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This is a truly brilliant essay on the scientific method, clearly showing why Asimov was regarded as one of the best writers popularized and explained scientifi
by Jun8 17y ago
This is a truly brilliant essay on the scientific method, clearly showing why Asimov was regarded as one of the best writers popularized and explained scientific concepts. His "Please Explain" should be required reading.
However, I think he has misclassified the error of the English Lit correspondent in this essay. Since I have witnessed this misunderstanding many times (and I want to postpone writing my C++ thread pool code), let me elaborate. There are basically three areas of intellectual endeavor, classified by how they go about investigating the truth of the statements: One is scientific, where questions are handled using the scientific approach, so well described by Asimov. The other is group is axiomatic systems, like mathematics (and heraldry), where statements are mostly proven rather than checked through experiments. Given a statement, e.g. "there are infinitely many primes", one does not go about making measurements in the real world to check its truth (although sometimes real-world models can help, pioneered by Archimedes in the "Sand Reckoner").
Then, there's a third category of questions where these two approaches fail. In fact, when asked a question of this type, one does not immediately know how to go about proceeding to investigate it, e.g. "What is truth, Is there a God", etc. This, of course, is the realm of philosophy with somewhat different techniques of tackling problems then the previous two.
With this (rather simplistic) classification, we can see the impedance mismatch between Asimov and the Lit guy. Asimov is the scientist par excellence and is talking about the scientific method. However, the Lit guy's letter (truth is relative, etc.) is the culmination of a certain philosophy that is still the accepted standard in liberal arts school and may be summed up as moral relativism. The guy's obvious error is to apply this approach to the scientific realm. But mind you, this is very common with people of this background. If you don't believe me, just find a liberal arts major and talk for 10mins. He/she will be dumbstruck that you think otherwise. A common example with such people is how Newton's theory was "wrong" and Einstein's theory "corrected" it, clearly showing there's no absolute truth. Years ago, my professor in graduate level Syntax course gave this very example with the same conclusion that the Lit guy arrived.
But apart from its misapplication to scientific matters (such as the shape of the earth), is the moral relativistic approach a useful one, despite its acceptance as an axiom in a lot of universities? Now, that is a long debate.
- jamesbritt 17y ago" If you don't believe me, just find a liberal arts major and talk for 10mins. He/she will be dumbstruck that you think otherwise. A common example with such people is how Newton's theory was "wrong" and Einstein's theory "corrected" it, clearly showing there's no absolute truth." What I've often seen is a sort of "convenient relativism" about truth. I've known people who, for some things, claim there's no real truth, it's all relative, you cannot prove or know anything, etc. (Which makes me wonder how they know you can't know anything, or why, if it's all relative, my belief in an objective universe is not just as valid as any other belief.) And they'll occasionally toss this charge at matters of science. Yet in their day-today life, they happily take aspirin, ride elevators, use electricity, and put gas in their cars, all with the belief that these things will follow a known and predictably consistent behavior.
- netcan 17y agoBehind this is a whole world of subtle (and less subtle) fallacies. For example, uncertainty does not mean all options are equally likely. I'm not sure if this has a name. Agnostic fallacy?
- jamesbritt 17y agoIt reminds me of the "slippery slope" argument, which tries to equate any action in some direction with the worst possible outcome. But it's based on the idea that people cannot make reasonable distinctions along some axis. All grays are equal in their view.
- netcan 17y agoThere is some validity to slippery slope arguments, especially in common law systems.
- olalonde 17y agoThen, there's a third category of questions where these two approaches fail. In fact, when asked a question of this type, one does not immediately know how to go about proceeding to investigate it, e.g. "What is truth, Is there a God", etc. [...] But apart from its misapplication to scientific matters (such as the shape of the earth), is the moral relativistic approach a useful one, despite its acceptance as an axiom in a lot of universities? Now, that is a long debate. IMHO, the moral relativistic approach as you describe it constitutes an interesting mental exercise, but not a useful one per se. If there is absolutely no hint or proof that something exists, how can it be useful to debate it (apart from intellectual masturbation) ? Let's say we live in "the matrix" and that there is _absolutely_ no way to get out of it or anything that could hint its existence. Given that assumption, what is the point of debating whether it exists or not ? Even if there really was a matrix, how could it be useful for us to know this piece of information ? That knowledge wouldn't serve any purpose as the said matrix wouldn't in any way interfere with our universe and even less with our mere human lives. Of course, if there was any way to escape the matrix or if it would even subtly interact with our universe, that would be another question. In the same vein, I dislike the concept of "agnosticism". If we had to be agnostic about everything that is not possible to prove (or even partially, through subtle hints) then we'd have to be agnostic about an amount of things only limited by our collective imagination. For instance, we'd have to be agnostic about "the matrix", the fact that our universe is an "atom" inside a much larger universe, that we're all imagining this universe through an induced dream, etc. On a side note, this is one of the reason I find it more interesting to debate with theists that believe they have evidence for God than agnostics or theists that base their belief on faith. PS: I'm not trying to discard philosophy and I actually admire this discipline. All I'm saying is that it should not attempt to answer the wrong questions.