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Member Posts: 3945 From: Duluth, Minnesota, U.S. (West end of Lake Superior) Joined: Member Rating: 10.0 |
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Author | Topic: Theory Evolution (not "Theory of Evolution") | |||||||||||||||||||||||
JustinC Member (Idle past 4874 days) Posts: 624 From: Pittsburgh, PA, USA Joined: |
quote:I think fundie's would love Kuhn's essay, since it is basically an attack on traditional views of science by an anti-realist constructivist.
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JustinC Member (Idle past 4874 days) Posts: 624 From: Pittsburgh, PA, USA Joined: |
I mean, it does lay out a useful framework for which to interpret scientific development, ie, paradigms, normal science, anomolies, etc. Kuhn is a great historian so his book is very informative with regard this.
The problem comes when he starts talking about science as a non-progressive enterprise and asserts that different paradigms are incommensurable. His main point is that paradigm shifts aren't progressive, they just lay out different rules and give us different models for which to interpret the world; science is progressive within a paradigm but outside of it. He even goes on to say that paradigms change how our perceptions, so different scientists actually view different worlds. According to him, Copernican astronomy is no more 'real' than Ptolemaic; they are just different models which both have there limits of applicability. He would say the same with the transition from Newtonian dynamics to GR. I think his main problem is that he denies Popperian science, i.e, that falsifiability is the central attribute of scientific theories. He states that no paradigm ever explains all the observable data, so we would have to have degrees of falseness. of course, he's pretty vague about how communities choose between competing paradigms. He denies falsifibility because it will be in degress. He denies verificationism for the same reason. He states we would should directly compare the paradigms, but I don't even know what that means outside of some falsification or verification criteria. I'm rambling now, but I think there is some very controversial claims in the essay that creationists or anti-science folks would greatly enjoy.
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JustinC Member (Idle past 4874 days) Posts: 624 From: Pittsburgh, PA, USA Joined: |
quote:It kind of depends on what you mean by "view the world differently." Kuhn claims we "view a different world" and scientists "work in a different world." This is a little different than viewing the world differently. He saw paradigms as changing our perceptions (he destinguished between stimuli, perceptions, and interpretations). quote:It's not that we know we are close to right; it's that we know (according to some)we are getting closer to the right answer, though it may practically never be possible to be absolutely right. We approach it assymptotically. This is what Kuhn denies; he denies inductive logic. I'm not saying he's wrong, I'm just stating his position. According to Kuhn, we will never get closer to the "right" answer. GR is no closer to reality than Newtonian dynamics.
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JustinC Member (Idle past 4874 days) Posts: 624 From: Pittsburgh, PA, USA Joined: |
quote:Because some, like myself, view the change from Newtonian dynamics to Special Relativity to GR as progressive. Each incorperated the former into the new paradigm, so I don't see how they are incommensurable. Also, it seems that we cannot say theories are ever false with his view. They are simply incommensurable with modern theories. I think we are actually removing the chaff, not just switching our rules for which to interpret the world.
quote:Keep in mind these are my opinions. I'm not trying to state that it is an objective problem; i understand others disagree. So, as a critic of falsificationism, are you a verificationist? How do we distinguish scientific theories from crack pot theories? Why is an explanation that can handle all observations (explain everything and anything)not science? How do we choose between competing paradigms? I'm not trying to berate you or anything, these are serious questions and the answers aren't very clear to me.
quote:I understand he was not anti-science and what he was trying to do with his work. But, he was a science antirealist. So, if his view is assumed by fundies, they can claim whatever they want about the world and science can say nothing to contradict them. After all, science just sets up explanatory frameworks whose truthfulness is impossible to know (according to Kuhn). Science is no more true than whatever it is they are doing (pseudoscience?). quote:Creationism is largely a reaction by fundamentalist Christians to the views that science is teaching. If it is realized that scientific theories aren't true or closer to being true than any other explanatory framework, they should have nothing to worry about. This message has been edited by JustinC, 12-08-2005 03:24 PM
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JustinC Member (Idle past 4874 days) Posts: 624 From: Pittsburgh, PA, USA Joined: |
quote:Kuhn would disagree. Progress only occurs when a paradigm gets more and more articulated. SR was a new way to interpret the observations, with whole new conceptions of time and space. Thus it was paradigm shift. String theory would have to reduce to GR, so I think you would view it as progressive. I agree with you that it was progressive, but Kuhn wouldn't (atleast 1969 Kuhn).
quote:I think the problem is that the term is ridiculously vague. What is it again? I think Kuhn described it as the beliefs, values, instruments, etc. of a scientific community. Since paradigms apply to communities, some small discoveries may cause a paradigm shift within that community. Paradigms aren't necessarily huge explanatory frameworks like QM or GR. The people may have been shifting paradigms within their small community according to Kuhn. quote:That would be an example, though it doesn't have to be that radical.
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JustinC Member (Idle past 4874 days) Posts: 624 From: Pittsburgh, PA, USA Joined: |
I have finals this Friday and Saturday so I probably won't respond until Sunday.
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JustinC Member (Idle past 4874 days) Posts: 624 From: Pittsburgh, PA, USA Joined: |
Maybe not sunday.
quote:I never really understood why people say gravity isn't a force. I understand that gravity is just the motion of objects travelling in a straight line (longest proper time) through space time, but does that really mean it isn't a force? It seems to me that Newton defined a force as anything which causes an acceleration in a mass in space. So, gravity is a force and it is explained by curved space-time the same way electromagnetism is a force an is explained by photon interactions. That's my opinion. Cavediver HELP!
quote:Einstein expanded on the concepts of time, space, mass, etc. but I don't see that as causing an incommensurability in any non-trivial sense. Yes, the concepts were different, but at the local scales they reduce to the previous concepts. The previous concepts were too myopic in scope, but I don't think that means they are incompatible with the new ones. Do you see incorperating previous theories into grander theories the same as going from phlogiston to oxygen theories of combustion? Or going from Aristotolean physics to GR? I don't think incommensurability comes in degrees.
quote:I don't really get this. Does GR really make any statements about conventions of measurements? The latter is more precise and more replicable, but that seems like a practical weights and measurement type thing, not a theoretical problem. quote:By "world" I mean our perceptions. Who knows if there is an actual "fixed and objective" world. We certaintly do interpret our perceptions. By interpret, I mean deliberately choose between various alternatives. quote:In a sense, I think theories are declared false by failed predictions if the data is sure to be correct. It may not happen right away because the theory is good as making other predictions; but these "anomolies," as Kuhn calls them, pave the way for new theories. But whether you think that means they are false seems like a problem of inductive logic, though I'm not sure how you feel about it.
quote:I believe inductive logic can be used to evaluate plausibility of the truth of a claim. "Goodness of fit" is good reason to believe something is likely to be true. According to you (I may be wrong), it seems we can never convict someone of a crime that wasn't observed. All we have is the data and the model, but this in no way indicates whether the defendent actually committed the crime. Is this a right interpretation of your view? This is all the time I have now, I have to get ready for a test. I'll try and get to the rest ASAP. edited for typos This message has been edited by JustinC, 12-10-2005 06:59 AM
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JustinC Member (Idle past 4874 days) Posts: 624 From: Pittsburgh, PA, USA Joined: |
quote:I don't think that's a valid equation, i.e., incommensurability=concept change. Everyone agrees there are concept changes, but not everyone agrees the new concepts are incommensurable with the previous ones. Kuhn is trying to say that the Newtonian physicist and the GR physicist will basically be talking past each other when trying to communicate their ideas on physics.
quote:Why is it a "total upheaval?" Is any concept change a total upheaval? The new metaphysics, which I'm not sure can be seperated from the mathematical formalisms, shows why are previous assumptions were only approximations. How can you seperate the metaphysics from the math? It's not that we just changed from "absolute space" to "relative space," we changed from "absolute space" to "space which is viewed differently depending on one's frame of reference, in a very specific manner governed by equation E1, E2, etc." quote:Again, I don't think the mathematics and the metaphysics can necessarily be seen as mutually exclusive. Copernican astronomy's metaphysics and math doesn't reduce to Ptolemaic astronomy. quote:I really don't like the term metaphysics because it seems so vague and undefined. Can you maybe clarify what you mean? Can metaphysics be mathematical in nature? For instance, were the metaphysics of quantum mechanics derived from the mathematical formalisms or vice versa? I have to admit that I don't use the word metaphysics to much, nor have studied what it means extensively so I could be way off with regard to this.
quote:"World" is used in several different way. All we have access to is our perceptions, so in a sense that is the "world." The rest, like electromagnetic radiation, is apart of a theoretical framework for how we interpret the world, and may be indicative of some deeper underlying reality. quote:It's not that we declare them false, it's that we declare we think they are false. During times of "crisis" a lot of communities begin to believe the previous theories are false even though there is no alternative theory. Before the whole QM framework was layed down, people saw serious deficiences in Newtonian mechanics at microscale, and I would think many thought that Netwonian mechanics was indeed not the whole story. Many people began to believe that Ptolemaic astronomy was false when it got to the point that adding an epicycle created problems in another part of the orbits, so another epicycle had to be added, etc. I remember a quote by some scientist at the time who said something to the effect of "if God created such a system, he should have consulted me first." I think scientists certainly believe the way a theory is formulated at a given time is false before a new theory can replace it. That doesn't mean they'll stop using the previous one though.
quote:Why is the analogy bad? We use inductive logic in both. With regard to scientific theories, you say that "goodness of fit" is not an indicator of any "truth value." In criminal case, you say it is an indicator of "truth value." Why the difference? I can maybe think of one significant one, but let me hear what you come up with first. I'm not saying scientific theories will ever conclusively prove they are correct, that goes against inductive logic. You can only support hypothesese through inductive logic. Sorry, I have to go again. I will get to the rest of this post and the rest of the previous post ASAP. I want to some reading before I respond to your the rest of your previous post and can't find the time til finals are over (Wed). Thanks for your patience.
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JustinC Member (Idle past 4874 days) Posts: 624 From: Pittsburgh, PA, USA Joined: |
quote:Yeah, I don't really know. I remember reading in the Principia that force is defined as what causes an acceleration. quote:I might just have a wrong view of incommensurability. When I read that terms, I think uncomparable. I think one guy describes gravitation as the curved space-time, another as as angels pushing inward. They can't even have a valid conversation as to whose views are "correct." I don't see this in Newtonian/GR. I could just be ignorant of the history. Were scientists saying, wrt SR, "Space is defined as static and unchanging, you are not making any sense!" Are the new concepts completely different than the old ones, or are they just refinements? Is every refinement incommensurable? And what is the difference between a refinement and upheaval?
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JustinC Member (Idle past 4874 days) Posts: 624 From: Pittsburgh, PA, USA Joined: |
JustinC writes
quote:Cavediver responds quote:I don't think it reduces to Newtonian thinking. I'm referring to Kuhn's concept of incommensurability. According to Kuhn, we cannot say that Newtonian thinking was wrong and that GR is correct (or more correct). They are simply paradigms which apply different rules for how to solve different puzzles. Space is not absolute or relative; these are just different models which have varying degrees of success in describing empirical data. And they don't even have the same empirical data because the paradigms themselves influence our perceptions of reality. This is according to Kuhn. Do you agree with him with regard to Newtonian dynamics and GR, i.e., they are just different rules for solving the puzzles of the "world," and the "world" isn't even the same because how we view the world hinges on our paradigm? I don't necessarily see them as incommensurable because SR grew out of the problems of Newtonian dynamics. It wasn't like physicists just said, "Ok, lets throw this garbage out and start from scratch." This message has been edited by JustinC, 12-14-2005 09:10 AM
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