Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Limits of Science

nationalaffairs.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 60 posts

Re: The Limits of Science

#21

Post by mattigames »

_Nat_ wrote: post #19

The core argument seems to be that, since scientific analysis isn't a perfect tool, we ought to hedge our bets by also acting based on emotional reasoning. > The time has come to pause the second phase of the scientific revolution — to recover a more humble and skeptical approach to what the scientific method can achieve, to unite the emotional, spiritual, and intellectual dimensions of life, and to find our way back…

The number of red flags when people mention "spiritual" in any given argument is about as bad as someone talking about the Earth being flat or vaccines causing autism.

Re: The Limits of Science

#22

Post by username90 »

roenxi wrote: post #20
username90 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone had just gotten lucky and just happened to plot mass vs velocity to recover the laws of gravity we'd still include it in all the science textbooks. I am not so sure it would have been a hit as a stand alone formula. Newton discovered calculus and used it to lay the groundwork for almost the entire field of physics, gravity was just a minor detail in his work. Or if you are talking about General relativit…

> Newton discovered calculus and used it Calculus is maths. Different field, and frequently classified into the arts or astand-alone discipline as opposed to a science. People have lonog been suspect about classifying math as a science. Mainly, I suspect, because it does not rely on data as a form of evidence instead using logical proof as a foundation.

Calculus is science if it is used to discover laws of physics which are then verified through experiments. Or in other words, Newton discovered that calculus helps explain a lot of phenomena in nature and verified that through experiments, that is the epitome of science.

The problem with the data first approach you are advocating for is that it almost never results in a good explanation, and almost all the value in science lies with the good explanations we have built up throughout history. Formulas are mostly useless, you need an intuitive explanation or people won't be able to build on top of it.

Re: The Limits of Science

#23

Post by akavel »

sgt101 wrote: post #16
akavel wrote: post #4

I believe the article is dangerously drawing incorrect conclusions. In particular, from the cases shown, I'd say it's rather that there's a lot in the world that we currently are unable to measure (esp. in human behaviors and mind). That's where science indeed and emphatically has limits, and that's why medicine doctors must not rely purely on science. And why anyone who tries to ignore people's descriptions of how t…

I don't think the article is saying "all science is crap" it is saying "we need to think critically about what we are doing and how we are doing it because we can see flaws in the current way of working"

Hm, sorry, I overreacted somewhat. I do agree with the conclusion that the article presents, that scientific method brings great value, but that it's not enough, because there are many places we are not able to apply it. I'm however afraid of some arguments and claims the author uses to support their thesis, such as: "[person X] was a victim of the scientific method". They were not a victim of the scientific method, but of people who abused the scientific method. The conclusion is correct that the output of the scientific method as is practiced in our imperfect world, by imperfect people, cannot be zealously believed without scrutiny. (Scrutiny is in fact one of the pillars of the method!) But saying: "a victim of the scientific method" instead of: "a victim of errors in application of the scientific method" is reverse, misleading and dangerous.

In other words: if someone doesn't follow, say, fire prevention guidelines, and starts a fire, it is misleading and socially dangerous to say that a person burnt by the fire was a victim of the fire prevention guidelines!

Re: The Limits of Science

#24

Post by DrAwdeOccarim »

mattigames wrote: post #21
_Nat_ wrote: post #19

The core argument seems to be that, since scientific analysis isn't a perfect tool, we ought to hedge our bets by also acting based on emotional reasoning. > The time has come to pause the second phase of the scientific revolution — to recover a more humble and skeptical approach to what the scientific method can achieve, to unite the emotional, spiritual, and intellectual dimensions of life, and to find our way back…

The number of red flags when people mention "spiritual" in any given argument is about as bad as someone talking about the Earth being flat or vaccines causing autism.

I know, completely agree. But one thing that struck me the other day, I read a tweet from some random person that got retweeted a bunch. It went something like this, "Don't shame me for looking to natural remedies/my doctor rolls my eyes when I tell him what my chiropractor suggests/my naturopath has never rolled their eyes at something my doctor has said." It made me sad also because so many people jumped in and said basically the same thing, how "western medicine" has failed us".

Re: The Limits of Science

#25

Post by roenxi »

username90 wrote: post #22
roenxi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Newton discovered calculus and used it Calculus is maths. Different field, and frequently classified into the arts or astand-alone discipline as opposed to a science. People have lonog been suspect about classifying math as a science. Mainly, I suspect, because it does not rely on data as a form of evidence instead using logical proof as a foundation.

Calculus is science if it is used to discover laws of physics which are then verified through experiments. Or in other words, Newton discovered that calculus helps explain a lot of phenomena in nature and verified that through experiments, that is the epitome of science. The problem with the data first approach you are advocating for is that it almost never results in a good explanation, and almost all the value in s…

> Calculus is science if it is used to discover laws of physics

So a shower is science if the warm water inspires someone to come up with a new theory? That is a terrible place to draw the boundary; it opens up a can of semantic worms about what 'using' means. Major scientific results that are most easily expressed using calculus can be derived using processes other than calculus.

> The problem with the data first approach you are advocating for is that it almost never results in a good explanation

Science doesn't provide good explanations at the best of times. I'll willingly bet not 1 engineer in 100 can explain gravity. We just know if we measure mass we get predictive estimates of velocity. That isn't an explanation; that is reliable magic. In fact there have been a couple of centuries where even the scientists were basically just plotting data and curve fitting.

Re: The Limits of Science

#26

Post by brobdingnagians »

DrAwdeOccarim wrote: post #24
mattigames wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of red flags when people mention "spiritual" in any given argument is about as bad as someone talking about the Earth being flat or vaccines causing autism.

I know, completely agree. But one thing that struck me the other day, I read a tweet from some random person that got retweeted a bunch. It went something like this, "Don't shame me for looking to natural remedies/my doctor rolls my eyes when I tell him what my chiropractor suggests/my naturopath has never rolled their eyes at something my doctor has said." It made me sad also because so many people jumped in and sai…

Modern medicine is wonderful for reducing deaths from childbirth, antibiotics, surgeries, etc. but for someone who has an "incurable" condition which stumps every doctor they've been to, imagine how frustrating it would be to be told every time that nothing can be done or every treatment just makes it worse? If someone else promised something, not based on rigorous scientific trials, it would be tempting to take it, or at least consider it. I can see why someone would consider things when desperate, or sees the side effects of some conventional treatments. And it stands to reason that there exist treatments unproven which work, otherwise medical research would have stopped long ago.

Re: The Limits of Science

#27

Post by username90 »

roenxi wrote: post #25
username90 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calculus is science if it is used to discover laws of physics which are then verified through experiments. Or in other words, Newton discovered that calculus helps explain a lot of phenomena in nature and verified that through experiments, that is the epitome of science. The problem with the data first approach you are advocating for is that it almost never results in a good explanation, and almost all the value in s…

> Calculus is science if it is used to discover laws of physics So a shower is science if the warm water inspires someone to come up with a new theory? That is a terrible place to draw the boundary; it opens up a can of semantic worms about what 'using' means. Major scientific results that are most easily expressed using calculus can be derived using processes other than calculus. > The problem with the data first ap…

If you create new mathematics in order to properly describe a physics phenomena then you are doing science. Similarly if you create a laboratory in order to properly conduct physics experiments to verify your theories you are doing science. How the laboratory was built matters a lot for the experiment, the same as how the math language was built.

Math is a tool, yes, but it is a tool that is very useful to do science in and the act of creating and distributing a tool you use to do science is a large part of science. A shower on the other hand has no direct relationship to science, you don't need to be a physicist to make a shower, it is just a commodity. Calculus however needed to be discovered by a physicist as the math was too strange for mathematicians to find but simple enough that two different physicists found it in parallel.

Re: The Limits of Science

#28

Post by arethuza »

username90 wrote: post #22
roenxi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Newton discovered calculus and used it Calculus is maths. Different field, and frequently classified into the arts or astand-alone discipline as opposed to a science. People have lonog been suspect about classifying math as a science. Mainly, I suspect, because it does not rely on data as a form of evidence instead using logical proof as a foundation.

Calculus is science if it is used to discover laws of physics which are then verified through experiments. Or in other words, Newton discovered that calculus helps explain a lot of phenomena in nature and verified that through experiments, that is the epitome of science. The problem with the data first approach you are advocating for is that it almost never results in a good explanation, and almost all the value in s…

I think I'd argue that calculus (like all of maths) is a tool used by science rather than a science itself.

Re: The Limits of Science

#29

Post by atomack »

akavel wrote: post #23
sgt101 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the article is saying "all science is crap" it is saying "we need to think critically about what we are doing and how we are doing it because we can see flaws in the current way of working"

Hm, sorry, I overreacted somewhat. I do agree with the conclusion that the article presents, that scientific method brings great value, but that it's not enough, because there are many places we are not able to apply it. I'm however afraid of some arguments and claims the author uses to support their thesis, such as: "[person X] was a victim of the scientific method". They were not a victim of the scientific method,…

I agree with you completely. I agree with the conclusion, but the way the author gets there just looks wrong to me. I feel the scientific method is mischaracterised throughout, for example when the author says it's one of "intentional ignorance" where scientists only look at certain facts an leave out others, the point is they aim to include as many as they need to capture the phenomena they're looking at.

Elsewhere, the article's just wrong. It claims "the concept of temperature lacks clear meaning" amongst scientists. This isn't true: temperature has a perfectly clear meaning through statistical mechanics.

I came away with the feeling the author doesn't really understand the science under discussion, which is frustrating because I share the conclusion and I think it's an interesting question

Re: The Limits of Science

#30

Post by GTP »

This is the first time I see temperature defined as "an emergent property of molecular motion". I agree that this definition is vague, but I've always seen the temperature of an object defined as the medium kinetic energy of the particles that form that object, and I don't see this definition as a vague one at all. Now we should see if and how this medium kinetic energy can affect a person's health, but this is a different problem (and one that has been already studied and afaik produced not too vague results).
Post reply on HN