The fundamental errors in the scientific worldview

This thread is meant to be a list of the fundamental assumption and philosophical problems in the western scientific worldview. Please do not add to this thread by making unsubstantiated claims, or rejecting the worldview in question without making a case for your rejection.

I strongly believe that the scientific worldview and way of thinking is the best available. I believe that it produces the most truths, and provides the best known method for understanding reality. My evidence for this is the successful predictions made by scientific theories, and the tremendous amount of working technology based on those theories. However, this worldview and methodology is imperfect. Fundamental systemic flaws and baseless assumptions exist within it. These will be described herein.



The traditional scientific worldview is based on at least three assumptions which are taken to be self-evident. These premises are - and must be - accepted without proof. They are:

1) Realism: The doctrine that regularities in observed phenomena are cause by some physical reality whose existence is independant of human observers.

2) Induction is valid: This premis holds that inductive inference is a valid mode of reasoning and can be applied freely; so that legitimate conclusions can be drawn from consistent observations.

3) Einstein locality: This premis states that no influence of any kind can propagate faster than the speed of light.

These three assumptions underly all theories which are taken to be scientifically valid. This is based on the following observations:

1) For realism: Theories purport to explain and describe an independant reality. They refer to, point to, and have their meaning about, a reality which is "out there;" a reality which is independant of the observer. When a tree falls in the woods, it makes a sound, because the tree and the woods and sound exist out there obeying the laws of physics whether or not there is someone there paying attention to them. The laws of physics are about the universe, and both the laws and the universe exist independantly of humans.

2) For induction: All scientific theories are based on past observations. The theories say something about the way the universe functions, and if the theory is correct than it can be used to make correct predictions about the future. All beliefs within the scientific worldview are based on past observations. It is taken to be self evident that the future will resemble the past and that these beliefs will continue to hold true. Constants in equations will continue to be constant. Equations which describe a certain force or interaction will continue to describe that force or interaction, so long as the equation is the correct one. H2O boils at 100 C at sea level on earth in earths atmosphere. It is expected that this if the theory is valid, water will always boil at 100 C in under the exact same conditions.

3) For Einstein locality: Scientific theories describe a reality which is unfolding as a series of causes and effects. The causes are influences, which lead to specific effects. Causal entities can only effects things which they can interact with. This interaction can be described as the "influence" of the causal entity. This influence has to actually move through space and "get to" its "target"(whatever it will end up causing/influencing). If it doesn't get there, it can't influence it. This notion is hard to demonstrate positively, so imagine if it weren't true: If influences didn't have to actually "get to" their targets, then whenever anything happened its cause could never be known, because if causality were not local anything could influence anything else at any time, with no identifiable causal mechanism. Luckily for us it is local; the influence has to physically propagate through space to effect something. So far this has been a description of locality in general, which is the more fundamental assumption underlying the scientific worldview. However, special relativity is now accepted, and with it the claim that no influence may propagate faster than the speed of light. Whether the underlying premis is that the influence must propagate in physical space, or that it must do so at the speed of light or slower, is trivial in the context of this conversation.

I submit that these three assumptions are fundamentally flawed, and that the scientific worldview is in reality supported by little more than a hope and a prayer.

I'm running out of room, so I will proceed with my arguments to attempt undermine the premises described above in my next post which I will write as fast as I can.

*It should be noted that I'm not putting forth original material here or in my next post. All this stuff is "out there" in the world of philosophy of science, I'm just trying to bring it to ATS in a manageable essay. You can google any of these concepts and you will get results. I'm not citing specific sources because these ideas have been addressed in many places, and are more or less part of the public doman at this point. I'm also not making any factual claims that could be verified somewhere. These are just ideas which I am explaining, and no facts need to be introduced at this point in the discussion. Any part of the later discussion which may rely on specific facts will be cited.

1).There are two simple ways to undermine realism:

The first is to acknowledge that there is no logical argument that can possibly be made for a world existing out there, outside my head, specifically(or yours, this is true for anyone). This epistemological argument has been put forth brilliantly by philosophers in two notable ways.

Descarte introduced this problem in his meditations:

Meditation I: Concerning Those Things That Can Be Called into Doubt
The first way that Descartes tries to undermine his beliefs is by considering the fact that he remembers that his senses have deceived him before. If he has been misled by sensory information in the past (e.g. he judged that the stick in the water was bent, when in fact it was straight), then he may be deceived now, "and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once."

He goes on to suggest more powerful reasons to doubt that his beliefs are true. In general, his method is that of forming skeptical hypotheses — methodic doubt. In the first meditation, he considers whether he is mad, dreaming, or deceived by an evil demon. If any of these scenarios were the case, many of his beliefs would be false.

The general form of these arguments is:

If I am dreaming/deceived, then my beliefs are not true.
Descartes' goal — as stated at the beginning of the meditation — is to suspend judgment about any of his beliefs which are even slightly doubtful. The skeptical scenarios show that all of the beliefs which he considers in the first meditation, including at the very least all of his beliefs about the physical world, are doubtful. So he decides to suspend judgment. He will henceforth give up all of his beliefs about the physical world. This is very difficult. At the end of the first meditation Descartes compares himself to a prisoner who enjoys an imaginary freedom while asleep, and dreads waking. In the same way Descartes slips back into his old beliefs, and dreads waking to toil "amid the inextricable darkness of the problems [he has] now raised."

It is important to keep in mind when reading the Meditations that Descartes intends to lead the reader along with him gradually. He begins with skepticism and attempts to offer a solution. Thus, he should not be uncharitably read as contradicting himself when, for instance, he thinks of something as doubtful in the first meditation and as certain in the last. Several of his objectors fail to read the meditations as a guide, in which the order of the arguments is important, and so make this mistake.[2]

[edit] Meditation II: Concerning the Nature of the Human Mind: That It Is Better Known Than the Body
In Meditation II: Concerning The Nature of the Human Mind: That It Is Better Known Than The Body, Descartes lays out a pattern of thought, sometimes called representationalism, in response to the doubts forwarded in Meditation I. He identifies five steps in this theory:

We only have access to the world of our ideas; things in the world are only accessed indirectly.
These ideas are understood to include all of the contents of the mind, including perceptions, images, memories, concepts, beliefs, intentions, decisions, etc.
Ideas and the things they represent are separate from each other.
These represented things are many times "external" to the mind.
It is possible for these ideas to constitute either accurate or false representations.
Descartes argues that this representational theory disconnects the world from the mind, leading to the need for some sort of bridge to span the separation and provide good reasons to believe that the ideas accurately represent the outside world. The first plank he uses in constructing this bridge can be found in the following excerpt:

I have convinced myself that there is nothing in the world — no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies. Doesn't it follow that I don't exist? No, surely I must exist if it's me who is convinced of something. But there is a deceiver, supremely powerful and cunning whose aim is to see that I am always deceived. But surely I exist, if I am deceived. Let him deceive me all he can, he will never make it the case that I am nothing while I think that I am something. Thus having fully weighed every consideration, I must finally conclude that the statement "I am, I exist" must be true whenever I state it or mentally consider it.

Source

Actual text of these meditations:
www.classicallibrary.org...

The part of his argument that I want to bring to this conversation is this: Everything could be an illusion. We could be dreaming, or hallucinating, or being psychically manipulated by an evil demond. The point is that there is no way to know that it is not all in our heads. This problem has no solution.

Continued on next post.

There exists a modern version of Descarte's epistemological problem, known as the "brain in the vat":

In philosophy, the brain in a vat is an element used in a variety of thought experiments intended to draw out certain features of our ideas of knowledge, reality, truth, mind, and meaning. It is drawn from the idea, common to many science fiction stories, that a mad scientist might remove a person's brain from the body, suspend it in a vat of life-sustaining liquid, and connect its neurons by wires to a supercomputer which would provide it with electrical impulses identical to those the brain normally receives. According to such stories, the computer would then be simulating reality (including appropriate responses to the brain's own output) and the person with the "disembodied" brain would continue to have perfectly normal conscious experiences without these being related to objects or events in the real world.

The simplest use of brain-in-a-vat scenarios is as an argument for philosophical skepticism and Solipsism. A simple version of this runs as follows: Since the brain in a vat gives and receives the exact same impulses as it would if it were in a skull, and since these are its only way of interacting with its environment, then it is not possible to tell, from the perspective of that brain, whether it is in a skull or a vat. Yet in the first case most of the person's beliefs may be true (if he believes, say, that he is walking down the street, or eating ice-cream); in the latter case they are false. Since, the argument says, you cannot know whether you are a brain in a vat, then you cannot know whether most of your beliefs might be completely false. Since, in principle, it is impossible to rule out your being a brain in a vat, you cannot have good grounds for believing any of the things you believe; you certainly cannot know them.

Source

This argument proves, again, that realism is an unfounded assumption No matter how uncomfortable that fact may be, it is absolutely true.

The second way to undermine realism is to look to the observations of quantum mechanics. This argument against realism is weaker and more specific, but it has experimental observations to support it. The basic idea is that observations seem to in some way "determine" reality. This would imply that a definite reality is not "out there" in existance independant of an observer. It would instead imply that an indefinite reality exists "out there" and it only becomes a specific reality when someone "looks at it," or observes it. This issue is known as the measurement problem of quantum mechanics. It is described briefly here:

The measurement problem in quantum mechanics is the unresolved problem of how (or if) wavefunction collapse occurs. The inability to observe this process directly has given rise to different interpretations of quantum mechanics, and poses a key set of questions that each interpretation must answer. The wavefunction in quantum mechanics evolves according to the Schrödinger equation into a linear superposition of different states, but actual measurements always find the physical system in a definite state. Any future evolution is based on the state the system was discovered to be in when the measurement was made, meaning that the measurement "did something" to the process under examination. Whatever that "something" may be does not appear to be explained by the basic theory.

To express matters differently (to paraphrase Steven Weinberg [1][2]), the wave function evolves deterministically – knowing the wave function at one moment, the Schrödinger equation determines the wave function at any later time. If observers and their measuring apparatus are themselves described by a deterministic wave function, why can we not predict precise results for measurements, but only probabilities? As a general question: How can one establish a correspondence between quantum and classical reality?

Source

And in much better detail and a fascinating read here:
www.templetonprize.org...
(thanks drew hempel)

2) The way to undermine the second assumpion - that induction is valid - is known as the problem of induction.

The problem of induction is the philosophical question of whether inductive reasoning leads to knowledge. That is, what is the justification for either:

1 - generalizing about the properties of a class of objects based on some number of observations of particular instances of that class (for example, the inference that "all swans we have seen are white, and therefore all swans are white," before the discovery of black swans) or

2 - presupposing that a sequence of events in the future will occur as it always has in the past (for example, that the laws of physics will hold as they have always been observed to hold).

...

In inductive reasoning, one makes a series of observations and infers a new claim based on them. For instance, from a series of observations that at sea-level (approximately 14.7 psi, or 101 kPa) water freezes at 0°C (32°F), it seems valid to infer that the next sample of water will do the same, or that, in general, at sea-level water freezes at 0°C. That the next sample of water freezes under those conditions merely adds to the series of observations. First, it is not certain, regardless of the number of observations, that water always freezes at 0°C at sea-level. To be certain, it must be known that the law of nature is immutable. Second, the observations themselves do not establish the validity of inductive reasoning, except inductively.

Source

Continued...

The problem of induction is essentially this:

We believe that the future will resemble the past(that the theories will formulate now, based on past observations, will continue to hold true).

We believe that the future will resemble the past, because so far this has been true.

Therefore we believe that the future will resemble the past, because in the past the future has resembled the past. In other words, we believe the future will resemble the past because we believe that the future resembles the past.

The argument is laid out more thoroughly in the sources I provided, and in more technical detail here. The crux of the matter that it is based on a circular argument, and the conclusion is also the premis that is used to support itself. Therefore it is logically invalid(but not necessarily untrue). This means that we have no logical grounds for applying it.

3) Eintein locality.

The following idea characterises the relative independence of objects far apart in space A and B: external influence on A has no direct influence on B; this is known as the Principle of Local Action, which is used consistently only in field theory. If this axiom were to be completely abolished, the idea of the existence of quasienclosed systems, and thereby the postulation of laws which can be checked empirically in the accepted sense, would become impossible.

-Einstein

What he means here is that locality is a fundamental premis in science, and that science has a serious philosophical problem if we do not accept locality.

This is a tricky issue that has yet to be sorted out, but there is empirical evidence in quantum mechanics that this principal is violated, making the premis untrue. The fact that experimental results have been in disagreement with this premis is what has led to scientists and philosphers accepting extraordinary notions of reality like infinite parallel universes and such. All in order to come to an agreeable acceptance of locality.

The debate is ongoing:

In physics, the principle of locality states that an object is influenced directly only by its immediate surroundings. Experiments have shown that quantum mechanically entangled particles must violate either the principle of locality or the form of philosophical realism known as counterfactual definiteness.

Einstein's view
[edit]EPR Paradox
Albert Einstein felt that there was something fundamentally incorrect with quantum mechanics since it predicted violations of locality. In a famous paper he and his co-authors articulated the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox. Thirty years later John Stewart Bell responded with a paper which stated (paraphrased) that no physical theory of local hidden variables can ever reproduce all of the predictions of quantum mechanics (Bell's theorem).

[edit] Philosophical view
Einstein assumed that principle of locality was necessary, and there could be no violations of it. He said[1]:

“ The following idea characterises the relative independence of objects far apart in space A and B: external influence on A has no direct influence on B; this is known as the Principle of Local Action, which is used consistently only in field theory. If this axiom were to be completely abolished, the idea of the existence of quasienclosed systems, and thereby the postulation of laws which can be checked empirically in the accepted sense, would become impossible. ”

[edit] Local realism
Local realism is the combination of the principle of locality with the "realistic" assumption that all objects must objectively have pre-existing values for any possible measurement before these measurements are made. Einstein liked to say that the Moon is "out there" even when no one is observing it.

[edit] Realism
Realism in the sense used by physicists does not directly equate to realism in metaphysics.[2] The latter is the claim that there is in some sense a mind-independent world. Even if the results of a possible measurement do not pre-exist the measurement, that does not mean they are the creation of the observer (as in the "consciousness causes collapse" interpretation of quantum mechanics).[citation needed] Furthermore, a mind-independent property does not have to be the value of some physical variable such as position or momentum. A property can be dispositional, i.e. it can be a tendency, in the way that glass objects tend to break, or are disposed to break, even if they do not actually break. Likewise, the mind-independent properties of quantum systems could consist of a tendency to respond to certain measurements with certain values with some probability.[3] Such an ontology would be metaphysically realistic without being realistic in the physicist's sense of "local realism" (which would require that single value be produced with certainty).

Local realism is a significant feature of classical mechanics, general relativity and Maxwell's theory, but quantum mechanics largely rejects this principle due to the presence of distant quantum entanglements, most clearly demonstrated by the EPR paradox and quantified by Bell's inequalities.[4] Any theory, like quantum mechanics, that violates Bell's inequalities must abandon either local realism or counterfactual definiteness. (Some physicists dispute that experiments have demonstrated Bell's violations, on the grounds that the sub-class of inhomogeneous Bell inequalities has not been tested or other experimental limitations). Different interpretations of quantum mechanics reject different parts of local realism and/or counterfactual definiteness.

Continued...

Copenhagen interpretation
In most of the conventional interpretations, such as the version of the Copenhagen interpretation and the interpretation based on Consistent Histories, where the wavefunction is not assumed to have a direct physical interpretation of reality, it is realism that is rejected. The actual definite properties of a physical system "do not exist" prior to the measurement, and the wavefunction has a restricted interpretation as nothing more than a mathematical tool used to calculate the probabilities of experimental outcomes, in agreement with positivism in philosophy as the only topic that science should discuss.

In the version of the Copenhagen interpretation where the wavefunction is assumed to have a physical interpretation of reality (the nature of which is unspecified) the principle of locality is violated during the measurement process via wavefunction collapse. This is a non-local process because Born's Rule, when applied to the system's wave function, yields a probability density for all regions of space and time. Upon measurement of the physical system, the probability density vanishes everywhere instantaneously, except where (and when) the measured entity is found to exist. This "vanishing" would be a real physical process, and clearly non-local (faster than light) if the wave function is considered physically real and the probability density converged to zero at arbitrarily far distances during the finite time required for the measurement process.

[edit] Bohm interpretation
The Bohm interpretation preserves realism, and it needs to violate the principle of locality to achieve the required correlations.

[edit] Many-worlds interpretation
In the many-worlds interpretation realism and locality are retained but counterfactual definiteness is rejected by the extension of the notion of reality to allow the existence of parallel universes.

Because the differences between the different interpretations are mostly philosophical ones (except for the Bohm and many-worlds interpretations), physicists usually use the language in which the important statements are independent of the interpretation we choose. In this framework, only the measurable action at a distance - a superluminal propagation of real, physical information - would usually be considered in violation of locality by physicists. Such phenomena have never been seen, and they are not predicted by the current theories (with the possible exception of the Bohm theory).

[edit] Relativity
Locality is one of the axioms of relativistic quantum field theory, as required for causality. The formalization of locality in this case is as follows: if we have two observables, each localized within two distinct space-time regions which happen to be at a spacelike separation from each other, the observables must commute. Alternatively, a solution to the field equations is local if the underlying equations are either Lorentz invariant or, more generally, generally covariant or locally Lorentz invariant.

Source

So, what to do with all this?

Well, for now it may just be something to keep in mind, and something to keep the dogma at bay. Nothing is certain, even if it is in a textbook.

My hope is that these philosophical problems will manifest themselves experimentally, and that this will lead to a dramatic paradigm shift. This is already starting to happen in quantum mechanics and cosmology and consciousness studies. Reality may be much different than it seems.

Here are some problems which seem to brush up against the fundamental philosophical limitations of the scientific world view:

Consciousness:
en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...
plato.stanford.edu...

The measurement problem:
en.wikipedia.org...
plato.stanford.edu...
physicsworld.com...

Dark things:
en.wikipedia.org...
nasascience.nasa.gov...
imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov...
physicsworld.com...

Plus, all of the paranormal stuff that you are all well aware of. Please, add to this discussion. It is important that we think about things in order promote a paradigm shift. Such revolutions in thinking are inevitable. They continue to happen, and always will, as we discover new things which change our concept of reality. Promote such change by spreading these ideas and the associated empirical problems.

Our world view may have significant room for improvement.

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Wow! Super informative post. The only thing I would have to add us to link Russell's Problems of Philosophy here

it covers in depth #'s 1 and 2 in relatively simple language.

reply to post by OnceReturned

1) Realism: The doctrine that regularities in observed phenomena are cause by some physical reality whose existence is independant of human observers.

Yes. What about non-physical reality. Lets take thought for instance. Only the independent human observer can observe it in it's truest form. It is non-physical. That means that a non-physical reality exists also.

One of the biggest mistakes science makes is to think that where their diagrams stop, so does the universe. They've been doing that for centuries, if not millennia. Quarks are going to be found to be massive compared to the smallest components of existence. You can bet on it.

reply to post by afterschoolfun


Thank you much, afterschoolfun. I appreciate your input, and I'm going to provide a summary of Russell's Problems of Philosophy here:

Russell begins by exploring the twin concepts of appearance and reality. Empiricists like Russell believe that all knowledge is ultimately derived from our sensory perceptions of the world around us. Individual perception, however, is easily affected and prone to error. If three people—one who’s had three martinis, one with a heavy fever, and one who’s color-blind—look at the same table, chances are they’ll each see the same object somewhat differently. Submerge the same table underwater, or set it behind a wavy pane of glass, and once again the table will look different. There is, then, a distinction to be made between appearance and reality. If perception is so variable, what can it actually tell us about the stable, real object we assume lies behind it?

Russell coined the term “sense-data” in his attempt to discern the relationship between appearance and reality. Sense-data are the particular things we perceive during the act of sensation. When you walk into a café, the smell of the coffee, the redness of the awning, and the heat from the radiator are all examples of sense-data. Sense-data are the mental images (visual as well as auditory, olfactory, tactile, and gustatory) we receive from a given object in the physical world. As we can see from the table example, the same object can produce variable sense-data. Sense-data are related to the physical objects they represent, but the exact nature of this relationship is unclear. The skeptical argument contends that sense-data tell us nothing about the reality of the object. Russell had a commonsense take on the matter: while he understood the skeptical arguments, he found no reason to believe them. A hundred different viewers may have a thousand different kinds of sense-data for a given table, yet each agrees that they are looking at the same table. This consistency suggests, to Russell, that we must at least believe in the existence of a single, particular, real table. To this “instinctive” belief, Russell also adds the hypothesis that physical objects cause the sense-data we receive and therefore correspond to them in some significant way.

During the act of sensation (i.e., the exercising of our five senses), we receive and process the sense-data produced by physical objects in our vicinity. The knowledge we gain during this process Russell calls “perceptual knowledge”—knowledge gained through experience. In contrast, Russell believes we are also in possession of certain kinds of a priori knowledge. These include the self-evident rules of logic, most important, and those of mathematics. Perceptual knowledge (the knowledge of things) and a priori knowledge (the knowledge of truths) work in concert: the first gives us empirical data, and the second tells us how to process that data.

Russell further divides human knowledge into knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. To be acquainted with something is to be directly and immediately aware of it, without the action of an intermediary. When you sit on a red plastic chair, you become acquainted with lots of sense-data associated with that chair. You know its redness, its smoothness, its coolness, and its hardness. But to know that this thing is called a “chair” and that it’s often found in the company of other “chairs” and something called a “table” requires more than just direct, immediate acquaintance with the physical object. To know all that requires us to make inferences, based on our general knowledge of facts and on our acquaintance with other similar objects. This kind of knowledge is derivative, and Russell terms it “knowledge by description.” For instance, most of us know only by description that Everest is the tallest mountain in the world. Few of us have actually been there, so we have to rely on the testimony of others to “know” that fact. Indeed, to truly be acquainted with the fact of Everest’s superior height, one would have to visit and measure all the mountains in the world. It’s probably safe to say, then, that no one is truly acquainted with that particular piece of knowledge.

Just as we can know objects either immediately or derivatively, we can also know truths immediately or derivatively. Russell defines immediate knowledge of truths as intuitive truths. These are concepts that, to Russell, are so clearly self-evident that we just know they must be true. “1 + 1 = 2” is an example of such a self-evident truth. Derivative knowledge of truths involves deduction and inference from immediate, self-evident truths.

All knowledge is, in Russell’s view, built on acquaintance. Without knowledge by description, however, we would never pass beyond the limits of our own individual experience. Thus, just like perceptual and a priori knowledge, knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description work together to create a totality of human knowledge.

Source

Your contribution is exactly the sort of thing I am looking for here. Thanks again.

Originally posted by Conclusion
reply to post by OnceReturned

 

1) Realism: The doctrine that regularities in observed phenomena are cause by some physical reality whose existence is independant of human observers.

Yes. What about non-physical reality. Lets take thought for instance. Only the independent human observer can observe it in it's truest form. It is non-physical. That means that a non-physical reality exists also.

Thanks Conclusion. I agree completely. The mind goes completely unaddressed by the physical sciences. In fact, it seems that the picture of reality painted by the physical sciences with mathematics as their basis has no room for/way to account for consciousnes/awareness/the mind/"what it is like" to be a brain.

This is acknowledged by a growing number of scientists and philosophers, and is covered under the blanket term "the problem of consciousness." Here:
www.illc.uva.nl...

WOW. Absolutely AMAZING post OP. every scientist and philosopher should read this.

All very good points, and most philosophers of science would probably agree. Ultimately, they are all resolved through pragmatism. So long as it is unnecessary to posit external dependence upon the observer, that independence will be assumed. There are observational instances when "the observer problem" manifests. In the social sciences, it can usually be removed by redesigning the experiment. In quantum physics, however, it remains a fundamental paradox. The problem of induction is resolved through pragmatism as well. Granted, induction cannot be used to prove that the sun "must" rise in the morning, simply because it has in the past, in science it is not a problem until the sun does NOT rise in the morning. In that event, the governing theory can be revised based on the new observations. Locality is assumed for convenience sake alone, though it is constantly being challenged. Ultimately, the assumptions of science are generally accepted because they work.

reply to post by DJW001


I agree, pragmatism is the only reasonable way to proceed. We cannot sensibly throw away the best tools that we have. However, we can consider it a certainty that we are destined for a paradigm shift. This is how group thinking progresses, and we have no absolutely no reason to believe that we are done progressing. Here is a summary of Thomas Khun's ideas about a paradigm shift(he literally wrote the book on it, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions):

An epistemological paradigm shift was called a scientific revolution by epistemologist and historian of science Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

A scientific revolution occurs, according to Kuhn, when scientists encounter anomalies which cannot be explained by the universally accepted paradigm within which scientific progress has thereto been made. The paradigm, in Kuhn's view, is not simply the current theory, but the entire worldview in which it exists, and all of the implications which come with it. It is based on features of landscape of knowledge that scientists can identify around them. There are anomalies for all paradigms, Kuhn maintained, that are brushed away as acceptable levels of error, or simply ignored and not dealt with (a principal argument Kuhn uses to reject Karl Popper's model of falsifiability as the key force involved in scientific change). Rather, according to Kuhn, anomalies have various levels of significance to the practitioners of science at the time. To put it in the context of early 20th century physics, some scientists found the problems with calculating Mercury's perihelion more troubling than the Michelson-Morley experiment results, and some the other way around. Kuhn's model of scientific change differs here, and in many places, from that of the logical positivists in that it puts an enhanced emphasis on the individual humans involved as scientists, rather than abstracting science into a purely logical or philosophical venture.

When enough significant anomalies have accrued against a current paradigm, the scientific discipline is thrown into a state of crisis, according to Kuhn. During this crisis, new ideas, perhaps ones previously discarded, are tried. Eventually a new paradigm is formed, which gains its own new followers, and an intellectual "battle" takes place between the followers of the new paradigm and the hold-outs of the old paradigm. Again, for early 20th century physics, the transition between the Maxwellian electromagnetic worldview and the Einsteinian Relativistic worldview was neither instantaneous nor calm, and instead involved a protracted set of "attacks," both with empirical data as well as rhetorical or philosophical arguments, by both sides, with the Einsteinian theory winning out in the long-run. Again, the weighing of evidence and importance of new data was fit through the human sieve: some scientists found the simplicity of Einstein's equations to be most compelling, while some found them more complicated than the notion of Maxwell's aether which they banished. Some found Eddington's photographs of light bending around the sun to be compelling, some questioned their accuracy and meaning. Sometimes the convincing force is just time itself and the human toll it takes, Kuhn said, using a quote from Max Planck: "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

After a given discipline has changed from one paradigm to another, this is called, in Kuhn's terminology, a scientific revolution or a paradigm shift. It is often this final conclusion, the result of the long process, that is meant when the term paradigm shift is used colloquially: simply the (often radical) change of worldview, without reference to the specificities of Kuhn's historical argument.

Source

A cool example that he talk about is gestalt images. Ever seen the duck and the rabbit or the old and young woman?

Rabbit Duck

Old Woman Young Woman

We can switch between to totally different interpretations of the same data, and both of results are correct, make sense, and work. This is like shifting from one paradigm to another.

I think that undoubtedly the basis of the challenge to our current worldview will come from a empiracle source, and not this kind of armchair philosophy. However, I think that this philosophy can give us a good idea about what sort of empiracle "stuff" to look for; what will be important and perhaps revolutionary.

Also, there is some value in admitting that science justifies its most fundamental premises on pragmatism. Most people don't think about it this way, and there is some value in calling it to the attention of as many people as possible that things are not set in stone.


Anyone see Shutter Island(and wants to stay on topic)? This is a fantastic example of dynamic world views. Teddy's entire experience can be interpreted in two totally different ways. This is analogous to a paradigm shift in the same way as the gestalt illusions.

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[edit on 3/10/10 by OnceReturned]

[edit on 3/10/10 by OnceReturned]

First many thanks and stars and (one) flag. T. Kuhn's book was one of most influential in my world view development and in my opinion it should be studied at high schools - before adepts get contact with daily practice of science at universities.
Situation is now much better then at days of prevalent positivism - still many scientists did not ask the fundamental question: What is science? Every good scientist should be sometime philosopher. Fragmentation of totality of science into specializations is inevitable but dangerous - i.e. ethic of science - and every scientist should once upon a time look out of his little specialized ghetto.

reply to post by OnceReturned


B. Russel's position is in many aspects identical to I. Kant notion expressed in Critic of Pure Reason. It is nice to see convergence of analytical and continental (mostly idealistic) philosophy. Also phenomenological view (especially E. Husserl) is useful while thinking about epistemology and totality of science.

reply to post by OnceReturned

Fantastic, OnceReturned, just fantastic. A flag and six stars from me.

My hope is that these philosophical problems will manifest themselves experimentally.

I don't believe they ever will.

DJW001's post indicates, if it does not explain, why. At bottom, science is simply a formalized version of the way in which human beings experience the world and draw conclusions from it. The 'reality' of reality, the validity of inductive logic and the locality of action and reaction are assumptions the human brain makes about the world in all its interactions with it, unless the brain is that of a philosopher who is deliberately suspending one or more of these assumptions because she is conducting a thought-experiment, or a physicist observing some mind-bending display of quantum perversity.

And as I said (twice over, in slightly different ways, in my last post on the other thread in which you and I are engaged in discussion), these assumptions are built into the way we have been designed by evolution to experience and interact with our environment.

All three assumptions are frequently invalidated in real life: we experience hallucinations, draw inductive conclusions that later prove false, and even experience a crude version of nonlocality thanks to modern communications devices. However, we are familiar with such exceptions and do not change our assumptions because of them. We will likely use the same strategy in formal scientific experiments that manifest similar problems; as, for example, we are presently doing with evidence of quantum-level nonlocality; we accept that the principle of locality is no longer to be considered absolute, but we do not abandon it; we know it is still valid nearly all the time, so we keep it.

reply to post by Astyanax

...these assumptions are built into the way we have been designed by evolution to experience and interact with our environment....

...,but we do not abandon it; we know it is still valid nearly all the time, so we keep it.

Exactly!

Possibly these “assumptions”, which are “valid nearly all the time” are valid all the time in the context in which they taught themselves to us.

Our whole method of proof using the three premises of realism, valid induction and locality, were learned by observing the physical world and learning what it taught. It has paid us back by all the wonderful outcomes science has provided in the physical world. But it and the knowledge it taught cannot transcend itself.

Now we delve a little deeper – we look beyond the physical, to what drives it or makes it up. What it taught us is no longer helpful. It (the observed physical world) cannot teach us with its rules to understand its creation or make up. It doesn’t contain the methods to do this. The observations of the rules it follows no longer apply. We enter a new context.

So will these problems manifest themselves experimentally? No, not if we continue to experiment in the wrong context, with the wrong tools. These problems lie “outside” of current experimentation methods.

So the “fundamental systemic flaws” may not be flaws as much as they are simply misapplications, we like to try and apply them to all contexts because the have served so well through the ages and will continue to make our physical lives more comfortable. But we have no reason to believe they can apply to the next level, non-physical reality. Possibly it (non-physical reality) will also need to teach us the way to investigate it self if we put aside the current rules observe it and listen carefully, with open minds to accept what we hear…

The problem when trying to reconcile physics or science in general with other philosophies is that philosophers don't make measurements.

This is evident in some of the fantastic if not down right insane (seemingly) scientific philosophies such as string theory and brane theory. Most philosophies are not falsifiable through measurement and experiment.

Scientific theories and laws are falsifiable.

You will never change the scientific paradigm through the use of philisophical arguments so long as your philosophy lacks a measurable component.

I'm not saying you are wrong OP. Actually I agree whole heartedly that scientific dogma is deeply ingrained and in all likelyhood immovable.

Another huge problem is the peer review process. Alot of good work goes unnoticed because it goes against the grain. One such example that finaly had it's day of acceptance is super gravity.


A paradigm shift in the scientific proccess is a pipe dream so long as being "mainstream" is the only way to get research funding.

Just my thoughts


S & F


[edit on 10-3-2010 by constantwonder]

reply to post by NickK3

May I offer you a star for the most persuasive argument for a nonphysical reality I've ever seen on these boards?

Naturally, I disagree. For me, physical reality is all of reality. The complex aspect it presents to human experience and assembles in human conception is--as far as humans are concerned--just the way it is.

It almost certainly assembles itself differently for a bat, differently yet again for a sperm whale and in still another aspect for a plasma being living among the gas-clouds and nascent stars of Eta Carinae. All these aspects, too, are just the way it is.

Reality is always the same, yet appears different depending on how it is observed and interpreted. Hence there is no need to go beyond the physical into some hypothetical nonphysical reality, such as Plato's world of forms or the 'higher theoric world' proposed by Neal Stephenson in Anathem. We can, as you say, trust what seems real to be real--most of the time, at least.

I admit I have fudged the real differences between individual and cultural variations of the aspect reality presents to human beings, but I think these are trivial compared with what all have such variations have in common. To be human is to experience reality in human guise.