Stumble it!O.K. Back to basics
posted in Philosophy by themaiden |It is sad that this needs to be written, but there seems to be much confusion on the issue.
Science is an attempt to describe observable phenomena. That is pretty much the end of it. The scientific method is an agreement between researchers concerning that description of data. The agreement is this, that the simplest description wins.
As it stands so far, though, it is meaningless. If my idea has three parts, someone need merely remove one of them to trump me. If I state that one must, “turn left, turn left, and then turn left again” to arrive at a destination, then to trump me based purely on simplicity, one need merely state “turn left, then turn left.” This is just silly, but equivalent arguments pop up with surprising frequency.
So we add another condition: that all competitors must describe the same set of data. Now here is the tricky part. This data must be verifiable. Why? Well, it is useless if it isn’t. I can make up anything I want, but why would anyone believe me if i have no evidence? I can say anything, but words alone don’t make fact. If you’ve seen the movie Mystery Men think about the character of The Invisible Boy. Here is a guy who claims to be able to make himself invisible, except that he can’t do so if someone is watching. Not surprisingly, no one believes him. There is no evidence.
The Invisible Boy is vindicated as the film progresses however. No one sees him, but he performs an action which would not have been possible if he where not invisible. Science works this way in large part. Take a theory, make a prediction based upon that theory, experiment, and then check the results. It is called indirect observation. Eventually we grow to depend upon the predictions and dispense with the formal experimentation. Most people work these analysis’ in thier heads a hundred times a day without realizing it. Practically every action we make depends upon them. Try driving without calculating the motions of your car. Every turn you make safely is verification of the predictions.
Place this same type of logic in the lab, though, and it starts to face criticism. “You don’t know that gluons exist. You’ve never SEEN them.” “You’ve never actually SEEN another star. All you’ve seen are little dots of light in the sky.” “You’ve never SEEN evolution, or continental drift, or ……”
Lets run thruogh this again. I can describe the motion of a car by way of gerbils running on flywheels under the hood. If someone proposed this to me, I’d open the hood and look. That is the scientific method. I heard about the gerbil hypothesis. I formulated a prediction based on the hypothesis: If there are gerbils running on whells inside, I should be able to see them when I open the hood. And I tested it. That is, I looked. There, the scientific method in action. It is not more than a name placed upon how people think.
Take away that verifiability and there is nothing left. Belief or disbelief become completely arbitrary, even random. Knowledge becomes impossible. And fact become indistinguishable from fiction. Remember that next time someone asks you to accept something on faith.
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