I have developed certain ideas about scientific theories that I have recently realized are not in accordance with majority of the public, and perhaps the majority of the scientific community either. As such, I would like to lay them out and give my reasons.
1. Scientific theories are not about explaining phenomena; they are about predicting the future.
This can often have the disguise of explaining, but ultimately that is not the purpose. One of the tests of a scientific theory is it having falsifiable predictions. If there are no falsifiable predictions it is not a theory. Ultimately everything is inexplicable. At best you can explain everything in terms of physical laws, but those laws have no explanation behind them, they just are. Personally, I consider such explanation to be unnecessary (though it is nice). If your theory makes falsifiable predictions, and is not falsified, it is a valid theory. In this view, a theory says "Assume A is how the world works, then B will happen," instead of "B happens, therefore A is how the world works."
2. A scientific theory cannot merely fit the current data points, it must make predictions about future data points, and is not to be considered correct until those data points are verified.
This is sort of the same as #1, but slightly more nuanced. It seems obvious right off the bat until you consider what it actually implies. Suppose I observed the moon for 10 years and noticed that on day 1 it was a new moon, on day 2 it was waxing, etc etc. I now make a theory saying the moon goes in cycles from new moon to new moon every 29.5 days. This fits the data I have perfectly. However, my theory is not yet tested, because all the data points I used to make it are irrelevant at testing it. This also means that if you have a fixed number of data points and you will never get any more, if you didn't make your theory before you finished getting the data, it will never be a valid one. It would simply be an organizational structure to help memorize the existing data points. Perhaps I am getting too close to arguing semantics on this point, but I nonetheless feel that it is important.
3. Nothing is strictly true. Everything comes about due to inductive reasoning.
Thus a scientific theory does not have a true or false value. Rather it has a percentage, where 0% is absolutely false and 100% is absolutely true. The truth value of a scientific theory is based on the number of experiments performed after it was conceived that match the predictions of the theory. An experiment performed that matches the prediction raises the truth value (though even if all the experiments match the theory it does not get to 100% because of the way statistics works). This is probably accepted by most people, but it leads to...
4. Two competing theories that have equal truth values are equally valid.
By this I mean that you cannot deny a theory purely on philosophical grounds. Saying "God does not play dice with the universe," is incredibly poor form. Moreover, this means that since two competing theories can be 99% true even if they are mutually exclusive. This seems very counterintuitive, but if you remember point #1, it works out, because a science ultimately doesn't care how things work, it just wants to predict the future.
If you have these 4 beliefs about scientific theories work, (and I think that, except for #2, you really have no choice but to believe it) then a few things become simpler.
First, Science and Religion never conflict. Well, they could potentially, but I don't know any falsifiable predictions that Religion makes, thus, they should never be in conflict.
Second, it becomes easy to accept all the craziness of quantum mechanics and other modern science (How can something be a particle and a wave? What do you mean how, it just is!), and the question of whether the universe really is random or not becomes irrelevant.
Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Monday, September 17, 2007
Superstitions
"Always start off with a quote because somebody's already said it better" - American History X
Well, I'm saying this, because although it may be true that somebody has said it better, it is not often that I can point to the specific person and passage that did. However, in this case I can. Richard Feynman said it better. I got angry about this because I saw two people, who were very successful and seemed intelligent enough, discuss faith healing as a serious topic. Anyways..., superstitions obviously still permeate our society, and without further ado, the words of Feynman himself:
And now finally, as I'd like to show Galileo our world, I must show him something with a great deal of shame. If we look away from the science and look at the world around us, we find out something rather pitiful: that the environment that we live in is so actively, intensely unscientific. Galileo could say: "I noticed that Jupiter was a ball with moons and not a god in the sky. Tell me, what happened to the astrologers?" Well, they print their results in the newspapers in the United States at least, in every daily paper every day. Why do we still have astrologers? Why can someone write a book like Worlds in Collision by somebody with a "V," it's a Russian name? Huh? Vininkowski? And how did it become popular? What is all this nonsense about Mary Brody, or something? I don't know, that was crazy stuff. There is always some crazy stuff. There is an infinite amount of crazy stuff, which, put another way, is that the environment is actively, intensely unscientific. There is talk of telepathy still, although it's dying out. There is faith-healing galore, all over. There is a whole religion of faith-healing. There's a miracle at Lourdes where healing goes on. Now, it might be true that astrology is right. It might be true that if you go to the dentist on the day that Mars is at right angles to Venus, that it is better than if you go on a different day. It might be true that you can be cured by the miracle of Lourdes. But if it is true, it ought to be investigated. Why? To improve it. If it is true, then maybe we can find out if the stars do influence life; that we could make the system more powerful by investigating statistically, scientifically judging the evidence objectively, more carefully. If the healing process works at Lourdes, the question is how far from the site of the miracle can the person, who is ill, stand? Have they in fact made a mistake and the back row is really not working? Or is it working so well that there is plenty of room for more people to be arranged near the place of the miracle? Or is it possible, as it is with the saints which have recently been created in the United States - there is a saint who cured leukemia apparently indirectly - that ribbons that are touched to the sheet of the sick person (the ribbon having previously touched some relic of the saint) increase the cure of leukemia - the question is, is it gradually being diluted? You may laugh, but if you believe in the truth of the healing, then you are responsible to investigate it, to improve its efficiency and to make it satisfactory instead of cheating. For example, it may turn out that after a hundred touches it doesn't work anymore. Now it's also possible that the results of this investigation have other consequences, namely, that nothing is there.
And another thing that bothers me, I might as well mention, are the things that the theologians in modern times can discuss, without feeling ashamed of themselves. There are many things that they can discuss that they need not feel ashamed of themselves, but some of the things that go on in the conferences on religion, and the decisions that have to be made, are ridiculous in modern times. I would like to explain that one of the difficulties, and one of the reasons why this can keep going, is that it is not realized what a profound modification of our worldview would result, if just one example of one of these things would really work. The whole idea, if you could establish the truth, not of the whole idea of astrology but just one little item, could have a fantastic influence on our understanding of the world. And so the reasons we laugh a little bit is that we are so confident of our view of the world that we are sure they aren't going to contribute anything. On the other hand, why don't we get rid of it? I will come to why we don't get rid of it in a minute, because science is irrelevant, as I said before.
Well, I'm saying this, because although it may be true that somebody has said it better, it is not often that I can point to the specific person and passage that did. However, in this case I can. Richard Feynman said it better. I got angry about this because I saw two people, who were very successful and seemed intelligent enough, discuss faith healing as a serious topic. Anyways..., superstitions obviously still permeate our society, and without further ado, the words of Feynman himself:
And now finally, as I'd like to show Galileo our world, I must show him something with a great deal of shame. If we look away from the science and look at the world around us, we find out something rather pitiful: that the environment that we live in is so actively, intensely unscientific. Galileo could say: "I noticed that Jupiter was a ball with moons and not a god in the sky. Tell me, what happened to the astrologers?" Well, they print their results in the newspapers in the United States at least, in every daily paper every day. Why do we still have astrologers? Why can someone write a book like Worlds in Collision by somebody with a "V," it's a Russian name? Huh? Vininkowski? And how did it become popular? What is all this nonsense about Mary Brody, or something? I don't know, that was crazy stuff. There is always some crazy stuff. There is an infinite amount of crazy stuff, which, put another way, is that the environment is actively, intensely unscientific. There is talk of telepathy still, although it's dying out. There is faith-healing galore, all over. There is a whole religion of faith-healing. There's a miracle at Lourdes where healing goes on. Now, it might be true that astrology is right. It might be true that if you go to the dentist on the day that Mars is at right angles to Venus, that it is better than if you go on a different day. It might be true that you can be cured by the miracle of Lourdes. But if it is true, it ought to be investigated. Why? To improve it. If it is true, then maybe we can find out if the stars do influence life; that we could make the system more powerful by investigating statistically, scientifically judging the evidence objectively, more carefully. If the healing process works at Lourdes, the question is how far from the site of the miracle can the person, who is ill, stand? Have they in fact made a mistake and the back row is really not working? Or is it working so well that there is plenty of room for more people to be arranged near the place of the miracle? Or is it possible, as it is with the saints which have recently been created in the United States - there is a saint who cured leukemia apparently indirectly - that ribbons that are touched to the sheet of the sick person (the ribbon having previously touched some relic of the saint) increase the cure of leukemia - the question is, is it gradually being diluted? You may laugh, but if you believe in the truth of the healing, then you are responsible to investigate it, to improve its efficiency and to make it satisfactory instead of cheating. For example, it may turn out that after a hundred touches it doesn't work anymore. Now it's also possible that the results of this investigation have other consequences, namely, that nothing is there.
And another thing that bothers me, I might as well mention, are the things that the theologians in modern times can discuss, without feeling ashamed of themselves. There are many things that they can discuss that they need not feel ashamed of themselves, but some of the things that go on in the conferences on religion, and the decisions that have to be made, are ridiculous in modern times. I would like to explain that one of the difficulties, and one of the reasons why this can keep going, is that it is not realized what a profound modification of our worldview would result, if just one example of one of these things would really work. The whole idea, if you could establish the truth, not of the whole idea of astrology but just one little item, could have a fantastic influence on our understanding of the world. And so the reasons we laugh a little bit is that we are so confident of our view of the world that we are sure they aren't going to contribute anything. On the other hand, why don't we get rid of it? I will come to why we don't get rid of it in a minute, because science is irrelevant, as I said before.
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