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Science expressed in terms of what happens is getting in the way of progress
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- cblconfederate 5y agoDid anyone get the point?
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- geden 5y agoIf we only study 'what is', we miss 'what can be'.
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- onhn 5y ago"The counterfactuals that matter to science and physics, and that have so far been neglected, are facts about what could or could not be made to happen to physical systems; about what is possible or impossible." On the contrary, if I had to describe theoretical physics in a nutshell, I would say it is entirely about what is impossible. Pick any physical law or theorem. I cannot exceed the speed of light. I cannot globally decrease entropy. I cannot measure a force between two static electric charges in vacuum that deviates from the Coulomb force law.
- HPsquared 5y agoAlso basic quantum physics: it's all about the "possible" state of a system (e.g the wave function of an electron).
- bartread 5y agoLook, I don't mind reading long form - in fact, I strongly prefer it - but this rambling slow-walk of an article is an incredibly infuriating read. Moreover the examples the author pulls out as "not being studied by science" are BS: DNA is heavily studied by disciplines such as biology, biochemistry, and genetics. Are these not science? Other counterfactual examples are covered by engineering: like the steam engine. This is a shallow, uninsightful, and myopic view of the relationship between science and progress. Moreover - and I'll admit to having only skimmed the last third because I was getting so fed up - it never seems to get to any point. The try-hard profundity yields... nothing.
- myfavoritedog 5y agoYeah, a lot of electrons were sacrificed to ramble on about very little.
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- agnosticmantis 5y agoDoes anybody know a nontrivial example of such a counterfactual law that came out of this new approach? The conservation of energy is mentioned in the article, but that’s old science. Theory of computation is implied as another example, but that didn’t come out of this new science either. The other examples look like trivialities, but I may be missing something here.
- opaque 5y agoThis is the critical question and the answer is no, as far as I'm aware. Like many such suggestions it's "A great tool for telling you things you already know" as my professor used to say. Physics should be judged on its predictive power.
- jkhdigital 5y agoTry Judea Pearl’s The Book of Why for an exploration of the formalizations of counterfactual reasoning. I’m not sure what this article’s author is trying to say, so I’ll project and assume that it has something to do with the science of causation.
- erezsh 5y ago> It is because of a deep misconception, which, paradoxically, originated within my own field, theoretical physics. The misconception is that once you have specified everything that exists in the physical world and what happens to it—all the actual stuff—then you have explained everything that can be explained. If any scientist actually thinks this, then science is in deep trouble.
- trabant00 5y agoI for one am thoroughly convinced, the article clearly and eloquently proved the impossibility of the book it's trying to promote being any good. With Shakespeare and aliens nonetheless.
- myfavoritedog 5y agois getting in the way of progress I find irony in that this statement in the title isn't actually a fact.
- buildingmateri 5y agoWas hoping the point would be that science today at the most fundamental level is descriptive, not explanatory, and being humble and honest about our failure to be explanatory would make people more interested and less intimated. For example, there are four fundamental forces and a table of fundamental particles. Why? Don't know, we just noticed them. All of chemistry seems to be determined by properties and interactions of electrons, which also determines biology. Where do these electrons come from? Don't know, just there. The gravitational constant pops up in bunch of equations. So does the speed of light. Why do they have their specific values? Why is there even a speed limit in the universe (which expanding space violates)? Don't know, we just noticed it.
- ganafagol 5y agoClearly you are not a physicist. Just because you don't personally know sth does not mean it's not there or being worked on. The theory of relativity has quite clear thoughts about why there is a "speed limit". Entire branches of physics ponder about why and when electrons and other particles came about. The shrugging "Don't know, we just noticed it." that you ascribe to scientists' reactions does not match reality.
- buildingmateri 5y agoShowing your own ignorance here. Where do electrons come from? Or any of the other fundamental particles. Please, enlighten the world of science. "Fundamental constant" means "we don't know why it has that value, we just noticed it does" You're proving my point, people don't like science because folks like you make it seem filled with all knowing experts when really the most fundamental questions are not answered
- myWindoonn 5y agoAt the scale of electron-sized particles, local reality no longer definitely exists. In fact, we have a chunk of math (Bell's inequalities) which suggests that local reality cannot exist; either some parts of reality are non-local, or some parts of local interactions are non-real. I say this because it undermines your hope that epistemology and metaphysics is merely a matter of explaining where electrons "come from"; the question is so wrong that it must be entirely rethought. An electron isn't a dot in space, but a behavior smeared throughout a region. I thought that the reason that folks didn't like science is because they were preoccupied with Jehovah/etc. but perhaps I'm wrong.
- bondarchuk 5y ago>Nautilus magazine, launched online and in print in 2013, connects together science, mathematics, philosophy, theology, and culture to create the broadest, deepest and most compelling narratives in science media. Find the odd one out.