Showing posts with label philosophy of science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label philosophy of science. Show all posts
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Ken Miller on Intelligent Design
This is a very long video (almost 2 hours) but quite worthwhile for anyone interested in understanding why intelligent design creationism is bad science. Especially interesting to me were the bits where Miller discusses evidence against irreducible complexity.
Miller is a Roman Catholic biology professor at Brown University, and he believes that faith and science are compatible. I disagree with him on this one point, but not in a strict sense. Miller's beliefs certainly don't make him any less a scientist.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Elegant Snaarsiverse
I bought Brian Greene's best-selling popular science novel, "The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory" today.
Hopefully, I'll have something both philosophical and irrelevant to say about string theory after reading the book. But first off, let me say that string theory is really a fool's quest, and here's why:
String theory is touted as the explain-everything model that will reconcile general relativity with quantum theory. For those who are unfamiliar, quantum mechanics is about the smallest things we know about in physics, and general relativity is about medium- and large-sized objects (like bugs, apples, cars, planets, and stars) on up to the ungeblievagly engormous things (like black holes and galaxies.) The theories of quantum mechanics and general relativity, taken together, explain just about everything observable about the physical universe, but they are mutually exclusive - they can't both be right.
String theory posits the existence of zero-point, one-dimensional structures called "strings," which vibrate through precisely eleven dimensions, and from which emerge matter and the forces familiar to modern physics: gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces.
String theory, so far (to my admittedly meager knowledge), doesn't predict anything that is observable - but it does seem to be able to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity.
If I were a professional philosopher of science, I might characterize string theory as a reductionist theory, meaning that it attempts to explain all phenomena by appealing to one, or a very few, fundamental phenomena, forces, particles, or kinds of things (the last phrase being deliberately vague.)
Anyway, let's cut to the chase, shall we? The truth is, string theory is bullshit when - huh, obviously - the universe is composed not of strings, but - DUH - little bitty snaarsisms, quivering their way through the universal ovoid, imbuing space itself with hyper-optional potentiality.
I can teach you all the Way of the snaars, by which you too can know the truth of these things.
Hopefully, I'll have something both philosophical and irrelevant to say about string theory after reading the book. But first off, let me say that string theory is really a fool's quest, and here's why:
String theory is touted as the explain-everything model that will reconcile general relativity with quantum theory. For those who are unfamiliar, quantum mechanics is about the smallest things we know about in physics, and general relativity is about medium- and large-sized objects (like bugs, apples, cars, planets, and stars) on up to the ungeblievagly engormous things (like black holes and galaxies.) The theories of quantum mechanics and general relativity, taken together, explain just about everything observable about the physical universe, but they are mutually exclusive - they can't both be right.
String theory posits the existence of zero-point, one-dimensional structures called "strings," which vibrate through precisely eleven dimensions, and from which emerge matter and the forces familiar to modern physics: gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces.
String theory, so far (to my admittedly meager knowledge), doesn't predict anything that is observable - but it does seem to be able to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity.
If I were a professional philosopher of science, I might characterize string theory as a reductionist theory, meaning that it attempts to explain all phenomena by appealing to one, or a very few, fundamental phenomena, forces, particles, or kinds of things (the last phrase being deliberately vague.)
Anyway, let's cut to the chase, shall we? The truth is, string theory is bullshit when - huh, obviously - the universe is composed not of strings, but - DUH - little bitty snaarsisms, quivering their way through the universal ovoid, imbuing space itself with hyper-optional potentiality.
I can teach you all the Way of the snaars, by which you too can know the truth of these things.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Creation/Evolution controversy explained
It's SO simple, really. Ken Ham, the protuberant creationist apologist, has a neatly packaged Answer-In-Genesis to the question of why Evolutionists "refuse" to believe.
Be you creationist or evolutionist, you may be surprised to find out that the controversy is not about the actual evidence for or against your position. No, we can never look to the evidence to decide the matter. The key, you see, is in the interpretation of the evidence, which is naturally based on our presuppositions (or axioms, which, Mr. Ham explains, are the same thing.)
One interpretation might seem to fit the evidence better, warns Ken, if we have not grasped the notion that what are at issue are the presuppositions which underlie.
You see, it's like this: no one really "knows" if we were created or evolved. Because no one was there to witness how we came to be. Because "We all exist in the present—and the facts all exist in the present."
If there was a witness, then someone was already living. So, being alive, they can't have witnessed the creation of life. Therefore, no one witnessed the creation of life.
No one, that is, except God (good thing HE's not alive, right?)!
Until we have a time machine, we'll never know how it really happened.
Luckily, our Christian brethren actually do have a time machine, in the form of the Bible. Hooray!
If we will only presuppose (and what right-thinker wouldn't?) that the Bible is the revealed Word of our Lord, then all the evidence will fall naturally into place. What a relief!
Ken Ham says he's glad he learned this distinction between facts and presuppositions, because then he was able to inoculate his students against the factual interpretations of other (evolutionist) teachers. Then the shoe was on the other foot for a change!
Despite God's every effort to be fair and give us all an even shake, however, some folks just won't believe, for their own indiscoverable, spiritually corrupt and immoral reasons. As long as they remain obstinate, nothing can prevent them from forming their own radicallly dangerous scientific interpretations of the evidence.
Be you creationist or evolutionist, you may be surprised to find out that the controversy is not about the actual evidence for or against your position. No, we can never look to the evidence to decide the matter. The key, you see, is in the interpretation of the evidence, which is naturally based on our presuppositions (or axioms, which, Mr. Ham explains, are the same thing.)
One interpretation might seem to fit the evidence better, warns Ken, if we have not grasped the notion that what are at issue are the presuppositions which underlie.
You see, it's like this: no one really "knows" if we were created or evolved. Because no one was there to witness how we came to be. Because "We all exist in the present—and the facts all exist in the present."
If there was a witness, then someone was already living. So, being alive, they can't have witnessed the creation of life. Therefore, no one witnessed the creation of life.
No one, that is, except God (good thing HE's not alive, right?)!
Until we have a time machine, we'll never know how it really happened.
Luckily, our Christian brethren actually do have a time machine, in the form of the Bible. Hooray!
If we will only presuppose (and what right-thinker wouldn't?) that the Bible is the revealed Word of our Lord, then all the evidence will fall naturally into place. What a relief!
Ken Ham says he's glad he learned this distinction between facts and presuppositions, because then he was able to inoculate his students against the factual interpretations of other (evolutionist) teachers. Then the shoe was on the other foot for a change!
Despite God's every effort to be fair and give us all an even shake, however, some folks just won't believe, for their own indiscoverable, spiritually corrupt and immoral reasons. As long as they remain obstinate, nothing can prevent them from forming their own radicallly dangerous scientific interpretations of the evidence.
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
okaaaaaaay ...
Every day I take breaks from the work on my desk and I check out the latest news through my Yahoo! home page. Not often, but once in a while I check out the usually frivolous/inane/pointless/annoying comments that users post to the articles. The following post is no exception:
If this guy wanted to say that science is inductive, why didn't he just say so? Geeez! I SO want to reply to this, but I know it would be pointless. He seems to be saying that anything at all can happen, because science is "only" based on what we have observed to happen. He does have a point of sorts. With the very great wealth of carefully gathered scientific evidence we have gathered over the past few hundred years however, there are physical principles that in all probability will never be overturned. (That's not to say we have everything figured out, but that it is far more likely that physical laws will be refined rather than falsified.)
I'm so glad I studied philosophy of science. The popular conception of science is so far removed from the actual practice of it. I shudder to remember that I too once suffered from a similar kind of ignorance.
What do you think, am I being arrogant?
Although nothing prevents you from dreaming at least on papar with the hopes that as the result of your contemplation of something potentially different than what is commonly accepted you may arrive at an equally innovative solution... Mind you that depite all the physical limitations which have been theoretically summarised, nothing prevents nature from acting differently in consideration of the fact that our physical laws are descriptive of phenomena which occur with startling causality with a level of prediction which is first and foremost based on accumulated observation which gave purpose for the edification of specific pĥysical laws which only exist because of the relation to observe between theory and observation such observations being deemed as being faithfully representative of reality...
If this guy wanted to say that science is inductive, why didn't he just say so? Geeez! I SO want to reply to this, but I know it would be pointless. He seems to be saying that anything at all can happen, because science is "only" based on what we have observed to happen. He does have a point of sorts. With the very great wealth of carefully gathered scientific evidence we have gathered over the past few hundred years however, there are physical principles that in all probability will never be overturned. (That's not to say we have everything figured out, but that it is far more likely that physical laws will be refined rather than falsified.)
I'm so glad I studied philosophy of science. The popular conception of science is so far removed from the actual practice of it. I shudder to remember that I too once suffered from a similar kind of ignorance.
What do you think, am I being arrogant?
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