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Science is great, and I love science, but it paradoxically has a way of limiting our understanding. Things that the scientific method cannot be successfully app

Science is great, and I love science, but it paradoxically has a way of limiting our understanding. Things that the scientific method cannot be successfully applied to are immediately written off by such skeptics. The rejection of anything not deemed scientific is a close-minded approach to understanding the universe. Take a look at WIMPs[0] (weakly interacting massive particles) and a slew of other theorized forms of matter and energy that we are currently incapable of detecting. It may be the case that there are physical phenomena we will never be able to detect. Does that make them false? No, that is a logical fallacy. I think the prefix pseudo- is used as a pejorative by dogmatic disciples of science. If they applied the prefix pseudo- to everything not supported by direct observation (rather than just things of a spiritual or metaphysical nature), then theoretical physics would have been branded as pseudophysics a long time ago. Any crackpot can write down some equations that the scientific community will except as a substitute for direct observation, without applying the term pseudo-. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weakly_interacting_massive_particles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weakly_interacting_massive_par...

Ginden 5y ago
> The inability to detect phenomena does not make them "false" or "fake", Certain philosophers, associated with scientific anti-realism, would argue it does make them "false" (or rather "undefined" or "null"). https://www.britannica.com/topic/instrumentalism https://www.britannica.com/topic/instrumentalism https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/
- tediousdemise 5y ago
  By that definition, were bacteria fake until the microscope enabled them to be observed? Scientific anti-realism appears to be an easily refutable logical fallacy.
BoiledCabbage 5y ago
> The rejection of anything not deemed scientific is a close-minded approach to understanding the universe. It's closed-minded by design. The human brain has an incredible ability to find patterns where none exist. Scientific methodology, is a way of obtaining a 1% false negative rate, to avoid an alternate approach of having a 90% false positive rate. It's a worthwhile tradeoff.

Ginden 5y ago

> The inability to detect phenomena does not make them "false" or "fake", Certain philosophers, associated with scientific anti-realism, would argue it does make them "false" (or rather "undefined" or "null"). https://www.britannica.com/topic/instrumentalism https://www.britannica.com/topic/instrumentalism https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/

tediousdemise 5y ago
By that definition, were bacteria fake until the microscope enabled them to be observed? Scientific anti-realism appears to be an easily refutable logical fallacy.

BoiledCabbage 5y ago

> The rejection of anything not deemed scientific is a close-minded approach to understanding the universe. It's closed-minded by design. The human brain has an incredible ability to find patterns where none exist. Scientific methodology, is a way of obtaining a 1% false negative rate, to avoid an alternate approach of having a 90% false positive rate. It's a worthwhile tradeoff.