5 ms·

Is Scientific Truth Always Beautiful?

34 points by gruseom 14y ago

lutusp 14y ago
Interesting article, very bad title. Science is not a search for truth, it's a search for testable, falsifiable theories that (a) resist falsification, but (b) are perpetually open to falsification by new evidence. Those who want truth should join a religion -- science is content to successfully test theories against reality.
- pfraze 14y ago
  I really appreciate your vocality about this, lutusp. It's important stuff, and you tell it well. http://arachnoid.com/ChildrenOfNarcissus/index.html http://arachnoid.com/ChildrenOfNarcissus/index.html is a great read.
  - lutusp 14y ago
    Thanks! On the general topic, here's a link to my most recent psychology article: http://arachnoid.com/trouble_with_psychology http://arachnoid.com/trouble_with_psychology
    - brockf 14y ago
      You should really talk to some cognitive scientists for some depth and perspective on the issues of studying the mind. There are real things to consider about the study of the mind, predisposition and plasticity, dynamic systems versus symbolic computation, etc., and you're comparing p-values between particle physics and studies with human subjects? Armchair theorizing about autism? Calling all of psychology (which spans more sub-fields than one might imagine) a psuedoscience? Disappointing, to say the least. p.s. The DSM is written by psychiatrists.
      - lutusp 14y ago
        > You should really talk to some cognitive scientists for some depth and perspective on the issues of studying the mind. Oh, really? Would that be those same cognitive scientists whose therapeutic methods has been shown to be indistinguishable from a placebo effect?: Link: http://www.brown.uk.com/depression/parker.pdf http://www.brown.uk.com/depression/parker.pdf (warning: PDF) Title: "Treating depression with the evidence-based psychotherapies: a critique of the evidence" Conclusion: No reliable evidence supporting CBT over any other method or no method. > There are real things to consider about the study of the mind ... First, from a scientific standpoint, the mind doesn't exist. Second, psychologists only describe, they don't try to explain. Third, theories require efforts to explain, and finally, science requires theories. No mind, no empirical observations, no efforts to explain, no theory, no science. Prove me wrong -- send me a picture of the mind, or its weight, or its morphology, or its location, or its distance from the brain. I will accept a photograph of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as a substitute. > ... and you're comparing p-values between particle physics and studies with human subjects? Your objection seems to be that it's unrealistic to compare p-values between psychology and real science. Well, I agree -- that was the point of my example. > Armchair theorizing about autism? All theorizing about autism is armchair theorizing, because no one has offered an explanation, only differing descriptions -- the plague of psychology. > The DSM is written by psychiatrists. Nonsense. They're involved, as are clinical psychologists and others. In any case, a psychiatrist is a psychologist with an M.D. degree. You're comparing oranges and oranges. > Calling all of psychology (which spans more sub-fields than one might imagine) a psuedoscience? It is a pseudoscience until it offers testable, falsifiable theories that define the field itself, something that's not close to happening. BTW this is not only my claim, it is that of many critics of the field over decades. Psychology, unlike legitimate scientific fields, has no theoretical core of testable claims that defines the field. This is a requirement for the status of a scientific field. Physics has the standard model. Biology has evolution and genetics. Geology has physics and plate tectonics. Psychology has a number of poorly articulated, untestable anecdotes. Medical researchers can and do control the activities of medical practitioners. The reason? A clear, tested theoretical core and solid scientific evidence. Psychological researchers cannot control the activities of psychological practitioners. The reason? No theoretical core and no scientific evidence. And until this changes, people like you need to stop claiming that psychology has a scientific basis -- it doesn't. The present state of clinical psychology puts the lie to that claim. Richard Feynman made this general claim long before I or others did: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science (discussion) http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html (article) Quote: "I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call cargo cult science. In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head to headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas--he's the controller--and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land." And, as proven by the Asperger's fiasco (the opportunistic introduction and hasty removal of Asperger's as a "disease" recognized by the DSM) among other things, nothing has changed.
- gruseom 14y ago
  I don't see how you can dismiss the notion of truth and then invoke falsification. What does "false" mean but "not true"?
  - aharrison 14y ago
    In science, there are really two states of being: "false", and "not false yet." Truth implies a definitiveness that science lacks. Unfortunately, this is a hotly debated topic. Many philosophers of science would argue that science is the search for truth, and an example of this might be logical positivism. My own personal take is that science is a method (and framework of thought) for making statistically accurate predictions about the world. Somewhat paradoxically then, "truth" becomes approximations of correct, rather than the traditional inviolable assertion.
    - lutusp 14y ago
      > Many philosophers of science would argue that science is the search for truth ... Yes, but because the stakes are so high, and because of the critical role of science in modern times, the views of philosophers aren't compelling on science's definition any more. As just one example, society needs to keep superstition out of science classrooms. To do this, and with the aid of expert witnesses, a court of law has recently defined science this way: Source: McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html) Summary -- science must have these properties: 1. It is guided by natural law; 2. It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law; 3. It is testable against the empirical world; 4. Its conclusions are tentative, i.e. are not necessarily the final word; and 5. It is falsifiable. The above is why Creationism isn't presented alongside evolution in Arkansas science classrooms. If you think that's important, then it follows that science should be defined clearly enough to avoid that outcome. BTW the above is only one of many nearly identical legal definitions of science. Based on the foregoing, a falsifiable idea is not a truth, it is merely an idea that has survived falsification so far. > My own personal take is that science is a method (and framework of thought) for making statistically accurate predictions about the world. There's a bit more to it than that. There is the responsibility to test one's ideas against reality, and abandon those ideas that fail the comparison. There is the responsibility to candidly consider alternative explanations for the same observation. There is the responsibility to design experiments sufficiently rigorous that independent, similarly equipped observers are drawn to the same conclusion. And many more. > Somewhat paradoxically then, "truth" becomes approximations of correct, rather than the traditional inviolable assertion. For philosophers arguing over tea, no problem. For those who understand the deadly serious role of science in modern times, no way.
CurtMonash 14y ago
A focus on "beauty" or "elegance" is, for starters, just an updating of Occam's Razor. The simplest theory that fits the facts is assumed best, and people pick different ways of expressing the notion of "simple". There's nothing wrong with that as a starting point. Problems can arise, however, when you take that further and make simplifying assumptions. Economics has been particularly prone to that problem; I believe the famous can opener joke dates to the 1960s. (http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/JokEc.html http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/JokEc.html gives the simplest :) form of the can-opener joke I know: A physicist, a chemist and an economist are stranded on an island, with nothing to eat. A can of soup washes ashore. The physicist says, "Lets smash the can open with a rock." The chemist says, "Lets build a fire and heat the can first." The economist says, "Lets assume that we have a can-opener...") By way of contrast, simplifying assumptions in physics have usually gone better. In particular, relaxing them has gone fairly smoothly ("Assume all the mass is concentrated at a point of zero diameter ... oops, I mean in a small sphere of finite diameter ...") On the other hand, one of the core critiques of string theory is based on the suspicion that a key simplifying assumption (only the early terms of certain Taylor series matter) is badly mistaken. And in climate science, predictions are necessarily based on simplified models; debate can then ensue as to whether or not the models are misleading.
- Osmium 14y ago
  > On the other hand, one of the core critiques of string theory is based on the suspicion that a key simplifying assumption (only the early terms of certain Taylor series matter) is badly mistaken. Do you have more info on this please? It sounds interesting.
  - CurtMonash 14y ago
    I got it from Lee Smolin's book, The Trouble With Physics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trouble_with_Physics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trouble_with_Physics
biggfoot 14y ago
I have one (insignificant?) beef with the article, in that it positions critics of a scientific discipline as those who decide the validity of the 'status quo' - this is right, that is wrong - which is a rather bleak picture of what their role is for. Criticism is as intrinsic to the development of a theory/experiment as is the effort of the scientist. In short, science critic != movie critic.
charonn0 14y ago
"Beauty", in science and mathematics, is not a quality of the object regarded so much as it is a pattern-recognition response in the one regarding it. Patterns which are predictable are naturally pleasing to us because our pattern-recognition abilities evolved to harness the patterns of nature for prediction of outcomes. Predicting and harnessing outcomes based on patterns may be the power that humans posses in strength over the other animals. It should not be the case that exploration of an outcome is excluded on the basis that it is not perceived as beautiful. However, that there are patterns among the laws of nature was one of the fundamental discoveries of our species and a guiding principle of modern science. Richard Feynman said[1]: "Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry." [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=j3mhkYbznBk#t=3233s http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...
- CurtMonash 14y ago
  Well, that gets us near aesthetic philosophy -- something is beautiful if most relevant people will or should find it beautiful. The distinction between "will" and "should" can of course cause issues, and in this case "relevant people" can be troublesome as well. But as a shorthand, "This is a beautiful theory" is a lot like "This is a theory that seems like it SHOULD -- or at least COULD -- be right".
dromidas 14y ago
Its definitely more often beautiful than historical truth or personal truth. Either way, you deserve to wear the uniform.

34 points by gruseom 14y ago

Interesting article, very bad title. Science is not a search for truth, it's a search for testable, falsifiable theories that (a) resist falsification, but (b) are perpetually open to falsification by new evidence. Those who want truth should join a religion -- science is content to successfully test theories against reality.

pfraze 14y ago
I really appreciate your vocality about this, lutusp. It's important stuff, and you tell it well. http://arachnoid.com/ChildrenOfNarcissus/index.html http://arachnoid.com/ChildrenOfNarcissus/index.html is a great read.
- lutusp 14y ago
  Thanks! On the general topic, here's a link to my most recent psychology article: http://arachnoid.com/trouble_with_psychology http://arachnoid.com/trouble_with_psychology
  - brockf 14y ago
    You should really talk to some cognitive scientists for some depth and perspective on the issues of studying the mind. There are real things to consider about the study of the mind, predisposition and plasticity, dynamic systems versus symbolic computation, etc., and you're comparing p-values between particle physics and studies with human subjects? Armchair theorizing about autism? Calling all of psychology (which spans more sub-fields than one might imagine) a psuedoscience? Disappointing, to say the least. p.s. The DSM is written by psychiatrists.
    - lutusp 14y ago
      > You should really talk to some cognitive scientists for some depth and perspective on the issues of studying the mind. Oh, really? Would that be those same cognitive scientists whose therapeutic methods has been shown to be indistinguishable from a placebo effect?: Link: http://www.brown.uk.com/depression/parker.pdf http://www.brown.uk.com/depression/parker.pdf (warning: PDF) Title: "Treating depression with the evidence-based psychotherapies: a critique of the evidence" Conclusion: No reliable evidence supporting CBT over any other method or no method. > There are real things to consider about the study of the mind ... First, from a scientific standpoint, the mind doesn't exist. Second, psychologists only describe, they don't try to explain. Third, theories require efforts to explain, and finally, science requires theories. No mind, no empirical observations, no efforts to explain, no theory, no science. Prove me wrong -- send me a picture of the mind, or its weight, or its morphology, or its location, or its distance from the brain. I will accept a photograph of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as a substitute. > ... and you're comparing p-values between particle physics and studies with human subjects? Your objection seems to be that it's unrealistic to compare p-values between psychology and real science. Well, I agree -- that was the point of my example. > Armchair theorizing about autism? All theorizing about autism is armchair theorizing, because no one has offered an explanation, only differing descriptions -- the plague of psychology. > The DSM is written by psychiatrists. Nonsense. They're involved, as are clinical psychologists and others. In any case, a psychiatrist is a psychologist with an M.D. degree. You're comparing oranges and oranges. > Calling all of psychology (which spans more sub-fields than one might imagine) a psuedoscience? It is a pseudoscience until it offers testable, falsifiable theories that define the field itself, something that's not close to happening. BTW this is not only my claim, it is that of many critics of the field over decades. Psychology, unlike legitimate scientific fields, has no theoretical core of testable claims that defines the field. This is a requirement for the status of a scientific field. Physics has the standard model. Biology has evolution and genetics. Geology has physics and plate tectonics. Psychology has a number of poorly articulated, untestable anecdotes. Medical researchers can and do control the activities of medical practitioners. The reason? A clear, tested theoretical core and solid scientific evidence. Psychological researchers cannot control the activities of psychological practitioners. The reason? No theoretical core and no scientific evidence. And until this changes, people like you need to stop claiming that psychology has a scientific basis -- it doesn't. The present state of clinical psychology puts the lie to that claim. Richard Feynman made this general claim long before I or others did: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science (discussion) http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html (article) Quote: "I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call cargo cult science. In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head to headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas--he's the controller--and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land." And, as proven by the Asperger's fiasco (the opportunistic introduction and hasty removal of Asperger's as a "disease" recognized by the DSM) among other things, nothing has changed.
gruseom 14y ago
I don't see how you can dismiss the notion of truth and then invoke falsification. What does "false" mean but "not true"?
- aharrison 14y ago
  In science, there are really two states of being: "false", and "not false yet." Truth implies a definitiveness that science lacks. Unfortunately, this is a hotly debated topic. Many philosophers of science would argue that science is the search for truth, and an example of this might be logical positivism. My own personal take is that science is a method (and framework of thought) for making statistically accurate predictions about the world. Somewhat paradoxically then, "truth" becomes approximations of correct, rather than the traditional inviolable assertion.
  - lutusp 14y ago
    > Many philosophers of science would argue that science is the search for truth ... Yes, but because the stakes are so high, and because of the critical role of science in modern times, the views of philosophers aren't compelling on science's definition any more. As just one example, society needs to keep superstition out of science classrooms. To do this, and with the aid of expert witnesses, a court of law has recently defined science this way: Source: McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html) Summary -- science must have these properties: 1. It is guided by natural law; 2. It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law; 3. It is testable against the empirical world; 4. Its conclusions are tentative, i.e. are not necessarily the final word; and 5. It is falsifiable. The above is why Creationism isn't presented alongside evolution in Arkansas science classrooms. If you think that's important, then it follows that science should be defined clearly enough to avoid that outcome. BTW the above is only one of many nearly identical legal definitions of science. Based on the foregoing, a falsifiable idea is not a truth, it is merely an idea that has survived falsification so far. > My own personal take is that science is a method (and framework of thought) for making statistically accurate predictions about the world. There's a bit more to it than that. There is the responsibility to test one's ideas against reality, and abandon those ideas that fail the comparison. There is the responsibility to candidly consider alternative explanations for the same observation. There is the responsibility to design experiments sufficiently rigorous that independent, similarly equipped observers are drawn to the same conclusion. And many more. > Somewhat paradoxically then, "truth" becomes approximations of correct, rather than the traditional inviolable assertion. For philosophers arguing over tea, no problem. For those who understand the deadly serious role of science in modern times, no way.

CurtMonash 14y ago

A focus on "beauty" or "elegance" is, for starters, just an updating of Occam's Razor. The simplest theory that fits the facts is assumed best, and people pick different ways of expressing the notion of "simple". There's nothing wrong with that as a starting point. Problems can arise, however, when you take that further and make simplifying assumptions. Economics has been particularly prone to that problem; I believe the famous can opener joke dates to the 1960s. (http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/JokEc.html http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/JokEc.html gives the simplest :) form of the can-opener joke I know: A physicist, a chemist and an economist are stranded on an island, with nothing to eat. A can of soup washes ashore. The physicist says, "Lets smash the can open with a rock." The chemist says, "Lets build a fire and heat the can first." The economist says, "Lets assume that we have a can-opener...") By way of contrast, simplifying assumptions in physics have usually gone better. In particular, relaxing them has gone fairly smoothly ("Assume all the mass is concentrated at a point of zero diameter ... oops, I mean in a small sphere of finite diameter ...") On the other hand, one of the core critiques of string theory is based on the suspicion that a key simplifying assumption (only the early terms of certain Taylor series matter) is badly mistaken. And in climate science, predictions are necessarily based on simplified models; debate can then ensue as to whether or not the models are misleading.

Osmium 14y ago
> On the other hand, one of the core critiques of string theory is based on the suspicion that a key simplifying assumption (only the early terms of certain Taylor series matter) is badly mistaken. Do you have more info on this please? It sounds interesting.
- CurtMonash 14y ago
  I got it from Lee Smolin's book, The Trouble With Physics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trouble_with_Physics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trouble_with_Physics

biggfoot 14y ago

I have one (insignificant?) beef with the article, in that it positions critics of a scientific discipline as those who decide the validity of the 'status quo' - this is right, that is wrong - which is a rather bleak picture of what their role is for. Criticism is as intrinsic to the development of a theory/experiment as is the effort of the scientist. In short, science critic != movie critic.

charonn0 14y ago

"Beauty", in science and mathematics, is not a quality of the object regarded so much as it is a pattern-recognition response in the one regarding it. Patterns which are predictable are naturally pleasing to us because our pattern-recognition abilities evolved to harness the patterns of nature for prediction of outcomes. Predicting and harnessing outcomes based on patterns may be the power that humans posses in strength over the other animals. It should not be the case that exploration of an outcome is excluded on the basis that it is not perceived as beautiful. However, that there are patterns among the laws of nature was one of the fundamental discoveries of our species and a guiding principle of modern science. Richard Feynman said[1]: "Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry." [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=j3mhkYbznBk#t=3233s http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...

CurtMonash 14y ago
Well, that gets us near aesthetic philosophy -- something is beautiful if most relevant people will or should find it beautiful. The distinction between "will" and "should" can of course cause issues, and in this case "relevant people" can be troublesome as well. But as a shorthand, "This is a beautiful theory" is a lot like "This is a theory that seems like it SHOULD -- or at least COULD -- be right".

dromidas 14y ago

Its definitely more often beautiful than historical truth or personal truth. Either way, you deserve to wear the uniform.