What is Science, after all?

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by Mauro Porto, Jun 6, 2001.

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  1. Mauro Porto Registered Member

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    As an electronic engineer with a fairly good scientific training I have learned that Science is no more no less than the wealth of knowlege obtained through the "scientific method", meaning you must observe a certain phenomenon many times, make suppositions about its causes, check all actual facts that could go against the suppositions, and, finally accept them as the current explanation of the natural (or otherwise) phenomenon, in spite of what "Science" had to say before the new set of observations.

    I think it is relevant to discuss this point because I've tried to Post in SciForum the analysys of an official autopsy report, made by forensic MD specialists, and other related obseervations , and I could Post it under no other title than "Pseudoscience".

    For a long time, up to the XIXth century, meteorites were denied by "scientists" because "there were no stones in the sky", only peasantes believed in it. I would say that isn't "scientific" at all, what do YOU think?

    Check my other Post and you will see what I mean. (I hope the Postmaster and the Moderator will understand the effort I am making to get out of the Ghetto).
     
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  3. rde Eukaryotic specimen Registered Senior Member

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    You're forgetting the most important part of the scientific method; making predictions. If your theory makes predictions, it's science. If it doesn't, it isn't.

    That's where it belongs. We live in a world that, despite our best endeavours, still contains many mysteries. We're gradually moving beyond religion, but it's being replaced by idiocies like UFOs, Feng Shui and others in a similar vein. Again I say: if the theory makes predictions, it's scientific.

    I think that the scientific method takes time. Science has come a long way; I don't think you can point at 19th century scientists as evidence of anything other than the fact that there was a lot they didn't know that we know now. I've seen a television broadcast by the man who discovered the electron, explaining his discovery. To me,that point highlights how far we've come in a hundred years and how radically different the 19th century was from a scientific viewpoint.
     
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  5. Mauro Porto Registered Member

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    Re: Re: What is Science, after all?

    I agree completely when you say that if a theory makes predictions, it's science. If it doesn't, it isn't.

    But science isn't only theories. To observe phenomena, to take notes, to make correlations is part of the scientific method, is part of science, even before it results in definitive conclusions... or in a theory.

    If you could be curious enough (I mean "scientifically curious") to visit my site you'd see that I am not "theorizing", just showing related data and asking you to decide between two excluding conclusions (or to bring up another one), that is:

    EITHER a couple of mad Brazilian Ufologists killed the autopsyed victim exactly copying the ALLEGED human mutilation cases and the VERY WELL KNOWN (hundreds of well studied cases) "cattle mutilation" type of wounds,

    OR the mutilations inflicted upon the alive and suffering body (this is part of the autopsy CONCLUSION) of the Brazilian victim is proof enough of the truthfulness of the alleged human mutilation cases ocurred in other parts of the world.
    [/i]

    We live in a world that, despite our best endeavours, still contains many mysteries. We're gradually moving beyond religion, but it's being replaced by idiocies like UFOs, Feng Shui and others in a similar vein. Again I say: if the theory makes predictions, it's scientific.
    [/QUOTE]

    Agreed again. We're moving beyond religion only to see it replaced by a great lot of idiocies.

    The problem seems to be that the western mentality is profoundly dualistic in its perception of the Universe, what is'nt "matter", is "spirit".

    As a faithful offspring of the Western philosophy Science used to be absolutelly confident that the Universe the senses could feel was something intrinsecally material -- and as predictable as a machine.

    Only in the last 25 years the full understanding of the theories of Plank, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schroedinger and Einstein led to the aknowledgement of a world where there isnĀ“t any matter but only energy and strange quantum fields that appear, disappear, change places and transmute incessantly, forming and deforming space and time.

    This is something only a relatively small bunch of people of the academic area fully understands, but the IDEA that the Universe is an immaterial multidimentional Universe full of surprises have trickled down.

    That seems to be the source of the "idiocies" problem: as science now seems to be pointing to a multidimentional holistic kind of Universe, more akin to the monistic/panteistic view of the orientals than to the traditional Western dualism, many intelligent but spiritually starved people are moving beyound their simple Judeo-Christian religion to supertitious UFO/ET theories and/or accepting "stock and barrel" the whole karma and reincarnation formula of the eastern theology.

    But we can't throw away the baby with the bath water.

    There are some well researched things, like the Guarapiranga Dam case, that should function as an immediate eye opener to logical persons.
     
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  7. Chagur .Seeker. Registered Senior Member

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    What is Science?

    Did I miss something? I've been under under the impression for a long time now that an important aspect of Science is repeatability, not 'prediction' (I prefer 'Theory').

    If I announce to the world that I've discovered that anti-gravity can be accomplished by sticking a piece of bubble gum in just the right place on something, but no one else can duplicate my results (ex. cold fusion) ... you see where I'm going?

    Prediction, I think, comes into play when you attempt to validate the Theory (Yes! The eclipse occurred when the Theory led me to believe it would).
     
  8. Merlijn curious cat Registered Senior Member

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    Well, repeatability alone is not sufficient at all, it is just too thin. A theory that does not predict anything but the re-occurrence of a phenomenon is not scientific, is it?
    Pre-Newtonian ideas about the falling of stones were not scientific, even though stones did in fact fall over and over again.
    There must be some rationale out of which you can make testable predictions.
    another example: Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis is not considered to be scientific. There was a rationale, but it did not predict anything. It just explained: whatever emotional problem you have, it is because of your oedipal(M)/electral(F) complex or your childhood had a frustrating anal phase. That way psychoanalysis (at that stage at least) ended up not explaining anything at all. Like animism. All possible events can be explained with the sentence:"this behaviour is by design"

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    -> Rocks fall because they want to be on the ground, etc.
    In short, Chagur, I think you are right.
     
  9. Chagur .Seeker. Registered Senior Member

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    And then there's the situation where there is no theory, no 'this is the way it might be'. I'm thinking along the lines of theoretical physics and astronomy. Quite often it's a matter of the math not adding up and having to find out, or theorize, why (ex. dark matter - Where's the necessary mass?).

    Actually, in some cases it takes thirty, even forty years to even get an inkling that something exists, can be detected, that accounts for the descrepancy, ex. Black Holes. I think it was Chandra, back in the '30's, who realized that things weren't kosher, so to speak, and we're just getting around to dealing with the concept.

    So, what is science after all?
     
    Last edited: Jun 13, 2001
  10. rde Eukaryotic specimen Registered Senior Member

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    Dark matter is more of an hypothesis than a theory in the scientific sense of the word; it's a result of making a prediction about galaxies... assuming this is the mass of the galaxy, what will happen when it rotates? It'll fly apart. Given that it didn't, something must be holding it together. Let's call that something 'dark matter'.

    Black holes were first hypothesised a couple of hundred years ago, when John Mitchell realised that gravity on a really massive body might be so strong that not even light would escape. At the time, it was a nice idea, but couldn't really be elevated to the status of 'theory'; after all, no-one even knew for sure that light had a speed limit, or that such massive bodies could exist. It was only later, when (er... can't remember who) someone predicted the emission of x-rays that it began to become really interesting; since then, numerous x-ray sources (Cygnus X-1, for example) have been reevaluated as black holes; they fit all the predictions made about black holes, so it's probable that that's what they are.
     
  11. Chagur .Seeker. Registered Senior Member

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    hey rde, re. galaxies/dark matter:

    Wouldn't an enormous gravity well effectively accomplish the same thing without having to concoct 'dark matter'?
     
  12. rde Eukaryotic specimen Registered Senior Member

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    Not really. The bigger the gravity well at the centre of a galaxy, the faster matter will spin around it. Judging by the speed at which local galaxies are rotating, there's reason to believe that there are supermassive black holes - on the order of millions of solar masses - at their centres. This, however, is much lower than the required mass to keep teh galaxies together; something along the lines of hundreds of billions of solar masses is required. We can be reasonably sure that this kind of mass doesn't exist as normal matter, so it's got to be somethign invisible. Things like neutrinos could account for some of it, but probably not all.
     
  13. Biggles Custos morum Registered Senior Member

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    What is Science?

    !
     
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