Conversation on the nature of science

I thought I would post a debate I had with another uni student about the nature of science, partly so it doesn't get lost in the churn of the net, and partly so people can look at it and see what they think about the the issue and all that. Here it is. :)

SAM: I would like to call into question the idea of 'scientific fact' ...

Plus, belief in a God, Gods, etc. is perfectly okay, as much as belief in any 'ideal'. It's organised religion, not some unknown quantity, which is the enemy.

Most of us, I'm not including Richard in this, tend to believe what we're told by 'scientists'. I'll be fucked if any of us actually understand what's happening. It's ridiculous to condemn belief in a deity or deities and then prop up science that it has 'facts' - the theories behind science are being revised, updated, changed all the time. And, do... See more you REALLY understand what quantum physics is, how the world works, or are you just taking what you're told and choosing to believing it? Also, you seem to be implying that deity/deities is purely a humanoid, rather than a dimensional, spiritual, or even scientific thing. And also forgetting that, a lot of the basis of our understand of our world has come out of people trying to prove God right, or real.

ME: Believing what scientists say isn't the same as just accepting what you're told, because what scientists say isn't arbitrary; it's logical conjecture based on a method that has shown itself to be reliable. The scientific method works. It objectively works. If it didn't, you wouldn't be on a computer, and planes would be crashing all around us. Or never taking off.

That's not to imply that it's completely infallible. But it's inaccurate to say that scientific theories change all the time, as if it were all a massive flux of equally valid ideas. A lot of the big theoretical stuff has stuck - Newtonian physics, despite not being the most perfect description of reality now that we have relativity and QM, is still basically spot on if you're dealing with ordinary things instead of sub-atomic particles. That's been around since the 17th century. The fact that science expands, updates and revises is a strength, not a weakness.

SAM: You imply that logic is logical ...
If you prayed to a God about the same time every year that something would grow and be ready to harvest every year, it would prove God. Now as a scientist, one could go into detail, but as lay peeps, we just accept that it happens for whatever reason we're told. :P

Also, I gave a list of things that scientific ... See moreidea's can be doing: "revised, updated, changed", not just "changed". And no one ever said science was bad, I'm attacking the use and the claim of it (despite doing it myself) in everyday occurrence without knowing what we're talking about.
Also, eugenics. What a great, non-arbitrary thing that was/is.

ME: No it wouldn't prove god, because you wouldn't have used the scientific method - you wouldn't have isolated your variables. You'd need to pray at different times of the year and see if you got food to make it scientific. This is the classic rule that correlation doesn't equal causation. Like someone made that graph showing that as the number of pirates had gone down over the centuries, global temperature had gone up, so pirates were needed to stop global warming. =p

Well, often we can know what we're talking about scientifically without having technical training. I could explain evolution to you pretty satisfactorily, and why it's true, and I'm a pile of shit at science.

Eugenics was a political issue, not an "is science reliable" issue.

SAM: The theory of Eugenics was based around the theory of evolution: selective breeding (and killing). Note the word theory. Also, note the world of 'theoretical science', if you please, whilst we're at it. It was political, yes, but it was based around a scientific idea. And, anyway, theories such as evolution were amazingly political for their time, undermining the institutions that said how the world works. Same with the Earth going round the Sun. They're not mutually exclusive: these theories have political and social repercussions.

Plus, you're still using the 'experiment' to prove something, whilst I'm arguing that people take scientists word for it. Ergo, someone says eugenics is workable and, HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and Hitler say "okay, yes."

The sun goes around the Earth.

ME: Well saying that eugenics was based on the theory of evolution is about as useful as saying that hanging was based on the theory of gravity. You can't blame science for finding out the truth if that truth is then abused. It was politicians, not the scientific method, that created eugenics. Science deals with what is; philosophy and politics deal with what ought to be, and eugenics is a 'what ought to be' idea. Noticing that genetic traits which help us survive and reproduce naturally get passed on more than ones that don't is science. Saying that we ought to fiddle about with people's genes to create a master race is politics. Interestingly, Darwin actually explicitly warned against the social Darwinism idea that we should try to eliminate the genetically weak in society.

I agree with you that scientific theories can have repercussions outside of the scientific sphere. Clearly evolution and heliocentric ideas re-defined how we view our place in the universe. But what you were saying is that eugenics is an example of an arbitrary idea coming from science; it isn't. Nowhere did Darwin start saying let's genetically create a master race. And even if he had, it would have been a political idea he was expressing, not a scientific one. It's an arbitrary idea coming from racist politicians.

As for taking the scientists word for it - this is effectively the same as trusting in the explanatory power of the experiment, because that's what scientists do. They don't just make shit up. It doesn't mean taking what they say and assuming that it's some kind of revealed final truth on a matter - scientists themselves don't pretend that they have that kind of authority - but it does mean accepting that this is probably our best guess at the time, and at the moment there doesn't seem to be any reason to doubt it.

SAM: They don't make shit up ... hmm ... as I mentioned, theoretical science is theory, it is not yet cohesively proven or completely disproven. String theory. Therefore, as there is theoretical science, science doesn't necessarily just deal with 'what is' but the also theory of 'what ought to be', or could be. Jesus, poor bloody quantum physisits who only deal 'with is': isn't that part of the problem? What appears isn't necessarily what is, was or will be.

Eugenics wasn't just politics, it was based in the theory of natural selection, a scientific theory. It was originated by a polymath called Francis Galton, who was a bit of a scientist. He, according to Wikipedia, coined the phrase 'Nature vs nuture'. It was a scientific idea with political implications ... like all scientific theory.

Phrenology, too. That was a fantastic bloody science. It is amazing discredited, but it was right popular for a while a way back. I'm also informed by a scientist friend of mine that particle science is running out of space to work, too.

ME: I don't mean to be flippant, but you're just repeating the content of your last post. I have already responded to all of those arguments.

1. If something isn't 'cohesively proven', it will not be presented as such by scientists. Problem solved. If it is, it will be. Problem solved again. As Richard pointed out, it's very rare that anything misleading would survive peer review. I said words to this effect last post - they don't just make shit up.

2. Social Darwinism is a political idea. Galton's idea was political. The fact that it referenced a scientific theory doesn't mean it was the fault of science, any more than hanging people was the fault of the science of gravity.... See more

3. Phrenology was a pseudo-science, and the advocates of it basically did not use the scientific method when saying that the shape of your head was directly connected with your personality. It didn't last very long in the grand scheme of things, and it wouldn't survive peer-review nowadays.

SAM: All I have to say, is question everything all the time. It's the only way to be almost confident that you don't know anything, or at least much.