dinoiii
March 18th, 2006, 05:25 PM
Dinoiii's Rant VII: Step Away from the Truth
If scientists tell you they have found The Truth, disbelieve with all your heart and mind; they mislead themselves or seek to mislead you. In 1847, William Whewell wrote, "There is a mask of theory over the whole face of nature." Scientists build masks consistent with the roles played by those of nature's players they have studied. The mask may be an explanation that works for a particular given set of circumstances. It may articulate into a view of the facts that brings sense and order to them. A mask may extend a player's role in hitherto unknown directions to uncover new facts.
We make masks called theories by observing facets of the universe and rolling those observations around through our intellects. At our human best, we use a full measure of our capacities for reason, intuition, and imagery. Theories are educated, carefully stated guesses about how observations might come into line, might be related. Often the guesses form bases for seeking new observations, either through the contrivance of experiment or simply through casting our eyes in a hitherto unlooked direction. New observations confirm the guesses or disconfirm them, forcing modification. The process is agonizing and delightful at the same tiime.
Peter Mediwar singles out "meliorism" as the guiding spirit of seeking understanding of our universe. He argues that the mission of science is to find better explanations. We have moved through understandings of our physical universe from Newtonian to Relativity and from Relativity to Quantum theories. Each move toward a better understanding was made necessary by unaccountable facts, and each has led to the discovery of new facts. None has succeeded in presenting the Truth.
Each view from Newton forward (and backward too, for that matter) is successful in the management of a body of observations. The geocentric view is a good one if it doesn't have to explain the motion of planets across the sky. The Copernican view is better for that purpose. But the latter fails as gallactic perturbations are added to the body of observations. Then, in turn, Newtonian mechanics demand that the center of the universe become only as real as the center of an empty sphere. And so on to Relativity where spherical is NOT quite the right shape, and then to views where the focus is on energies rather than entities. And so on. And again.
Successive theories do NOT imply successive failures. Einstein does NOT entirely displace Newton. Each offers views that are consistent for a piece of the universe, and thus each has a measure of validity. Sometimes alternative views, each based on its own theory, have equal measures of truth value. Some very sophisticated and bright people have seen this and explained it to us.
Neils Bohr included in his coat of arms the phrase, "Contraria Sunt Complementa," opposites are complementary. Among other things he meant that different explanations could apply without invalidating each other. In fact, they might serve to enrich our understanding as we see and use them together. There are shades of Hegelian dialectic in this; the synthesis derives strength from the validity of both its thesis and antithesis bases.
Psychology provides some grand examples of dialectics. Consider that the Ego develops out of the conflict between the Id's hot desires and the world's cold realities. Note also the continual equilibration that is the signature quality of the child's mind and that Piaget focused upon with his processes of assimilation and accomodation. Perhaps most insightful for being most general in Heinz Werner's formulation of how we shape our lives by balancing adaptive change on the one side with organized stability on the other.
Heisenberg gave a version of the dialectic in his Uncertainty Principle that expresses a fundamental property of matter, its nature to be at once both random and statistically describable as well as precisely predictable and mechanistically describable. This echos the movement of humans through our stages, our life spans, our generations, and our history. We account for ourselves by appealing both to our essential human features as well as to their -- and hence our -- variability.
Science is not Magic, nor is it sophistry. It is a way of developing views of the universe that are based in orderly observation. It would be wrong to believe that the scientific way is the only, infallible and complete way of knowing something. It has nonetheless, in contemporary terms, turned a handsome profit.
With it, I bring you DA's NEW WORLD ORDER: the CSC ORDER (Contraria Sunt Complementa - "opposites are complementary"). If you ask where you sign up...the replies that follow would imply your interest.
[author's note: This rant was inspired by my current Fish vs. Flax, Omega 6 vs. Omega 3, magnesium idea wars/roundtable with one Phosphate Bond for those that have been following. It is his ideas I love and welcome - just make sure you bring your complete theory!]
I will live to rant again...
D_
If scientists tell you they have found The Truth, disbelieve with all your heart and mind; they mislead themselves or seek to mislead you. In 1847, William Whewell wrote, "There is a mask of theory over the whole face of nature." Scientists build masks consistent with the roles played by those of nature's players they have studied. The mask may be an explanation that works for a particular given set of circumstances. It may articulate into a view of the facts that brings sense and order to them. A mask may extend a player's role in hitherto unknown directions to uncover new facts.
We make masks called theories by observing facets of the universe and rolling those observations around through our intellects. At our human best, we use a full measure of our capacities for reason, intuition, and imagery. Theories are educated, carefully stated guesses about how observations might come into line, might be related. Often the guesses form bases for seeking new observations, either through the contrivance of experiment or simply through casting our eyes in a hitherto unlooked direction. New observations confirm the guesses or disconfirm them, forcing modification. The process is agonizing and delightful at the same tiime.
Peter Mediwar singles out "meliorism" as the guiding spirit of seeking understanding of our universe. He argues that the mission of science is to find better explanations. We have moved through understandings of our physical universe from Newtonian to Relativity and from Relativity to Quantum theories. Each move toward a better understanding was made necessary by unaccountable facts, and each has led to the discovery of new facts. None has succeeded in presenting the Truth.
Each view from Newton forward (and backward too, for that matter) is successful in the management of a body of observations. The geocentric view is a good one if it doesn't have to explain the motion of planets across the sky. The Copernican view is better for that purpose. But the latter fails as gallactic perturbations are added to the body of observations. Then, in turn, Newtonian mechanics demand that the center of the universe become only as real as the center of an empty sphere. And so on to Relativity where spherical is NOT quite the right shape, and then to views where the focus is on energies rather than entities. And so on. And again.
Successive theories do NOT imply successive failures. Einstein does NOT entirely displace Newton. Each offers views that are consistent for a piece of the universe, and thus each has a measure of validity. Sometimes alternative views, each based on its own theory, have equal measures of truth value. Some very sophisticated and bright people have seen this and explained it to us.
Neils Bohr included in his coat of arms the phrase, "Contraria Sunt Complementa," opposites are complementary. Among other things he meant that different explanations could apply without invalidating each other. In fact, they might serve to enrich our understanding as we see and use them together. There are shades of Hegelian dialectic in this; the synthesis derives strength from the validity of both its thesis and antithesis bases.
Psychology provides some grand examples of dialectics. Consider that the Ego develops out of the conflict between the Id's hot desires and the world's cold realities. Note also the continual equilibration that is the signature quality of the child's mind and that Piaget focused upon with his processes of assimilation and accomodation. Perhaps most insightful for being most general in Heinz Werner's formulation of how we shape our lives by balancing adaptive change on the one side with organized stability on the other.
Heisenberg gave a version of the dialectic in his Uncertainty Principle that expresses a fundamental property of matter, its nature to be at once both random and statistically describable as well as precisely predictable and mechanistically describable. This echos the movement of humans through our stages, our life spans, our generations, and our history. We account for ourselves by appealing both to our essential human features as well as to their -- and hence our -- variability.
Science is not Magic, nor is it sophistry. It is a way of developing views of the universe that are based in orderly observation. It would be wrong to believe that the scientific way is the only, infallible and complete way of knowing something. It has nonetheless, in contemporary terms, turned a handsome profit.
With it, I bring you DA's NEW WORLD ORDER: the CSC ORDER (Contraria Sunt Complementa - "opposites are complementary"). If you ask where you sign up...the replies that follow would imply your interest.
[author's note: This rant was inspired by my current Fish vs. Flax, Omega 6 vs. Omega 3, magnesium idea wars/roundtable with one Phosphate Bond for those that have been following. It is his ideas I love and welcome - just make sure you bring your complete theory!]
I will live to rant again...
D_