The Goal of Science

[Frasch]

What is it that our scientific models aim to do? Do our scientific models tell us what reality is like, or are they tools to make predictions and to allow us to understand reality? Explain what you think and why.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-dependent_realism- What Stephen Hawking thinks

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gixvLGyJlI - What Brian Greene thinks

[ajb]

...tools to make predictions and to allow us to understand reality?

I think at best we have mathematical tools that allow us to describe nature and make predictions that we can then test against nature.

 

Is it possible that nature really is mathematics? I do not know.

[cladking]

Is it possible that nature really is mathematics? I do not know.

 

No one really knows.

 

I believe nature is simply logical and mathematics is the quantification of logic. It's only natural that math can model nature or nature appears to model math.

 

The sole purpose of any science is to make predictions. The degree to which understanding is achieved is the degree to which accurate prediction can be made.

What is it that our scientific models aim to do? Do our scientific models tell us what reality is like, or are they tools to make predictions and to allow us to understand reality? Explain what you think and why.

 

 

 

Models are merely a sort of mnemonic to remember experimental results.

 

Models are often mistaken for reality and understanding of models mistaken for understanding of nature.

[swansont]

!

Moderator Note

 

Discussion on scientific testing and the validity of certain theories has been split

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/91338-scientific-testing-split-from-goal-of-science/

 

This thread is for the discussion of the OP: Do our scientific models tell us what reality is like, or are they tools to make predictions and to allow us to understand reality? Explain what you think and why.

 

[Scott Mayers]

What is it that our scientific models aim to do? Do our scientific models tell us what reality is like, or are they tools to make predictions and to allow us to understand reality? Explain what you think and why.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-dependent_realism- What Stephen Hawking thinks

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gixvLGyJlI - What Brian Greene thinks

I agree mostly (I think) with the link that describes model-dependent realism. The models to me are real even if they are limited in what they represent to the referents in reality they symbolize. I interpret models in kind to logic and math as both conceptual and real. If we use "tools" anywhere to interpret reality, we have to trust that the tools themselves are valid. So both the procedure of science and the logic/math [or modeling] act as 'forms' in what I believe Plato meant as being real in themselves. It is just difficult to use language in one unique way to model reality through linguistic or geometric ways. I think that nature itself manifests reality through a model-like logic. That is, reality itself is a 'model' of the underlying logic as they get manifested in the "laws" of physics.

 

But I perceive that science operates on a top-down approach in our paradigm meaning that we start with what we observe to induce a model(s). But these models are not certain. This is where we also need to find a bottom-up approach by trying to find (discover?) a logic that universally connects things from first logical principles. I prefer one that begins in assuming a literal nothingness. Yet this approach is hard to singly describe nature using our varying backgrounds to present this to everyone's satisfaction. If we find a means to include both means to meet in the middle, we can actually then consolidate the value of both the practice of science and the philosophical analysis to discover CERTAIN truths. So I treat science as including both in usual dissent today to demarcate these distinctly. I guess I prefer to think of this collectively as Natural Philosophy in kind to the way many of the past have.

 

Models ARE thus real even if they can be presented differently. It is what they semantically stand for that count.

One disagreement I have to the model-dependent-realism regards "predictability". While I think some things can be 'predicted', with regards to the very large (cosmology), we cannot reproduce much of what we 'observe' from space. What we CAN do, however, is to reanalyze our models to improve science by finding those interpretations that also reconcile apparently conflicting interpretations from other areas of science. On the other scale, the very small (atomic physics), much of the science there depends on uncertainty and thus defeats 'predictability' with certainty anyways.

Edited October 7, 2015 by Scott Mayers

[PeterJ]

Scott- "This is where we also need to find a bottom-up approach by trying to find (discover?) a logic that universally connects things from first logical principles."

 

Right on, It is called metaphysics. No need to look too hard, the task has been completed. It;s just that scientists and professional philosophers take no notice of Nagarjuna. He uses Aristiotle's logic and an axiom of unity, and all else follows.

[swansont]

Scott- "This is where we also need to find a bottom-up approach by trying to find (discover?) a logic that universally connects things from first logical principles."

 

Right on, It is called metaphysics. No need to look too hard, the task has been completed. It;s just that scientists and professional philosophers take no notice of Nagarjuna. He uses Aristiotle's logic and an axiom of unity, and all else follows.

 

All else? What particle masses and constants of nature are predicted from this approach?

[PeterJ]

Hi Swansont

 

You know that metaphysics has nothing to say about such specific things. It may, however, tell us something about the nature of mass and the 'nature of Nature', as it were.

 

There's no need to argue. The dictionary is quite clear on where physics ends and metaphysics begins. I'm not suggesting any changes.

[swansont]

Hi Swansont

 

You know that metaphysics has nothing to say about such specific things. It may, however, tell us something about the nature of mass and the 'nature of Nature', as it were.

 

There's no need to argue. The dictionary is quite clear on where physics ends and metaphysics begins. I'm not suggesting any changes.

 

Yes, I do know the definition. Metaphysics isn't science. I wondered what it has to do with the topic, being the goal of science.

[PeterJ]

 

Yes, I do know the definition. Metaphysics isn't science. I wondered what it has to do with the topic, being the goal of science.

 

Well, it places a limit on those goals. No point in science hoping to solve a metaphysical problem.

 

Frasch asks - "What is it that our scientific models aim to do? Do our scientific models tell us what reality is like, or are they tools to make predictions and to allow us to understand reality? Explain what you think and why."

 

The answer to the second two questions would be no. This would be why we have metaphysics, so we can extrapolate from the scientific data to deep truths. Making predictions requires little or no understanding of reality. just a few facts about some phenomenon. . .

Edited October 19, 2015 by PeterJ

[cladking]

 

Well, it places a limit on those goals. No point in science hoping to solve a metpahysical problem.

 

Frasch asks - "What is it that our scientific models aim to do? Do our scientific models tell us what reality is like, or are they tools to make predictions and to allow us to understand reality? Explain what you think and why."

 

The answer to the second two questions would be no. This would be why we have metaphysics, so we can extrapolate from the scientific data to deep truths. Making predictions requires little or no understanding of reality. just a few facts about some phenomenon. . .

 

Extrapolating reality from models is equivalent to a poet learning poetry from his own poem.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's even more ridiculous since a human being can exceed his potential, his totality, and a model can't because a model must adhere to the reality expressed through experiment.

 

 

.

 

 

 

 

 

The improvement of models over time is through interpolation and cross referencing with other models with experiment as its guide. But no model that lies outside the metaphysics, the rules of model building, will serve to strenghten understanding or the ability to predict. Theory becomes a frankenstein's monster of unrelated bits and parts that seem to fit together but bear little relationship to reality and fail at the basic goal of science; prediction.

 

Just as with language there is no certainty we'd even notice when communication between models and reality fails.

[swansont]

The improvement of models over time is through interpolation and cross referencing with other models with experiment as its guide. But no model that lies outside the metaphysics, the rules of model building, will serve to strenghten understanding or the ability to predict. Theory becomes a frankenstein's monster of unrelated bits and parts that seem to fit together but bear little relationship to reality and fail at the basic goal of science; prediction.

 

Just as with language there is no certainty we'd even notice when communication between models and reality fails.

 

!

Moderator Note

If you want to discuss this (or respond to a modnote), please do it in a new thread rather than hijack the discussion here.

[PeterJ]

 

Yes, I do know the definition. Metaphysics isn't science. I wondered what it has to do with the topic, being the goal of science.

 

I think it is often forgotten that those goals are limited by metaphysics, that there is a boundary that physics ends up bumping against, but okay, other than that maybe it's off-topic. It would immediately become on-topic if anyone were to suggest that a goal of physics is a fundamental or general theory.

.

[ydoaPs]

Right on, It is called metaphysics. No need to look too hard, the task has been completed. It;s just that scientists and professional philosophers take no notice of Nagarjuna. He uses Aristiotle's logic and an axiom of unity, and all else follows.

That's pretty bad metaphysics if it uses Aristotle's logic. The topoi which admit QM do not admit a Boolean structure, but rather a more general Heyting structure in which the law of excluded middle does not always hold.

[PeterJ]

Yes, but most scientists and philosophers do not apply the laws rigorously. You won't believe this, I predict, but it is the case. In fact for metaphysics the law of excluded middle is no problem, nor the LNC. I wouldn't be surprised if the same is true for QM, once Aristotle is read properly.

 

This may be one of those various occasions where philosophy has let physics down, in this case by muddling the logical issues.

[ydoaPs]

Yes, I do know the definition. Metaphysics isn't science. I wondered what it has to do with the topic, being the goal of science.

Metaphysics is quite important to the topic of the goal of science, actually. Without it, mathematical physics becomes nothing more than mathematics and science in general becomes hyper-antirealistic idealism.

 

A theory in physics is about taking one point on a phase space, giving it to a function, and the function giving you back another point on the phase space. The phase space is just a cotangent bundle of a manifold and some cotangent space. That's all you get without metaphysics. You don't get anything about the world. It takes metaphysics to say what in the math is supposed to be real. It takes metaphysics to say whether a theory is deterministic or deterministic.

 

For science in general, you end up with layers of lies building on idealism. Mach denied that this is idealism, but the primitive of the ensuing worldview is mental in nature, so it is actually idealism. You never have observational access to an underlying substance (Kant's noumena). All you have is a sequence of experiences. These experiences differ from one another. In one experience, there's a red blob. In another experience, you have a slightly different red blob. Without metaphysics, you don't get to assume an underlying object giving the sensations, so you don't get to say that they're the same red blob. It's only in using fictive abstraction that you get 'objects' on a metaphysics free picture. These 'objects' are related via yet more fictive abstraction when we construct the idea of measurement. Then yet another layer is added when we collect these multilayered fictive versions of observation into generalized laws. That's all science becomes without metaphysics: layers of organization of functional fictive abstractions.

 

And you don't get the standard difference between primary and secondary properties. Color and taste, for example, are on the same playing field as length.

Yes, but most scientists and philosophers do not apply the laws rigorously. You won't believe this, I predict, but it is the case. In fact for metaphysics the law of excluded middle is no problem, nor the LNC. I wouldn't be surprised if the same is true for QM, once Aristotle is read properly.

 

This may be one of those various occasions where philosophy has let physics down, in this case by muddling the logical issues.

It has nothing to do with a proper reading of Aristotle. No topos that can support QM has Boolean structure. The law of excluded middle simply can't hold everywhere in a QM universe. This isn't about any sort of observation, but it's part of the deepest structure of the theory.

[PeterJ]

YdoaPs - I can go along with your comments on metaphysics except for your final para. I think you are wrong about logic. You are making the mistake of which I accuse academic philosophy as a whole. Aristotle's logic is fine for QM just as long as we read the small print for the 'laws of thought'. Not many people do. This has been pointed out by bigger guns than me. I won't argue more since it's off-topic, but if you want to do so I'll post a link