Is Science the Best Method to Understand the World?

[Audie]

(Matthew 11:25-27) 25 At that time Jesus said in response: “I publicly praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intellectual ones and have revealed them to young children. 26 Yes, O Father, because this is the way you approved. 27 All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one fully knows the Son except the Father; neither does anyone fully know the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son is willing to reveal him.
@Left Coast Sorry I overlooked the second question. I'm distracted as I am engaged otherwise. I'll answer the second question as soon as I can.

@Left Coast to your second question.
(Psalm 10:4) In his haughtiness, the wicked man makes no investigation; All his thoughts are: “There is no God.”
Investigation leads to evidence based faith.

Chant verse and claim evidence as you will,
there is no evidence.

And if there were you won't need faith.

 

[Heyo]

Wow. Sophomoric Cosmogony 101.

Thanks. (That was a compliment or didn't I understand you?)

 

[osgart]

Science is the best and only way to extract information from the world to gain use of what is in the world. Science can tell you how things behave. It is limited by observation as to what it can know.

To understand the world you need to take a philosophical approach. The underlying causes and patterns are never intrinsically understood as to why things behave as they do.

It's an assumption that patterns of non intelligent behaviour alone are the building blocks of life. We will never know life by any other way than objective introspection.

 

[Augustus]

Since when was trial and error tinkering not part of the scientific method?

In all the years before the 17th C development of modern science for a start.

All trial and error tinkering is not 'the scientific method' though imo.

If you are interested

 

[Audie]

I got to vote 'Disagree'

Science is the best method for understanding the physical world at this time.

However from my study of the paranormal and psychic I believe science is also an incomplete understanding of all reality.

Spirituality is even more important to human happiness than science.

Terrif. Now define spiritual.

And explain when the topic became happiness instead of knowledge.

Since psychic and paranormal cannot be detected, how exactly do you study them?

And how you know that getting out of the stone age did not contribute to happiness.

 

[Left Coast]

But personally, the "world" I experience is a lot more than physical phenomena, coolly observed with scientific detachment. I experience emotions, relationships, art and other things that science is no help at all in describing, understanding or dealing with.

I have to disagree here. As someone whose background is in social science, science has actually quite a bit to say in describing, understanding, and dealing with emotions, relationships, and even art.

 

[exchemist]

I have to disagree here. As someone whose background is in social science, science has actually quite a bit to say in describing, understanding, and dealing with emotions, relationships, and even art.

Very little of any use to normal people, though. If I want to develop an understanding of the works of J S Bach, do I turn to science? If I want to come to terms with my wife's death, do I turn to science? If I have a love affair that goes wrong, do I turn to science? If I have an argument with my neighbour and want to sort it out, do I turn to science?

All such things are part of the "world" of experience we inhabit as human beings, just as much as the physical manifestations of nature: in fact, for most people, more so. This is why we have art, literature, history, religion. Not for nothing are they called the Humanities.

Science has its place in human affairs, but is far from being all one needs. So arguing it is "the best" method is a bit like trying to argue a spanner is "better" than a screwdriver, it seems to me.

 

[Left Coast]

@Left Coast to your second question.
(Psalm 10:4) In his haughtiness, the wicked man makes no investigation; All his thoughts are: “There is no God.”
Investigation leads to evidence based faith.

What type of investigation, though? What is the method of that investigation, and how do we determine it's accurate?

 

[Valjean]

If we let science rule, human beings will likely become obsolete.

This you'll have to explain.

 

[Left Coast]

Very little of any use to normal people, though. If I want to develop an understanding of the works of J S Bach, do I turn to science?

Yes. Science is extremely useful in understanding music.

If I want to come to terms with my wife's death, do I turn to science?

Yes. Any therapist or grief counselor worth their salt should be employing techniques that have been scientifically demonstrated to be effective in helping clients work through their grief.

If I have a love affair that goes wrong, do I turn to science?

That depends on what question you have about the love affair or it going wrong, i suppose.

If I have an argument with my neighbour and want to sort it out, do I turn to science?

Yes. Science is useful in helping us test techniques for negotiation, conflict resolution, and so on.

 

[Left Coast]

Another point on this:

Under the assumption that the brain is like a satellite dish what could we predict?

So, for example, we should see antenna-type structures. We should see interference effects from people close by that are on similar 'frequencies'. We should detect energy loss or gain when the signals come in or leave. We should be able to produce similar structures to pick up on the signals.

Given that *none* of those predictions is supported by observation, this puts the hypothesis in serious question.

So, make a prediction based on this hypothesis that gives a measurable effect that is different than some competing hypothesis. If that cannot be done, then the hypothesis isn't even one that needs to be considered. It becomes equivalent to arguing about brains in a vat or the Matrix.

That is why I say things outside space and time are undetectable.

 

[Polymath257]

That is why I say things outside space and time are undetectable.

So what does it even mean to say they exist at all?

 

[exchemist]

Yes. Science is extremely useful in understanding music.



Yes. Any therapist or grief counselor worth their salt should be employing techniques that have been scientifically demonstrated to be effective in helping clients work through their grief.



That depends on what question you have about the love affair or it going wrong, i suppose.



Yes. Science is useful in helping us test techniques for negotiation, conflict resolution, and so on.

Science is not at all useful in understanding the music of J S Bach. I am well aware it provides a basis for understanding why consonant intervals are heard as harmonious and why a violin sounds different from a flute, but that gets you nowhere towards answering the question I posed. You are thinking about it at quite the wrong level.

 

[Polymath257]

Don't you mean we should have a lot of hubris, considering we are not even able to understand the most complex organ on earth - the one we use for science, and yet expect to detect something we know absolutely nothing about.
We can't even figure out the 95% dark universe. Hubris yes.

Which is more hubris?

To acknowledge we can be wrong and modify our views as more data comes in, making sure our hypotheses are testable?

OR

Thinking someone 2000 years ago was in contact with the designer and maker of the universe and gave correct information that should not be questioned?

 

[Left Coast]

So what does it even mean to say they exist at all?

No clue. If there is some type of "existence" that is timeless and spaceless, we have no clue what it would be like, as far as I can tell.

 

[Polymath257]

No clue. If there is some type of "existence" that is timeless and spaceless, we have no clue what it would be like, as far as I can tell.

And, at that point, we can acknowledge that no knowledge about such is possible.

Which means the scientific method is STILL the only way of getting *knowledge*.

Personally, I think it is simply meaningless to say that something inherently undetectable exists. That is because there is no way to distinguish between its non-existence and its existence.

 

[Left Coast]

Science is not at all useful in understanding the music of J S Bach. I am well aware it provides a basis for understanding why consonant intervals are heard as harmonious and why a violin sounds different from a flute, but that gets you nowhere towards answering the question I posed. You are thinking about it at quite the wrong level.

You asked if science can help us understand Bach's music. So I guess the question is what you mean by "understand?"

 

[Vouthon]

Agree or disagree?

Only qualified agreement from me LC.

I concur with the South African cosmologist Professor George Ellis when he writes, "The belief that all of reality can be fully comprehended in terms of physics and the equations of physics is a fantasy. As pointed out so well by Eddington in his Gifford lectures, they are partial and incomplete representations of physical, biological, psychological, and social reality."

Science is limited to what can be tested - or, at least, what is capable of having testable consequences. Beyond the particle horizon, our telescopes can see no further - and so we naturally wander into the realm of good, empirically based but fundamentally unfalsifiable 'speculative' philosophy.

The universe has only been in existence for 14 billion years. Light only journeys a certain distance in that time and then we can't see anything further out. So there is a whole dimension of reality we likely know nothing about and will never know anything about, because the light will never get to us in time for us to know anything about it. Arguably, the capacity of scientists to test for high energy physics – structures on the smallest physical scales at the highest energies – is approaching its limit.

You cannot test empirically for what existed before space and time came into being.

There is also nothing in particle physics or biology which gives one a universal standard of ethical conduct. We can learn from science why the human being is the "moral animal" but we can't derive our moral norms from the brute facts of scientific knowledge. That is the province of the human mind/qualia, socialization and culture; it does not emerge as the logical and inevitable conclusion of any premises derived from natural, scientifically explicable processes (the "ought" from "is" impossibility).

Professor Richard Dawkins has written on this too:


Richard Dawkins: 'We need an anti-Darwinian society'

“...Evolution by natural selection is the explanation for why we exist. It is not something to guide our lives in our own society. If we were to be guided by the evolution principle, then we would be living in a kind of ultra-Thatcherite, Reaganite society.

Study your Darwinism for two reasons, because it explains why you’re here, and the second reason is, study your Darwinism in order to learn what to avoid in setting up society. What we need is a truly anti-Darwinian society. Anti-Darwinian in the sense that we don’t wish to live in a society where the weakest go to the wall, where the strongest suppress the weak, and even kill the weak..."​

Science is indispensable to understanding the universe and our human condition, but it doesn't satisfy the deeper existential questions that many people have or tell us how to - say - resolve a legal dispute between two companies. That's our intra-"human" world.

Ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, pure mathematical relationships, legal systems, political governance and meaning etc.. Science doesn't help us with much of that but they are all in different ways important parts of the "human" world we experience and live in.

 

[MikeF]

Not odd. Science can't work with the supernatural. It can only work with observable, testable phenomena.

How does one know the properties of the supernatural to know that those properties are not detectible?

 

[Left Coast]

And, at that point, we can acknowledge that no knowledge about such is possible.

Which means the scientific method is STILL the only way of getting *knowledge*.

Personally, I think it is simply meaningless to say that something inherently undetectable exists. That is because there is no way to distinguish between its non-existence and its existence.

I suspect you're right. I explored this idea here:

Are God Concepts Incoherent?