Learning: Introduction

[blü 2]

How would you define science?

One way of putting it is to say science is the practice and findings of scientific method. Scientific method is a branch of reasoned skeptical enquiry, and (to oversimplify) is reasoning honestly and transparently from examinable evidence with the intention to explore, describe and explain the entities and phenomena of nature. It includes such ideas as hypothesis formation, hypothesis testing by experiment, peer review and publication, common unambiguous terminology, debate, re-testing, aiming to address and amend problems, errors and difficulties, and so on. And of course luck good or bad, sudden insights, flashes of inspiration and cries of Aha! and of Dang! come with the territory.

Briefly, what is the history of science?

I'll let >Wikipedia< field that one. I'll add that many of the major ideas have big debts to the ancient Greeks. (As does the Christian church, for that matter.)

What is the strengths and weaknesses of science?

Scientific method has no peer, no serious rival at all, for addressing the question, what's true in reality?

Free of human folly, malice, and negligence, it does what it tries to do without particular weaknesses; and since it's constantly self-examining and self-correcting, always a work in progress, if it finds a weakness in method, it seeks to correct it.

 

[Audie]

One way of putting it is to say science is the practice and findings of scientific method. Scientific method is a branch of reasoned skeptical enquiry, and (to oversimplify) is reasoning honestly and transparently from examinable evidence with the intention to explore, describe and explain the entities and phenomena of nature. It includes such ideas as hypothesis formation, hypothesis testing by experiment, peer review and publication, common unambiguous terminology, debate, re-testing, aiming to address and amend problems, errors and difficulties, and so on. And of course luck good or bad, sudden insights, flashes of inspiration and cries of Aha! and of Dang! come with the territory.
I'll let >Wikipedia< field that one. I'll add that many of the major ideas have big debts to the ancient Greeks. (As does the Christian church, for that matter.)
Scientific method has no peer, no serious rival at all, for addressing the question, what's true in reality?

Free of human folly, malice, and negligence, it does what it tries to do without particular weaknesses; and since it's constantly self-examining and self-correcting, always a work in progress, if it finds a weakness in method, it seeks to correct it.

So you'd say the weakness is that science, like democracy,
is run by people?

 

[exchemist]

Can't answer the 1st 2 questions because I'm an uneducated retired train driver. I thought I had an answer for Q3 but I thought you meant, positives and negatives of science but on re-reading it I see you say strengths and weaknesses, that I'm also unqualified to judge. Not much of an answer, sorry.

I'm curious as to why you would ask these questions here? I don't see the relevance in a forum called Evolution V's Creationism.

A very perceptive question, in my opinion.

 

[exchemist]

I couldn't agree with you more, but thus the dilemma. We should let scientists do science and the creationist sort out creation. Science can't test the supernatural so it has absolutely no say in the matter. The conflict between the atheist and the fundamentalist is a class struggle. Polemic pontification at the least.

Nevertheless . . . here we are.

Why do you conflate two totally separate things here. What does a "class struggle" between two opposing worldviews have to do with science and creation? There are thousands of religious believers who are trained in or practising science and who do not have any difficulties with either science or the idea of creation. And there are - of course - millions of religious people who are not "fundamentalists" and who watch the "class struggle" you refer to with utter bemusement.

(Of course, barely any of those scientists would subscribe to the pseudoscience of ID, but that is something else entirely. )

 

[Audie]

Why do you conflate two totally separate things here. What does a "class struggle" between two opposing worldviews have to do with science and creation? There are thousands of religious believers who are trained in or practising science and who do not have any difficulties with either science or the idea of creation. And there are - of course - millions of religious people who are not "fundamentalists" and who watch the "class struggle" you refer to with utter bemusement.

(Of course, barely any of those scientists would subscribe to the pseudoscience of ID, but that is something else entirely. )

It is a class struggle, though, isnt it?

Creo v Evo is the gaming field. but what is going on is
we have our fundies who are the trailer park gang v
the more sophisticated citizens.

("trailer park" is a condensed way of saying they are generally the
working class / low income, low education, low social status
folks.)

Anti science,, anti intellectual. And proud of it.

Atheists on the whole are considerably higher on the
above scale.

Scientists, educated people in general do not with few
exceptions seem to find a problem with ToE; they
understand it and know there is no problem ever found.

Readers of tabloid-level creationist lit. of course are
lied to and deceived by the things they read from AIG
or whoever..

You get a lot of confused anger and resentment from
those people. See "science as the Inquisition".

 

[exchemist]

It is a class struggle, though, isnt it?

Creo v Evo is a gaming field. but what is going on is
we have our fundies who are the trailer park gang.

(condensed way of saying they are generally the
working class / low income, low education, low social status
folks.)

Anti science,, anti intellectual.

Atheists on the whole are considerably higher on the
above scale.

Scientists, educated people in general do not with few
exceptions seem to find a problem with ToE; they
understand it and know there is no problem ever found.

Readers of tabloid-level creationist lit. of course are
lied to and deceived by the things they read from AIG
or whoever..

You get a lot of confused anger and resentment from
those people. See "science as the Inquisition".

Yes it may well be - I don't live in the US and we have nothing like it here - but my point is that any such class-based custard pie-throwing match has nothing to do with the intellectual issue of how the discipline of science relates to the religious idea of creation.

If our poster wants to explore that, the views of rednecked fundies, or of atheist crusaders, are not relevant because, obviously, they want to manufacture a conflict rather than see if the ideas can be compatible.

 

[Audie]

Yes it may well be - I don't live in the US and we have nothing like it here - but my point is that any such class-based custard pie-throwing match has nothing to do with the intellectual issue of how the discipline of science relates to the religious idea of creation.

If our poster wants to explore that, the views of rednecked fundies, or of atheist crusaders, are not relevant because, obviously, they want to manufacture a conflict rather than see if the ideas can be compatible.

There are advantages to not living in the USA.
I kind of enjoy having the option to live here or
Hong Kong, as it suits me.

nothing to do with the intellectual issue of how the discipline of science relates to the religious idea of creation.

It does, for some of our friends here who suffer
from hypertrophy of the conflation-bone.

 

[Fool]

How would you define science?

Briefly, what is the history of science?

What is the strengths and weaknesses of science?

science = knowledge, both subjective and objective.

 

[stvdv]

13 jun 2018 stvdv 011 20

What is the strengths and weaknesses of science?

Strength: Good use of brains and discrimination. Real understanding not blind believing.
Weakness: Science is below the senses. So it will always miss out on a lot of knowledge.
Weakness: Science misses humility towards spirituality

 

[Thermos aquaticus]

How would you define science?

Science is an activity where you apply the scientific method to a set of observations and experiments. You DO science.

Briefly, what is the history of science?

We replaced Rationalism with Empiricism and haven't looked back since.

What is the strengths and weaknesses of science?

The strength of science is that it requires verification through objective means. The weakness of science is that it is done by humans.

 

[Thermos aquaticus]

No, indeed, it wouldn't. But I don't want a dictionary definition I wan't proponents of evolution to help me understand where you are coming from. If you change your mind and follow the discussion, and can add to it, you certainly have my attention.

Science really boils down to this:

If theory A is true then I should see observation X and NOT observation Y.

The one thing that most non-scientists forget about is the "not Y" part. Scientists call it the null hypothesis or the potential falsification. It is another way of saying, "If I am wrong then you will see Y". What separates science from non-science or pseudoscience is the possibility of falsification.

If we are talking about evolution, then there are tons and tons of potential falsifications. For example, finding mammal fossils in the Cambrian would be a massive falsification. Finding numerous fossils with a mixture of mammal and bird features would be a massive falsification of evolution. Finding no correlation between genetics and morphology would be yet another massive falsification. There are so many things that could be observed that are inconsistent with evolution, but we never see them. Instead, we only see the things we would expect to see if evolution is true.

 

[Earthling]

Science really boils down to this:

If theory A is true then I should see observation X and NOT observation Y.

The one thing that most non-scientists forget about is the "not Y" part. Scientists call it the null hypothesis or the potential falsification. It is another way of saying, "If I am wrong then you will see Y". What separates science from non-science or pseudoscience is the possibility of falsification.

If we are talking about evolution, then there are tons and tons of potential falsifications. For example, finding mammal fossils in the Cambrian would be a massive falsification. Finding numerous fossils with a mixture of mammal and bird features would be a massive falsification of evolution. Finding no correlation between genetics and morphology would be yet another massive falsification. There are so many things that could be observed that are inconsistent with evolution, but we never see them. Instead, we only see the things we would expect to see if evolution is true.

Thanks for the information. Don't take this the wrong way, but to me it sounds like Double Speak or Gibberish. That is no fault of yours, it's just I have no idea what you are talking about. It's over my head. My goal is to learn here and this is too advanced for me.

 

[Thermos aquaticus]

Thanks for the information. Don't take this the wrong way, but to me it sounds like Double Speak or Gibberish. That is no fault of yours, it's just I have no idea what you are talking about. It's over my head. My goal is to learn here and this is too advanced for me.

Please ask specific questions and I will do my best to answer them. When someone is very familiar with a subject it can be difficult to explain it to non-experts, so a little patience from both sides goes a long ways.

 

[Earthling]

Please ask specific questions and I will do my best to answer them. When someone is very familiar with a subject it can be difficult to explain it to non-experts, so a little patience from both sides goes a long ways.

Amen. I'm trying to be as concise as I can without being obtuse, but I am trying to learn something I've thought was complete nonsense since it was introduced to me as a child many years ago, when, by the way, I was an atheist.

 

[Thermos aquaticus]

Amen. I'm trying to be as concise as I can without being obtuse, but I am trying to learn something I've thought was complete nonsense since it was introduced to me as a child many years ago, when, by the way, I was an atheist.

Are you referring to the theory of evolution, or science and the scientific method in general?

 

[Earthling]

[180613_stvdv_01120]


Strength: Good use of brains and discrimination. Real understanding not blind believing.
Weakness: Science is below the senses. So it will always miss out on a lot of knowledge.
Weakness: Science misses humility towards spirituality

That I could agree with.

 

[Earthling]

Are you referring to the theory of evolution, or science and the scientific method in general?

Specifically the theory of evolution, though I pretty much doubted the validity of most of the stuff I was taught in school, with the exception of math, which I sucked at nevertheless.

 

[Thermos aquaticus]

Specifically the theory of evolution, though I pretty much doubted the validity of most of the stuff I was taught in school, with the exception of math, which I sucked at nevertheless.

The first concept you have to understand is the tree of life. It is also called a nested hierarchy or a phylogeny.

A good analogy is language. As you are probably aware, there are the three major Romance languages of French, Spanish, and Italian. All of these languages share a common ancestral language called Vulgar Latin.

If a modern French speaker went back in time they probably wouldn't be able to understand someone speaking an early form of French, just as you would have a tough time reading the Canterbury Tales in their original Middle English, and probably have no chance of reading or understanding Old English. And yet, every generation of French speakers was able to understand the generation before them and communicate to the generation after them. So what happened? Small changes accumulate over time to the point that they produce big differences.

On top of that, language groups were developing separate from one another. Whatever changes happened early on in the French speaking group were different from the changes that happened in the Spanish speaking group. Over time, those languages diverged. They became less and less like each other over time even though both language groups started with the same common ancestral language. At the same time, you can still find Spanish and French words that are obviously similar, and they are similar because they share a common ancestral language.

This is the sort of process that produces the tree of life, the branching structure of shared features and different features. Small changes accumulate over time which is why you can see larger differences between modern species and fossil species. You also get different changes in different species that share a common ancestor, and this is what causes modern species to be different from each other.

Does that make sense?

 

[Earthling]

science = knowledge, both subjective and objective.

I'm sure that they would disagree with subjective.

 

[Hawkins]

How would you define science?

Briefly, what is the history of science?

What is the strengths and weaknesses of science?

Science is exclusively about the discovery of a set of rules governing a repeatable phenomenon. Listen, it's all about something repeatable. It's not applicable to something not repeatable. It loses its accuracy on a phenomenon which doesn't repeat.

This is so because humans don't have the ability to either go backward or forward in the time axis. We can efficiently confirm a truth only when this truth is repeatable indefinitely for us to do our repeatable observations, formulation and most importantly predictions.

Science can only be accurate when used against a repeatable phenomenon. The other limitation of science is that since science is experiment based, humans can get to a scientific conclusion only when we can physically establish an experiment. This thus will not include the past, the future and any time-space outside of our physical realm.

It is because we lack the capability to know the future that if we can predict how a repeatable phenomenon repeats itself into the future, we thus know that the formula/theory we are using to make this repeating but always come to pass prediction is a scientific truth.