----- Original Message ----- From: "William T Goodall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 9:07 AM Subject: Re: Science and knowledge
> > On Tuesday, July 22, 2003, at 06:08 am, Dan Minette wrote: > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Sent: Monday, July 21, 2003 10:41 PM > > Subject: Re: Science and knowledge > > > > > >>>> The purpose of science is not to help us understand reality; it is > >>>> not > >>> about the truth. Indeed, one of my favorite statements about science > > is > >>> "the most important development in the history of science is when it > > was > >>> decided that it wasn't about the truth." > >> > >> I would argue that most scientists believe that their models are about > > reality. Truth is a somewhat trickier >notion. It implies finality > > while > > science is always more tentative. > > > > But, if this is true, then why did this statement achieve general > > acceptance among the professional scientists on sci.physics? There > > are a > > lot of different scientists with a lot of different viewpoints, who all > > agreed that science was about making models concerning observation. > > It had > > nothing to say about the validity of observation. > > > <snip> > > Thinking about this, its probably because we hang with different types > > of > > scientists. > > The overwhelming majority of scientists are *not* physicists. Fair enought, I'll be happy to admit that I've got a biased sample. :-) > <snip> > > > Now, it is also true that few scientists believe that observations have > > nothing to do with reality. Most idealists, for example, think there > > is a > > correlation between observation and reality. And, idealists do have a > > respected place among physicists: Wheeler was one. > > Perhaps you should start using 'physicist' instead of 'scientist' in > your posts to avoid overgeneralising. That's a fair point. I think that physicists have had to worry about foundation problems, while other scientists do not, because their conceptual foundation is the science of the next level down. Chemistry's foundation is physics, biology is chemistry, etc. > Certainly most of the scientists I have known are realists who wouldn't > know what philosophy was if they stubbed their toe on it... That's an interesting phenomenon. Let me relate a story about Jim Carr on sci.physics. He is a self described realist. When I asked him about the question of whether physics describes reality or simply provides a model of observation, he said "of course the latter." Physicists are forced to confront quantum realism on a fairly regular basis. There are Physics Review Letters papers on the experimental tests for spacelike correlations, Bell without inequalities, etc. on a fairly regular basis. Since physics, by its nature, goes for the foundations, these questions are considered important. I've been throwing these questions around among physicists for over 25 years now, and there is a general acceptance that "quantum weirdness" cannot simply be shrugged off. I think the key to reconciling this with the general description of physicists as mostly realists is the "shut up and calculate" statement of Feynman. It is an acknowledgement that there is no good realistic explanation for how QM works. It deliberately tables the question; tacitly acknowledging Feynman's inability to solve it. It is not a statement that the question is worthless. Indeed, anyone trained in classical physics expects a good answer to the question: what types of things behave this way. The inability to straightforwardly define QM in terms of things that have properties consistent with known laws of physics apart from our observations is not thought to be a trivial problem.* So, if you were to ask a physicist about these questions, and then offer the understanding that physics just models what we see, there is a close to universal acceptance of that statement. There is often an accompanying statement that what we see has something to do with reality. Finally, thinking about your statement about not overgeneralizing, I think that I share the general prejudice that a physicist is someone who's had some graduate work in physics, not necessarily someone with an undergraduate degree. I was told that one of the questions that are important to prelims is determining if the student "thinks like a physicist." An ABD** physicist, like Richard Baker, certainly qualifies here. Dan M. * by straightforward I mean without relying on interpretations that require a rich infinity of universes with a slightly less rich infinity of Dan M.s being created all the time, or hidden backwards signals in time, etc. ** ABD is all but dissertation _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
