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Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science

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Re: Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science

#41

Post by karmakaze »

weinzierl wrote: post #20
Animats wrote: post #15

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/...

I would say it's somewhere between these points. The IBM image[1] is a picture, constructed from tunnelling currents rather than light, much like a blind person can see a face with their hands. Since even in the usual sense we don't see the object but the interaction with it, I would classify them more similarly than not.

Re: Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science

#42

Post by vacri »

adekok wrote: post #30
Animats wrote: post #15

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:…

> Saying that is like saying "we don't know evolution is true, because we don't see new species evolve every day".

We do see new species evolve every day. We also see microevolution so commonly that it's a standard high-school biology task.

> Physics is funded because it's cool.

The point being made is that for a long time, it was common for physicists to look down their nose at other sciences "because what we do is real". Now they're finding themselves in the same boat.

Re: Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science

#43

Post by eruditely »

weinzierl wrote: post #16

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…

http://andrewgelman.com/2015/12/17/gathering-of-philosophers...

Andrew Gelman is the author of the most popular of the advanced "Bayesian Data analysis" text and is considered the standard.

He says false, bayesian falsificationism is better than confirmation theory and deborah mayo founder of error statistics essentially agrees with him.

Re: Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science

#44

Post by yummyfajitas »

jwmerrill wrote: post #32
yummyfajitas wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The Bayesian approach is to assign a prior distribution to various theories of this nature. Because there are infinitely many possible priors, most exceedingly complicated (because the set of priors of complexity I don't think this would be a very compelling argument for Occam's razor if you didn't already believe it. This argument says you can't assign high probability to all "complex" theories, but it doesn't see…

I didn't claim it did - all I said is that this gives Occams Razor as an asymptotic law. Intuitively, I'm claiming:

Lim_{complexity -> infinity} P(theory having fixed complexity) = 0

Stated more precisely, fix a prior distribution, then for any epsilon > 0, I can find a complexity cutoff C (which depends on the prior) so that P(any theory with complexity > C being true) This doesn't mean that P(theory|complexity) is monotonically decreasing, that would be a much stronger claim.

I don't know how this isn't a compelling argument, it's a provable mathematical statement.

Re: Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science

#45

Post by qb45 »

mannykannot wrote: post #36

"Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, pointed out that falsifiability is woefully inadequate as a separator of science and nonscience, as Popper himself recognized. Astrology, for instance, is falsifiable — indeed, it has been falsified ad nauseam — and yet it isn’t science." You could say the same for phlogiston or N-rays. Falsifiable hypotheses that actually ge…

Just shows how sad academia is. Wouldn't be the first time I'm seeing those guys ponder endlessly on something other people say or do without bothering to really understand what those others are thinking and trying to achieve.

BTW, is astrology actually falsifiable? I'm under impression that astrologists deliberately strive for unfalsifiability exactly to avoid falsification which could cast doubt on their wisdom.

Re: Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science

#46

Post by Avshalom »

adekok wrote: post #30
Animats wrote: post #15

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:…

>> 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 general it's also true of almost all astronomical research, and large whacks of geology. Which is fine because experiments are just observations that scientists are the impetus for. Science works by gathering data, experiments just let us produce data to gather at our own speed instead of having to wait around for something to happen and hope we're looking in the right direction when it does. In the case of astronomy instead of relying on experiments to produce more data we mostly build better instruments.

Re: Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science

#47

Post by eternalban »

hodwik wrote: post #34

We had a rush of scientific breakthroughs 100 years ago. I believe we will have more. 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 to…

If we disambiguate the factual success of applied science from the theoretical aspirations and/or formulations of the past 100 years [1], we would note the substantial downturn in the latter compared to 19th century.

I further disagree regarding your take on the "underlying" basis of science. Science begs philosophy to explain its (irreducible) mathematical foundation, where the said foundation ("basis") has a few un-canny givens/axioms in its bag of tricks.

Empiricism was the line drawn a few centuries ago. And just like the 'magna carta', the latter day "sages" apparently have determined the ancient ones were in error ..

[post-comment-edit: 1] Roughly speaking. To set bounds, above would consider Einstien a good citizen of 19th century science.

Re: Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science

#48

Post by dmfdmf »

This crisis in Physics makes me happier than anyone can know. It signals the end of the dominance of Kantian philosophy in Physics. Mach's principle (Einstein's polestar), Popperian falsifiability, Cantor's paradise of infinity (as described by Hilbert) and all other derivatives of Kant are the dead-end of a false metaphysics and epistemology.

We do indeed, live in interesting (or depending on your worldview, dangerous) times.

Re: Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science

#49

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

A mistake that lots of people, including many in this thread, is to conflate 'physics' and 'fundamental/particle physics.'

The former's still chugging along pretty good, with things like the "invisibility cloaking" and all sorts of condensed matter stuff.

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