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Modern science is absolutely not a single paradigm. QM has been in conflict with GR since its invention. Lambda-CDM is in conflict with MOND and other cosmologi

Modern science is absolutely not a single paradigm. QM has been in conflict with GR since its invention. Lambda-CDM is in conflict with MOND and other cosmological paradigms. String theory is a paradigm. And that's just talking about theoretical physics. I appreciate your argument, and yes if there have been no paradigm shifts in the past few centuries that would neatly resolve the problem. But I can't possibly agree, and regardless I would still love to find a counterexample where something which anyone considers a paradigm shift happened in a non-political manner. For a great example outside of physics, I can't imagine how anyone could read the story of plate tectonics and not understand it to be exactly what Kuhn was talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics#Development_of_the_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics#Development_of...

pdonis 6y ago
> Modern science is absolutely not a single paradigm. I think you're confusing "paradigm" with "model". See below. > QM has been in conflict with GR since its invention. "Conflict" in the sense that neither one can possibly be a final fundamental theory, yes. But whatever final fundamental theory we come up with is going to have our current QM and our current GR as special cases/approximations in the relevant regimes. In terms of any such final fundamental theory, current QM and current GR would simply be particular models built for particular applications. So current QM and current GR are not different or conflicting "paradigms" in the sense that Aristotelian and Newtonian physics are. They're just our best current models. > Lambda-CDM is in conflict with MOND and other cosmological paradigms. These aren't paradigms, they're models. Both of them accept the same underlying framework for model building. They just make different claims about which models are more accurate. > String theory is a paradigm. String theorists like to make it seem that way, but it's really not any different from any other quantum field theory in the fundamentals. It's just QFT using strings instead of point particles. The original justification for it as a fundamental theory candidate was that gravity just pops out (since the simplest closed string mode looks like a massless spin-2 particle at low energies, and that's the graviton), so it seemed to be an easy way to get a quantum theory of gravity that would reduce to GR in the classical limit. (I think it's fair to say that the jury is still out on whether this promise has been realized.)
- guscost 6y ago
  How do you get rid of renormalization? Are those not incompatible paradigms to the best of our knowledge? About string theory, "really not any different" and "strings instead of point particles" don't seem compatible. I agree that it is largely an attempt to explain the fine-tuning in the Standard Model, not to overthrow it. But it is in conflict with other paradigms that attempt to "complete" the Standard Model in other ways.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > How do you get rid of renormalization? First, why do you need to? Second, renormalization only has to be done at all in perturbation theory, and perturbation theory is just an approximation anyway. There is plenty of work done in non-perturbative QFT, in which renormalization doesn't even arise at all. > Are those not incompatible paradigms to the best of our knowledge? I'm not sure what you mean. Different approximations to the same underlying theory don't have to be compatible unless their domains of validity overlap, and even then the only compatibility they have to have is that they have to make predictions that are consistent with each other. More generally, s/approximations/models/ in the above, since approximations are one kind of model. > "really not any different" and "strings instead of point particles" don't seem compatible Why not? There's nothing about the fundamentals of QFT that says it can only apply to point particles, or that applying it to point particles and applying it to strings are inconsistent. They're different models. > it is in conflict with other paradigms that attempt to "complete" the Standard Model in other ways. To the extent that the different attempts at a fundamental theory are inconsistent with each other (e.g., string theory vs. loop quantum gravity, which AFAICT are not consistent with each other), yes, I suppose they could be considered different paradigms. But there will never be a transition from one of them to the other. The most that could happen is that we transition from our current theories as the best we have, to our current theories being approximations to whichever more fundamental theory wins out. (Or it's possible that none of the current candidates will win out.)
    - guscost 6y ago
      > why do you need to [get rid of renormalization]? What does renormalization actually represent? Why does nature do that? Those rules seem kinda tacked-on after the fact, to me... > There's nothing about the fundamentals of QFT that says it can only apply to point particles String Theory does not present a serious challenge to QFT or the Standard Model yet, but it is a massive set of additional ideas that are completely unnecessary for either one, and it is a paradigm in vigorous conflict with all of the other proposed completions to the Standard Model right now. If any of these completions ever wins conclusively, it will also "win" against the Standard Model, in the sense that the Standard Model will turn out to be a higher-level approximation of some truer lower-level theory, one which will never explain any of its fine-tuning, and therefore one which will fail. It's very similar to GR vs. Newtonian Dynamics, and I would argue that Newtonian Dynamics is in fact a failed paradigm, and it has been replaced by a better paradigm, no matter how useful it may remain.
pdonis 6y ago
> I would still love to find a counterexample where something which anyone considers a paradigm shift happened in a non-political manner. I should make clear, given what I've said about what I think actually count as paradigm shifts, that I agree with you that when a paradigm shift happens, it doesn't happen through pure rationality with no politics involved. Certainly the shift from Aristotelian to Newtonian physics did not.
pdonis 6y ago
> I can't imagine how anyone could read the story of plate tectonics and not understand it to be exactly what Kuhn was talking about This is why I qualified my statements by saying "once the field becomes a science". The story of plate tectonics finally being accepted (and, as you say, not by any sort of purely rational process) is the story of that part of geology becoming a science. The previous view was not a scientifically established view; it was just the unsupported opinion of the people who happened to be bigwigs in the field.
- guscost 6y ago
  Got it, that checks out. You have a very strict definition of science that I'm not sure how I feel about, we're dangerously close to a no-true-scotsman problem, but I respect the idealism.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > You have a very strict definition of science that I'm not sure how I feel about The reason I am using such a strict definition is that looser ones make the term "science" a useless label that can be put on anything one likes, or withheld from anything one doesn't like. To make the term useful and meaningful, it has to focus on something more objective than individual preferences. The something more objective that I have been implicitly using is that hypotheses have to be tested using evidence and experimental data, and discarded if they are falsified; otherwise, even if the person making the hypothesis is a respected "scientist", the hypothesis doesn't get to be counted as "science". > we're dangerously close to a no-true-scotsman problem The way to avoid that is to have a reasonably objective criterion for applying the term. That's what I've tried to provide above.
    - guscost 6y ago
      I mean, I agree with all of this, Kuhn's version is some bullshit that should not be called science! But then does "real science" even exist? If yes, that really means we have never changed to a new paradigm? The second in particular is really hard to believe.
naringas 6y ago
Modern science is just barely science alas, I cannot back this up with any data but note that backing my assertion up with references is not sufficient to make my statment scientific. but I can add some resasoning to my claim: modern science seems to be performed with a goal in mind (often funding of some sort). it is no longer a free-form pursuit. So then, does science have to be a free-form aimless pursuit? (maybe?)
- pdonis 6y ago
  > Modern science is just barely science This is way too pessimistic without being more specific than just "modern science". Modern science is accurate enough to produce technology that allows your phone to tell you where you are to within a meter or so, to communicate with a space probe that has exited the solar system (not to mention launching the probe in the first place and having it go where it was intended to go, visiting multiple planets and moons over several decades), to produce the global networking system that we are having this conversation on, and so on for many, many more examples. There are particular areas that are called part of "modern science" but are just barely sciences (or really not even sciences yet). But there are also areas of modern science that emphatically are sciences, and not "barely" either. > modern science seems to be performed with a goal in mind (often funding of some sort) Modern science now mostly does, but that hasn't always been the case. The research that originally led to relativity and quantum mechanics was not. It was done out of intellectual and scientific curiosity. If your question is whether doing science for those reasons is better than doing it to pursue funding, I would say yes.
  - naringas 6y ago
    > Modern science is accurate enough to produce technology I would argue that this is better called "engineering" rather than science. In this sense engineering is a design discipline which applies science-made theories to create technology and tools. And so engenireeng is not strictly creative (it does not create novel ideas) but refines and pushes the practice (of the theories) to more sophisticated levels. In any case engineering does create novel technology which then can push science forward by providing better and more dieverse empirical data for science to continue.
woodandsteel 6y ago
>I can't imagine how anyone could read the story of plate tectonics and not understand it to be exactly what Kuhn was talking about It was nothing like the shift from Aristotelean physics to Newton. The vast majority of what geologists had previously believed remained valid, and there was no change in the related sciences of physics and chemistry. And indeed it was findings in the previous geological science that lead to it. Imagine, if you will, that plate tectonics had included that the Earth is flat and the abolition of the first law of thermodynamics and you begin to understand what a true paradigm revolution would be.
- guscost 6y ago
  This sounds like more of the no-true-scotsman problem to me. You're basically saying that a paradigm shift has never happened more than once per field (at its founding).
  - woodandsteel 6y ago
    Kuhn came up with the concept of paradigm change, and as he defined it, yes, it only happened once. He claimed it had happened many times, but when you look at the history closely, it just didn't.

pdonis 6y ago

> Modern science is absolutely not a single paradigm. I think you're confusing "paradigm" with "model". See below. > QM has been in conflict with GR since its invention. "Conflict" in the sense that neither one can possibly be a final fundamental theory, yes. But whatever final fundamental theory we come up with is going to have our current QM and our current GR as special cases/approximations in the relevant regimes. In terms of any such final fundamental theory, current QM and current GR would simply be particular models built for particular applications. So current QM and current GR are not different or conflicting "paradigms" in the sense that Aristotelian and Newtonian physics are. They're just our best current models. > Lambda-CDM is in conflict with MOND and other cosmological paradigms. These aren't paradigms, they're models. Both of them accept the same underlying framework for model building. They just make different claims about which models are more accurate. > String theory is a paradigm. String theorists like to make it seem that way, but it's really not any different from any other quantum field theory in the fundamentals. It's just QFT using strings instead of point particles. The original justification for it as a fundamental theory candidate was that gravity just pops out (since the simplest closed string mode looks like a massless spin-2 particle at low energies, and that's the graviton), so it seemed to be an easy way to get a quantum theory of gravity that would reduce to GR in the classical limit. (I think it's fair to say that the jury is still out on whether this promise has been realized.)

guscost 6y ago
How do you get rid of renormalization? Are those not incompatible paradigms to the best of our knowledge? About string theory, "really not any different" and "strings instead of point particles" don't seem compatible. I agree that it is largely an attempt to explain the fine-tuning in the Standard Model, not to overthrow it. But it is in conflict with other paradigms that attempt to "complete" the Standard Model in other ways.
- pdonis 6y ago
  > How do you get rid of renormalization? First, why do you need to? Second, renormalization only has to be done at all in perturbation theory, and perturbation theory is just an approximation anyway. There is plenty of work done in non-perturbative QFT, in which renormalization doesn't even arise at all. > Are those not incompatible paradigms to the best of our knowledge? I'm not sure what you mean. Different approximations to the same underlying theory don't have to be compatible unless their domains of validity overlap, and even then the only compatibility they have to have is that they have to make predictions that are consistent with each other. More generally, s/approximations/models/ in the above, since approximations are one kind of model. > "really not any different" and "strings instead of point particles" don't seem compatible Why not? There's nothing about the fundamentals of QFT that says it can only apply to point particles, or that applying it to point particles and applying it to strings are inconsistent. They're different models. > it is in conflict with other paradigms that attempt to "complete" the Standard Model in other ways. To the extent that the different attempts at a fundamental theory are inconsistent with each other (e.g., string theory vs. loop quantum gravity, which AFAICT are not consistent with each other), yes, I suppose they could be considered different paradigms. But there will never be a transition from one of them to the other. The most that could happen is that we transition from our current theories as the best we have, to our current theories being approximations to whichever more fundamental theory wins out. (Or it's possible that none of the current candidates will win out.)
  - guscost 6y ago
    > why do you need to [get rid of renormalization]? What does renormalization actually represent? Why does nature do that? Those rules seem kinda tacked-on after the fact, to me... > There's nothing about the fundamentals of QFT that says it can only apply to point particles String Theory does not present a serious challenge to QFT or the Standard Model yet, but it is a massive set of additional ideas that are completely unnecessary for either one, and it is a paradigm in vigorous conflict with all of the other proposed completions to the Standard Model right now. If any of these completions ever wins conclusively, it will also "win" against the Standard Model, in the sense that the Standard Model will turn out to be a higher-level approximation of some truer lower-level theory, one which will never explain any of its fine-tuning, and therefore one which will fail. It's very similar to GR vs. Newtonian Dynamics, and I would argue that Newtonian Dynamics is in fact a failed paradigm, and it has been replaced by a better paradigm, no matter how useful it may remain.

pdonis 6y ago

> I would still love to find a counterexample where something which anyone considers a paradigm shift happened in a non-political manner. I should make clear, given what I've said about what I think actually count as paradigm shifts, that I agree with you that when a paradigm shift happens, it doesn't happen through pure rationality with no politics involved. Certainly the shift from Aristotelian to Newtonian physics did not.

pdonis 6y ago

> I can't imagine how anyone could read the story of plate tectonics and not understand it to be exactly what Kuhn was talking about This is why I qualified my statements by saying "once the field becomes a science". The story of plate tectonics finally being accepted (and, as you say, not by any sort of purely rational process) is the story of that part of geology becoming a science. The previous view was not a scientifically established view; it was just the unsupported opinion of the people who happened to be bigwigs in the field.

guscost 6y ago
Got it, that checks out. You have a very strict definition of science that I'm not sure how I feel about, we're dangerously close to a no-true-scotsman problem, but I respect the idealism.
- pdonis 6y ago
  > You have a very strict definition of science that I'm not sure how I feel about The reason I am using such a strict definition is that looser ones make the term "science" a useless label that can be put on anything one likes, or withheld from anything one doesn't like. To make the term useful and meaningful, it has to focus on something more objective than individual preferences. The something more objective that I have been implicitly using is that hypotheses have to be tested using evidence and experimental data, and discarded if they are falsified; otherwise, even if the person making the hypothesis is a respected "scientist", the hypothesis doesn't get to be counted as "science". > we're dangerously close to a no-true-scotsman problem The way to avoid that is to have a reasonably objective criterion for applying the term. That's what I've tried to provide above.
  - guscost 6y ago
    I mean, I agree with all of this, Kuhn's version is some bullshit that should not be called science! But then does "real science" even exist? If yes, that really means we have never changed to a new paradigm? The second in particular is really hard to believe.

naringas 6y ago

Modern science is just barely science alas, I cannot back this up with any data but note that backing my assertion up with references is not sufficient to make my statment scientific. but I can add some resasoning to my claim: modern science seems to be performed with a goal in mind (often funding of some sort). it is no longer a free-form pursuit. So then, does science have to be a free-form aimless pursuit? (maybe?)

pdonis 6y ago
> Modern science is just barely science This is way too pessimistic without being more specific than just "modern science". Modern science is accurate enough to produce technology that allows your phone to tell you where you are to within a meter or so, to communicate with a space probe that has exited the solar system (not to mention launching the probe in the first place and having it go where it was intended to go, visiting multiple planets and moons over several decades), to produce the global networking system that we are having this conversation on, and so on for many, many more examples. There are particular areas that are called part of "modern science" but are just barely sciences (or really not even sciences yet). But there are also areas of modern science that emphatically are sciences, and not "barely" either. > modern science seems to be performed with a goal in mind (often funding of some sort) Modern science now mostly does, but that hasn't always been the case. The research that originally led to relativity and quantum mechanics was not. It was done out of intellectual and scientific curiosity. If your question is whether doing science for those reasons is better than doing it to pursue funding, I would say yes.
- naringas 6y ago
  > Modern science is accurate enough to produce technology I would argue that this is better called "engineering" rather than science. In this sense engineering is a design discipline which applies science-made theories to create technology and tools. And so engenireeng is not strictly creative (it does not create novel ideas) but refines and pushes the practice (of the theories) to more sophisticated levels. In any case engineering does create novel technology which then can push science forward by providing better and more dieverse empirical data for science to continue.

woodandsteel 6y ago

>I can't imagine how anyone could read the story of plate tectonics and not understand it to be exactly what Kuhn was talking about It was nothing like the shift from Aristotelean physics to Newton. The vast majority of what geologists had previously believed remained valid, and there was no change in the related sciences of physics and chemistry. And indeed it was findings in the previous geological science that lead to it. Imagine, if you will, that plate tectonics had included that the Earth is flat and the abolition of the first law of thermodynamics and you begin to understand what a true paradigm revolution would be.

guscost 6y ago
This sounds like more of the no-true-scotsman problem to me. You're basically saying that a paradigm shift has never happened more than once per field (at its founding).
- woodandsteel 6y ago
  Kuhn came up with the concept of paradigm change, and as he defined it, yes, it only happened once. He claimed it had happened many times, but when you look at the history closely, it just didn't.