31–40 of 168 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I fully agree with your point, but I think the "picture of atoms" is not a good supporting argument. The IBM image[1] is nothing more than a visualization of measurements including a good measure of artistic license. It has not much to do with seeing in the usual sense. [1] http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/files/us-flinte/...
Every picture is a visualization of measurements.
Nowadays, as several philosophers at the workshop said, Popperian falsificationism has been supplanted by Bayesian confirmation theory, or Bayesianism, a modern framework based on the 18th-century probability theory of the English statistician and minister Thomas Bayes. Bayesianism allows for the fact that modern scientific theories typically make claims far beyond what can be directly observed — no one has ever seen…
Yes. It's a fairly natural outgrowth of falsification based theories, and is in fact completely necessary. Consider a simple theory - bear attacks will be very low in the UK forever. Consider an alternate theory - bear attacks will be low until 2016 and then the bearpocalypse happens. Both theories have passed all attempts at falsification - they both accurately predict that bears haven't so far eaten very few people…
Physics used to be "hard science" - if it wasn't testable, it wasn't meaningful. Physicists used to look down on other sciences for that reason. This article shows how much worse things have become. Nobody can figure out a way to test string theory. In cosmology, you can only observe, not experiment. As the article points out, the big questions are out of reach for scaling reasons. Trying to fix the problem through w…
> Physics used to be "hard science" - Physics is still a hard science. However, the edges of physics are difficult to test. > In cosmology, you can only observe, not experiment Saying that is like saying "we don't know evolution is true, because we don't see new species evolve every day". It's a naive approach to science. In both cases, you can use theories to make predictions about new things to look for. e.g. http:…
That experimentation in physics has slowed down to 18th century levels doesn't mean science is over, it just means the low-hanging fruit is over and we will have to continue slogging through theory before we discover new experiments.
Science has always relied on philosophy for its underlying direction, it's just obvious again. It took 2040 years before science/math could answer Zeno's paradoxes. If you can't handle the slog you're not really a scientist, you're a technician.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I fully agree with your point, but I think the "picture of atoms" is not a good supporting argument. The IBM image[1] is nothing more than a visualization of measurements including a good measure of artistic license. It has not much to do with seeing in the usual sense. [1] http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/files/us-flinte/...
Every picture is a visualization of measurements.
You could say the same for phlogiston or N-rays. Falsifiable hypotheses that actually get falsified are dropped from science, but the process of falsifying them is a scientific activity.
Physics used to be "hard science" - if it wasn't testable, it wasn't meaningful. Physicists used to look down on other sciences for that reason. This article shows how much worse things have become. Nobody can figure out a way to test string theory. In cosmology, you can only observe, not experiment. As the article points out, the big questions are out of reach for scaling reasons. Trying to fix the problem through w…
I fully agree with your point, but I think the "picture of atoms" is not a good supporting argument. The IBM image[1] is nothing more than a visualization of measurements including a good measure of artistic license. It has not much to do with seeing in the usual sense. [1] http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/files/us-flinte/...
Physics used to be "hard science" - if it wasn't testable, it wasn't meaningful. Physicists used to look down on other sciences for that reason. This article shows how much worse things have become. Nobody can figure out a way to test string theory. In cosmology, you can only observe, not experiment. As the article points out, the big questions are out of reach for scaling reasons. Trying to fix the problem through w…
Rumors say that the more practical physicists have always been looking down on cosmologists for the same reason.
If it is not testable, it does not sound like physics to me. Physics is an empirical science, and should therefore be testable by definition.
What do you mean by "testable"? There's a pretty big spectrum of "untestable" ranging from requiring too many trillions of dollars to requiring more resources than this planet has to requiring equipment or energy levels we don't know how to produce even in theory to requiring stuff we're pretty sure is impossible like looking beyond the range of the observable universe or requiring more energy than is contained in th…
Perhaps a better question is at what point does philosophy become physics? Finding a way to test the theory, and doing so, may be such a point.