Re: What's the Science of Dinosaurs?

["David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

(I went offlist with this thread because it looks pretty off-topic to me.
Well.)

> I observed:
> <Interesting that in a discussion including quantum theory, with
> its uncertainty principle, that 'science is about what can be
> observed and measured'.>
> to which you responded:
> <The uncertainty principle describes how much can and can't be
> measured. Fits perfectly.>
> Well, if the subject matter cannot be observed and measured (without
> changing it), quantum mechanics is not science.  The ideas are
> pretty weird.

Wait a minute and read some of the good pop-sci books on quantum physics. It
does say that the statement "this electron is here, and only here, and not
(also) half an attometer further to the left" is unscientific. But it
predicts observable -- and meanwhile often observed -- phenomena, such as
entanglement. A beryllium ion has been found to be in 2 places at the same
time, with opposite spins; the collapse of this state has been observed.

> You also observed:
> <IMHO positivists have one big disadvantage (if I understand
> correctly what positivism is in the first place): They care about
> what they can observe now, not what may or may not be observable
> in the future.>
> Sounds like the ultimate scientific principle is Wait for the
> Paper.

That's a hard way to put it, but not far off :-) . You can also write the
papers yourself...

> Taking a more detailed look at Positivism:
> The distinction between observational and theoretical terms depends
> on the verifiability principle. A statement is meaningful only
> if it is verifiable;

Falsifiable, I thought?

> but, in scientific theories, there are many
> statements which are not verifiable -- for example, assertions
> dealing with quantum particles or relativistic gravitational
> fields.

Much of that has been observed. Gravitational lensing is well known. You
know the Hubble photos of the Einstein Cross and all those Einstein Rings?
(The former is one star behind another; the one behind appears 4 times
around the one in front, the latter are galaxies which appear as distorted
arcs and/or rings around others that lie in front of them.)

> The problem with this, as observed in a quote used in a prior
> discussion with HP Holtz, is that we never get any closer to
> truth.  Science doesn't advance, it just elaborates its hypotheses.

In one sense, science does advance: it explains more and more observed
phenomena. In another sense, it probably does, but this cannot be tested,
because we can't compare it with the truth to see whether it really gets
closer or not.

> I'm beginning to think that the diagnostic character of the philosophy
> of science is turgidity.

AFAIK it's meanwhile found in all philosophy. Most terrible is
postmodernism.