Another perspective. If Science does not produce truth? What is it good for? What does then produce Truth we can participate in and acknowledge?
Comment on "Belief in Science" Oxymoronic Explainer for SecOps/Mathematicians/Programmers
bogdugg@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I don’t really know what this post is on about, but science is not truth. It’s a system of prediction. The closest you can get to “truth” would be observation and data. Science is the process of interpreting these facts to better understand what things will look like in the future. It is obvious that science is not ‘true’, because by its nature it requires change over time as our models of the world improve.
elias_griffin@lemmy.world 6 months ago
bogdugg@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
If you want, you can view science as a system of organization. A way of making sense of facts. If I give you a file of seemingly random ones and zeroes, it is useless. If I give you an algorithm to decode those ones and zeroes into a message, that has utility. However, somebody else could produce an algorithm to decode those same ones and zeroes into an entirely different message. So, which algorithm is correct? Neither.
But say I give you another file, and Algorithm B doesn’t produce anything useful for this message, so now Algorithm A is more useful. But I also provide a new Algorithm C which also finds messages in both files. Now which is more correct, A or C? And on and on. We continue to refine our models of the data, and we hope that those models will have predictive utility until proven otherwise, but it is always possible (in fact, almost guaranteed) that there is a model of the universe that is more accurate than the one we have.
Consider the utility of a map. A map is an obviously useful thing, but it is also incomplete. A perfect map, a “true” map, would perfectly reproduce every single minute detail of the thing it is mapping. But to do so, it would need to be built at the same scale as the thing it is mapping, which would be far too cumbersome to actually use as, you know, a map. So, we abstract details to identify patterns to maximize utility. Science, likewise, is a tool of prediction, which is useful, but is also not true, because our model of the universe can never be complete.
elias_griffin@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Let me also affirm in this way, maybe this will help. What does the Scientific Method produce? It’s produces evidence/conclusions and theories. Moreso, it produces what we know as Science.
elias_griffin@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I can appreciate this perspective, but what you’re referring to is the Scientific Method. Science is the field of the sum of all knowledge, Science as it is used, “settled”, meaneed, thought, correctly, by most is, “what is”.
Sentrovasi@kbin.social 6 months ago
This is really strange in two ways.
One, you're not describing science but existence. Science is nothing if not a framework of knowledge based on the scientific method. To somehow come up with a definition of science that separates it from the scientific method actually removes all qualities of knowledge from science (do you think religious people also don't define their knowledge as "what is"?) On the whole, basing your definition of "Science" as how laymen define science seems to be a strange way to try to make a supposedly mathematical argument - from imprecision and abstraction?
Two, to conflate Science with existence essentially is concocting a truism - like when someone asks you to solve for x you've chosen to define x as whatever you want then solve it. Science as the sum of empirical human knowledge is an approximation of x, and as a mathematician I'm sure you understand the significance of how an approximation of something is a world apart from the thing itself. You cannot say that science is truth, therefore science is true - that is a pointless statement that completely drops all the reasons why science is more truthful than religious knowledge or any other form of knowledge.
elias_griffin@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yet another.
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
― Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
Sentrovasi@kbin.social 6 months ago
If all it takes to make science truth is to provide quotes of famous people calling it truth, then religion is probably truth a thousand times over.
A lot of the arguments and evidence you bring to the table are circular and only true from the reference point of whatever internal logic you've decided to assemble for yourself. Does this mean you're surrounded by Chinese shills? Probably not, but that is also apparently the truth you've decided to believe in, evidence be damned.
What people are trying to make you see is that epistemologically, absolute truth is a ridiculous bar that, if you set as the hurdle for science to meet, is only going to disappoint you time and again.
Scientific knowledge does not have any special status or truth value conferred on it beyond the very educated guesswork of scientists and the time and effort and money that goes into verification. It's an endeavour that relies entirely on empiricism and the flaws that come with having limited human perceptions.
Does this mean that science is exactly the same as religion when it comes to reliability? Of course not, because the things that you choose to believe in when you believe in science are different, more accurate and reproducible.
To claim that science has some ineffable attribute that puts it above any other belief, on the other hand, is discounting and discrediting the effort and very nature of scientific knowledge, and ascribing to it the kind of mystic quality that is exactly what makes religious knowledge so ridiculous.