Science, And What Science Isn't

[PoliticalChic]

There is a tongue-in-cheek reference to what science is, and what it isn't.
The term used is "SWAG."

It means a 'scientific wild ass guess."
It's meant to poke fun at folks who believe 'scientific' facts that are based on a confident and unquestioning belief,...sometimes called 'faith.'



Here's some examples of SWAG....

The Mulitiverse Theory
String theory
The Higgs boson
The universe created out of nothing.


What do these have in common?
All of 'em are of the modern fashion called 'science.'

But none of 'em are scientific....yet they are drooled over, praised,...accepted by the many infected with sciolism,
"Sciolism: A pretentious attitude of scholarship; superficial knowledgeability." sciolism - definition of sciolism by The Free Dictionary


Another word that applies to those willing to accept the absurd and call it knowledge.....'sophomoric: intellectually pretentious and conceited but immature and ill-informed."





1. Such wasn't always the overlay in socieity.....On Wednesday, June 6, 1928 the Oxford English Dictionary was completed.

In The Meaning of Everything, a book about the creation of the OED,Simon Winchester discusses the English of the time as follows:

“The English establishment of the day might be rightly derided at this remove as having been class-ridden and imperialist, bombastic and blimpish, racist and insouciant- but it was marked undeniably also by a sweeping erudition and confidence, and it was peopled by men and women who felt they were able to know all, to understand much, and in consequence to radiate the wisdom of deep learning.”


Today we may have given up being racist and imperialist, and class-ridden....but much of our populace has also given up the sense that we are 'able to know all, to understand much, and in consequence to radiate the wisdom of deep learning.'


They accept the absurd and call themselves wise.
SWAG is now accepted as 'science' by the sophomoric, afflicted with sciolism.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

Couldn't hack it in the polticial arena so trying your luck in the scientific realm?

 

[TooTall]

Couldn't hack it in the polticial arena so trying your luck in the scientific realm?

Couldn't hack it on the subject of the post so trying your luck at personal insults?

 

[PoliticalChic]

As these 'popular' philosophical endeavors are SWAG....but certainly not science....

The Mulitiverse Theory
String theory
The Higgs boson
The universe created out of nothing



2. Well, then......what is science?

Philosopher Michael Devitt, to mention but one, continues to proclaim that “there is only one way of knowing, the empirical way that is the basis of science!” .” http://12tuesday.com/discuss-an-interesting-quote-from-michael-devitt/


Declarations of this sort have been common in the history of philosophy since the eighteenth century. In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume argued that “if we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion!”. . .
Berlinski


Need I define 'sophistry'?


a. Begin to recognize science from this definition....eventhose versed in high school science should recognize the author of this quote:

"I have imposed upon myself, as a law, never to advance but from what is known to what is unknown; never to form any conclusion which is not an immediate consequence necessarily flowing from observation and experiment; and always to arrange the fact, and the conclusions which are drawn from them, in such an order as shall render it most easy for beginners in the study of chemistry thoroughly to understand them."
Antoine Lavoisier, "The Elements of Chemistry," 1790 Antoine Lavoisier




Richard Feynman, of quantum mechanics fame, attacked philosophy often, calling it “low-level baloney,” and saying philosophers “are always on the outside making stupid remarks.” Richard Feynman Accidental Philosopher Issue 59 Philosophy Now




3. What make science different from said "low-level baloney"?
Empiricism is the doctrine that all knowledge is derived from the senses: what we see, hear, hold, weigh, and measure. Where, then do we find moral truths? Clearly, under such a definition, values and morals could not be truths, but simply emotions, feelings. Henceforth, the natural world, observed via the senses, qualified as genuine knowledge. But morality and values, neither perceived through the senses, are merely subjective feelings: principles, rather than transcendent truths, became simply preferences. Here is the division between science and religion.
Nancy Pearcey, "Saving Leonardo."



See where the four examples I gave at the start fit in?

 

[Sunni Man]

SWAG + Political Correctness = todays version of modern science.

Where facts do not matter.

And what a person feels is right is the ultimate scientific reality. .....

 

[Moonglow]

SWAG is already taken, they will need to find another acronym...sorry....

 

[PoliticalChic]

SWAG + Political Correctness = todays version of modern science.

Where facts do not matter.

And what a person feels is right is the ultimate scientific reality. .....

Really glad you posted that......you've taken this in the right direction.

Far too much science ....and education.....is dictated by political worldviews.

My plan is to define what is and what isn't science...and then go there.

 

[Andylusion]

Another example would be the Oort Cloud. We have these things called comets, which by the empirical evidence, suggest they wouldn't last much more than a few hundred thousand years. Yet they are still here.

That makes the "universe is billions of years old" theory in trouble.

So they just made up the magical mythic, zero evidence, Oort Cloud. No one has seen it. No one has detected it. But it must exist, because the universe must be billions of years old, and something has to spawn these short lived comets.

 

[Sunni Man]

What galls me is when I hear the term "settled science" from our own President and his legions of brain dead Obamabots.

History is packed full of top scientists of their day publicly announcing that certain inventions and ideas were impossible.

Only later to be mocked in history books as fools when proven wrong. ......

 

[PoliticalChic]

What galls me is when I hear the term "settled science" from our own President and his legions of brain dead Obamabots.

History is packed full of top scientists of their day publicly announcing that certain inventions and ideas were impossible.

Only later to be mocked in history books as fools when proven wrong. ......

Global warming?

Antonio Gramsci, Italian Marxist theoretician and founding member and one-time leader of the Communist Party of Italy. Gramschi’s motto is that of liberals today: “that all life is "political."

 

[PoliticalChic]

4. In the West, many elevate science to the level of a god, which is their right, ...there are huge gaps in knowledge that, for the nonbeliever, require leaps of faith: and sure enough, scientists and their devotees, at times, invest in the same kinds of faith as religious people do.



Some scientists will admit that they see science, in some sense, as their religion:

“I believe a material explanation will be found, but that confidence comes from my faith that science is up to the task of explaining, in purely material or naturalistic terms, the whole history of life. My faith is well founded, but it is still faith.”
What neo-creationists get right - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences




But most are not so self-aware, and don’t realize the faith status of their own views. Which brings up back to the SWAG.....

The Mulitiverse Theory
String theory
The Higgs boson
The universe created out of nothing.

 

[Andylusion]

What galls me is when I hear the term "settled science" from our own President and his legions of brain dead Obamabots.

History is packed full of top scientists of their day publicly announcing that certain inventions and ideas were impossible.

Only later to be mocked in history books as fools when proven wrong. ......

So true. So much of the settled science. Brontosaurus, 'discovered' in 1877, and for 100 years it was 'settled science'. Then in 1970s, they discovered "oops they never existed".

Remember in the 90s, the scientists were all saying redheads would all be gone by 2020? Yeah... any minute now...

 

[PoliticalChic]

5. Science: knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation
Science - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary

And this....

" If a theory doesn’t make a testable prediction, it isn’t science. It’s a basic axiom of the scientific method, dubbed “falsifiability” by the 20th century philosopher of science Karl Popper. "
Does Science Need Falsifiability - The Nature of Reality The Nature of Reality PBS



I'd go with those definitions.


What about the four examples I gave as SWAG....'scientific wild ass guesses'? Not science.
They are filler, conjecture dressed up for specific purposes.....I'll get to those purposes.


a. String theory only exists as a bunch of equations with no testable predictions. If science is based on experiment, observation, and empirical knowledge, then it isn’t science.

b. . "The multiverse (or meta-universe) is the hypothetical set of infinite or finite possible universes (including the historical universe we consistently experience) that together comprise everything that exists and can exist: the entirety of space,time,matter, and energyas well as the physical laws
Multiverse - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

".... Because there is no way they can prove this conjecture. That same uncertainty disturbs many physicists who are adjusting to the idea of the multiverse. Not only must we accept that basic properties of our universe are accidental and uncalculable. In addition, we must believe in the existence of many other universes. But we have no conceivable way of observing these other universes and cannot prove their existence. Thus, to explain what we see in the world and in our mental deductions, we must believe in what we cannot prove."
"Dr. Alan P. Lightman, physicist,
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2011/12/0083720


"....we must believe in what we cannot prove." That's called 'faith.'


c. " We need this dynamics of the multiverse to populate 10^100 or so different Universes with different cosmological constants in order to get one with a cosmological constant as small as the one that we observe.

We unfortunately have few ways of determining if the multiverse is true...."
Which theory will prevail multiverse or supersymmetry - Quora



So....string theory.....the mulitverse.......SWAG.

 

[eagle1462010]

PFM

Pure Fucking Magic.

 

[PoliticalChic]

6. How about another dose of reality?

There is prominent scientist, Lawrence Krauss, "... an American theoretical physicist and cosmologist...known as an advocate of the public understanding of science, ...and works to reduce the impact of superstition and religious dogma in pop culture. He is also the author of several bestselling books, includingThe Physics of Star Trek and A Universe from Nothing."
Lawrence M. Krauss - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia


Krauss has said "we all, literally, emerged from quantum nothingness..."
Clearly an attempt to avoid the central question of where did the universe come from. Where are the quantum rules that imply a universe that must appear out of the void? Can any come up with a few examples where something has come from nothing?


And, from reviews of Krauss' book, " A Universe From Nothing,"...

"....at the end of the book he he has given up trying to explain his hypothesis. Throughout the book he admits that Something can come from Nothing only if there is Something inherent in the Nothingness.

...Krauss claims that "in quantum gravity, universes can, and indeed always will, spontaneously appear from nothing" This is yet again another fabrication,....

Krauss mixes opinion with pseudo-science to fool his cult that the universe popped into existence from nowhere with no cause (the epitome pseudo-science, anti-science and religious belief)."



Of course, the ancient Greek, Parmenides, was correct: nihil fit ex nihilo... "out of nothing, nothing [be]comes."

Yet, SWAG continues as a substitute for science.

 

[Hollie]

SWAG + Political Correctness = todays version of modern science.

Where facts do not matter.

And what a person feels is right is the ultimate scientific reality. .....

Really glad you posted that......you've taken this in the right direction.

Far too much science ....and education.....is dictated by political worldviews.

My plan is to define what is and what isn't science...and then go there.

1. You're not at all a candidate to define anything.

2. Your goofy "quote-mining" is a waste of time.

3. Doesn't copying and pasting from Harun Yahya make you feel, at the very least, dirty?

 

[PoliticalChic]

7. And, the latest...and perhaps most expensive journey into fantasy.....the "God particle," the Higgs boson.


a. "[ Michio Kaku is an American futurist, theoretical physicist ] explained the importance of the God particle this way in a radio interview, "If we don't find the Higgs boson we are in deep trouble. We are in deep doo-doo. The reason is that the subatomic particles in the Standard Model are the basis, the foundation of everything we know about the Big Bang, everything we know about the universe, cosmic rays (and) black holes. So if that theory is wrong, then we are really in trouble. It means we have to throw out what is called the Standard Model — and even string theory would be in danger because string theory also has a Higgs boson. ...It will be a disaster if we don't find Higgs boson, because basically the entire edifice of modern physics depends upon it." Creation theory may be wrong collider hasn t found God particle



b. Uh oh...."When the Large Hadron Collider at CERN Laboratory in Geneva closed down for upgrades in early 2013The grand flo, its collisions had failed to yield any of dozens of particles that many theorists had included in their equations for more than 30 years. The grand flop suggests that researchers may have taken a wrong turn decades ago in their understanding of how to calculate the masses of particles.


Yet decades after their prediction, none of the supersymmetric particles have been found. “That’s what the Large Hadron Collider has been looking for, but it hasn’t seen anything,” said Savas Dimopoulos, a professor of particle physics at Stanford University who helped develop the supersymmetry hypothesis in the early 1980s. “Somehow, the Higgs is not protected.”


....many physicists have grown increasingly convinced that the theory has failed. Just last month at the International Conference of High-Energy Physics in Valencia, Spain, researchers analyzing the largest data set yet from the LHC found no evidence of supersymmetric particles. (The data also strongly disfavors an alternative proposal called “technicolor.”)"
Radical New Theory Could Kill the Multiverse Hypothesis WIRED

 

[PoliticalChic]

Some were far less kind in their analysis of the Higgs boson affair...

8. "I’ve just read The Higgs Fake by Alexander Unzicker. He says physicists such as Einstein would have considered the “discovery” of the Higgs boson to be utterly ridiculous. And more. Unzicker really rips into particle physics.

”something had to be found in the theoretical boxroom to inspire the next round of high energy experiments”.
Groan. Those of you who are old enough to remember might recall that the Higgs boson just didn’t feature in 1995. But now it does.


We have no electron model within the Standard Model. Instead we have what Unzicker described as epicycles. Because of groupthink and big science and singing in the choir. Because of mindcuffs and peer review and the”suppression of opinions that would endanger the sacred cows of an established field”. Oh it makes grim reading all right. All the more so when you know that particle physicists have painted themselves into a corner. They can’t admit that any of it is wrong. And yet, whilst they dismiss the turkey delusion, they know in their hearts that if things don’t change, they’re in for the chop."
Science on Sunday The Higgs Fake



a. My interest in all of this is the need for demonstrable credible scientific progress in the face of ever-increasing funding pressures. Physics now plays second fiddle to biochemistry. Physics is under threat because particle physics, the "queen of physics", has demonstrated no credible scientific progress in decades. (Ibid...comment from a reader)


Are you gettin' that?
There is the need to fund all those careers!!!



9. “Physics would appear to have gotten away with it: a decades-long campaign of hype, propaganda, and outright deception that saw a ragtag bunch of social misfits swindle the world out of billions of dollars, monies which as of this writing have not been returned. What follows is the story, if not of an outright hoax, then at least of the most audacious and effective PR campaign in the history of science.”
Higgs Boson and the Great Scam of Modern Physics - The Awl


Still think it's science?


'Follow the money" seems to be the operative explanation....

...but, there are others, too.

 

[Hollie]

Some were far less kind in their analysis of the Higgs boson affair...

8. "I’ve just read The Higgs Fake by Alexander Unzicker. He says physicists such as Einstein would have considered the “discovery” of the Higgs boson to be utterly ridiculous. And more. Unzicker really rips into particle physics.

”something had to be found in the theoretical boxroom to inspire the next round of high energy experiments”.
Groan. Those of you who are old enough to remember might recall that the Higgs boson just didn’t feature in 1995. But now it does.


We have no electron model within the Standard Model. Instead we have what Unzicker described as epicycles. Because of groupthink and big science and singing in the choir. Because of mindcuffs and peer review and the”suppression of opinions that would endanger the sacred cows of an established field”. Oh it makes grim reading all right. All the more so when you know that particle physicists have painted themselves into a corner. They can’t admit that any of it is wrong. And yet, whilst they dismiss the turkey delusion, they know in their hearts that if things don’t change, they’re in for the chop."
Science on Sunday The Higgs Fake



a. My interest in all of this is the need for demonstrable credible scientific progress in the face of ever-increasing funding pressures. Physics now plays second fiddle to biochemistry. Physics is under threat because particle physics, the "queen of physics", has demonstrated no credible scientific progress in decades. (Ibid...comment from a reader)


Are you gettin' that?
There is the need to fund all those careers!!!



9. “Physics would appear to have gotten away with it: a decades-long campaign of hype, propaganda, and outright deception that saw a ragtag bunch of social misfits swindle the world out of billions of dollars, monies which as of this writing have not been returned. What follows is the story, if not of an outright hoax, then at least of the most audacious and effective PR campaign in the history of science.”
Higgs Boson and the Great Scam of Modern Physics - The Awl


Still think it's science?


'Follow the money" seems to be the operative explanation....

...but, there are others, too.

"Follow the charlatans at the Disco'tute" is hardly an operative explanation....

 

[PoliticalChic]

10. There are several reasons for so many falling all over themselves to extol, to praise.....dare I say 'worship' the 'science' of SWAG....'scientific wild ass guess' kind of science....such as these:

The Mulitiverse Theory
String theory
The Higgs boson
The universe created out of nothing.



a. There are more working 'scientists' today than ever before...and they all need to put food on the table. Scientists they may be, but they are a variety of entrepreneur....they need employment, grants, stipends, etc. You get same by publishing 'research,' by thinking up avenues to investigate that haven't been investigated to death.
The irony is that many claim to be anti-capitalism.

Probability or even possibility of the investigation is secondary.



b. Then there are lots of folks who claim to recognize the genius behind those fake/absurd endeavors. The further from reality and experience, the better. They need the claim to impress others, to appear informed, deeply knowledgeable...au fait.

There's that word for it:
"sci·o·lism A pretentious attitude of scholarship; superficial knowledgeability."
sciolism - definition of sciolism by The Free Dictionary



c. And one more motivation....the least reputable one: the need to find a way to explain the creation of the universe, and how it works, without reference to a Creator. The scientists in this group are largely atheist and, if not redundant, Marxist, a political view requiring atheism.

1. Astrophysicist Fred Hoyle advanced the following after studying the resonances of carbon during nucleosynthesis. “The universe,” he concluded, “looks like a put-up job.” An atheist, Hoyle did not care to consider who might have put the job up, and when pressed, he took refuge in the hypothesis that aliens were the cause. In this master stroke he was joined later by DNA-discoverer, Francis Crick. When aliens are dropped from the argument, there remains a very intriguing question: Why do the constants and parameters of theoretical physics obey such tight constraints?

1. Physicist Leonard Susskind wrote “If, for some unforeseen reason, the landscape turns out to be inconsistent — maybe for mathematical reasons, or because it disagrees with observation — I am pretty sure that physicists will go on searching for natural explanations of the world. But I have to say that if that happens, as things stand now we will be in a very awkward position. Without any explanation of nature’s fine-tunings we will be hard pressed to answer the ID [intelligent design] critics. One might argue that the hope that a mathematically unique solution will emerge is as faith-based as ID.”

As I stated earlier.

1. And some will let the 'cat out of the bag,' admitting that any craziness will do, no matter how preposterous,......

“We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs,” the geneticist Richard Lewontin remarked equably in The New York Review of Books, “in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories.” We are to put up with science’s unsubstantiated just-so stories because, Lewontin explains, “we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door!”

His words, not mine.


Here's hoping that some day, in the near future, science will re-discover science.