Putting the final nail into modern science's coffin

Originally posted by iamusic

Originally posted by TrueBrit
Modern science is changing all the time. Things like a constant speed of light, the impossibility of faster than light travel, and various other examples you gave, including some of the outlying regions of relativity, are being dissected using ever more complicated and precise equipment, using ever newer information.

These theories you mention are used as bases for thinking in science because as of yet they provide the best fit that we can get AT THE MOMENT, and because people working in the effected fields, need a jumping off point which allows them to glimpse behind the curtain so to speak.

The thing that determines wether a theory hangs around, is wether or not it is still useful for something, and wether or not something has clearly and unquestionably, in the opinion of every respected thinker on the topic at hand, been surpassed by a better, more complete, more elegant theory.

With such high measures being applied to these theories, it is no wonder that the theories which you mention are hanging around, despite coming into question. But slow as changes may be, modern science is morphing, and new information is coming to light all the time.

What I do think is very unfortunate, is that very old, very inaccurate information is being taught in schools, in all sorts of subjects, from English, to science. In the ninties when I was in school, our textbooks were often quite old, and I happened to know that the curriculum itself, particularly in the sciences, was at least five years too old to be good information, certainly no bloody use to me when I was a teenager that I can tell you. Mind you, the high school curriculum was pretty pedestrian and tedious really, particularly in terms of science.

Nonsense high school crap, and old hat aside though, we are learning and improving our understanding as a speices all the time, but totally discarding some of the cleverest theories ever devised, takes significant improvements in understanding. We still look to Newton for some of the most useful applications of physics, and his ideas are centuries old!

A good idea remains good for as long as a better one does not exist.

Hmm. I was quite serious when I asked, am I missing something, in my last post.
You seem to have a view point of someone who works in the science field. So are you saying that some of these theories are flawed?

edit on 23-7-2013 by iamusic because: (no reason given)

If they weren't flawed and could be proved they wouldn't be theories would they...

It is still the "theory of relativity" and the "big bang theory" not the "relative big bang fact"... of course this being the interwebs I suppose I can just take care of this all by doing this... BIG BANG FACT... and so it shall be...

reply to post by SwissMarked


You should look up Scientific theory.
Just because something has the word theory in doesn't mean it isn't fact.

In science, a theory is not a guess, not a hunch. It's a well-substantiated, well-supported, well-documented explanation for our observations.

It ties together all the facts about something, providing an explanation that fits all the observations and can be used to make predictions. In science, theory is the ultimate goal, the explanation. It's as close to proven as anything in science can be.

Originally posted by SwissMarked


If they weren't flawed and could be proved they wouldn't be theories would they...

It is still the "theory of relativity" and the "big bang theory" not the "relative big bang fact"... of course this being the interwebs I suppose I can just take care of this all by doing this... BIG BANG FACT... and so it shall be...

Thats true, however it would be scary to know that publicly funded scientists are questioning well known concepts like gravity and magnetic fields.

In fact it wouldn't just be scary, it would be quite disappointing.

Thats not to say that the OP is a scientist or anything like that. I just saw TrueBrit's post and was curious as to what he/or she meant by this statement:

These theories you mention are used as bases for thinking in science because as of yet they provide the best fit that we can get AT THE MOMENT, and because people working in the effected fields, need a jumping off point which allows them to glimpse behind the curtain so to speak.

reply to post by iamusic


Theories change as more evidence is found. They evolve over the years, so that theory that fits nicely today, may not fit so nicely tomorrow, after CERN does a test, or after a new satellite is launched that finds something new.

I think that much of the problem here stems from a basic lack of understanding in terms of what science is.
Science isn't about finding an end-point. it would be naive to think that we can solve all of life's mysteries through science. That's simply not going to happen, nor is it what science seeks to do.

Science is a PROCESS. Even at its most basic (i.e. The Scientific Method) it's about following process. Expanding that same idea, it's about the learning process. Who are we? How do we fit in the world around us? What can we know about these things, and how do we find those things out?

This is precisely why science has taken us from c1400 "flat earth" theory to the view of the world that we have now... because that learning process has steadily enabled us to understand more about the world, more about the universe, more about the systems that we live in.

This isn't a flaw in the system; it's an inherent BENEFIT of the system. The day that we sit back and say to ourselves "I think I've learned all I can about the origins of the universe" is the day that we put the nail in our OWN coffin. So, struggling to come to terms with the Big Bang theory (in all its variants and theoretical evolution) doesn't mean that science is dead - it means that science is operating exactly as it should. ...and when that theory is finally proven to be inadequate in explaining the origins of the universe (as it will), science will move on to something else - growing gradually closer to the truth each time, expanding on what may be known through observation.


By way of a disclosure? I'm a literal, 6-day Creationist. I believe that the universe was created by God in six literal 24-hour periods, and that the Universe is somewhere between 6500 and 10,000 years old. I believe the flood (Noah's flood) was a literal event in which water covered the whole earth, and I believe that science can tell us a lot about that event. I believe that while mainstream science and creationists may disagree on how to interpret the evidence around us, that scientists on both sides of the intelligent design debate do so, in large part, honestly and sincerely... and I believe that God intended us to learn from the world around us, to examine, to probe, to use rational thought, rational processes, and scientific exploration in order to better understand all that He created.

...and quite frankly, as I said... the day we "put a nail into science's coffin" is the day that we close our eyes and our minds to the amazing world around us. This is one step in a process... not the end-game.

Originally posted by boymonkey74
reply to post by SwissMarked

 

You should look up Scientific theory.
Just because something has the word theory in doesn't mean it isn't fact.

In science, a theory is not a guess, not a hunch. It's a well-substantiated, well-supported, well-documented explanation for our observations.

It ties together all the facts about something, providing an explanation that fits all the observations and can be used to make predictions. In science, theory is the ultimate goal, the explanation. It's as close to proven as anything in science can be.

edit on 23-7-2013 by boymonkey74 because: (no reason given)

One man's "well substantiated, well supported, well documented, explanation for an observation" is another man's bag of b.s...

Say for the sake of argument I wanted to "prove" that cannabis and all of it's offshoots were harmful to the world as a whole and had a sack full of money to buy enough "renowned scientists" to say that there is no medicinal, agricultural, or industrial use for any of it how hard do you think it would be to produce "evidence" to support my desired outcome...

The scientific community is rife with outright frauds willing to say whatever you want them to be as long as there are enough zeros on their endowments... in turn they get tossed into "institutes of higher learning" and smear their crap all over "bright young minds" that then fertilize other idiots with their "facts"...

Plain and simple... we're not that far off from a world that can't feed itself because they're watering their plants with "Brawndo" because it's "got electrolytes" and "that's what plants crave"...

Thanks Scientists...

Originally posted by iamusic


Hmm. I was quite serious when I asked, am I missing something, in my last post.
You seem to have a view point of someone who works in the science field. So are you saying that some of these theories are flawed?

edit on 23-7-2013 by iamusic because: (no reason given)

First of all, for clarities sake, I am not a scientist, I never went to university. But I keep myself abreast of developments where possible. Certain elements of the student safety and the quality of education at both my primary and secondary schools, were... less than ideal, so despite deep interests in astrophysics and fair familiarity with the basics of other sciences, I have no qualifications in any of them, aside from GCSE's in science and psychology.

I do however, subscribe to a monthly science and technology publication, and read heavily on subjects that interest me in my spare time. I have learned more in my own time than I ever did in school. It is my own little rebellion against the efforts of my nations government to promote idiocy in the majority of young people at the time of my institutional education.

However, even bearing that in mind, I can tell you that new theories are being developed all the time, and with the discoveries being made by projects running out of the LHC at CERN, the very fabric of what we know, will be, is being re-written. It may not be that all the old theories we know of will completely die, some will be amended. The key thing to grasp about theory is what the word means, and how it differs from assumed fact.

Essentially all a theory is, is a working principle, assembled from observations that have been made, explanations of observed phenomena based on working knowledge. When that working knowledge changes, so does the theory, until such time as the theory becomes so amended that it is ridiculous to continue to use it. For an example, see the change in perception and understanding that came about when it was widely accepted that the Earth was an oblate sphereoid, rather than a flat disc, that the Earth orbits the Sun, and not the other way around. You will note that well before we understood WHY the Sun appeared to rise and set, and seasons came and went, we were still, as a species, able to farm land, plan crops, make calendars and the like. But after that time, we were able to make better informed guesses about the way the universe worked, even on the rudimentary basis of the time.

Many of the early astronomers made discoveries, and had thoughts, which are still key to the study of the stars today, because those theories were a) simple in thier elegance, and b) have been validated and made stronger, the more we have learned, and now, in this day and age, they are as real and basic to science, as air and breathing are to those who do not participate or hold an interest in that field.

Theories like relativity are not FLAWED if they happen to be proven incomplete, because a discovery made with an ultra modern, totally new piece of apperatus reveals something strange and outside the bounds of that theory. Einsteins E=mc2 came under threat relatively recently (did you see what I did there?) when a neutrino, tracked between two points, APPEARED to have traveled faster than light during an experiment, but as it turned out later, the apperatus was faulty.

That said, there are people working on theoretical propulsion methods which echo those used in the television show, Star Trek, utlising localised, controled gravity wells, to drag and push a craft along, between two bubbles of warped space, folding space time both toward and away from a vehicle, in order to sidestep Einstiens pesky theories.

Pluto is no longer a planet, and heres the kicker, the real evidence for the fact that science is truely changing its accepted models of the universe. Less than four decades ago, most people, despite the sci-fi, in the field of astrophysics were pretty adamant that there was no other life in the universe, because we had never seen signals from anywhere else, and because we knew of no other habitable planets.

With new teloscopy methodology however, and gravitational lensing techniques, space exploring space telescopes have seen vast numbers of potentially habitable planets, whose atmospheres appear (at this great distance) to be rich in various life relevant minerals. Also, we keep discovering increasingly hardy bacteria and even multicellular lifeforms which survive outrageous environments. We now know of a critter (called a Waterbear if I recall correctly) which can lay eggs which hatch in a cold vacuum, and it and its off spring will survive that environment for quite a time, much longer than you or I would, thats for sure.

There are even some microbes which REQUIRE uranium (I think thats the element they need) to live. Our understanding is expanding constantly, and never ceases to grow. Never doubt it, not even for a moment!

True knowledge and understanding comes from fundamentally understanding and in turn, truly knowing something.

Science is great, science is the best, science is all that matters.

Science does not fundamentally understand or know the nature of reality. So there is room for perspectives and theories and ideas on what the fundamental nature of reality may be.

"well science itself claims it doesnt know everything"... yea thats what this thread is about, discussing what science does not know, not how good it is at making iphones and toasters and changing its mind.



We are ignoring all the stuff science has done, to try and think about and discuss what science may not know, and potentially why. And those who have a problem with this, are only discussing what science does and has done, and ignoring its ignorance. which quite frankly is ignorant.

reply to post by TrueBrit


Quite honestly the best thing I've read on ATS today.
You seem so intelligent. This gives me hope and makes me smile. Quick question in relation to modern science.

Where do you see us as a society 40 years from now? Scientifically, that is.

reply to post by iamusic


Well with the advent of 3D printing in the medical field, and around the home, things are going to get interesting from many different angles. Organs and bones will be grown and printed to order, from the genetic material of the people who need them, reducing rejection concerns to nill in all but the rarest of cases (those involving people who have the Chimera gene for example).

Printing in three dimensions may also mean that future space vehicles and equipment are assembled in space, in gigantic print factories in orbit. Doing this will allow for larger craft, with greater capacity for human transportation, and the carriage of greater payloads to sites which are being examined in future missions. The discovery of the Higgs boson, will, if there is any justice to these things, be taken forward, and hopefully a measure of control of its mass imparting properties will be gained, meaning that we could develop some sort of Higgsian mass manipulation method, allowing a hundred tonne craft to move as if it had the mass of a tennis ball. That would be something I would be very interested to see.

In other areas, we may see the work of Aubrey De Grey change the face of age, aging, and dying. He is working on methods of expanding the human life span by exponentially greater units of time, by performing preventative assaults on the human physiology, for example, learning ways to lengthen the telomeres at either ends of human DNA strands, which would fend off death and aging effects for some time, if coupled with other regenerative therapies, the creation of which he is working on with many organistions.

However, the real changes that need to happen in order to allow the future to be a place we want to live in, are less scientific than they are political. At the moment, politics and money dictate every damned thing in the world, right to the point where although efficient electric motors for cars could be made tomorrow, batteries which wont run out till the sun goes dark already in existence, we will not SEE the fruits of the best labours, because they cannot be monetised, without being EXTREMELY costly to the consumer, to the end user.

Unless oil becomes less powerful as a business, the energy requirements of an advanced culture will not be met fairly and equally, so this is a first step, a transition to not just carbon free, but COST free power production, and smart useage. The technology, I believe, already exists, but as I say, as long as the power remains with the money, the oil will win, so fixing that, getting that changed is going to be vital. The future of science depends on the freedom of thought, and the freedom of thought depends on access to information, to learning. Given that the vast stores of mankinds knowledge are now digitised and readily available, I expect to see scientific endevour to become less centralised, more distributed, and more exotic over time.

Its an interesting period to be a human being in, thats for damned sure. We as a species are always, technically at the begining of a new era, the dawn of a new day for this thing, or that thing, but if things go well from here on for a while... the possibilities are wonderful, terrifying, potentially unifying, or might sunder us as surely as a sharp knife through a soft tissue. But what ever happens, it will definitely not be boring!

reply to post by phishyblankwaters


You do realize how incredibly weak your responses are, right? Well, probably not.

Listen, I think Tesla holds more weight than someone (you) that nobody's ever heard of.


Anyway, lots of great comments so far. I'm going to try my hardest not to get in the way, even though I'd love to answer the ignorant.

Here's one bit to chew on though. Take one end of a jump rope. Move it up and down slowly, like a wave. then do it faster. Does the wave go the same rate, or does it travel faster?

To paraphrase, its not what you don't know, its what you know for sure that is the problem.

reply to post by boymonkey74


You didn't even read the opening post, did you? You can read can't you?

I asked the OP to define an 'evolutionist' earlier, but, unsurprisingly, they failed to do so. So allow me the honour:

The term "evolutionist" is commonly used as an anti-science label by proponents of creationism and intelligent design. When used in this way it is an attempt to colour the argument and imply that evolution is just another belief system or worldview ("ism") as opposed to a scientific theory. This idea of acceptance of evolution being a worldview is quite common.

One can only assume that the creationist is saying, in effect: "Your beliefs are just as baseless as mine are, so you might as well believe what I believe." They rarely ever seem to understand that, by their very nature, scientific ideas cannot be beliefs.

We may accept evolution, but it would not be science if we believed evolution. The distinction is similar to the use of evidence in a court of law: the defendant's mother may believe her son couldn't have committed the crime, but no responsible court will disregard the weight of evidence in favour of someone's unsubstantiated belief about the case.

Paraphrased from rationalwiki.org


The reason I asked was simple. The OP immediately launched into an attack of cosmology, quantum mechanics and physics in general - yet not a mention of the biological sciences which would be responsible for evolutionary theories. I wonder why that was?

Based on your general views, I must therefore assume that science confuses you, essentially rendering your views on it utterly meaningless.

PS - I also assume you're using magic to access the internet, right?

reply to post by MarsIsRed



ev·o·lu·tion·ist

noun
1.
a person who believes in or supports a theory of evolution, especially in biology.
2.
a person who supports a policy of gradual growth or development rather than sudden change or expansion.
dictionary.reference.com...

Originally posted by CircleOfDust
reply to post by MarsIsRed

 

ev·o·lu·tion·ist

noun
1.
a person who believes in or supports a theory of evolution, especially in biology.
2.
a person who supports a policy of gradual growth or development rather than sudden change or expansion.
dictionary.reference.com...

So you do know [how to copy and paste]. Then why use 'evolutionist' when attacking physics?

Incidentally, you have another thread claiming all of history is wrong too.

Mind sharing what's actually 'right' then? (Bearing in mind this is a *science* forum).

reply to post by MarsIsRed


Can you not read either? Tesla has to do with electricity. The two posts I then quoted also has to do with electricity. Can no one read anymore? I'm here to help, but I'm not here to hold children's hands.

reply to post by CircleOfDust


Tesla also believed electricity could travel fasster than light, and that mass and energy were not equivalent. He's proven wrong on both accounts. Genius, yes. Right about this? No.

reply to post by OccamsRazor04


And who decided that he was wrong on both counts? you? Einstein? Nobody has arrived at his genius to stand in judgment. Electricity does travel faster than light, and mass and energy are not interchangeable. E=mc2, how can you just pick a big number like the speed of light arbitrarily?

Originally posted by CircleOfDust
reply to post by OccamsRazor04

 

And who decided that he was wrong on both counts? you? Einstein? Nobody has arrived at his genius to stand in judgment. Electricity does travel faster than light, and mass and energy are not interchangeable. E=mc2, how can you just pick a big number like the speed of light arbitrarily?

The fact that electricity can not travel faster than light and has never ever been shown to do so? You claim it does, show me the experiment proving it does. The fact we can experimentally prove the mass and energy equivalency.