Science is mere info/data?

[TINNY]

i would think so, seeing as how the discovery of things can be great to the people willing to progress, and annoying to the ones who don't want to progress and discover. so science balances itself out amung the world.

science per se therefore is inadequate to know truth.

[TINNY]

i would think so, seeing as how the discovery of things can be great to the people willing to progress, and annoying to the ones who don't want to progress and discover. so science balances itself out amung the world.

science per se therefore is inadequate to know truth and provide a philosophy of life?

[orbsycli]

i have no idea how to answer that question, i am not sure at all.

[Biochemist]

Originally Posted by TINNY

so is science neutral?

"Science" has no opinion. People do. I think it is impossible for an individual to be non-biased. The scientific method presumes bias on the part of researchers. We structure experimental design to minimize bias, and we have peer review processes to minimize the perpetuation of bias. But everyone has it. The most insidious purveyors of bias are those that contend they have none.

Facts are facts, but it is very difficult to separate facts from interpretation of facts. To contend otherwise is naive.

[Biochemist]

Originally Posted by TINNY

science per se therefore is inadequate to know truth and provide a philosophy of life?

Science does not provide a worldview. Science can provide a set of facts that underpin a worldview. But for most folks, the worldview is the lens through which they interpret facts.

Even issues that should be fundamental fact positions are not easily resolved by a listing of facts. Finding "facts" is often difficult. For example, I think gradualism is poorly supported. This puts me in a minority position among a lot of smart folks on this site. I acknowledge that minority position, but I discount the vast majority of things I read here that support gradualism. I see most opinions here as artful interpretations of rare facts. If I were a believer in gradualism, I would look at the majority of people on this site (many very smart, very informed) and take the weight of their informed opinions as additional support for my view. It takes a lot of data to get someone to shift a fact position.

And gradualism is a reasonably simple issue, compared to those issues that are not demonstrable by the scientific method. Issues such as the purpose of mankind, our relationship with our Creator, and our responsibilities in the world are entirely opinion, without much fact basis. For most folks, this set of opinions sets their worldview, and establishes the framework within which we arrange our "facts".

Separate of facts from interpretation of facts is a constant challenge. To quote that philosophical sage, Paul Simon "all lies in jest, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest" (from "The Boxer").

[paultrr]

Originally Posted by TINNY

so is science neutral?

Science can be. But its lack of evidence on things like God, etc can be construed as saying there may be none. However, by the book, if God was supernatural then in essence we cannot use science to study God. We could at best only study the process by which he might have created all which since its naturalistic would tend to come across as the result of natural process which leads one back to an easy assumption that even if there is a God he or she is not personally involved in everything. That's why when it comes to personal ideas on all this one tends to find the Athiest possition, the agnostic possition and at times the deist position held by scientists. One can also find more liberal christian ideas expressed also. But here you are crossing into personal ideas, beliefs, philosophy, etc.

[infamous]

Originally Posted by Tim_Lou

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

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

Good point Tim; I quess one could say that scientific knowledge are the bricks and philosophy is the mortar.

[Qfwfq]

Originally Posted by paultrr

Science can be. But its lack of evidence on things like God, etc can be construed as saying there may be none. However, by the book, if God was supernatural then in essence we cannot use science to study God.

Quite, theology is a totally different branch of philosophy.

[Kriminal99]

Science is nothing really, except maybe a malformed concept. The world is what it is. The basic idea of science is to try to capture that. However in order to do anything you need reasoning.

Using scientific experiments we collect information on correlations between different things. However this is already going too far to try and claim that our reasoning is a matter of simple fact. This is something that many people have problems understanding. In reality the only thing that can be claimed without generalization of some form about any situation from which information gathered is what occured in that specific instance. That means at time x, location y, with infinite enviornmental factors, such and such occured.

There is no such thing as "proof" and this may something which was purposefully constructed to prevent deviation from scientific belief. Asking for proof in a sense is equivalent to asking someone to force you to believe something. If you don't want to believe it bad enough, then noone can force you. You might consider a statement you can break down into steps as simple as 1+1=2 close enough to being proof, because every person can clearly see that 1+1=2 and therefore noone would have reason to contradict such statements and everyone would feel intense imagined social pressure trying to contradict such a simple statement. However a scientific experiment can never be objective "proof" of anything- in order for a scientific experiment to be unbiased, the experimenter would have to first test for infinite possible sources of bias inherent into their sampling method. IE if you choose people for a drug experiment on a street corner, and 10 feet from that corner is a Starbucks, then maybe 69% of the people you choose will be coffee drinkers and maybe 89% of coffee drinkers would have a better response to your drug. And whats worse, maybe you know this and are using it stealthily to get the results you want.


Then you have the problem with science that it depends on some kind of non-existent 3rd person abstract "body of knowledge". As if a person is going to take from someone else that y occured from an experiment the same as if they would had they experienced it themselves. In courtrooms this is called hearsay and disposed of because in this place where a man has the highest motivation to seek the best reasoning they have realized its utter uselessness.

Science and its associated dogma is extremely outdated. Some scientists may try and claim that science encompasses reasoning and therefore any pursuit of knowledge could be called science as well as anything else. However the very ideas which differentiate science from other pursuits of knowledge are fallacious...

[Tormod]

Originally Posted by Kriminal99

Science and its associated dogma is extremely outdated. Some scientists may try and claim that science encompasses reasoning and therefore any pursuit of knowledge could be called science as well as anything else. However the very ideas which differentiate science from other pursuits of knowledge are fallacious...

Interesting. Why did you bother to sign up at a science forum, then? It seems to me you haven't got the slightest clue as to what science is in the first place!

Can you give me some examples of A) "the very ideas which differentiate science from other pursuits of knowledge and B) "other pursuits of knowledge"?