Luc Turpin

No police required. Science's social status and repetition suffices. Your view of science as it is is better than mine. My view of what science should be might be better than yours.

Who is participant in global environmental processes operating on geologic timescales according to the New York Times article? The rest of the post is avoidance of my own main contention or characterization.

The creation of hard steps thrust upon society as if they were hard facts when they are actually interpretation of facts, that is my characterization. This is my main message here and shared by the author of the study.

We raise the possibility that there are no hard steps (despite the appearance of major evolutionary singularities in the universal tree of life), and that the broad pace of evolution on Earth is set by global environmental processes operating on geologic timescales (i.e., billions of years). Put differently, humans originated so 'late' in Earth's history because the 'window of human habitability' has only opened relatively recently in Earth history." Mills et all Sure sounds like Gaia! Mills said the notion of hard steps has left an imprint on humanity that is not justified. "Many people have taken these conclusions for granted, as if science has actually proven that our existence on Earth depended on chance events with small likelihoods in the available time," he said."Not only are these conclusions unjustified, they are damaging to our collective self-image, contributing to the notion that humans are an accident of Earth's biosphere rather than a natural expression of it."He believes this idea has handicapped human life and is steering us in the wrong direction" Sure sounds as if science overstepped its boundaries once again https://phys.org/news/2024-09-hard-evolutionary-history-human-intelligence.html https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10293

A few excerpts "In recent decades, however, the sci­entific understanding of life’s relationship to the planet has been un­dergoing a major reformation. Contrary to longstanding maxims, life has been a formidable geological force throughout Earth’s history, often matching or surpassing the power of glaciers, earthquakes and volcanoes. Over the past several billion years, all manner of life forms, from microbes to mammoths, have trans­formed the continents, ocean and atmosphere, turning a lump of or­biting rock into the world as we’ve known it. Living creatures are not simply products of inexorable evolutionary processes in their particu­lar habitats; they are orchestrators of their environments and partici­pants in their own evolution. We and other living creatures are more than inhabitants of Earth. We are Earth: an outgrowth of its physical structure and an engine of its global cycles. The evidence for this new paradigm is all around us, although much of it has been discovered only recently and has yet to permeate public consciousness to the same degree as, say, selfish genes or the microbiome." "Yet there has never been an objective measure or a universally accepted definition of life. There are numerous examples of things we con­sider inanimate that have traits of the living and vice versa. Life is more spectral than categorical, more verb than noun. Life is not a distinct class of matter but rather a process — a performance. Life is something matter does." "Although sci­ence has not yet arrived at a fundamental explanation of the phenomenon we call life, many experts in the past century have favored a variation of the following: Life is a system that sustains itself. This defining capacity for active self-preservation and self-regulation emerges at many different scales: at the scale of the cell, the organism, the ecosystem and, I would argue, the planet." "Gaia still retains something of a stigma in mainstream science, but in recent decades opposition has waned significantly. Although the claim that Earth itself is a living entity remains contro­versial, some scientists embrace it, and others are increasingly open to it. The idea that life transforms the planet and is intertwined with its self-regulatory processes has become a central tenet of mainstream Earth-system science, a relatively young field that explicitly studies the living and nonliving components of the planet as an integrated whole. As the Earth-system scientist Tim Lenton has written, he and his colleagues “now think in terms of the coupled evolution of life and the planet, recognizing that the evolution of life has shaped the planet, changes in the planetary environment have shaped life, and together they can be viewed as one process.” "One early metaphor Lovelock deployed to explain Gaia was a redwood tree. Only a few parts of a tree contain living cells, namely the leaves and thin layers of tissue within the trunk, branches and roots. The rest is dead wood. Similarly, the bulk of our planet is inanimate rock, wrapped in a flowering skin of life. Just as strips of living tissue are essential to keep a whole tree alive, Earth’s living skin helps sustain a kind of global being. What Lovelock did not realize at the time, however, was that even Earth’s seemingly inert skeleton of rock was far more porous and alive than most people believed." "To recognize that deep subsurface life not only exists but also is engaged in a continuous alchemy of earth — that it may have helped create the very land on which all terrestrial life depends — is to redefine the modern understanding of life’s influence on the planet. Yet even today, some scientists, especially in geology and related fields, continue to describe life as a relatively inconsequential layer of goo coating a vastly greater mass of inanimate rock." "There’s simply no comparison between an Earth without life and Earth as we know it. Life’s ubiquity endows our planet with an anatomy and physiology. Together, Earth and life form a single, self-regulating system, one that has endured and evolved for more than four billion years. We have as much reason to regard our planet as a living entity as we do ourselves: a truth no longer substantiated by intuition alone, or by one man’s vi­sion, but by a preponderance of scientific evidence." "For more than two centuries, Western science has re­garded the origin of life as something that happened on or in Earth, as if the planet were simply the setting for a singular phenomenon, the manger that housed a miracle. But the two cannot be separated in this way. Life does not merely reside on the planet; it is an extension of the planet. Life emerged from, is made of and returns to Earth. Earth is not simply a terrestrial planet with a bit of life on its surface; it’s a planet that came to life. Earth is a rock that broiled, gushed and bloomed: the flowering callus of a half-sealed Vesuvius suspended in a bubble of breath. Earth is a stone that eats starlight and radiates song, whirling through the inscrutable emptiness of space — pulsing, breathing, evolving — and just as vulnerable to death as we are."

An interesting read; especially for those who find the notion romantic, but without scientific sustenance. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/24/magazine/earth-geomicrobiology-microbes.html

I have nothing new, but here is a good review of the situation pertaining to aluminium, AD and general health as well. https://nutritionfacts.org/video/does-aluminum-cause-alzheimers-disease/ Does not appear to be a concern for AD, but other health issues abound, especially if you use Maalox Forte.

1- Transistor bias has nothing to do with human bias in science. So "knowledge of objectivity" negates subject perception? The subject is still there to perceive what he believes to be objectivity, which, again is not 100% infalible. 2- And what happens if she-he believes she-he is objective when for no fault of her-his own, she-he is not objective or as objective as she-he believes to be? 3- Please define "subject"??? 4- I agree that for many processes, designs, calculations, constructions the exact values is unknown, but the probability of being wrong is a known acceptably low level" 5- I took for granted that data, facts were correct, relevant and complete. Data - facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis. Fact - a thing that is known or proved to be true 6- no

1-Let's then agree then to the use of the first definition 2- I am not getting this; how is "allowing for some form of constructive subjectivity in the beginning of the scientific provides opportunities for seing things differently" with provided defintions; Objective - objectivity means something that presumably exists independent of the subject's perception of it; Subjective - which is the claim that perception emerges form the subject's point of view; 3- Pointless to use, so let's not use it; agree with the rest of your statement. 1- Please elaborate on transitors not working without bias 2- I provided a definition of objectivity for the thread; means something that presumably exists independent of the subject's perception of it. Here is another one from wiki: In science, objectivity refers to attempts to do higher quality research by eliminating personal biases, emotions, and false beliefs, while focusing mainly on proven facts and evidence. Please provide yours as I was unable to find it in the thread. 3- Please elaborate on Limit State Theory. 4- Data and facts turn the subjective into the objective. 5- Now I am asking for elaboration.

I would also add that I don't always understand your writing, which makes it harder for me to see your point.

1- I am all ears to learn about "bias" 2- You keep telling me that the subjective is acknowledged and accepted by Science, but when I bring the topic up, I can sense the unease and tension about the subject matter. I am not sure that all scientists would agree with your statement. There is also the matter of what kind of subjectivity is at play. If I say bias in worldview, then I get a much stonger response than say parallax 3- I would modify your phrase to "subjectivity contained and controlled through data and facts". 4- Letting subjectivity rule without containment and control would be a disaster of titanic proportion.

1- So, do you agree that there is and should be some amount of required subjectivity at the onset of the scientific process and this has to be "objectivised" through data at the outset of the process? 2- I will be revisiting the text and I agree that it should not exclude 'a good match with data is what makes a good explanation. This is an unconditional statement 3- This is not a definition, but a statement on my part. Allowing for some form of constructive subjectivity in the beginning of the scientific provides opportunities for seing things differently. I did not ignore the parallax example, but made reference to it by stating that different result interpretations were less an issue of optics, but more of bias.

My response to Studiot's post was not fully posted; for which I corrected in a following post. I am on the outside looking inside, which is a different view from those on the inside no longer looking outside.

I was able to recover the missing text. 1- Is the article that bad or just presenting another perspective of things that runs counter to one's worldview? They criticise, but do not abandon science. 2- Assimilated the difference between accuracy and precision; thanks! 3- My contention as those from referenced authors is that subjectivity has a constructive role to play in the scientific process and should not always be frowned upon. For example subjectivity in efference with conclusion resistant to variation in subjective input. 4- There are ways of correcting tilting heads, but what about when the difference in lecture comes from the inside of the head as in bias towards a certain outcome? 1- Swansont; Will Robinson is not in danger if subjectivity comes into play in the early stages of the scientific process, when hypothesis is formed. And agree that the map is not the territory and correlation does not imply causation. 2- I did not do anything special for that post, but you can see it being rolled under the quote box. 3- I agree that there are risks involved in putting into play subjectivity in the scientific process. Again, at the start of the process and then confirmed or denied by data.

1- I guess that we have unanimity that the paper is of poor quality. It was not for the content though that I posted it, but because it was expressing a view of including subjectivity in the scientific process. 2- It says that science 'needs to lose its fear of subjectivity in efference" and says that “Science is superior to superstition not because it does not allow for subjective elements, but because its conclusions are rather resistant to variation in subjective input, and because it allows for rational criticism of the assumptions it makes.” I am all for this 1- The fact that individuals formulate hypotheses does make it subjective. Definition: a- Subjectity which is the claim that perception emerges form the subject's point of view. b- Something is subjective if it is dependent on a mind 2- Subjectivity in the scientific process does not exclude "a good match with data is what makes a good explanation. 3- There is a good side to subjectivity in science; it allows for different ideas to come into play. For an unknown reason, most of my response was not posted. I will try and recover it.

I think that I chose poorly with the posted reference as I just wanted to pursue the line that subjectivity is already in the science process and/or a requirement for good science. The article that I posted made the debate diverge towards consciousness and its interplay with living organisms. In fact, the authors do promote that not only humans are conscious, but all biological entities, which is an idea that I have been pursuing, quite unssucessfully in a few threads, Not sure though that it would be the kiss of death for science if a certain amout of subjectivy was in the scientific process.. "While the evidence-based approach of science is lauded for introducing objectivity to processes of investigation, the role of subjectivity in science is less often highlighted in scientific literature. Nevertheless, the scientific method comprises at least two components: forming hypotheses, and collecting data to substantiate or refute each hypothesis (Descartes’ 1637 discourse [Olscamp, 1965]). A hypothesis is a conjecture of a new theory that derives from, but by definition is unproven by, known laws, rules, or existing observations. Hypotheses are always made by one individual or by a limited group of scientists, and are therefore subjective—based on the prior experience and processes of reason employed by those individuals, rather than solely on objective external process. Such subjectivity and concomitant uncertainty lead to competing theories that are subsequently pared down as some are proved to be incompatible with new observations." https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article/40/1/95/130748/The-science-of-subjectivity or this one: "Subjective choice and objective knowledge are no opposites in science: rather, subjective elements are inevitable in scientific inference and need to be explicitly addressed to improve transparency and achieve more reliable outcomes, says a team of EU-funded researchers." "Explanatory inference is the process of choosing the hypothesis that best explains the data at hand. This concept has been notoriously vague, notes Sprenger: “What is a ‘good’ explanation? The gut feeling of a scientist? In our work, we have provided a rigorous foundation of this mode of inference via the construction and comparison of various measures of explanatory power.” The team identified a close relationship between prior beliefs and explanatory power. The quality of an explanation, and the inference of the ‘best explanation’, is hence not a purely objective matter, but entangled with subjective beliefs." https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/430474-reconciling-subjectivity-and-objectivity-in-science

Will need it as so far I feel nothing

1- to feel that I have some sense of purpose 2-din’t get that one 😊

So, the arrow of time of this historical perspective is from subjectivity to a more precise interpretation of objectivity? I sensed while reading this, maybe wrongfully, that science wanted to "rinse away" subjectivity from the process. However, some believe that subjectivity has a key role to play in science In this paper, we argue on the ability of science to capture the true subjective experience of life, blinded within the limits of its reductionist approaches. With this approach, even though science can explain well the physics behind the objective phenomenon, it fails fundamentally in understanding the various aspects associated with the biological entities. In this sense, we are skeptical to the present approach of science and calls out for a more fundamental theory of life that considers not only the objectivity aspect of a biological entity but also the subjective experience as well. It raises questions as to what does it takes to develop a new science from a subjective standpoint. https://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/552 Another thing that caught my attention was that science does not evaluate objects, but evaluates properties of objects. This will become vital in furthering my understanding of science.

I need to correct and even contradict my statement; as there is not perfect objectivity, all steps in the process of doing science are vulnerable, to a certain degree, to subjectivity seeping into the process, including individual experiments.

Understrood

1- I was trying to demonstrate imperfect objectivity through imperfect sampling, but, admittedly, not going very far with the argumentation. Never was my intention to disbar Mohs from objectivity; but disbar it from perfect objectivity, maybe. 2 - Because of 4- below, I hesitate to say that the subject is still in the picture, even for the greater than two and less than three argumentation. But, if you ask me if a measurement between two and three inches is objective enough to make science work, then my response is a resounding yes. Also, does your two examples demonstrate some sort of a link between more objectivity with less precision and less objectivity with more precision? This seem to be contra-indicative. 3- I understand better you position. 4- I would appreciate knowing more about the theory of errors as a way of differentiating between science and philosophy. I admit that may very well be missing many parts of the puzzle in my comprehension of objectivity is science. Note: I will not be very available on the weekend for responses to posts. Thanks.

Told you I aint that smart!

Yep!

I admit that this is a very good case for perfect objectivity. Nonetheless, objectivity is still reliant upon subject perception to make the determination that it is objective, which is the main point of the definition. You need a subject to perceive the scratch on the quartz and subject perception is not 100% infallible, although very-very unlikely in your example. How can you lack precision and still be objective? I am not quite sure I understand how this could come about. The mohs scale has quantative values and agree that my example does not make it subjective 1- I am just trying to discuss here, not pass for a genius, which I am not. I have shown that I am not on numerous occasions in my posts. 2- Just saying that imperfections abound also in the minerals stated in the mohs scale 3- I am so smart that I don't even understand your point of continuous rather than not in the mohs scale. 4- Read my Swansont reply above; if you can seperate the object from the subject, then you can claim absolute objectivity. But, the example given by Swansont, which is very-very close to absolute objectivity, does not remove the object from the subject. "Someone" has to make the determination about the "something", and this "someone" is not 100% infallible. 5- Quite frankly, no, but does that make a difference. 6- Here to learn!