Science.

I wonder how many would agree with this statement:

'Science is the best method we have for getting accurate knowledge about the universe.'

As regards the actual structure of things, and what is actually out there, it seems to me that in pre scientific ages we lived in almost complete ignorance. We didn't know shit, and maybe even now we don't know shit, but we're beginning to find out.

I'm not saying the materialist paradigm is necessarily wholly correct, but without scientific method, where would we be?
It annoys me when people put down science.

Thoughts?

 

science is the process of honesty. it doesn't claim to know everything. nor that everything is limited to what it explores or is capable of.

while everything else is possible, if only marginally, everything else is less probable and less usefully reliable.

there are a lot of things that have been claimed to have been justified by science and this is what has some people confused about it.

i don't think most people entirely understand what science is.

people who think its about absolute factuality, certainly don't.

science is a process, which unlike belief, can and does correct its mistakes as it goes along. which by doing so, gives an ever clearer picture of reality, then any belief, however wisely intended, ever can.

but you do need one other thing, in addition to the honesty of science, and that is a universally mutual considerateness.

 

My thoughts are not welcome in this thread or anywhere on this website. I get the haters' message loud and clear.

 

Yep.
I think the problem is that some scientists can be dogmatic and claim to know more then they do.
It's the process, the method that I mean by science.

 

non-scientific knowledge is a self contradiction.

arrogance and establishment have nothing to do with science either.

this is the lie perpetrated by those who have something to gain by the popularity of not being honest with ourselves.

it IS true that you don't need formal education to have a realistic understanding of the world around you. but no realistic understanding directly contradicts real science.

it is a simple reality however, that not everything is intuitive.

 

Somewhere between knowing and measuring lies the golden mean that really is science. It is correct that science basing itself wholly on empiricism is "pretend science" but an integral part of knowing is discernment and an integral part of creation is measure - so don't throw the "beeper" out with the bath water and use your slide rule on what the buddha says and that's about the best we got ~

 

There must be stuff you know that you wouldn't know if science had never existed. At a basic level I'm sure you must be aware of the existence of cells, bacteria, viruses, galaxies, that the earth is round. Computers themselves are one of it's products.

So it could be argued that any information you get from the internet is brought to you courtesy of application of the scientific method.

 

I agree with what you say, but fail to see the necessity or logic in putting science in opposition to "belief" assuming you mean religious belief.

Science has it's fair share of "belief" or "faith" as well.

Science isn't about absolutes, it's about probabilities because that is what we observe. The more consistently we observe a phenomena follow the same path of probabilities, the more confidence we ascribe to it to the point of considering such phenomena and the observed probabilities associated with it as "Laws of Nature".

Yet simply by virtue of our means of perceiving the universe and our very localized conception of it, we realize that the best we can hope for is to be able to predict probabilities and that absolutes, at least as far as humans are concerned, are humanities feeble and nebulous attempts at defining and as such to a small degree "controlling" our environment.

So far it has worked for us given the parameters meted out.
change the parameters and who knows.

 

have you cooked any food lately?


I think you have a skewed impression of what constitutes science.

 

to me, science has no other meaning then scientific method. nothing to do with human hierarchies. it explores the real universe, to which anything human is no more then a footnote. except of course, when it is exploring aspects of our species itself.

i think the problem is people don't want to admit that they're not the center of the universe. it may even frighten them that their entire species isn't.

why they should be frightened by this makes no sense to me, but apparently they are.

 

The only knowledge about the universe comes from science, this is a no-brainer. How accurate it is, is a completely different thing.

 

Yup, and if you cook a steak or cook pasta to perfection you have employed the scientific method or at the very least enjoying the discoveries made by previous scientific pioneers as they experimented and found the best methodologies for grilling the perfect steak or cooking pasta to perfection.

If you do something as simple as try different methods of using a screwdriver, you are employing the scientific method, maybe without rigorous controls and recording, but you figure out what works and what doesn't.

Simple trial and error, the heart of the scientific method.
:mickey:

 

Thats it.

.

Maybe its got to do with the fact that humans did consider themselves to be the center of the universe for thousands of years. And maybe as individuals, when we are very young, we do feel we are the center.

Awakening to the truth can be a stark experience if you just want to hang onto old and familiar ideas and patterns. I think sometimes there's a kind of inbuilt conservatism in many people. They fear the new.

 

I prefer to see science as a branch of natural philosophy.

 

i'm not sure i understand what you mean. there is no knowledge which does not come from science in some sense of the word, however informal that sense might be.

 

I mean that science is not always accurate and ever-changing. What we know at this point in space and time is not necessarily the 'truth', so the accuracy of anything is at least questionable.

 

There are other intellectual disciplines (for want of a better term) that seek or even proclaim knowledge, philosophy for instance, or 'revealed' religions.

 

Science isn't a set of 'facts' but a method of investigation.

 

yes. the accuracy of everything is always questionable. that's rather the whole point. we know only that some things happen more often then others and that some things happen more often when other things happen first. thanks to the honesty of science however, we are able to know this to many decimal places.