I just couldn’t bear it.
Until you turn your head and stop observing, and then it reverts back to mysticism. :-P
You’re referring to quantum effects? Don’t worry about whether you’re not watching, the universe is watching. If one photon is emitted from the thing in a quantum state and hits anything, that’s the observation
Mostly, but it could be more broadly applicable like the placebo effect.
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The placebo effect would like a word.
The placebo effect works even if you know its a placebo tho.
That’s medicine. Science just sees it as a problem to be sorted by good study design and statistics
Science just sees it as a problem to be sorted by good study design and statistics
And those studies are going to care about what you believe.
Unless it’s like… Sociology, or Psychology. They care what you believe.
What do you mean? Sociology I kind of get, but psychology nowadays is a purely quantitative discipline (despite its subject being squishier than other quantitative sciences).
Science doesn’t have an opinion on anything, it’s a process not a person.
Haha science takes more faith to believe in than my religion.
- Sent from my iPhone
/s
Sent from my iPhone
I guess prayer and ritual made the device possible, eh?
LOL!
Yep that’s the joke, although I should probably have made it more obvious given that it’s the internet and there are real people who probably post this sort of stuff sincerely.
LOL! forgot the /s…
Yaahh… I used to go around on Reddit wth those types all the time! That is one level of ignorance I do not miss by being on lemmy…
/s aside, what it takes to use science is mental discipline, not faith.
Actually, “science” is a human activity and must care about what you think. It’s the universe that doesn’t care about either.
Sadly a lot of people’s beliefs don’t give a fuck about science.
This is mostly shared as an arrogant statement towards laymen, but really, it’s a reminder for scientists themselves
No matter what you think or believe your experiment should yield, reality check is always waiting around the corner.
Nice, when seen in this light!
Is “Neither do I” written on the bottom?
Needlessly antagonistic, anthropomorphises science… hmm.
That handle is on the wrong side, unless it’s for someone who is left handed.
It might be printed on both sides
I want to believe you, but as a scientist I require evidence.
I’m right handed, but often find myself with the cup in my left hand, because I need my dominant hand for high dexterity tasks, like writing, operating computer mouse, etc.
I will accept this task-oriented reply.
Maybe it’s a personal reminder to the drinker
Yeah so they can jerk off to their superiority.
I would rather force my opinions on my coworkers
Technically correct since science is a concept and doesn’t have feelings, unlike animals, and possibly plants, fungi, all forms of life, who knows, rocks? Idk.
This is “scienceism”.
It’s referred to as “Scientism”.
yr right of course but mine sounds better.
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Science isn’t a belief system. It’s a way of making sense of natural phenomena.
- observe
- write down observation
- try to find a discernable pattern
- test pattern
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.
- Murray Gell-Mann
“it posits that the universe functions according to predictable rules”
- you
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.
Complexity theory is a model that posits components interact in multiple ways and behave according to local rules. 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, complexity and chaos. Scientists are prepared to abandon everything in exchange for something 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.
Edit: Found it! Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry by Helen E. Longino
