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It’s almost tautologically true that the scientific method is the gold standard. The problem is rather that not everything is easily studied in such fashion. In

It’s almost tautologically true that the scientific method is the gold standard. The problem is rather that not everything is easily studied in such fashion. In fact, physics is almost unique in being easily reducible to smaller and smaller problems that can be studied independently. That approach fails already for many problems of biology: our understanding of isolated cells and genetics has grown exponentially, yet we have made barely a dent when in comes to treatment of, for example, depression. As you zoom out to, say, sociology or political science, it gets even worse.

kurthr 7y ago
Large parts of Physics and Astronomy are a bit more like looking for your keys under the street lamp. You study what you can measure and model as simply as possible the effects even if it's an approximation. The classic physicists response to a multi-body problem is 1,2, infinity...because those are the ones we have solutions/tools ffor. That's true for planets all the way to atoms. Now, at the edges there are those who look at more philosophical things like Bell's Theorem or study complicated things like chaos, but even there it's about simplifying to what you can model and measure... anything else is boiling the ocean and you never get done.
- kurthr 7y ago
  To be more clear, the problems only look like mathematical solutions, because the questions are chosen very carefully... and that's what other physicists expect when they look at your results, but it means there are a lot of questions that you just won't answer other than as a gross approximation.
whatshisface 7y ago
>we have made barely a dent when in comes to treatment of, for example, depression When the cure finally is understood, it's virtually guaranteed to come in the form of breaking down the large systems into simpler systems. "Holistic understanding" is possible up to however smart you are, and any system more complicated than that has to be diced up to fit in your head. Wouldn't it be nice to be so smart that you could understand the whole workings of the human body all at once? However in reality there are only those who pretend to understand all of it, and those who actually understand some minuscule fraction of it. If any entity ever actually understands a system more complicated than a few particles in a way that is neither reductive nor abstract, it will not be human.

kurthr 7y ago

Large parts of Physics and Astronomy are a bit more like looking for your keys under the street lamp. You study what you can measure and model as simply as possible the effects even if it's an approximation. The classic physicists response to a multi-body problem is 1,2, infinity...because those are the ones we have solutions/tools ffor. That's true for planets all the way to atoms. Now, at the edges there are those who look at more philosophical things like Bell's Theorem or study complicated things like chaos, but even there it's about simplifying to what you can model and measure... anything else is boiling the ocean and you never get done.

kurthr 7y ago
To be more clear, the problems only look like mathematical solutions, because the questions are chosen very carefully... and that's what other physicists expect when they look at your results, but it means there are a lot of questions that you just won't answer other than as a gross approximation.

whatshisface 7y ago

>we have made barely a dent when in comes to treatment of, for example, depression When the cure finally is understood, it's virtually guaranteed to come in the form of breaking down the large systems into simpler systems. "Holistic understanding" is possible up to however smart you are, and any system more complicated than that has to be diced up to fit in your head. Wouldn't it be nice to be so smart that you could understand the whole workings of the human body all at once? However in reality there are only those who pretend to understand all of it, and those who actually understand some minuscule fraction of it. If any entity ever actually understands a system more complicated than a few particles in a way that is neither reductive nor abstract, it will not be human.