5 ms·

Weird Science

54 points by Petiver 5y ago

verisimi 5y ago
'History of science' sounds like the attempt to frame acceptable scientific discussion.
carapace 5y ago
I read the whole thing and although there was a lot of interesting information there, I don't get what the author was trying to say (other than, "Hey look at all this information.") To me it seems clear that the word "science" and the outer trappings and forms of using the Scientific Method have become co-opted, largely in the last century or so, to cover a lot of things that just can't be considered "true science". This is not a "No True Scotsman" instance, because there is a clear and incontrovertible guideline for what (I think) counts as "true" science: the ability to make accurate predictions. That, and that alone, is what truly distinguishes science (as I am using the term here, in a restricted sense) from all the other what-could-be-called "predictive arts": e.g. astrology, tarot & divination, numerology, etc. Obviously, physics counts as "true" science. The standard model makes predictions accurate to within a mind-bending tolerance, the width of a human hair over the distance from New York to Los Angeles. Chemistry is science, biochemistry and molecular biology are still science. Biology and ecology are pretty scientific. From there, things get much worse pretty quickly. By the standard of "ability to make accurate predictions" there are a lot of things we call "science" today that I just don't think deserve the title, most importantly: economics, sociology, and psychology. They can't make predictions, and in many cases they can't even replicate their "findings" from previous "research"! I think those "sciences" serve a social function, the same one that the court astrologers et. al. used to serve, they give a glamour of legitimacy to the king and a way to deflect responsibility onto councilors of the imaginary, who supply ready-made scapegoats. I'm not saying "the humanities are not useful" or anything like that, what I'm saying is that people mix up the orders of knowledge (deliberately or otherwise) as part of politics, and that some things that we call "science" today, aren't. I mean, E=mc2 doesn't have to "defend itself" politically. Anyone anywhere can test it for themselves (that's the whole point, innit!?)
- JPLeRouzic 5y ago
  > Obviously, physics counts as "true" science. I am not a scientist, but I worked as a R&D engineer and it's my understanding that in a lot of physic fields there is a need for empiric corrections. It may be the case of semiconductors design if I recall correctly, but it happens also in other fields. Maybe GPS anomalies is a good example: https://web.stanford.edu/~gracegao/publications/conference/HengL_IONGNSS2010_GPS_SIS_Anomalies_paper_C6_v4.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/~gracegao/publications/conference/H... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity#Anomalies_and_discrepancies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity#Anomalies_and_discrepa...
- morelisp 5y ago
  A better definition of science, particularly in trying to separate proto-science or difficult science from non-science or pseudo-science, is in terms of open vs. closed systems. Sociology and psychology do make predictions, but do not have good accuracy and experiments are often prohibitively expensive or difficult to run[0]. Nonetheless, they seek to refine them based on new findings and new methods, and I think it's uncontroversial that psychology today has a body of knowledge it can make predictions about better than 50 years ago, at which point it had a body larger and more clearly defined than 100 years ago, etc.. This is not true of numerology, tarot, etc., as well as less controversial non-sciences like painting or rhetoric. It also helps tease out the scientific vs. non-scientific (without value judgement) parts of e.g. economics, and the scientific vs. non-scientific parts of physics. Focusing the definition on outcomes rather than methods repeats the same original sin of scientism you're criticizing. (Plus it means a particularly lucky coin could safely be 'science'.) [0] Also true of large areas of modern physics.
  - carapace 5y ago
    > A better definition of science, particularly in trying to separate proto-science or difficult science from non-science or pseudo-science, is in terms of open vs. closed systems. Do you mean the "open-world" vs. "closed-world" assumptions? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_world_assumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_world_assumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-world_assumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-world_assumption > Sociology and psychology do make predictions... Like what? I don't mean to sound rude or combative, I really want to know what you're thinking of here. FWIW if economics, sociology and psychology were classified as "non-sciences like painting or rhetoric" I would retire my objections. I don't think the problem is that these are pre-scientific fields that will become more predictive, I think it is that they have been derailed from the (natural?) progression of scientific knowledge from descriptive to ordering to predictive (e.g. like alchemy becoming chemistry.)
hhs 5y ago
> “Likewise, fringe movements in the sciences have long been a part of American society, although, to be sure, there has been a decided uptick over the past few decades. Consider the Flat Earth theory. Despite what you may have heard, Christopher Columbus did not discover that Earth was round; this fact was known since antiquity. (Plato wrote about it.) The notion that Columbus, one of the few knowledgeable mariners who did not quite believe it was a sphere (he thought it was egg-shaped), “discovered” its shape was a creation of the writer Washington Irving, who sought to assign some scientific legitimacy to what was otherwise a colonialist land grab. [5] Yet in the past decade, Flat Earth theory has achieved a certain currency, fueled by YouTube videos and an appetite for contrarian thinking, hyperskepticism, and a yearning for community. [6]” That last sentence suggests intrinsic motivation. Sometimes there may also be a business motivation (e.g., economics of the infotainment industry).
- apocalypstyx 5y ago
  The question might be whether intrinsic motivation is inescapable. "From the start of this book I have had occasion, in various contexts, to refer to the overwhelming elation felt by scientists at the moment of discovery, an elation of a kind which only a scientist can feel and which science alone can evoke in him. In the very first chapter I quoted the famous passage in which Kepler announced the discovery of his Third Law: ‘...nothing holds me; I will indulge my sacred fury...’1 The outbreak of such emotions in the course of discovery is well known, but they are not thought to affect the outcome of discovery. Science is regarded as objectively established in spite of its passionate origins. It should be clear by this time that I dissent from that belief; and I have now come to the point at which I want to deal explicitly with passions in science. I want to show that scientific passions are no mere psychological by-product, but have a logical function which contributes an indispensable element to science. They respond to an essential quality in a scientific statement and may accordingly be said to be right or wrong, depending on whether we acknowledge or deny the presence of that quality in it." --- Michael Polanyi --- Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, p140
- beloch 5y ago
  The thing about flat-earther youtube videos is that they aren't all designed to be seen by other flat-earthers. Some feature utterly idiotic arguments presented in a deliberately smug and arrogant manner designed to infuriate the viewer. People share things they like and agree with, but they also share things that piss them off and make them mad.
fuzzfactor 5y ago
>It may seem like there is more fringe thinking now because it is unfolding on your laptop screen, whereas previously it was easy to overlook the scribbled notebooks in your cousin’s neighbor’s basement that were thrown out when he passed away. Hey wait a minute, I still want to look at truly scientific notebooks before they get thrown out.

54 points by Petiver 5y ago

'History of science' sounds like the attempt to frame acceptable scientific discussion.

I read the whole thing and although there was a lot of interesting information there, I don't get what the author was trying to say (other than, "Hey look at all this information.") To me it seems clear that the word "science" and the outer trappings and forms of using the Scientific Method have become co-opted, largely in the last century or so, to cover a lot of things that just can't be considered "true science". This is not a "No True Scotsman" instance, because there is a clear and incontrovertible guideline for what (I think) counts as "true" science: the ability to make accurate predictions. That, and that alone, is what truly distinguishes science (as I am using the term here, in a restricted sense) from all the other what-could-be-called "predictive arts": e.g. astrology, tarot & divination, numerology, etc. Obviously, physics counts as "true" science. The standard model makes predictions accurate to within a mind-bending tolerance, the width of a human hair over the distance from New York to Los Angeles. Chemistry is science, biochemistry and molecular biology are still science. Biology and ecology are pretty scientific. From there, things get much worse pretty quickly. By the standard of "ability to make accurate predictions" there are a lot of things we call "science" today that I just don't think deserve the title, most importantly: economics, sociology, and psychology. They can't make predictions, and in many cases they can't even replicate their "findings" from previous "research"! I think those "sciences" serve a social function, the same one that the court astrologers et. al. used to serve, they give a glamour of legitimacy to the king and a way to deflect responsibility onto councilors of the imaginary, who supply ready-made scapegoats. I'm not saying "the humanities are not useful" or anything like that, what I'm saying is that people mix up the orders of knowledge (deliberately or otherwise) as part of politics, and that some things that we call "science" today, aren't. I mean, E=mc2 doesn't have to "defend itself" politically. Anyone anywhere can test it for themselves (that's the whole point, innit!?)

JPLeRouzic 5y ago
> Obviously, physics counts as "true" science. I am not a scientist, but I worked as a R&D engineer and it's my understanding that in a lot of physic fields there is a need for empiric corrections. It may be the case of semiconductors design if I recall correctly, but it happens also in other fields. Maybe GPS anomalies is a good example: https://web.stanford.edu/~gracegao/publications/conference/HengL_IONGNSS2010_GPS_SIS_Anomalies_paper_C6_v4.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/~gracegao/publications/conference/H... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity#Anomalies_and_discrepancies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity#Anomalies_and_discrepa...
morelisp 5y ago
A better definition of science, particularly in trying to separate proto-science or difficult science from non-science or pseudo-science, is in terms of open vs. closed systems. Sociology and psychology do make predictions, but do not have good accuracy and experiments are often prohibitively expensive or difficult to run[0]. Nonetheless, they seek to refine them based on new findings and new methods, and I think it's uncontroversial that psychology today has a body of knowledge it can make predictions about better than 50 years ago, at which point it had a body larger and more clearly defined than 100 years ago, etc.. This is not true of numerology, tarot, etc., as well as less controversial non-sciences like painting or rhetoric. It also helps tease out the scientific vs. non-scientific (without value judgement) parts of e.g. economics, and the scientific vs. non-scientific parts of physics. Focusing the definition on outcomes rather than methods repeats the same original sin of scientism you're criticizing. (Plus it means a particularly lucky coin could safely be 'science'.) [0] Also true of large areas of modern physics.
- carapace 5y ago
  > A better definition of science, particularly in trying to separate proto-science or difficult science from non-science or pseudo-science, is in terms of open vs. closed systems. Do you mean the "open-world" vs. "closed-world" assumptions? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_world_assumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_world_assumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-world_assumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-world_assumption > Sociology and psychology do make predictions... Like what? I don't mean to sound rude or combative, I really want to know what you're thinking of here. FWIW if economics, sociology and psychology were classified as "non-sciences like painting or rhetoric" I would retire my objections. I don't think the problem is that these are pre-scientific fields that will become more predictive, I think it is that they have been derailed from the (natural?) progression of scientific knowledge from descriptive to ordering to predictive (e.g. like alchemy becoming chemistry.)

hhs 5y ago

> “Likewise, fringe movements in the sciences have long been a part of American society, although, to be sure, there has been a decided uptick over the past few decades. Consider the Flat Earth theory. Despite what you may have heard, Christopher Columbus did not discover that Earth was round; this fact was known since antiquity. (Plato wrote about it.) The notion that Columbus, one of the few knowledgeable mariners who did not quite believe it was a sphere (he thought it was egg-shaped), “discovered” its shape was a creation of the writer Washington Irving, who sought to assign some scientific legitimacy to what was otherwise a colonialist land grab. [5] Yet in the past decade, Flat Earth theory has achieved a certain currency, fueled by YouTube videos and an appetite for contrarian thinking, hyperskepticism, and a yearning for community. [6]” That last sentence suggests intrinsic motivation. Sometimes there may also be a business motivation (e.g., economics of the infotainment industry).

apocalypstyx 5y ago
The question might be whether intrinsic motivation is inescapable. "From the start of this book I have had occasion, in various contexts, to refer to the overwhelming elation felt by scientists at the moment of discovery, an elation of a kind which only a scientist can feel and which science alone can evoke in him. In the very first chapter I quoted the famous passage in which Kepler announced the discovery of his Third Law: ‘...nothing holds me; I will indulge my sacred fury...’1 The outbreak of such emotions in the course of discovery is well known, but they are not thought to affect the outcome of discovery. Science is regarded as objectively established in spite of its passionate origins. It should be clear by this time that I dissent from that belief; and I have now come to the point at which I want to deal explicitly with passions in science. I want to show that scientific passions are no mere psychological by-product, but have a logical function which contributes an indispensable element to science. They respond to an essential quality in a scientific statement and may accordingly be said to be right or wrong, depending on whether we acknowledge or deny the presence of that quality in it." --- Michael Polanyi --- Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, p140
beloch 5y ago
The thing about flat-earther youtube videos is that they aren't all designed to be seen by other flat-earthers. Some feature utterly idiotic arguments presented in a deliberately smug and arrogant manner designed to infuriate the viewer. People share things they like and agree with, but they also share things that piss them off and make them mad.

fuzzfactor 5y ago

>It may seem like there is more fringe thinking now because it is unfolding on your laptop screen, whereas previously it was easy to overlook the scribbled notebooks in your cousin’s neighbor’s basement that were thrown out when he passed away. Hey wait a minute, I still want to look at truly scientific notebooks before they get thrown out.