My Philosophy Teacher: A Probabilistic Study of Science

[mechanics_boy]

In class, she said "there's no way of definitively knowing if the universal law of gravity will remain valid in 10 000 years. Science is therefore dependant on the probabilistic nature of its findings by assuming them to be definite."

What do you think of her statement?

This is my first philosophy course and I don't know if i'll be able to tolerate her. I know for a fact she is biased and heavily favours non-science students.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Science is all about model forming. We observe phenomenon, come up with hypotheses to explain said phenomenon and then test these hypotheses. Using the data from these tests we come up with predictive models that are testable, explanatory and can be used to manipulate the world around us in desirable ways. When we encounter new phenomena we look at them using our models, it may be that the new phenomena confirm the model or it could be that they show the model to be incomplete.

Empiricism is a practical philosophy. If we observe that water boils at 100C many times in a row we can safely assume that it will boil at the same temperature again. If it does not it might suggest that there is something we are missing, some variable that has not been taken into account. So science does not assume things to be definite at all, every discovery and every conclusion in science is tentative and open for revision in the event that new data comes to light.

 

[Pythagorean]

your teacher is right, but the question to his answer is "so what?"

 

[Pythagorean]

also, my neurochem teacher just assigned this to us:

http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269/

which is much more depressing than what your philosophy teacher said. You should 1up him with this article.

 

[SMOF]

So science does not assume things to be definite at all, every discovery and every conclusion in science is tentative and open for revision in the event that new data comes to light.

And, if you ask me, this is one of the great thibgs about science. Scientists are willing (generally) to revise what they know ...to say "Ok, I know a bit more information now, so that means what I thought was right before has changed a bit".

I wonder would your philosophy teacher be so open to change?

Seán

 

[Pythagorean]

Lots of young science majors do tend to equate science to truth

 

[Ryan_m_b]

And, if you ask me, this is one of the great thibgs about science. Scientists are willing (generally) to revise what they know ...to say "Ok, I know a bit more information now, so that means what I thought was right before has changed a bit".

Definitely. Every statement in science comes with the (often) unspoken caveat "To the best of our current knowledge."

 

[chiro]

Lots of young science majors do tend to equate science to truth

In some ways I don't blame them: we have all these formulas, all this technology, are able to predict a tonne of stuff and all of this is forced down their throats: i.e. all the stuff that we already know so from that point of view it doesn't surprise me.

Also most of the introductory years is about the basics that are well established which correlate to all the rules and associated material described above, whereas talking about what is unknown is usually put off to the side.

The fact that it takes so long nowadays to say "here is what we know" is probably IMO, one reason why most students realize what "we don't really know" which is what you are talking about.

 

[Pythagorean]

depends on the discipline, I think. My neuro teachers are always telling us we'll be writing the new textbooks.

 

[chiro]

depends on the discipline, I think. My neuro teachers are always telling us we'll be writing the new textbooks.

Thats definitely true, but I the way I see science going now, people in 50 or 100 years are going to have to start early and do more before they get to the research stage.

Even though I continually see knowledge being refined down to a point where it reaches minimal size for minimal digestion and maximal understanding, the context for all of this still won't diminish: it will just get deeper.

Having said the above though, it is amazing what we are capable of and how young people pick up things a lot quicker than the older folk.

Also I am wondering what the next developments in communication, language (including mathematics) and education will be in that period: we could well have technologies where people download information complete with all the surrounding context directly. Now that would be amazing!

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Thats definitely true, but I the way I see science going now, people in 50 or 100 years are going to have to start early and do more before they get to the research stage.

Even though I continually see knowledge being refined down to a point where it reaches minimal size for minimal digestion and maximal understanding, the context for all of this still won't diminish: it will just get deeper.

True but I think this will be compensated by an emphasis on specialisation which we are already seeing today. I did biology as a BSc and I did a totally different degree to some of my friends who took the same course. Every year (almost every term really) presented more and more modules to choose from in a variety of topics.

My Masters was interesting in that a philosophy of many of the teachers was that this specialised attribute had great potential so long as interdisciplinary research was promoted. A labs worth of scientists with different (but overlapping to some extent) backgrounds can produce far more innovative research than people cut from the same cloth.

we could well have technologies where people download information complete with all the surrounding context directly. Now that would be amazing!

As much as I would love that I imagine it would turn me into a bitter old man constantly complaining at students that "Back in my day we had to sit in the library until our eyes bled! You kids don't know how good you've got it"

 

[DaveC426913]

Concurrence with all responses, but especially Ryan's.

One of the key things hopefully you will learn from taking philosophy class alongside your sciences is that, no matter how sure we are of all our physics all our observations are predicated on the assumption of "as we currently understand it".

While we have every reason to be confident that gravity will not change in the next 10,000 years, that is not the same thing as saying "it cannot change".

Philosophy is a discipline that helps temper our arrogance that we think we know how the world is going to work.
An example of a practical way this is applied is in the Principle of Mediocrity. We base our cosmological models of the universe on the assumption that the rest of the universe is pretty much the same as here. If this is true, we can build models; if it is not true, we cannot.

Your philosophy course will hopefully keep these kinds of assumptions in the fore-front of your mind.

 

[wuliheron]

In class, she said "there's no way of definitively knowing if the universal law of gravity will remain valid in 10 000 years. Science is therefore dependant on the probabilistic nature of its findings by assuming them to be definite."

What do you think of her statement?

This is my first philosophy course and I don't know if i'll be able to tolerate her. I know for a fact she is biased and heavily favours non-science students.

Probability is just another metaphysical assumption that science can discard at will. The only thing science is dependent upon is what is useful at the time for cataloging and organizing data.

 

[Moonbear]

I think her statement is illogical and skips over unstated assumptions. The first half of the statement is an accurate and factual premise. The second sentence is a conclusion that does not follow from the premise and illustrates a lack of understanding of what science is. Somewhere between sentence 1 and sentence 2, she made the assumption that science requires assuming all theories are definite, which is exactly the opposite of what science assumes. For her to make such an illogical jump from statement 1 to statement 2 shows that she is not only ignorant of science, but also ignorant of how to construct a philosophical argument. You might really blow her mind by asking if she would make the same argument if philosophy were substituted for science in her statements and then pointing out that science is a branch of philosophy dealing with the physical world.

 

[Kholdstare]

I agree with Moonbear.

Science is the way of telling what is more likely or less likely to happen (to be true).

 

[wuliheron]

I agree with Moonbear.

Science is the way of telling what is more likely or less likely to happen (to be true).

The assertion itself is an absolute one and, therefore, by its own standards not a scientific one! Contextualists would even argue its so much vague and contradictory mumbo jumbo along the lines of insisting you can have an "up" without a "down". Compelling sounding word salad along the lines of "The Jabberwocky" that we could swear says something meaningful only because it implies contexts we are familiar with.

 

[Dembadon]

your teacher is right, but the question to his answer is "so what?"

That's exactly what I thought when I read it. I would've raised my hand and asked, "What am I supposed to infer from from that?"

 

[epenguin]

In class, she said "there's no way of definitively knowing if the universal law of gravity will remain valid in 10 000 years. Science is therefore dependant on the probabilistic nature of its findings by assuming them to be definite."

What do you think of her statement?

This is my first philosophy course and I don't know if i'll be able to tolerate her. I know for a fact she is biased and heavily favours non-science students.

This is the old question of induction. As far as I know almost no philosopher has thought it can be proved as a generality (I believe John Stuart Mill was an exception, not taken seriously by anyone). Yet we all use it.

Bertrand Russell somewhere mentions that turkeys assume by induction the farmer is a nice man there for their welfare.

I guess the answer is that we do have a bit more relevant insight into the nature of things than do turkeys, from wider knowledge we can understand that their assumption will break down at some point.

I think there is a host of phenomena the astronomers geologists etc. can tell us that makes sense on the basis that the present law has held for a long time back. Some of them are so constraining they could be regarded as tests that the law was true. We use the law to make models to explain how galaxies evolved etc. Now it will always be true that not everything is explained in this way, not everything has neatly fallen into place. So we have to try some other explanation. But what do we choose to modify? - the supposedly general law or some other feature of our modelling? As a rule we will modify the other feature. We hold on to what has been considered the general law, because otherwise it is too easy. If we can modify our general laws we will find we can rather readily explain everything and anything. Which does not really help us progress. We need the constraints and assistance of the general law even if it leaves us with an apparent mess of for the time being unexplained things. Only if we are really really forced by either an experiment/observation that is somehow focussed on the law so as to constitute an undeniable test of it with no other explanation of a failure to explain than the failure of the law are we prepared to doubt it, and even then it is only when we have a convincingly better one (then we'd have to talk about the criteria of 'better') do we abandon it. This is the conservative aspect of Science (of which Kuhn speaks and considers essential even though it has to shatter sometimes).

In other words we have to combine conservatism with flexibility, but the gravitation law stands high in the hierarchy of things we try to conserve.

We apply the same logic to other things than physics or science. We commonly recognise that certain things have 'always' proceeded in a certain way, but at certain junctures we recognise that circumstances have changed and the old rules failed, hopefully we have a wider vision of why.

 

[Astronuc]

In class, she said "there's no way of definitively knowing if the universal law of gravity will remain valid in 10 000 years. Science is therefore dependant on the probabilistic nature of its findings by assuming them to be definite."

What do you think of her statement?

This is my first philosophy course and I don't know if i'll be able to tolerate her. I know for a fact she is biased and heavily favours non-science students.

That's clearly an exaggeration. Did one ask for the proof of such a statement?

 

[mechanics_boy]

That's clearly an exaggeration. Did one ask for the proof of such a statement?

I didn't ask, I simply listened. It would have had little effect if i had decided to argue with her. She has a reputation of being biased and harsh on students who dare defy her ways of reasoning. She makes it mandatory to read her book (written by her). It is full of examples such as gravity not being necessarily valid in 10 000 years, etc.

 

[Containment]

You know for a fact she is biased and heavily favors non-science students? How did you come to that conclusion? Don't you think that by being so negative about the course you might be setting yourself up for failure? Imo just try to enjoy the class for what it is instead of trying to find reasons you don't like it.

 

[ThomasT]

Concurrence with all responses, but especially Ryan's.

One of the key things hopefully you will learn from taking philosophy class alongside your sciences is that, no matter how sure we are of all our physics all our observations are predicated on the assumption of "as we currently understand it".

While we have every reason to be confident that gravity will not change in the next 10,000 years, that is not the same thing as saying "it cannot change".

Philosophy is a discipline that helps temper our arrogance that we think we know how the world is going to work.

An example of a practical way this is applied is in the Principle of Mediocrity. We base our cosmological models of the universe on the assumption that the rest of the universe is pretty much the same as here. If this is true, we can build models; if it is not true, we cannot.

Your philosophy course will hopefully keep these kinds of assumptions in the fore-front of your mind.

As you note, many good replies, but I especially like yours. Imo, any arrogance on our part wrt the way our universe is or will be (especially 10,000 years hence) is misplaced. Science is our best tool, but its application is still quite young and limited. As is our existence and comprehension of our universe, and the underlying, fundamental reality(ies).

 

[ThomasT]

In class, she said "there's no way of definitively knowing if the universal law of gravity will remain valid in 10 000 years. Science is therefore dependant on the probabilistic nature of its findings by assuming them to be definite."

What do you think of her statement?

This is my first philosophy course and I don't know if i'll be able to tolerate her. I know for a fact she is biased and heavily favours non-science students.

The first part of her statement is obviously correct. However, one doesn't need to assume that probabilistic results are definite. Experimental results are definite. And they, in general, agree with the probabilistic predictions.

So, if you parse what's she's saying, then it's not so outlandish that you would need to speak in terms of tolerating her ... imho, even though her logic might be somewhat flawed.

But then, I'm not taking her class ... so keep us informed, and if she makes any statements that you think are intolerable, then you might vet them here.

 

[AlephZero]

You might like to reminder her that philosophers have been discussing the same problems for about 2500 years without much sign of progress in resolving them. To quote A N Whitehead, "the history of western philosophy is nothing but a series of footnotes to Plato".

On the other hand, science has made just a little bit of progress in the same timescale.

 

[zoobyshoe]

..."there's no way of definitively knowing..."

You have this in quotes. Did she actually say "definitively knowing" or did she say "definitely knowing"? If it was the former, someone will have to explain to me what it means to "definitively know" something. I can't figure out what that might mean.

 

[DaveC426913]

You might like to reminder her that philosophers have been discussing the same problems for about 2500 years without much sign of progress in resolving them.

What makes you conclude they have not made much progress? What yardstick do you use?

 

[ThomasT]

You have this in quotes. Did she actually say "definitively knowing" or did she say "definitely knowing"? If it was the former, someone will have to explain what it means to me to "definitively know" something. I can't figure out what that might mean.

I think that "definitively" knowing something means essentially the same thing as "definitely" knowing something. But I could be wrong about that, not being an expert wrt the English language, or anything else for that matter.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I think that "definitively" knowing something means essentially the same thing as "definitely" knowing something. But I could be wrong about that, not being an expert wrt the English language, or anything else for that matter.

No, they can't be synonymous.

My first thought was that the teacher simply misspoke, but then it occurred to me that "definitive knowledge" might be some philosophy concept I'm not familiar with.

 

[DaveC426913]

It means she thinks she may be (or actually is) God.

In knowing a thing, she defines it to be so.

 

[ThomasT]

No, they can't be synonymous.

Why not? At least in some sense.

 

[ThomasT]

My first thought was that the teacher simply misspoke, but then it occurred to me that "definitive knowledge" might be some philosophy concept I'm not familiar with.

I don't think she misspoke.

... there's no way of definitively knowing if the universal law of gravity will remain valid in 10 000 years.

I agree with this statement. There's no way of definitively knowing anything about our universe 10,000 years hence.

Which, imo, is the same as saying that there's no way of definitely knowing anything about our universe 10,000 years hence.

But then she also said:

Science is therefore dependent on the probabilistic nature of its findings by assuming them to be definite.

Which doesn't make any sense to me.

 

[Chi Meson]

While philosophy is inherently dependent on the multiple-syllabic nature of its obfuscatory constructs to create an illusory adherence to quintessential truth.

What your teacher said was, in essence, " But that's just a theory!"

Bring in a laser. The laser works. Just look to see how much of science had to be correct in order for that laser to work. That's enough for me.

 

[lisab]

While philosophy is inherently dependent on the multiple-syllabic nature of its obfuscatory constructs to create an illusory adherence to quintessential truth.

What your teacher said was, in essence, " But that's just a theory!"

Nice.

 

[DaveC426913]

While philosophy is inherently dependent on the multiple-syllabic nature of its obfuscatory constructs to create an illusory adherence to quintessential truth.

What your teacher said was, in essence, " But that's just a theory!"

Bring in a laser. The laser works. Just look to see how much of science had to be correct in order for that laser to work. That's enough for me.

I think you are being too hard on the teacher. This is not just some dude or dudette slagging science. We've here have all seen a lot of this, and it's easy to jerk our knee every time we hear something that sounds like "it's just a theory" - even if that's not what they're saying.

I see what she is doing as putting science in the bigger picture. That's the obligation of philosophy.

In his education, the OP should learn science's limits, else he may well go through life with a religious conviction in its predictions.

The Scientific Method is sound, but its predictions have a non-zero probability of being wrong.

Science needs to be tempered with wisdom.

 

[ThomasT]

While philosophy is inherently dependent on the multiple-syllabic nature of its obfuscatory constructs to create an illusory adherence to quintessential truth.

What your teacher said was, in essence, " But that's just a theory!"

Bring in a laser. The laser works. Just look to see how much of science had to be correct in order for that laser to work. That's enough for me.

Good point. A theory works. New data. The theory changes. And so on.

Saying that an accurate quantitative account of a physical process is "just a theory" is somewhat correct, but at the same time seemingly not giving due credit to the fact that that theory is an accurate (wrt a certain quantitative limit) account of the physical process.