Question: How, exactly, does philosophy underpin science?

by bohm 62 Replies latest jw friends

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  BurnTheShips

  Suppose we found that some particle - the funnytrino - just popped into and out of existence without any pattern, interacted with matter in unpredictable ways, and had an entirely unpredictable charge, spin and other properties. However, it was quite rare.

  It would not defeat science. But it would invalidate the first #3, and make exceptions to 1 and 2. About 5 - our brain can only be trusted to some degree. How much and when is mainly an emperical question

  Yet this particle does not exist.

  Secondly, take #4: With a slightly different sentence structure it would be a definition of science rather than a founding principle.

  I do not understand.

  How is logic philosophy? I thought logic was best described in mathematics, Im thinking about logic in the sence of eg. a boolean algebra.

  Logic seems to be a branch of philosophy. It is not limited to boolean logic.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic

  BTS
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  notverylikely

  Logic seems to be a branch of philosophy. It is not limited to boolean logic.

  Stop it, you got me all agreeing with you all over this thread and I'm questioning my decision to build a shrine to fight you to the death. (just kidding about the shrine part, I think it's cool we've clearly got a little common ground to build from)
• 

  quietlyleaving

  bts and notverylikey in answer to your question, there's a whole host of stuff. 2 already mentioned. Imagination mentioned by bohm, telelpathy by snowbird, colour, beauty and what it is .. need I go on
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  BurnTheShips

  If we are talking about the five senses (sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell), none of these things seems tied to them, quietlyleaving.

  Imagination exists in the mind.

  Telepathy is considered ESP, extra-SENSORY-perception.

  BTS
• 

  notverylikely

  bts and notverylikey in answer to your question, there's a whole host of stuff. 2 already mentioned. Imagination mentioned by bohm, telelpathy by snowbird, colour, beauty and what it is .. need I go on

  Yes, you haven't showed how any of those things can't be measured or quantified or why they are outside science :)
• 

  bohm

  BTS: No, but if it did, it would not change the immense usefullness of science (assuming it is quite rare or interact very little with ordinary matter, which it must be, at least in our neck of the woods). What i argue is that such assumptions are not required as foundation of science, because they could be violated tomorrow - allbeit in a mild sence - and science would tick along just happily, just as it would if we found God or something.

  If i was to give an axiomatic definition in 5 minutes, it would perhaps be something like this:

  0) Mathematics exist.
  1) It is possible to communicate.
  2) It is possible to make at least one statement about the universe which is either true or false which can be communicated. Call all statements A
  3) Humans can reason in a plausible way
  4) At least one system of plausible reasoning can be applied to a large subset of the statements in A.
  5) Use the system of plausible reasoning which offer the most predictive power on the statements in A.

  And, well, it would kind of work i think. 0, 1 and 2 are trivially true (for 2 consider: "The sun set tomorrow"). 3 is also self-evident; its essentially to extend logic to cover "common sence" which has even been formalized using mathematics (note the formalization is not strictly required). 4 is an observation, and 5 is to remove degenerate systems of reasoning - "all statements are false" - and get the word "predictive" in, which i just figure have to be there.

  The laws of physics would fall out when one reason on the true-false statements. Perhaps one need a axiom 6: Expand the set A to cover as much as possible 7) make the plausible reasoning as easily communicateable as possible (that is, make laws of physics).

  But i digress. I dont think that is a very good definition. I think that it would be better to put it in words, like:

  "We can define what is meant by plausible reasoning (long exposition). Science is to use that to describe the world in all its beauty, and aided with the imagination of humans and carefully crafted experiments to expand our knowledge beyond what we have previously thought possible, and thereby aid the living standard of humanity".

  because then it does not sound totally booring and meaningless, and i dont think anything important essential is lost, really.

  I cant remember which poster suggested it a couple of pages ago, but perhaps philosophy is the land of "wild and crazy" ideas, and science from time to time gobble up some of those ideas, expand, formalize and experiment on them, and turn whatever they then become into "science". Many 20th century developments in mathematics seem to follow this outline.
• 

  bohm

  BTS:

  One last note. Back on page 1:

  I'd like to add, science itself rests on certain scientifically unprovable assumptions, or first principles. These assumptions were made, philosophically, before what we would consider the age of modern science and helped enable it.

  To trust that science "works" means you have to believe in the assumptions, at least implicitly, if not explicitly.

  You can't prove the assumptions, scientifically.

  These assumptions are reasonable, in my opinion. But reasonable does not mean provable. They are philosophical in nature; not scientific.

  Any system of formal logic is unable to prove its core assumptions from within its own framework. This applies to the system of science, just as much as it applies to any other system.

  This touch the core of what i was getting at. When i think of the dawn of science, i think of tycho braha. You know, the astronomer, who thought the earth went around the sun, but even more important, went out in his backyard and began to look at the stars, figuring he might be able to support that conclusion in some way. Thats really what science is about. And good old tycho was an excellent scientist, when his observations did not match his hypothesis, he changed his hypothesis (and believed the sun went around the earth), and even more important, began to experiment even harder to verify his new hypothesis in a systematic way which was easily communicable.

  Im not sure Tycho was the first to do this. Im quite sure he was not. But i think he was not driven by philosophy to do what he did, and what he did was hardcore "it does not get better than this" science performed with primitive means (though his observations was so good it helped Kepler make his 3 laws and demonstrate tychos second hypothesis was false).
• 

  slimboyfat

  Well if reports are to believed Stephen Hawking has come out as stating the opposite: that science underpins philosophy, and that philosophers today don't know what they are talking about because they don't understand the latest physics.
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  quietlyleaving

  bts, notverylikely - I don't claim to understand how "telepathy", "imagination" etc works scientifically but as an arts student I can see the logic of it. However I'm willing to put imagination, telepathy etc in inverted commas to suggest that there is more to those faculties than a precise dictionary definition of what the words mean.

  I will say though that part of the logic is to do with the way that membranes function. In this respect I would not restrict skin, a membrane, simply to the empirical sense of touch.
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  notverylikely

  I don't claim to understand how "telepathy", "imagination" etc works scientifically but as an arts student I can see the logic of it.

  I have no idea what being an arts student or logic has to do with that. BTW, since you brought logic into it, we haven't established that telepathy exists yet :)

  However I'm willing to put imagination, telepathy etc in inverted commas to suggest that there is more to those faculties than a precise dictionary definition of what the words mean.

  Well, if you can't define what you are talking about then it becomes meaningless to attempt a discussion. As as arts student, you certainly wouldn't pass a test if you called Neaderthal cave art found in the south of France something else, like nouveau realisme just because you can't define them (not suggesting you can't).

  I will say though that part of the logic is to do with the way that membranes function. In this respect I would not restrict skin, a membrane, simply to the empirical sense of touch.

  Why would you think skin does nothing more than provide a sense of touch?