Scientific “Truth” - part I
This blog entry is, in part, a response to Ray’s comment on my post on “Intelligent Design”
Ray, thanks for your comment. It made me realise how much I miss the daily morning philosophical conversations we used to have on the way to work.
This is going to be a bit of a long post and it is going to come in two parts – or possibly three, we will see how it goes.
The subject is “Scientific Truth”…
Science occupies today the hegemonic position that theology used to hold in the past. When people ask you to prove something to be true, often what they are really asking you is: “Is what you are saying scientifically true?” The phrase “Scientists say…” is often invoked in an attempt to clinch the argument. The implicit understanding of our time is that the scientific world view is the arbitrator of all truth. In my last post I tried to hint at why this notion of truth is, especially for the Christian, a minimalistic understanding, but actually from just a plain philosophical stance, it is equally found wanting.
The scientific world view makes assumptions about our reality which can never be demonstrated. It is predicated on the belief that everything in our reality can be understood empirically and the belief that everything in our reality is governed by discoverable causal relationships. You might be tempted to suggest that these are perfectly reasonable assumptions but actually most philosophers would now disagree.
Empiricism suggests that all we can ever know about our reality can only be determine and ascertained via our human senses. The scientist’s work is to discover universal facts about our world and reality using this empirical data. She seeks to make propositions about nature which will hold to be true no matter where she is located in time and space. The problem with the empirical method though, is that these propositions can never be proven. If everything must, and can only be, ascertained empirically, we can never be absolutely sure that one day we will not find something which will undermine a previously held “scientific truth”.
You might suggest I am being pedantic, but actually a simple example might demonstrate otherwise. For thousands of years Europeans considered Swans to be white. All the empirical data at their disposal confirmed their view. It was not until Australia was discovered that it was realized Swans could also be black. The example may be simple but philosophically it is important because it demonstrates clearly the limitation of the empirical method. Until we have observed everything in time and space we can never ever be certain of our assertions.
When it comes to causal relationships, though, things get even trickier – and remember, essentially the scientific method is all about discovering this kind of relationship. David Hume - an empiricist philosopher - first made us explicitly aware of this issue and philosophically the problem has still yet to be resolved. The problem is that if all we can know and discover is mediated to us by our senses, we can never prove a causal relationship. By trusting in sense data alone, the best we can say is that based on all of our combined experience until now, event A will be followed by event B. We cannot fathom from sensual data alone the nature of that relationship. We can create propositions which seem to generalize our experience – i.e. Newton’s Laws of Motion – but we cannot absolutely prove those propositions.
Again you might suggest I am being overly pedantic but actually Newton is a very good example of why I am not. Newton’s inverse square law predicts that the attraction between two objects of matter is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. This scientific proposition has been labelled a law because it was thought to be universally applicable across space and time. In fact it has offered such accurate predictions concerning our reality that for over two hundred years physicists did regard Newton’s laws as exactly that - laws. It was believed that Newton had discovered incontrovertible laws woven somehow into the fabric of our cosmic reality.
Eventually though, what was thought to be impossible happened, Newton’s account of reality was found to be wanting. That is, it was found not to be universally applicable; certain anomalies were found which just did not fit. One such anomaly was that of the motion of Mercury around the sun. Its orbit does not fit that predicted by the inverse square “law”. No suitable explanation was found to account for the discrepancy, and Mercury’s orbit was not suitably explained, until Einstein proposed his General Theory of Relativity.
My point here is twofold: firstly, the empirical method has an intrinsic weakness and can never actually make a claim for universal and absolute truth; and secondly, scientific laws are not actually laws in the way we often think of them. They are at best, generalizations about our reality which seem to fit the empirical data we have currently observed. New data can, and frequently does, challenge preconceived notions of truth. Scientific knowledge, like all other domains of expertise, is provisional.
And this brings me to another point I want to make plain. There is a popular belief that the scientific method proceeds through the accumulation of knowledge. That theory is added to theory and gradually knowledge of our natural environment is increased over time. Well this is kind of true but at the same time is very misleading. The implication is that scientific knowledge is something stable, and once discovered, it exists for all eternity, never to be contested.
An important book to read in connection with this point is Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”.1) I do not think I am overstepping the mark in suggesting that Kuhn’s thesis represents the view that most philosophically reflective scientists consider true of their work. Kuhn is a historian of Science and in his thesis he makes clear that scientific knowledge progresses in anything but a cumulative fashion. In fact, as the title of the book suggests, there is such a thing as a scientific revolution.
“Normal science”, a term he conjures, progresses within a community of scientists committed to a particular dominant scientific paradigm and research is conducted within the parameters defined by that paradigm. Eventually though, experimental data is found to challenge the dominant understanding. When such data is discovered, the research community acts to try and absorb it within paradigmatic thought. Sometimes the model/paradigm can be adjusted and extended to include the data. If not, often this data is just shelved for a time – as a paradigm is not easily rejected – in the hope that a resolution will be found later. In the end though, if the anomalistic data persists and other anomalies are also found, the paradigm must be rejected. Kuhn says there then proceeds a period of abnormal science. This is a difficult time for a scientific community because research effectively stalls until a new paradigm is theorized with enough potential to restart the work again.
Kuhn supports his thesis using a broad and convincing survey of scientific history of which the Newtonian / Einsteinian paradigm shift is but an example. It is though, a particularly good example. Prior to Einstein, Newton proposed that all matter was essentially attracted to itself and that the force of attraction could be calculated using the inverse square “law”. Einstein’s theory though, says that actually matter is not attracted to itself at all! The reason why planets orbit the sun and so forth is not that they are attracted by a mutual force operating between them but rather because matter distorts the space time continuum – a bit like how a ball on a stretched piece of fabric distorts the fabric.
It is important to realise that these paradigm shifts – of which there have been many in the history of the scientific enterprise – really are exactly that. The new paradigm in no way resembles the old. It is not a cumulative step forward but, as Kuhn describes it, a revolution in the thinking of the particular research community. Newton’s and Einstein’s theories are in no way compatible. Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity revolutionized scientific understanding. The old Newtonian paradigm - as a model enabling further research - had to be discarded in order to accept the new.
It was a philosopher named Karl Popper who first realized the full import of this paradigm shift. His arguments built directly on Hume and drew together the conclusions I have briefly already sketched. Popper made much of the Einsteinian revolution to support his case.
Popular opinion tends to believe in scientific“laws” and certainly Newton’s “laws” were - and still are by some -thought of in this way. But in actual fact these “laws” are nothing of the sort and Kuhn and Popper make this very clear. What in actual fact they are, are generalizations, propositions which for the moment, and for our current understanding and experience of reality, enable us to predict how reality will react for certain pre defined events. Scientific “laws” simply enable us to predict how our world will behave under certain circumstances. They are models that enable us to engage with and manipulate our reality. This is why Newton’s laws are still taught at school and why they are still employed in everyday science, even though, in a sense, they represent an outdated model. Just because we have better models which give us more accurate predictions under certain circumstances, we do not need to discard the old ones which still are useful. Newton’s equations are much simpler to work with and yield accurate enough data for a good many applications.
What should now be apparent now though, is how disconnected scientific theory really is from reality. We are not discovering rules sown into the fabric of our cosmos but conjuring up metaphors which enable us to work with and better predict its behaviour. Popper put it like this:
Our intellect does not draw its laws from nature, but tries – with varying degrees of success - to impose upon nature laws which it freely invents…
Reason works by trial and error. We invents myths and our theories and we try them out: we try to see how far they take us. And we improve our theories if we can. The better theory is the one that has the greater explanatory power: that explains more; that explains with greater precision; and that allows us to make better predictions…
In this way, theories are seen to be the free creations of our own minds , the result of an almost poetic intuition, of an attempt to understand intuitively the laws of nature.2
In emphasising this very human dimension of the scientific enterprise, I do not mean in any way to demean it. Rather I am just trying to make clear its limitations. In a very real way, in our application of the scientific method, we are trying to do what is impossible according to Hume and Popper. We are trying to determine empirically the causal link between events. This, we will never do. It is simply not possible for an empirical methodology to derive a causal connection between two events and this is why Popper proposed the principle of falsification. Whilst we cannot ever say with certainty that we have discovered a causal link, we can test those hypothesis we do assert. Popper suggests that it is in this manner that science proceeds. By choosing to test all that we believe we continually challenge our theories. In a very real sense we are on an endless journey. It is the scientist’s work to keep creating, testing, refining, discarding theories and in the process bringing us ever nearer to an understanding of reality as it really is.
The scientific method is not just about cold hard empirical data. Scientific theories are derived poetically and have their root in the human psyche. This aspect of the scientific enterprise is what Michael Polanyi, in another important read in this area, calls the “human coefficient” and it requires an inductive leap.3Despite popular opinion otherwise, the scientific enterprise is a very human activity.
It is here that I want to leave this post. Next time I will pick up with Kant, whom, I believe, has a lot more to add.
13 Responses to “Scientific “Truth” - part I”
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isc
Said this on June 16th, 2007 at 8:58am:… The Gospel According To Jean-François… So much for keeping yer powder dry!
AJ
Said this on June 16th, 2007 at 9:25am:Indeed! – although I still haven’t mentioned the phrase “meta-narrative”… oh dam I just did!
Saj
Said this on June 16th, 2007 at 10:15pm:Hi Andy, hope you don’t mind an agnostic pitching in.
Although we can never know how accurately our senses translate existence into human perceptions, science has in fact recognized this for a long time. Its very remit is to develop models for data interpretation beyond that of our senses, although of course the final step must always be some biological pathway into our awareness. Despite this limitation, the fact that a logical translation (e.g. Newton’s Laws) can be mapped, albeit partially, onto the original (the motion of the planets) suggests that there is order in the original.
Science is a means of translating that order, it is not the translation itself. That it might never hit upon the perfect translation does not mean to say that the original does not exist, and that it does not in fact have order (i.e. “laws”). Nor does it mean that the (r)evolutionary improvement of translations by mapping them onto the original (i.e. science) is necessarily flawed in that it is incapable of success. All that can be said is that even if it yields the correct answer we could never confirm it without checking every possible area of the two maps - an impossible task.
AJ
Said this on June 24th, 2007 at 9:46am:Hey Saj
Thanks for your post, and of course the agnostic perspective is welcome.
I think though, I may not have made clear the purpose of my post. I am not trying to imply we live in an unordered world but I am more trying to get at the nature of what a scientific theory – sometimes misleading labelled a law – actually is. I believe if we were to use the term “scientific metaphor” instead of the term “law” things may be a little clearer.
Kuhn makes clear that science does not proceed simply through the random interpretation of empirical data but through focused experimentation designed to test a community’s shared preconceived understanding of how our world might work. The researcher’s job is to test these theories. Note – and I think this is where you and I agree – the researcher can never confirm these theories; they can only challenge. Theories are rooted in the human psyche and as such, I agree with Popper, are inspired and poetic in nature. We create models of reality and then put them to the test. It is key to realize though, these models come first. They precede the empirical effort. From this perspective it is important to understand how this actually blurs the objective/subjective divide. There is a definite human component within the scientific project which renders it context bound, sharing the same limitations as the rest of our human endeavour.
I am more than suggesting we will never be sure that we have found the truth. I am saying we will never find it. Absolute, “objective” truth – in the philosophical sense - is not available to us. Our lot is to continue to create theories – metaphors or stories of how our world operates – and test them against empirical data. Popper suggests, and I agree with him, that these theories will always fall short. He uses the analogy of asymptotic truth which I really quite like. That is, that just as the asymptotic curve tends towards the axis, so does our understanding tend toward reality. To use your terminology, scientific theories will never map to reality exactly but they will increasingly enable us to better chart and predict its behaviour.
I have more to say on this subject and will be writing the “part II” post soon. I believe Immanuel Kant’s understanding of our reality has a lot to offer to this conversation because one thing also the scientific effort cannot establish – as it must accept it as a presupposition – is that we do not have free will.
AJ
Said this on June 24th, 2007 at 11:37am:Hey Saj, rereading your post, I feel I need to pick you up on your hint that “(r)evolutionary” scientific change is evolutionary. I believe that Kuhn chooses specifically to use the word “revolution”. In the example cited in my post, and in the examples cited by Kuhn, these shifts are anything but evolutionary, unless by the term you mean simply to imply a small iterative step toward truth.
Saj
Said this on July 9th, 2007 at 12:53pm:Hi Andy,
I think it may be worth clarifying what it is you mean by “truth”. Reading through your posts it seems that you sometimes regard truth and objective reality as the same thing, and therefore that any interpretation of reality (scientific / theological etc) will always fall short of the “truth”. Of course, a poetic / photographic / biological interpretation of a woman, no matter how inspired or accurate, will never conjure an actual woman (unfortunately). A useful distinction might be to say that truth is the underlying mechanism that gives rise to reality.
Science is not concerned with trying to substitute or recreate reality, but with discovering the truth. Criticizing it on the grounds that it falls short of reality is therefore misplaced. If you accept that we live in an ordered world (which I think you do), then you must accept that there are laws of Nature (or God if you prefer?). These can be, and indeed have been, discovered by science. The term “scientific law” should therefore be a useful reminder that it is a (potentially incorrect) proxy for a law of Nature, though as you say people generally confuse the two. However, even scientific truths are of course a pale imitation of the “real truth” – typing E=mc2 on my keyboard will not suddenly conjure a nuclear event…. Phew!
Yes, people come up with the wrong theories from time to time and yes people believe them, but that is not a flaw of the scientific process, any more than the many different interpretations of the bible across the world / history are a reflection on the fallibility of Christianity (or perhaps they are?). However, an important limitation of science is that (unless you are very lucky) it will only be as good as the data it is based on, as exemplified by the Newton / Einstein story.
I would also pick you up on the statement that models of reality precede the empirical effort. The vast majority of science is simply observation; the “real world” always comes first (though of course there is inevitably some degree of observer bias). A scientific theory must, by definition, not only explain these observations but also make predictions that can then be tested; good science is obsessed with “reality checks”. No other form of interpretation even dares to be so bold. This makes science a much more powerful and objective tool than most of the other interpretations at our disposal, because it actively invites and indeed thrives on contradiction and always uses the real world as its measure.
Science isn’t perfect and its practitioners aren’t saints (ha!), but it has undoubtedly provided many useful insights into reality and will continue to do so.
AJ
Said this on July 15th, 2007 at 10:02am:Hey Saj… thanks again for your reply. I am going to respond in detail to each of your points…
Considering your first point then, you write:
I think it may be worth clarifying what it is you mean by “truth”. Reading through your posts it seems that you sometimes regard truth and objective reality as the same thing, and therefore that any interpretation of reality (scientific / theological etc) will always fall short of the “truth”. Of course, a poetic / photographic / biological interpretation of a woman, no matter how inspired or accurate, will never conjure an actual woman (unfortunately). A useful distinction might be to say that truth is the underlying mechanism that gives rise to reality.
You are absolutely correct in my understanding of truth. When I speak of truth, or reality as it is in itself, I am talking about pure objective, unmediated reality – something which I think, based on your comments above, we both agree we will never get access to.
I do not like your definition of truth, but I think I understand what you are getting at and possibly we might be almost – but not quite - agreeing. It all depends on what you mean by a scientific law. You write:
Science is not concerned with trying to substitute or recreate reality, but with discovering the truth. Criticizing it on the grounds that it falls short of reality is therefore misplaced. If you accept that we live in an ordered world (which I think you do), then you must accept that there are laws of Nature (or God if you prefer?). These can be, and indeed have been, discovered by science.
I do not accept that there are “laws of nature”. I agree that nature seems to function in an orderly fashion as though it is governed by laws – though actually, I think it is worth pointing out that at the quantum level this does not seem to be true. I also agree this “law like” behaviour has been “discovered” by scientists but I am very keen to point out the subjectivity of such discoveries.
Again I will suggest that the phrase “scientific metaphor” best captures what a “scientific law” really is. It is a model, often mathematical, which enables us to predict how our ordered world will react to certain defined stimuli. I think you and I are almost agreeing here. You write:
The term “scientific law” should therefore be a useful reminder that it is a (potentially incorrect) proxy for a law of Nature, though as you say people generally confuse the two.
I almost agree with this statement, except that I think it goes too far; I prefer the word “metaphor” to “proxy” because I do not know what it means for nature to have a “law” – as far as I am concerned, the concept of a law is a human construct and does not exist outside human language.
I am less in agreement with your next point:
Yes, people come up with the wrong theories from time to time and yes people believe them, but that is not a flaw of the scientific process, any more than the many different interpretations of the bible across the world / history are a reflection on the fallibility of Christianity (or perhaps they are?).
My view is that, in a sense, scientific theories are always wrong in that they will never describe reality as it really is. Newton’s “laws” model incredibly accurately the order found in our reality; in fact, so accurately they were thought to be laws in the way you seem to think of “laws of nature”; but we know that eventually they were found wanting. Einstein’s general theory of relativity has replaced them now as the model of truth – but, it should be pointed out that Einstein spent most of the rest of his life trying to come up with a better theory because he was aware of the inadequacy of his model at the quantum level. I have no doubt, and I am willing to wager, that there will be another revolution – not evolution – in scientific thinking and another more accurate model produced.
To be clear though, I am not suggesting the scientific method is flawed but I am saying it is limited in much the same way as the rest of human enquiry, in that it has a very human subjective component. Where it does have an edge on other forms of enquiry is that its models can be tested. I cannot test, for instance, in the same way, theological propositions I might want to assert. But there again, I am exploring territory which cannot make any of the assumptions the scientific method assumes; and remember, an assumption is essentially a faith position and science is not exempt from these – see my part II post.
Considering your last paragraph, I disagree with the first part and I have already agreed with the last:
I would also pick you up on the statement that models of reality precede the empirical effort. The vast majority of science is simply observation; the “real world” always comes first (though of course there is inevitably some degree of observer bias). A scientific theory must, by definition, not only explain these observations but also make predictions that can then be tested; good science is obsessed with “reality checks”. No other form of interpretation even dares to be so bold. This makes science a much more powerful and objective tool than most of the other interpretations at our disposal, because it actively invites and indeed thrives on contradiction and always uses the real world as its measure.
Theories, models – whatever you want to call them – always proceed the empirical effort. Popper himself found it difficult to make people see this but I believe his contemporary, Kuhn – whom, unfortunately, he did not really interact with - does make this very clear. Kuhn’s work is descriptive in the sense it is historical and is more convincing - in my opinion - on this point because his work cites endless examples in support of his thesis; Popper chose to make his case philosophically which is a trickier task as most people do not generally warm to this form of persuasion on first encounter. As a demonstration of his position, he would give someone a pen and paper and then ask that person to write down what they observed. The general response of course would be: “What do you want me to observe?” The point being that all observation is selective. The scientific method does not proceed though the random gathering of empirical data but through research focused by a theory; research communities, formed around a theory, work to test a theory.
A very good and current example that comes to mind is the postulated existence of dark matter. Dark matter is a human construct designed to account for a number of observations – one being that the universe seems to be accelerating as it expands. There is no logical connection between the empirical data which indicates that the universe is expanding and the concept of dark matter, but there is an intuitive, creative connection, earthed in the human psyche, which has hypothesized its existence. That is, the empirical data to date does not imply the existence of dark matter but rather, it is one of a number of theories advanced which may help us resolve a number of issues within our current cosmological models – metaphors, theories, whatever you want to call them! This hypothesis now focuses and directs the empirical effort and will continue to drive the effort until a better model is found. Should the research community established around this theory accumulate enough empirical evidence in support of this notion then history shows it will be temporarily be accepted as “fact” until, that is, it is found wanting.
Scientific knowledge is provisional, and subjective, and very human. At some point we have to make an inductive leap and launch ourselves from the springboard of empirical data and form a generalized hypothesis. This is nothing more than a leap of faith. A scientist must propose a theory that not only accounts for the observations which cannot be accounted for in existing models but must also advance understanding such that it can make new predictions and the new model can be tested, and importantly, falsified. This last point is key; we can never conclusively prove empirically a theory, we can only test and potentially falsify it – see the original post and the discussion of the empirical method. This has the downstream conclusion that even if we were to model “perfectly” our reality we would never know it because from our perspective we would only know that it has not yet been falsified – as in the case of Newton’s “laws” which took 200 years to falsify.
Actually though, I believe the human predicament, when it comes to scientific exploration, is in an even more tricky place than I have outlined in this post. Once we start factoring Kant’s stuff into the equation we must realize that reality, as it is in itself, is very much out of our reach; these “laws”, as we refer to them, may simply be artefacts of our human psychology. I would be keen for to hear you comment further on my part II post on this subject.
Saj
Said this on July 21st, 2007 at 1:52pm:Hi Andy,
Apologies for previous entry - please delete it. I was trying to see if I could get italics - is there an easier way than typing in the code for each line?
Anyway, thanks for your detailed response to my post! I have a few comments I’d like to put to you, and will adopt your Q&A format:
I am talking about pure objective, unmediated reality – something which I think, based on your comments above, we both agree we will never get access to.
We do have access to it (in the form of a woman if you take my earlier example), but I agree that we cannot experience reality to its full extent. That is, we can only be aware of a few aspects of reality (such as visual or auditory) for a particular object or scene, and even those only partially, at any one moment.
I agree that nature seems to function in an orderly fashion as though it is governed by laws – though actually, I think it is worth pointing out that at the quantum level this does not seem to be true.
It seems to me that in invoking quantum uncertainty, you are using science to undermine science.
I do not know what it means for nature to have a “law”
Given the previous statement, I would be interested to know the distinction you make between “order” and “law”?
I also agree this “law like” behaviour has been “discovered” by scientists but I am very keen to point out the subjectivity of such discoveries.
Here you seem to equate “subjective” with “wrong”. The mere fact that a human being thinks he knows something does not automatically make that information wrong, although it is by definition subjective.
My view is that, in a sense, scientific theories are always wrong in that they will never describe reality as it really is.
I think this is going too far. I would re-iterate what we agreed earlier, which is that a scientific theory cannot be proved to be correct. Later you make the same point when you say even if we were to model “perfectly” our reality (which presumably therefore you concede as being a possibility) we would never know it.
To be clear though, I am not suggesting the scientific method is flawed but I am saying it is limited in much the same way as the rest of human enquiry, in that it has a very human subjective component.
In much the same way, yes, but not to the same extent. That science is conducted by humans, those well-known cesspits of subjectivity, is clearly undeniable! However, I think science tries harder and has more tools at its disposal to minimise this bias than any other field of human enquiry (which are what by the way – meditation, theology / spirituality, philosophy?)
Finally, on the “chicken and egg” question of scientific models and reality, you say - Dark matter is a human construct designed to account for a number of observations. I would point out that the observations came first. If by empirical effort you mean the process of testing a scientific theory, then of course the theory must come first. I don’t know if I’m splitting imaginary hairs here but what I am trying to say is that reality comes first, our observations come second, then interpretation / modelling, and then the process of verification.
Perhaps you’ve had enough of this subject for now and want to move on, though I’d be very interested to hear your response? It’d be great to catch up sometime and discuss it properly over a beer or two!
AJ
Said this on January 20th, 2008 at 8:21pm:Hey Saj, a rather late reply, but hoping you might want to continue the conversation.
Adopting our Q&A format:
… I agree that we cannot experience reality to its full extent. That is, we can only be aware of a few aspects of reality (such as visual or auditory) for a particular object or scene, and even those only partially, at any one moment.
I think you are underplaying the difference between reality as we experience it and as it actually is. After all, what is auditory and visual experience? Surely, according to a scientific conception, it is simply colourless and odorless particles interacting with other such particles. Colour, sound and smell are nothing more than constructs of our consciousness. Further, according to Kant – and I tend to agree – it is also likely that so is the time and space in which we experience these sensations.
It seems to me that in invoking quantum uncertainty, you are using science to undermine science.
Well I actually I have no problem doing this as I reckon all “truth” to be circular.
I would be interested to know the distinction you make between “order” and “law”?
The distinction for me is all about where we believe the laws to have originated from. For me they are the product of the human psyche. Something we have poetically and imaginatively conjured through an inductive leap. The distinction emphasizes that these “laws” are not something sown in the fabric of our reality but the construct of our minds. These laws enable us to predict how our reality will behave and enable us to manipulate it and put it to good use. I know I have overused the Newton / Einstein example but it is such a good one. Newton discovered the “law” that predicted how matter was attracted to itself. Yet we now know that matter is not reciprocally attracted; instead we now hypothesize that matter distorts the space-time continuum. Newton’s theory has been falsified; Einstein’s has yet to be. The point I am trying to make clear is that these ideas / theories are human constructs. They are metaphors which describe our experience of reality not reality as it is in itself. If these laws are hard wired anywhere or sown into any reality in anyway, it is in our heads. They are describing how our heads interpret reality. In fact this is exactly what Kant believed Newton’s laws did.
Living in a post Einsteinian age, we now see Newton’s laws for what they are. Kant’s philosophy must be modified. Whilst he could be forgiven for thinking Newton had discovered laws operating inside our heads we now realize that actually they are nothing of the sort. They simply are a useful framework for predicting how our reality will behave. Einstein’s theory of relativity is a more accurate framework – especially under certain conditions - but it does not describe reality. And I suspect it will one day be falsified such that it will be found to not even be an accurate description of the reality we experience.
I have complicated the discussion here by bringing into the equation the separation between reality as it is and reality as it is when we experience it but I think it brings into focus why I am so certain reality is way different to our knowledge of it. Kant suggests that even time and space are a kind of hard wired into our psyche and I am convinced by him. Our senses and the natural way in which we experience reality take these concepts as a given. This is why relativity is so hard for us to get our heads around. Our minds our “set up” and pre configured to expect Euclidean space; that it might be something very different and can be contorted and bent pushes the limits of our comprehension. But what is beyond our comprehension? Surely reality does not stop there? How far can empiricism and the scientific method take us?
… [Y]ou seem to equate “subjective” with “wrong”. The mere fact that a human being thinks he knows something does not automatically make that information wrong, although it is by definition subjective.
I am given to provocative statements. It is the way my mind works. In using the word “wrong” I am simply trying to emphasize the huge chasm between reality as we experience and interpret it and how I suspect it to be in itself.
I think … [your statement: “scientific theories are always wrong in that they will never describe reality as it really is”] is going too far. I would re-iterate what we agreed earlier, which is that a scientific theory cannot be proved to be correct. Later you make the same point when you say even if we were to model “perfectly” our reality (which presumably therefore you concede as being a possibility) we would never know it.
Well, I do not think we will ever begin to get close to understanding reality as it is itself. I am not certain we will even get that close to how it is constructed in our own experience. I believe it is our lot to keep exploring and forever falsifying.
I think science tries harder and has more tools at its disposal to minimise this bias than any other field of human enquiry (which are what by the way – meditation, theology / spirituality, philosophy?)
I agree that within its very limited field of study, and the restrictions set by its own assumptions, it does have more tools at its disposal.
Finally, on the “chicken and egg” question of scientific models and reality … I don’t know if I’m splitting imaginary hairs here but what I am trying to say is that reality comes first, our observations come second, then interpretation / modelling, and then the process of verification.
I don’t think you are splitting hairs and I disagree. I think some kind of reality comes first, and then a theory/interpretation/model and then a process of verification based on observation and eventually a falsification and a repeat of the process. You argue chicken an egg but I will quote Popper’s response.
I do not think Popper is suggesting anything outrages here: simply that it takes interest to observe. Interest is provoked by anomaly. Anomaly is defined as contrary to theoretical expectations. Therefore anomaly creates impetus for a new theory and in turn the need for observations to verify. But the theory is first birthed through a poetic inductive and imaginative leap of human creativity. The process of falsification then begins and new anomalies will – in all likelihood – be discovered.
Saj
Said this on January 26th, 2008 at 1:31pm:Hi Andy!
difference between reality as we experience it and as it actually is
I agree – everything we perceive is interpretation (including ourselves). Going back to my first post, science is about understanding the interpretation, not the original itself, though undoubtedly most people (including myself) routinely forget this distinction. Perhaps this allows for the doubt you advocate in weighing up scientific “discoveries”?
However, I think it is a mistake to equate (if that is what you are doing) religious and scientific “metaphors” on two main grounds. Firstly, religious metaphor is more a guide to how things “should be”, not a description of how things are. Secondly, it is about people, whereas science is about trying to get around the observer, or, put another way, to limit interpretation as much as possible (though, as I have conceded, it can never be completely eliminated).
In a similar vein…
I am simply trying to emphasize the huge chasm between reality as we experience and interpret it and how I suspect it to be in itself.
Yes, but I hope that faced with an oncoming truck you will have sufficient trust in the reality of your interpretation to leap out of the way. The point I am making is that we should not by default undervalue our interpretations simply because we are the ones who make them. “Reality as it actually is” is not necessarily an easy benchmark to establish, and may not even be a monolithic certainty, so who is to say that our interpretations are not valid?
The fact that one scientific interpretation (eg Newton’s) can be superseded by another (Einstein’s) seems to me to strengthen the validity of the scientific endeavour, not weaken it. It is after all trying to grapple with only one reality. Other forms of interpretation do this rather poorly and can actually have many different versions co-existing. You would be hard-pressed to find as many schisms in science as there are in Christianity (let alone other religions).
In fact, I would say that non-scientific interpretations have very little to do with understanding the (physical) world as it is: “There is only one science, physics: everything else is social work.” (James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA).
If these (natural) laws are hard wired anywhere or sown into any reality in anyway, it is in our heads. They are describing how our heads interpret reality.
Again, I agree. Our brains, fabulously complex as they are, are geared toward certain stimuli and therefore irrevocably biased in their perceptions. Even the fraction we do manage to perceive is tainted by interpretation.
But does this mean that an unbiased, uninterpreted reality does not exist? What are we to make of the apparent accuracy of our interpretations; is it simply luck or coincidence, or is there method in scientific madness? Perhaps you will say that our observations of reality seem to match our theories because we are the common denominator, playing both sides. That might be true, but I do wonder what was holding the solar system together before men came along and called it gravity.
I agree that within its very limited field of study, and the restrictions set by its own assumptions, it does have more tools at its disposal.
To what vast untilled pastures are you referring?
I think some kind of reality comes first, and then a theory/interpretation/model and then a process of verification based on observation
Having already conceded that all human perception is interpretation, I think I must give you this one.
Believe Differently » Blog Archive » Principles Sminciples
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Believe Differently » Blog Archive » Everything Else
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Believe Differently » Blog Archive » Science (non)Fiction Stories
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