gnostic
The Lost One
It is still not science.Scientific racialism had nothing to do with science or being scientific?
Might want to do a bit of reading on that issue...
It is pseudoscience concept.
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Is 'scientism' a thing, or just a slur?
- Thread starter MikeF
- Start date
It is pseudoscience concept.
cladking
Well-Known Member
Believing in laws and that we know what these laws are is "scientism". It is the belief that reductionism has worked to give us a broad based understanding of everything and each of our inventions.
It is a belief in science.
And it is the understanding of everything only within the confines of those beliefs. Each specialist sees reality in terms of his specialty.
Augustus
…
Today yes, then no.
I'd say this is a good example of scientism for those who insist it doesn't exist..
When something was taught as science, by scientists and was is considered to be science at the time it was accepted as true, you can't then rewrite history to pretend it was always "pseudoscience" just because modern scientific beliefs have advanced on the issue.
The sciences are and have been wrong on all kinds of issues, just accept that is part of the scientific endeavour even when these beliefs are something we now find abhorrent. An inability to admit to the limitations of science is scientism.
For people who always "trust the science", it is good to look back in time and see what nonsense they would have beleived had they simply been born a few years earlier.
Rational humanists find it very hard to accept that they would almost certainly have been racialists and proponents of eugenics had they been born a century earlier though so need to do a bit of mental gymnastics.
gnostic
The Lost One
I do look back at history. If you read much of my posts that I talk of past events and past achievements.
This Scientific Racialism is pseudoscience now, which mean it was never science when it started.
The question is why even bother to bring up in the first place?
You might as well as bring up parapsychology, alchemy and astrology.
For millennia, astrology have been tied to astronomy. But if astrology now, then it was never science in the beginning, even people did believe in astrology in the past or today.
In the 20th century, governments have sponsored parapsychological research, thinking psychic phenomena and paranormal were worthy of researches and tried to find applications, but it turn out to be pseudoscience.
I am not trying to rewrite history, because I think we can learn from past mistakes. And I talk a lot about history in these forums, i have talked about successes and failures.
What I don’t understand, is why you are arguing with me over racialism, when it is pseudoscience, and not relevant today. Do we need discus this garbage?
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
So you are eternal for all time and not just now. OMG you are a god. So you already know pseudoscience for now from the point of the future. Check, you can know the future from now, so you are a god. Tell more.
cladking
Well-Known Member
So what if much of what we take for "science" today is pseudoscience? Masks, global warming, survival of the fittest, and superstition that made ancient people wise and powerful.
It hardly stops there. We also have an infinite number of universes springing into existence in each moment and anything else that pops up in equations. We have people who think we understand the causes of gravity and for whom it makes perfect sense to study species and ignore life.
"Science" is bought and paid for by the highest bidder, today.
Yes, science was always wrong in the past and soon enough today will be the past as well.
gnostic
The Lost One
What in Hades are you talking about?So you are eternal for all time and not just now. OMG you are a god. So you already know pseudoscience for now from the point of the future. Check, you can know the future from now, so you are a god. Tell more.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
You rule is that your now can decide if science is correct for the past, but then it can't for now in regards to the future.
Augustus
…
Some of it was pseudoscience, some of it was bad science, and some was science done in good faith that turned out to be wrong. The fact remains it was considered scientific by a large part of the scientific community.
Lots of science today will later be deemed pseudoscience or is bad science or science done in good faith that will turn out to be wrong, yet is currently considered scientific by a large part of the scientific community.
It should help people to think more sceptically (and scientifically) about science. If you think we can learn from past mistakes then this should be clear to you.
What you replied to was this point which was made in response to a poster saying "I always trust the science": If we look at the history of science it seems a ridiculous thing to say too . Countless erroneous and very harmful beliefs were 'scientific' in their time (racialism for example)
People who "trust the science" today tend not to want to accept what this would have meant had they been born in a different time. "Trusting the science" makes one very susceptible to whatever the latest fad is.
Sheldon
Veteran Member
Whilst it is true they were offered as scientific, they were not, and science overturned those erroneous ideas, because science follows wherever the evidence leads, and has never claimed ideas are immutable absolute truths, unlike religions of course.
It's one of the scientific method's greatest strengths, that all ideas remain tentative, no matter how well evidenced. Even scientific facts like species evolution, that are now evidenced beyond any reasonable doubt, must still remain tentative, and open to revision in the light of new evidence, that is the very antithesis of religions claiming to possess immutable absolute truths, some of which have been demonstrated to be errant nonsense in just a few hundred years, but because religious claims are closed minded they still cling to them even in the light of new and overwhelming evidence.
Science has never done this....as the method is objective...being wrong is not a flaw, being unable to admit you are wrong is a great and egregious flaw, if religions ever do learn this, then humans may one day see their penchant for superstition as the source of that flaw. Like religions scientists are anachronistic, unlike religions the scientific method is not, as it has evolved, and transcended the era from which it originated.
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gnostic
The Lost One
I know that,
But they are no longer to you and I, today.
For bad science:
Old theories - “bad science” or even “outdated” science - are often replaced by current scientific theories because the alternative often better explanatory modeling and predictive modeling, supported by observational evidence.
Today’s observation techniques and current devices, offer better ways to obtain information (data) from evidence, better detection and better measuring, due to advancing technology.
It’s called PROGRESS.
But then there are some that were considered to be science that really turned out to be pseudoscience.
The scientific racialism may have been accepted by some scientists, but regardless of their acceptance and their research, it is still pseudoscience.
So the question is still the same as my previous reply.
Why bring it up, when it isn’t relevant today?
Why do you keep on dancing around racialism as “not science”?
You are sugarcoating racialism. For what purpose? To score a point, to win an argument?
Tsk! * shakes head *
cladking
Well-Known Member
"Scientism" is the belief we finally have it right.
gnostic
The Lost One
Scientism is a belief by people who think science is a religion.
The only people who use the word “scientism”, is because they are bloody idiots who are anti-science, or who failed in science.
Such idiots don’t know squat about science, so they used it as insults.
gnostic
The Lost One
You don’t think I have been skeptical?
You don’t know me, so why are you pretending that you do?
I am skeptical about the many fields of theoretical physics, for examples String Theory, M-theory, Superstring Theory, Multiverse, Oscillating or Cyclical Universe model, etc.
These are all theoretical concepts, potential solutions and potential “scientific theory”, but they are not “scientific theory” because they are UNTESTED and don’t satisfy the 3 essential requirements of being science (or being “scientific theory”):
- Falsifiability
- Scientific Method
- Peer Review
Some sciences started out being “theoretical” until they were tested, eg Relativity (both SR & GR), until it was tested.
Likewise with the expanding universe models of Friedmann, Robertson & Lemaitre in the 1920s (eg Redshift), and Gamow, Alpher & Herman in 1948 (eg Hot Big Bang, Primordial Nucleosynthesis, Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation), later known as the Big Bang model, started out as theoretical, but later as scientific theory, because some of the evidence discovered that supported their predictions.
In 1964, Peter Higgs was one of theoretical physicists that have proposed a theoretical model on mass generations of gauge boson particles. The discovery of Higgs particle in experiment at CERN, in 2013, made Higgs Mechanics as being more than theoretical.
Despite the popularity of Cyclical Universe cosmology, Multiverse, String Theory, etc, haven’t been tested, yet, hence they are not science (not yet, possibly never), hence my skepticism. So I have not accepted these as sciences at this stage.
Mind you, I am definitely no expert in any of these fields, because I am neither a physicist, nor mathematician. My own experiences in sciences are in the applied science, in the fields of civil engineering (mid-1980s) and computer science (late 90s).
The points being, if concepts haven’t been tested yet, then these concepts aren’t “science”. That’s my skepticism at work.
I am also skeptical of non-science concepts that are masquerading as science, hence fake science (pseudoscience), like astrology, alchemy, ether, Intelligent Design, parapsychology, etc. And of course, this bloody Scientific Racialism that you insisted on bringing up.
I am being skeptical, Augustus. I am skeptical of Racialism as “science”. And that should be good enough for you.
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Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Many people do not even know what skepticism is. They think that if they reject everything that they are a skeptic. That is far from being correct. A skeptic follows the evidence. A skeptic may well have doubts about some of the less well supported theories of science because the evidence is not quite solid enough yet. There is nothing wrong with that. But if one denies gravity or evolution one is not a skeptic. One has crossed over into being a science denier since they are not following the evidence.
gnostic
The Lost One
No, there is nothing wrong with that.
My problem is with Augustus thinking I should accept Scientific Racialism as “science” because it was accepted as science by scientists in the past.
But the past is the past. It have no relevancy, today.
This is stupid.
And since it isn’t science, so it is illogical (to be more blunt, it is stupid) to accept some things when we know are not science.
By Augustus’ logic, then I must accept geocentric model, flat earth, astrology, paranormal phenomena, creationism, Intelligent Design, etc, since one time or another, they have been studied.
But not all studies are scientific.
Aside from learning from history, and. I loved history, but there are scientific reasonings to reject pseudoscience and bad science.
I don’t reject because they don’t exist, I rejected them because the evidence don’t support these concepts.
gnostic
The Lost One
So you are eternal for all time and not just now. OMG you are a god. So you already know pseudoscience for now from the point of the future. Check, you can know the future from now, so you are a god. Tell more.
You are just being silly.
A) I don’t believe in god, and I don’t believe in one.
B) I don’t believe in omniscience or the perfect knowledge.
C) Sciences aren’t perfect, scientific theories are not perfect, because they can be corrected, refined, expanded, modified, updated, AND IF NECESSARY replaced by better tested alternative.
B) I don’t believe in omniscience or the perfect knowledge.
C) Sciences aren’t perfect, scientific theories are not perfect, because they can be corrected, refined, expanded, modified, updated, AND IF NECESSARY replaced by better tested alternative.
If you look at astronomy as a whole, from the Bronze Age to the present, it has constantly changed. New discoveries lead to new information, often replacing outdated knowledge.
Astronomy, as well as astrophysics, is not a fixed knowledge, it is constantly being challenged and modified, whenever new evidence provide new information, so we can remove outdated concepts.
And astronomy, isn’t the only branch in science that are constantly changing and updating. Biology, medicine, geology, engineering, computer technology, etc, all required to progress forward whenever we understand the available evidence, and not dwell on outdated and poor models.
Sciences allow for recognizing errors, finding solutions and fixing it.
Only ignorant people think sciences are rigid dogmas, like religions or philosophies.
The problems with religions are that people believe in superstition - the old “god did it” and the belief in supernatural, like miracles, afterlife, reincarnation, transcendent consciousness, etc, where everything that are impossible in nature become possible.
And as with philosophies, there are literally hundreds of them. Some require logics, while others don’t.
And if we do just focus only on logic, there are myriad of ways to reach conclusions. And the idiocy of have so many different philosophies, is that philosophers being humans and all, they will defend their schools of thoughts, because their biases and prides, will lead to fruitless argument that have no resolution.
In the end, most philosophies are just incessant TALK, and not much actions or actionable resolutions.
The question is how would you determine WHICH philosophical views are true?
Sciences - and I am talking about Natural Sciences or Physical Sciences - depends on evidence (testable and verifiable observations and data) to resolve what is probable or improbable, to reach the conclusions.
It is the EVIDENCE that provide objective way to determine which model is true or false.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Now I will show you something fun, I were taught by people like you. Never trust what people say and check yourself. So here we go:
Now I am sorry. But I am trained too well, gnostic, to fall for such nonsense about science, that you claim. It has been many years now that I have learned what science might be, is not that simple.
gnostic
The Lost One
Actually, the nonsense is you, confusing the EVIDENCE with the MODEL (examples of models - theory, hypothesis).
The evidence is independent of the model.
The evidence is the physical reality (or the physical phenomena).
The model is the attempt to understand that physical reality...
- to explain WHAT it is, and
- to explain HOW does it work.
Sure, scientists can make mistake. And sure, some concepts can be wrong or weak. And I am also sure that scientists can misunderstand the evidence.
I don't deny that.
The problem isn't with the evidence. The problem could be the model, and the person or people behind the model.
But that is why models need TESTING. The testing (evidence, observations, experiments, data) is the only way to determine if the model is correct or incorrect, probable or improbable.
I don't know what you are train in and I don't know what you were taught, but it would seem you are not good in science or it would seem that you hate science.
If the former, then I think you are confusing the model with the evidence.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
So you use one model of evidence or rule/norm for evidence. Well, I use another rule/norm for how to think about the words model and evidence.
We are playing philosophy of science. And none of us can win that one. We can either agree or disagree.