4 ms·

This guarantees nothing. It guarantees a whole lot of things. When necessary, you bet your life on these mere 'models'. These 'models' cause you to trust stepp

This guarantees nothing. It guarantees a whole lot of things. When necessary, you bet your life on these mere 'models'. These 'models' cause you to trust stepping into an airplane and stepping out of the trajectory of a falling rock. We know very little. We know a lot about these models. We investigate where they hold and where they don't. We don't just know they are valid on planet Earth for a short period of time: we investigate whether they also hold elsewhere and held in the past and have every reason to believe they did and do. To move on to some philosophical background behind your assertion: the idea that there is some 'real', 'objective', 'true' reality that is modeled by these models, is a pre-Kantian point of view. A post-Kantian point of view is that these models of how the universe works are our reality. They are the only thing we can possibly have knowledge of: the models we use to categorize and structure our observations. Most of them only exist in our brains. They got there by nature and nurture, without us usually spelling them out. They govern our daily behavior. We've tried to formalize the more complex ones in language that is independent of individual humans. Sometimes observations are not consistent with a model, so we revise the model. Still we only know the new version of the model, which describes what we expect to observe.

raverbashing 14y ago
Of course, I don't mean 'guarantees nothing' in the sense of "planes won't fly" or things like this. These are the results that are verified. The math What we don't know about is if our model (and not the math or the results) has anything to do with "reality" (and that may not even be possible) Take the particle/wave duality for example. We're talking about an electron being 'a particle' but sometimes 'a wave'. Of course, we can predict things about the behaviour of this electron, but the story behind it, of particles, waves, may not be accurate, and this may be replaced by something that completely does away with electrons (difficult to imagine since electrons have mass) but comes with similar predictions.
- akiselev 14y ago
  For all we know, we may never "describe" reality with mathematics, but it's purpose is nevertheless to estimate and predict to a certain degree of precision an event within its boundary conditions. In this sense, science and mathematics are not one and the same. The scientific method is designed to push these mathematical models past their limits so that we may get closer to discovering what this "reality" really is. These models are how we know when something doesn't fit with our scientific understanding, it is nothing more than a feedback loop. Edit: hnhg: You're right, rephrased properly :)
  - hnhg 14y ago
    I think the parent is making the same point as you are.
flyinRyan 14y ago
>A post-Kantian point of view is that these models of how the universe works are our reality. Personally, I hate this view. There are actual facts, how things work, and there are our best educated guesses about what we're observing. One of these things is what I would call a scientific fact, the other is our best educated guess (and I don't mean that as negative as it sounds; we can do no better and may never be able to). I'm fine with saying "this is the best we can do so we have to go with it". I'm not fine with saying "this is the best we can do so this is simply the fact itself" as this leads to ridiculous situations like saying "X is a fact" when in reality there are more questions than answers about X.

raverbashing 14y ago

Of course, I don't mean 'guarantees nothing' in the sense of "planes won't fly" or things like this. These are the results that are verified. The math What we don't know about is if our model (and not the math or the results) has anything to do with "reality" (and that may not even be possible) Take the particle/wave duality for example. We're talking about an electron being 'a particle' but sometimes 'a wave'. Of course, we can predict things about the behaviour of this electron, but the story behind it, of particles, waves, may not be accurate, and this may be replaced by something that completely does away with electrons (difficult to imagine since electrons have mass) but comes with similar predictions.

akiselev 14y ago
For all we know, we may never "describe" reality with mathematics, but it's purpose is nevertheless to estimate and predict to a certain degree of precision an event within its boundary conditions. In this sense, science and mathematics are not one and the same. The scientific method is designed to push these mathematical models past their limits so that we may get closer to discovering what this "reality" really is. These models are how we know when something doesn't fit with our scientific understanding, it is nothing more than a feedback loop. Edit: hnhg: You're right, rephrased properly :)
- hnhg 14y ago
  I think the parent is making the same point as you are.

flyinRyan 14y ago

>A post-Kantian point of view is that these models of how the universe works are our reality. Personally, I hate this view. There are actual facts, how things work, and there are our best educated guesses about what we're observing. One of these things is what I would call a scientific fact, the other is our best educated guess (and I don't mean that as negative as it sounds; we can do no better and may never be able to). I'm fine with saying "this is the best we can do so we have to go with it". I'm not fine with saying "this is the best we can do so this is simply the fact itself" as this leads to ridiculous situations like saying "X is a fact" when in reality there are more questions than answers about X.