Science is mere info/data?

TINNY · 12-07-2004

Is it correct to say that science is mere data about nature?
From wikipedia.org:
Science is both a process of gaining knowledge, and the organized body of knowledge gained by this process. The scientific process is the systematic acquisition of new knowledge about a system. This systematic acquisition is generally the scientific method, and the system is generally nature. Science is also the scientific knowledge that has been systematically acquired by this scientific process

To make it relevant to human beings, we term that as philosophy?
Philosophy is now widely used to designate the pursuit of knowledge or wisdom about fundamental matters concerning life, death, meaning, reality, being and truth.

So science in itself is meaningless unless we philosophize?

sanctus · 12-07-2004

Science is not meaning less without philosophizing, but I would say that science becomes incomprehensible the more abstract it becomes and therefore you need to recur to philosophy.

TINNY · 12-07-2004

You mean that philosophy is the basis of scientific assumptions when science gets incomprehensible?

sanctus · 12-07-2004

No, not the basis, but I believe it to be the best and easiest way to understand it and once philosophy helped to understand it, one can make scientific assumptions based on logic.

TINNY · 12-07-2004

Hmm. What you're saying is rather vague. Is it something like this:

We can see progression of matter all around us. Starting from sub atomic particles, it culminates into atoms. A group of atoms forms molecules, a group of molecules form complex molecules (eg

NA) and so on till it progresses towards animal life. So right now, we start to philosophize that matter progresses into more complex organizations. Then we make logical assumptions that evolution takes place as matter gets more complex till the end of the line we have human beings.

So is this what you mean? If not, give your example.

sanctus · 12-08-2004

No I was not saying what you wrote and I thought I wasn't vague, as in my head everything seemed clear

. But here I give you an example:

How can you understand the implications of quantum mechanics without philosophizing about it's consequences. Quantum mechanics very roughly say that t any event has a certain probaility to happen,this probaility might be one but it doesn't have to.

Well, I let you think about that and tell me you if you didn't need philosophy to understand that and its implications.

Tim_Lou · 12-08-2004

philosophy and science... gotta use both of your brains--left and right.

thats symmetry!
what am i talking about??...

TINNY · 12-08-2004

Sanctus, I still don't understand.

Quote:

How can you understand the implications of quantum mechanics without philosophizing about it's consequences.

You're going round in circles here. Is the implicatoins of quantum mechanics scientific or philosophical? What difference is there between implications and consequences?

Quote:

tell me you if you didn't need philosophy to understand that and its implication

Hey, what do you mean by philosophy here? How can philosophy help understand QM? I thought the scientific discovery came first, then the philosophical implications of it.

sanctus · 12-09-2004

Quote:

Originally Posted by TINNY

Sanctus, I still don't understand.You're going round in circles here. Is the implicatoins of quantum mechanics scientific or philosophical? What difference is there between implications and consequences?

It's both scientific and philosophic, for me they are strongly married.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TINNY

Hey, what do you mean by philosophy here? How can philosophy help understand QM? I thought the scientific discovery came first, then the philosophical implications of it.

You're right scientific discory comes first..... sometimes; in the case of quantum mechanics you can't really say what came first. It all started by trying to explain the radiation of a black body, which is very scientific. Planck found an explanation which needed the quantification of the frequency (i.e h*nu=n with n a natural number) of emission, which is still very scientific. But this isn't yet the QM,it's the starting point of the theory to which usually it's referred to as the "old quantum theory" . Now at this stage, philosophy comes into the reasoning. Somebody (I think still Planck) thinks about the universe, the particles, how it could and couldn't be a comes up with the idea that particles have as well a quantified frequency (after the model from DeBroglie to every particle one can associate a wave length and therefore a frequency). This means that the energy of a particle isn't continuos, but has to be quantified. Well, in our daily life the energy of any object seems to be continuos, but this theory says not. The only way you can get out of that Dilemma and start to understand what is going on is that you sart to philosophize of its implications.
That's exactly what Bohr, Planck,Einstein, Heisenberg,Schrödinger, Sommerfeld and friends did and so they eventually got to the theory today called QM.

Just about the philosophical need to interprete the probability thingy of my earlier post: until that people used to think that the universe was deterministic, well after QM you cannot (and not because we are not smart enough!!) predict how the universe will be in 4 seconds! Tell me how can you understand that without recurring to philosophy? You may just say mathematics and experiences proves it to be so, but then then you understand it and what it implies? To understand it you have really to think, to philosophize about it and its implications and then you may come up with something new.