does science require belief? (20)

1 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2008-03-05 06:57 ID:JZCuKkv+

i've been wrestling with these thoughts for a bit, namely that science is based on various assumptions, that existence has orderly rules which we can induce through observation and experimentation, that observation and cognative processes present to us an accurate depiction of reality, that logical basics like induction might not even be work, &c.
not sure if i want to take the dive and invest time into popper and kund and feyerabend and friends. could people summarize their arguments and discuss the philosophy of science in this thread?

2 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2008-03-05 07:28 ID:W3VBOK2o

Interesting topic, but rather than rehash what wikipedia would provide you in a few minutes, why don't you formulate what's bothering you?

For instance do you doubt that there is order, or even a reality that science can grasp? Do you wonder if logic is a valid tool to understand the world?

For me the nutshell of science philosophy is: 1) Identification of patterns through observation. 2) Formulation of theories that produce testable predictions. 3) One can only prove that a theory is wrong, never that it's right, and only falsifiable theories are scientific. 4) Objective sign of scientific progress is the creation, based on theories and not just empirical knowledge, of new tools that increase our power to manipulate our environment.

3 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2008-03-05 15:02 ID:Heaven

One of the debates that interests me is scientific realism vs anti-realism.

To summarise:

Realism: Science/maths represents a deeper platonic reality. For example a realist would say that the space-time continuum is something that actually, physically exists.

Anti-realism: Science works. Who cares about the rest? Arguing over whether space-time 'actually exists' (whatever that means) is pointless. All that matters is that you can use a theory to make predictions.

4 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2008-03-05 15:57 ID:Heaven

Well, while you are agonizing over which to believe, scientists are actually working on understanding space-time, and figuring out whether it exists or is just a consequence of some deeper structure.

So neither is the approach taken by science. Science knows its current models are just models, and may very well not reflect an underlying reality. However, this does not mean that the question does not matter. It merely means the job is not done yet.

5 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2008-03-05 19:25 ID:Heaven

>>4

So how can we ever know when the job is done?

6 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2008-03-05 20:51 ID:KM3jZadr

>>5

It will never be done.

There will always be things beyond knowing.

7 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2008-03-05 21:58 ID:Heaven

>>6

There is absolutely no evidence for either possibility.

8 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2008-03-06 10:59 ID:h/JhRaDX

>>3

I'm finding the anti-realist position rather appealing, myself. I've found myself gravitating towards Popper, who characterized science as a search for a kind of truth that can only be indirectly tested by experimentation, and that none of the truths are permanently true, and that only one experiment is needed to fuck up the theory you made.

It's a process, bitches -- and processes are jobs. So it never gets done? Since when is work ever completely done? /b/ is eternally in the search for lulz. Ultimate lulz may never be get. So what?

I get annoyed with Dawkins when he talks about how scientists aren't supposed to have religions, as if it gets in the way of the job of science.

Dude, being a scientist means having a job, and adhering to standards. Just because one is a scientist doesn't mean that one needs to join the nearest Humanist association. You do your job.

Other people judge whether you've done your job or not, not whether your conclusions follow the approved ideology that they agreed on last atheist's meeting.

9 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2008-03-06 12:24 ID:gtYg7J2H

>Dude, being a scientist means having a job, and adhering to standards.

Looks like you're talking more about a Technician than a Scientist. And your description applies more to a manufacturing process than to scientific inquiry. Science is a creative process at its core, even if it requires lots of standards as tools.

It's like saying that artists adhere to standards, just because they use standardized brushes sizes,...

10 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2008-03-06 14:08 ID:tENcwfJd

I think it's possible that science's assumptions are wrong, and i think it's interesting to think about.
But to me, as far as considering a career in science is concerned, it's completely irrelevant. I'm not studying science for the sake of being right, i'm studying it to:
-get a job, hopefully an interesting one
-have a nice piece of paper or several which will look good on my wall.
-learn interesting things
-use my life to do some good in this world, hopefully.

11 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2008-03-06 14:31 ID:gtYg7J2H

>>10

You are talking about the motivations to choose a career in science, and that's all good, but it's not what was asked.

AFAIK, the question asked was: in order to create valid scientific knowledge, which assumptions/beliefs, if any, do you need?

And let's not mix Technicians with Scientists. Technicians are essential to produce science, just like Secretaries and Cookers. But we are talking about the core of scientific creation, and not the peripherals that surround it, even if they are essential for the core to work.

12 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2008-03-06 15:34 ID:4hiaXJKj

> Looks like you're talking more about a Technician than a Scientist.

Really? I don't think so. Scientists tend to begin as Technicians, and the boundary between Technicians and Scientists are fuzzy. I'm not even sure why you included this distinction, which doesn't seem like a particularly valid one anyway. What's the difference between a grad student doing his first paper and his Professor, a respected Scientist? Time, paper and tenure.

Sometimes people jump queue and publish a paper, and whoosh! They're suddenly lauded as Scientists. But how many people are like Einstein, who began as a patent office clerk and suddenly leaped into prominence by publishing a paper that, well, you know, just about destroyed the classical Newtonian view of the Universe?

So many big names in Science all began their lives as, you know, Techs, or explorers, or collectors of oddities? Darwin did. Newton did. Watson and Crick did. Dawkins did. Any scientist with a university education did; it's on-the-job training.

> And your description applies more to a manufacturing process than to scientific inquiry. Science is a creative process at its core, even if it requires lots of standards as tools.

Then take a creative process and ask, "What kind of beliefs do you need to be able to do perform this creative process?" So you've talked about Science. What about Art? Statescraft? Literature?

You know what? Don't use the words "standards". Use "principles". Scientists must adhere to principles: Be honest. Define your problem. Make your hypothesis. Show your work. Accept it when you're wrong. Do these things, and you are a scientist. Abandon them, and you're not.

These aren't beliefs. They're rules of conduct, and you don't need to have faith in them for them to work. They just need to be enforced. You don't need to hold them to be true; you just need to hold to them, conform to them, and never break them. Ever.

> But we are talking about the core of scientific creation, and not the peripherals that surround it, even if they are essential for the core to work.

Let me be very cynical, okay? You wanna know what the core of scientific work is? It's getting published in a scientific journal. Okay, so it's more than that.

It's getting published, and then influencing your fellow scientists so that they cite you. To do that, you need to convince them, that society of people, that you're a scientist.

The popular view is that Science is forging ahead, taking on the boundaries of What Man Knows, and leading us to the Utopian/Dystopian Enlightened/Godless Future.

What happens instead is that you get a messy scrum of people publishing shit and getting into stupid drama and working their asses off for grant money and lousy pay... and incidentally, we've got this very workable model of the universe that's really useful, and allows us to make predictions about the world around us.

And this is Science. You don't need beliefs or assumptions to start working in it. You just need to adhere to play the game.

13 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2008-03-06 16:47 ID:gtYg7J2H

I agree with most of what you say, but once again you avoid the issue. Still, I will elaborate on your comments,...

>Scientists tend to begin as Technicians, and the boundary between Technicians and Scientists are fuzzy. I'm not even sure why you included this distinction, which doesn't seem like a particularly valid one anyway.

Then let me explain it to you. Technicians do work associated with carrying out experiments. Sometimes they do the experiments themselves. A Scientist is the one who can formulate theories from the analysis of the data, and design valid ways of testing these theories. Any Technician can become a Scientist if he's capable of doing this. And many people carrying the title of Scientist, Professor or whatever are really just Technicians who somehow climbed the academic ladder following instructions of Scientists. I'm not interested in the labels of their job functions, but in the concepts behind these two very different activities. And of course, all Scientist do Technician work. All race pilots are drivers, but not all drivers are race pilots.

>Scientists must adhere to principles: Be honest. Define your problem. Make your hypothesis. Show your work. Accept it when you're wrong. Do these things, and you are a scientist. Abandon them, and you're not.

Basically you're saying that scientific activity requires a set of ethics to function, because it's a trust and reputation based environment. I agree, but so is also the banking and insurance system. Too much fraud and distrust, and the system crumbles and there are bank runs. Science needs a specific set of ethics to operate, just like it needs investment, freedom of travel, information exchange, and other requirements. But I don't think that these requirements define what is unique to scientific enquiry. It's not enough to be honest to be a Scientist or to do Science.

>Let me be very cynical, okay? You wanna know what the core of scientific work is? It's getting published in a scientific journal.

You are not being cynical, but short-sighted, and mixing the process for the essence. You could also say that scientific work is typing on a keyboard, since that's what you need to write papers. Publishing is a crucial part of scientific work as it's organized today, but it's certainly not the essence. A bit deeper insight would be that scientific work requires exchange of information and is reputation based, so you need to publish if you want to stay in the field. But in former times there were no scientific journals, you exchanged letters and published books, or made speeches at the Lyceum. All these are essential peripherals in scientific work, because information must be exchanged for Science to progress. But that alone is not Science, and equally applies to totally different processes (politics, for instance).

>What happens instead is that you get a messy scrum of people publishing shit and getting into stupid drama and working their asses off for grant money and lousy pay...

Soon you'll tell me that Science is about writing grand applications,... C'mon, in older times you had to be a free man, pretty rich or aristocratic in order to do Science. Does it mean that doing Science is about being in the aristocracy? You're again confusing peripherals and essentials. When you read Newton or Darwin, you don't care how they managed to get their funding, materials, etc. You care about what they have to say on their field. That is the core of Science. When you watch a movie, youdon't care how the film maker managed to get funding, a cast, etc. At the end of the day, films are not about getting the funding, but for sure there won't be a movie without money to pay for it.

>And this is Science. You don't need beliefs or assumptions to start working in it. You just need to adhere to play the game.

This is so wrong,... you need to follow the rules, to play the game, but just adhering to the rules will never make you a Scientist. But I hope that by now you understand what I'm trying to point at...

14 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2008-03-06 17:06 ID:gtYg7J2H

Just to try to bring back the discussion to the original point, I've seen a guy who believes the Earth is 6000 years old, the scriptures are strictly valid, get a first author paper accepted in Nature (and this was a biology paper).

My point is that:

  • He mostly followed his mentor instructions, and is thus not a Scientist, despite having the formal title
  • I don't think this guy will be able to provide a deep new insight into his field, because his faith is strongly hampering his understanding of biology

This being said, I know well that many of the best ever Scientist had religious faith, and this is where there is space for debate. What kind of beliefs hamper or are required to bring deep insights in Science, and not just do stamp collecting?... The debate is open, maybe there are none.

15 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2008-03-06 20:11 ID:KM3jZadr

> I've seen a guy who believes the Earth is 6000 years old,

The problem being not that he's wrong or that he got the idea from someone else, but that he starts with this as an assumption and most likely seeks only to reinforce his belief, not to test it.

Their are some philosophical assumptions we have to make to accept any knowledge as valid.
If you wished to, you could refer to these assumption as 'faith'.

16 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2008-03-06 21:26 ID:gtYg7J2H

>The problem [is] that he starts with this as an assumption and most likely seeks only to reinforce his belief, not to test it.

That's precisely what I see as a problem. Anything that conflicts with his faith is rejected, and this will hinder his research at various levels.

17 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2008-03-07 01:49 ID:h/JhRaDX

>>16

But that's the individual scientist's problem, isn't it? So he contributes badly to the body of knowledge. You know what happens?

He gets ignored and marginalized. That's the way it works, and thank god. His peers look at him, and realize that if you want to get ahead, you need to abandon ideological and dogmatic thinking, and focus on the work itself.

And they get published and win awards and grant money. So the evidence doesn't support your innermost beliefs. Too bad, either you'll learn to cope, or your successors will.

And none of this happens because someone thought, "This is how science should work, this is what all of us should believe".

This works because scientists work on scientists. What comes out is not a system of beliefs, but a kind of workable practice. It's not what you believe, it's what you do.

18 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2008-03-07 01:51 ID:h/JhRaDX

Hah! Just realized; science isn't what you believe in. It's something you do. You can postulate, speculate, and theorize all you like. But until you put those things to test with experiments, you're not doing science.

19 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2008-03-07 09:47 ID:gtYg7J2H

>science isn't what you believe in. It's something you do.

Sorry but there are always reasons for you to do something, and this is where beliefs creep in. And this is true in all human activities.

Now I agree with you (but it's obvious, isn't it), that theory without experimental tests is not science, just philosophical debate.

>And they get published and win awards and grant money. So the evidence doesn't support your innermost beliefs. Too bad, either you'll learn to cope, or your successors will.

Don't worry, I'm coping fine,... On the contrary, I find this very illuminating on how science works, and a good test on how far can you go while still maintaining a very dogmatic attitude. I was very happy to see this example, because otherwise I would think it was impossible. For me it's like knowing an astronaut who believes the earth is flat, or a flight steward who thinks planes don't fly, that what you see from your window is a film. It's the staggering power of faith to accommodate the reality around you which astounded me.

>What comes out is not a system of beliefs, but a kind of workable practice. It's not what you believe, it's what you do

Are you seriously pretending that a set of practices has no system of beliefs belying it? If so, allow me to ROFL!

20 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2008-03-07 10:40 ID:vxekhyRF

I think people are talking past one another ITT.

The two questions that seem to come out of this discussion are:

1) Is 'science' a collection of beliefs or a collection of practices? Or both?

2) If 'science' refers to a cluster a beliefs, is it necessary to hold these beliefs in order to do scientific research?

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