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It seems as though asimov agrees with you in the last paragraph: >Naturally, the theories we now have might be considered wrong in the simplistic sense of my E

It seems as though asimov agrees with you in the last paragraph: >Naturally, the theories we now have might be considered wrong in the simplistic sense of my English Lit correspondent, but in a much truer and subtler sense, they need only be considered incomplete.

foldr 11y ago
That seems false as applied to most of my examples. If the Big Bang theory turns out to be true, then that doesn't mean that steady state theories were "incomplete", it just means that they were wrong. Similarly, if it turns out that eating lots of fat doesn't make you fat, that doesn't mean that previous dietary advice was merely "incomplete".
- Locke1689 11y ago
  It is incomplete in the sense that a theory can only be measured against others by its predictive power and simplicity. You're creating a metric of "success" that Asimov doesn't believe exists -- that a theory has an essential quality which is measurable in any way other than its predictive success.
  - foldr 11y ago
    Right, this is what I said in my first paragraph: science tends to be empirically conservative. As for metrics of success, we're talking about right or wrong here, not successful or unsuccessful. If the scientific consensus in 1900 was P, whereas the current scientific consensus is ¬P, then it's silly to pretend that the previous theory was merely "incomplete". Take plate tectonics as an example. Either the Earth's surface is split into moving plates or it isn't. As it turns out, this hypothesis is correct, and the scientists who denied it well into the 20th century were just flat our wrong.
    - Locke1689 11y ago
      As for metrics of success, we're talking about right or wrong here Right. My entire claim is that right and wrong do not exist, only successful or unsuccessful.
      - foldr 11y ago
        If it's only possible to deny that scientific theories are ever wrong by denying the very distinction between right and wrong, then I think that underlines my point. Freedom from being wrong at the price of never being right doesn't seem like a very good bargain. As to the question of whether pragmatist theories of truth are viable, that is a separate one, but I tend to think that the standard objections are quite decisive.
      - pdonis 11y ago
        > right and wrong do not exist I think you're going to have a very tough time defending this claim. You might have better luck, though, with a claim that ends up doing much the same work for the subject under discussion: right and wrong do exist, and every theory we humans have come up with so far is wrong by that purist standard. But some human theories are less wrong than others, and it's the "degree of wrongness" that matters, practically speaking.
    - pdonis 11y ago
      > we're talking about right or wrong here And you're treating "right" and "wrong" as absolutes, with no in between, which is exactly what Asimov was saying you shouldn't do. You could apply the same logic you're using for plate tectonics to the shape of the Earth, which is Asimov's main example. If the Earth is a sphere, then it's not flat. If it's an oblate spheroid, then it's not a sphere. If it's slightly pear-shaped, then it isn't an oblate spheroid. So every previous scientific theory about the Earth's shape was just wrong. The problem with this, as Asimov points out, is that just putting theories into the buckets "right" or "wrong" doesn't tell you how far off they are, predictively, which is what's important. The Earth is not flat--but it's almost flat. It curves about 8 inches per mile; 8 inches per mile is not zero, but it might be indistinguishable from zero if you don't have very good measuring instruments. (And similarly for the increasingly more accurate measurements that have given us more precise knowledge of the exact irregular shape of the Earth.) So treating the Earth is flat is wrong, but it's not very far wrong. It is, however, more wrong than treating the Earth as a sphere, since the error involved is smaller in the latter case. Similarly, the continents are not motionless, but they're almost motionless. So treating them as motionless is wrong, but it's not very far wrong. You have to have accurate measurements to distinguish the actual motion of the continents from no motion at all. And you have to have even more accurate measurements and more comprehensive data to know that the cause of the motion is that the continents are sitting on plates that are floating in magma. > the scientists who denied it well into the 20th century were just flat our wrong. They were wrong, but they were still a lot less wrong than, for example, the Flat Earth Society. Which is Asimov's point.
      - foldr 11y ago
        I’m not actually assuming that ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ are absolutes. I’m just pointing out that some widely accepted scientific theories have turned out to be very clearly at the ‘wrong’ end of the spectrum. If you don’t like the particular example of plate tectonics then just take one of the other examples that I mentioned. E.g., our conception of the structure of matter has undergone several radical changes in the course of scientific history. These changes were fairly conservative in empirical terms, but in terms of the various conceptions of matter that they put forward, they are in some cases radically different. Another example would be the question of whether the universe has a beginning in time. There really isn't any middle ground there. If it did, then the people who said that didn't were wrong, and if it didn't, then the people who said that it did were wrong. Of course you can always find a germ of truth in a theory if you try hard enough, just as you can find a germ of truth in the book of Genesis if you're determined to defend it. I don't see the point, though. Why bother constructing a false Whig history of scientific progress when the real history is impressive enough?
- coldtea 11y ago
  >That seems false as applied to most of my examples. If the Big Bang theory turns out to be true, then that doesn't mean that steady state theories were "incomplete", it just means that they were wrong. They still seem incomplete (and not "wrong" to me). They served their purpose and were good approximations for calculations we did and observations we had all those years. >Similarly, if it turns out that eating lots of fat doesn't make you fat, that doesn't mean that previous dietary advice was merely "incomplete". Only if "previous dietary advice" was only all about fat, and only if it consisted of just saying "fat makes you fat".
  - foldr 11y ago
    >They served their purpose and were good approximations for calculations we did and observations we had all those years. In other words they were empirically more-or-less correct. That's what I was talking about in my first paragraph. >Only if "previous dietary advice" was only all about fat, and only if it consisted of just saying "fat makes you fat". I don't see the point of picking over the details of the example. Take plate tectonics. The scientific consensus used to be that the Earth's crust was not formed of separate moving plates. The current scientific consensus is exactly the opposite. If you have a concept of wrong according to which it's possible for neither of P and ¬P to be wrong, then I'm not sure where we can go from there.
    - coldtea 11y ago
      >The scientific consensus used to be that the Earth's crust was not formed of separate moving plates. The current scientific consensus is exactly the opposite. If you have a concept of wrong according to which it's possible for neither of P and ¬P to be wrong, then I'm not sure where we can go from there. That's the whole point of Asimov's article - the relativity of wrong. The example he gives for this is not at all different from yours (earth being flat and earth being non-flat are also opposite propositions). So it's not like the "plate tectonics" examples changes anything in his argument. The argument is that P and ¬P can both be useful if the first could explain a phenomenon to the best degree available at a time, and the second to an even better degree available at a later time. In that sense P and ¬P are degrees of wrongness and truthness. His is the argument that "wrong" depends on utility, as there's usually no absolute match with the objective status universe (ding an sich), so we just have approximations with different degrees of wrongness.
- tzs 11y ago
  > If the Big Bang theory turns out to be true, then that doesn't mean that steady state theories were "incomplete", it just means that they were wrong. Steady state turned out to be wrong, but it was far less wrong than, say, the theory that the frost from Niflheim and the flames from Muspelheim met in Ginnungagap, melted the ice, and the drops formed Ymir the hermaphrodite giant whose sweat produced more giants, and who was nourished by the milk of Audhumbla the cow (who was also formed from the melting frost), whose licking of salt-licks in the ice uncovered Buri, the first of the Aesir, who had a son named Bor, who married Bestla the giant, who gave birth to their half-breed son Odin and his brothers Vili and Ve, who slew Ymir and constructed the world from his corpse. Asimov's key point was that right and wrong are not absolutes. There are degrees of rightness and wrongness.
  - foldr 11y ago
    The "steady state" part of those theories was just wrong. And in fact some religions got that part right (no doubt just through luck). I am not denying that there are degrees of rightness and wrongness, by the way. That isn't Asimov's key point; it's just a banal observation that anyone would agree with. His key point (which I somewhat disagree with) is that the history of science can be viewed as a steady progression from "less right" to "more right" theories. Of course there has been a great deal of scientific progress, but sometimes scientists do just get things wrong.

foldr 11y ago

That seems false as applied to most of my examples. If the Big Bang theory turns out to be true, then that doesn't mean that steady state theories were "incomplete", it just means that they were wrong. Similarly, if it turns out that eating lots of fat doesn't make you fat, that doesn't mean that previous dietary advice was merely "incomplete".

Locke1689 11y ago
It is incomplete in the sense that a theory can only be measured against others by its predictive power and simplicity. You're creating a metric of "success" that Asimov doesn't believe exists -- that a theory has an essential quality which is measurable in any way other than its predictive success.
- foldr 11y ago
  Right, this is what I said in my first paragraph: science tends to be empirically conservative. As for metrics of success, we're talking about right or wrong here, not successful or unsuccessful. If the scientific consensus in 1900 was P, whereas the current scientific consensus is ¬P, then it's silly to pretend that the previous theory was merely "incomplete". Take plate tectonics as an example. Either the Earth's surface is split into moving plates or it isn't. As it turns out, this hypothesis is correct, and the scientists who denied it well into the 20th century were just flat our wrong.
  - Locke1689 11y ago
    As for metrics of success, we're talking about right or wrong here Right. My entire claim is that right and wrong do not exist, only successful or unsuccessful.
    - foldr 11y ago
      If it's only possible to deny that scientific theories are ever wrong by denying the very distinction between right and wrong, then I think that underlines my point. Freedom from being wrong at the price of never being right doesn't seem like a very good bargain. As to the question of whether pragmatist theories of truth are viable, that is a separate one, but I tend to think that the standard objections are quite decisive.
    - pdonis 11y ago
      > right and wrong do not exist I think you're going to have a very tough time defending this claim. You might have better luck, though, with a claim that ends up doing much the same work for the subject under discussion: right and wrong do exist, and every theory we humans have come up with so far is wrong by that purist standard. But some human theories are less wrong than others, and it's the "degree of wrongness" that matters, practically speaking.
  - pdonis 11y ago
    > we're talking about right or wrong here And you're treating "right" and "wrong" as absolutes, with no in between, which is exactly what Asimov was saying you shouldn't do. You could apply the same logic you're using for plate tectonics to the shape of the Earth, which is Asimov's main example. If the Earth is a sphere, then it's not flat. If it's an oblate spheroid, then it's not a sphere. If it's slightly pear-shaped, then it isn't an oblate spheroid. So every previous scientific theory about the Earth's shape was just wrong. The problem with this, as Asimov points out, is that just putting theories into the buckets "right" or "wrong" doesn't tell you how far off they are, predictively, which is what's important. The Earth is not flat--but it's almost flat. It curves about 8 inches per mile; 8 inches per mile is not zero, but it might be indistinguishable from zero if you don't have very good measuring instruments. (And similarly for the increasingly more accurate measurements that have given us more precise knowledge of the exact irregular shape of the Earth.) So treating the Earth is flat is wrong, but it's not very far wrong. It is, however, more wrong than treating the Earth as a sphere, since the error involved is smaller in the latter case. Similarly, the continents are not motionless, but they're almost motionless. So treating them as motionless is wrong, but it's not very far wrong. You have to have accurate measurements to distinguish the actual motion of the continents from no motion at all. And you have to have even more accurate measurements and more comprehensive data to know that the cause of the motion is that the continents are sitting on plates that are floating in magma. > the scientists who denied it well into the 20th century were just flat our wrong. They were wrong, but they were still a lot less wrong than, for example, the Flat Earth Society. Which is Asimov's point.
    - foldr 11y ago
      I’m not actually assuming that ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ are absolutes. I’m just pointing out that some widely accepted scientific theories have turned out to be very clearly at the ‘wrong’ end of the spectrum. If you don’t like the particular example of plate tectonics then just take one of the other examples that I mentioned. E.g., our conception of the structure of matter has undergone several radical changes in the course of scientific history. These changes were fairly conservative in empirical terms, but in terms of the various conceptions of matter that they put forward, they are in some cases radically different. Another example would be the question of whether the universe has a beginning in time. There really isn't any middle ground there. If it did, then the people who said that didn't were wrong, and if it didn't, then the people who said that it did were wrong. Of course you can always find a germ of truth in a theory if you try hard enough, just as you can find a germ of truth in the book of Genesis if you're determined to defend it. I don't see the point, though. Why bother constructing a false Whig history of scientific progress when the real history is impressive enough?
coldtea 11y ago
>That seems false as applied to most of my examples. If the Big Bang theory turns out to be true, then that doesn't mean that steady state theories were "incomplete", it just means that they were wrong. They still seem incomplete (and not "wrong" to me). They served their purpose and were good approximations for calculations we did and observations we had all those years. >Similarly, if it turns out that eating lots of fat doesn't make you fat, that doesn't mean that previous dietary advice was merely "incomplete". Only if "previous dietary advice" was only all about fat, and only if it consisted of just saying "fat makes you fat".
- foldr 11y ago
  >They served their purpose and were good approximations for calculations we did and observations we had all those years. In other words they were empirically more-or-less correct. That's what I was talking about in my first paragraph. >Only if "previous dietary advice" was only all about fat, and only if it consisted of just saying "fat makes you fat". I don't see the point of picking over the details of the example. Take plate tectonics. The scientific consensus used to be that the Earth's crust was not formed of separate moving plates. The current scientific consensus is exactly the opposite. If you have a concept of wrong according to which it's possible for neither of P and ¬P to be wrong, then I'm not sure where we can go from there.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    >The scientific consensus used to be that the Earth's crust was not formed of separate moving plates. The current scientific consensus is exactly the opposite. If you have a concept of wrong according to which it's possible for neither of P and ¬P to be wrong, then I'm not sure where we can go from there. That's the whole point of Asimov's article - the relativity of wrong. The example he gives for this is not at all different from yours (earth being flat and earth being non-flat are also opposite propositions). So it's not like the "plate tectonics" examples changes anything in his argument. The argument is that P and ¬P can both be useful if the first could explain a phenomenon to the best degree available at a time, and the second to an even better degree available at a later time. In that sense P and ¬P are degrees of wrongness and truthness. His is the argument that "wrong" depends on utility, as there's usually no absolute match with the objective status universe (ding an sich), so we just have approximations with different degrees of wrongness.
tzs 11y ago
> If the Big Bang theory turns out to be true, then that doesn't mean that steady state theories were "incomplete", it just means that they were wrong. Steady state turned out to be wrong, but it was far less wrong than, say, the theory that the frost from Niflheim and the flames from Muspelheim met in Ginnungagap, melted the ice, and the drops formed Ymir the hermaphrodite giant whose sweat produced more giants, and who was nourished by the milk of Audhumbla the cow (who was also formed from the melting frost), whose licking of salt-licks in the ice uncovered Buri, the first of the Aesir, who had a son named Bor, who married Bestla the giant, who gave birth to their half-breed son Odin and his brothers Vili and Ve, who slew Ymir and constructed the world from his corpse. Asimov's key point was that right and wrong are not absolutes. There are degrees of rightness and wrongness.
- foldr 11y ago
  The "steady state" part of those theories was just wrong. And in fact some religions got that part right (no doubt just through luck). I am not denying that there are degrees of rightness and wrongness, by the way. That isn't Asimov's key point; it's just a banal observation that anyone would agree with. His key point (which I somewhat disagree with) is that the history of science can be viewed as a steady progression from "less right" to "more right" theories. Of course there has been a great deal of scientific progress, but sometimes scientists do just get things wrong.