What's wrong with conventional 'Scientific Method'?

I wonder why things like those that uses death-dealing entropy(forces that natures used to decomposing matter) are acceptable by Conventional 'scientific method' while things like those that uses Inward motion, cold generating centripetal motion and forces like that which nature are used to build and enliven substances are not adhered to conventional 'scientific method'(particularly anything man made)?

And what's wrong with conventional 'scientific method' which overemphasizes dependence?

Anything that sticks to 'science' alone is missing out on the bigger picture.

Science keeps you in the box that you were meant to stay in ...

Expand your box or build your self a bigger box to encompass those things that are unknown to you and your world will begin to bloom.

In Physics, it has been demonstrated the observer can have a direct effect on some particles. So an experiment can not be run the say way twice. With the scientific method, I think you need to get the same results over and over again to prove a theory as fact. I think in physics, they are starting to believe that there could be other dimensions based on the movement of subatomic particles. These particles seem to move in different ways when observed by different people. It has been said that no one can really accurately detect where in an electron cloud the electrons actually are. This is because they seem to be everywhere at once, and also, sometimes seem to be in other dimensions.


If just having a different observer can chance the outcome of an experiment, that opens up a lot of new possibilities and something may not always work the same way. So how can we really have a solid theory about anything, if it can change?

If science is actually starting to believe in other dimensions, then they will in turn, sooner or later have to believe in life in these other dimensions.

If they believe in life in these other dimensions, then they might believe that this life is not a carbon based life, but maybe based on silica or plasma or something else. So something may be alive, but not solid. It may be like a consciousness that has no body, but can be observed as light or liquid or something.

So if that is possible, then science may one day explain what ghosts, angels, demons or other entities are.

These entities may not behave in ways we understand. If they visit our world, they may operate under different rules. Their very presence could change the rules of the physics around them, allowing them to do things in our world that seem paranormal to us, because we don't understand it.
Just by visiting our world, they may have a bubble around them, extending around their body, and within this aura, they may be able to operate by different rules.

Maybe if they stay here too long, they lose their powers as the rules of our world slowly integrate themselves into their own form. If they stay here too long, they may cease to exist, or they may become some other kind of creature, or become powerless. Maybe this is why they do not stay too long, but seem to come and go.

Originally posted by blujay
Science keeps you in the box that you were meant to stay in ...

Science is the way out, from the box of ignorance.

reply to post by masonicon

Whenever science makes a discovery, the devil grabs it while the angels are debating the best way to use it. - Alan Valentine

Source:
www.famousquotesandauthors.com...

reply to post by buddhasystem


And to a point you are correct.... but eventually you hit the walls ... you as a human aren't meant to break free, they want you right there in your comfortable container.

Break the surface and take a breath of fresh air.

Originally posted by blujay
reply to post by buddhasystem

 

And to a point you are correct.... but eventually you hit the walls ... you as a human aren't meant to break free, they want you right there in your comfortable container.

Break the surface and take a breath of fresh air.

Grand pronouncements like this are a dime a dozen. Break the surface, fresh air blah.

Sorry, let me do my science because I find it interesting. Let me know when you hit the wall (thunk!). I just suspect you never will.

IMHO
Scientific method was developed back in the day when scientists were the Gentleman elites who had the time and resources to study science and nature....

The smarter ones were in danger of becoming extinct because during debates at the royal academy, intelligence did not nessesarily translate to proficiency with a dueling pistol.

At it's heart scientific method is about having a system for solving debates regarding the newtonian world, but can and should be adapted to solving debates in the quantum world too.

It ain't about who's right, it is about what's right.

[edit on 23-7-2010 by Danbones]

reply to post by buddhasystem


You are kinda both correct. The culture of scienctists tends to lend itself to boxe in thinking. A + B = C, etc. Anyone who even suggests that A= B might equal D is rediculed. However, there is nothing in the scienctific method or the principles of scientific study that prescribes this.

Some of our greatest understandings of the universe and nature have come from tremendous leaps of imagnation and faith. M-Thoery and the Higgs Boson are both great examples of ideas that derived from "leaps of logic" where there was no logical reason for the concept to be right. However, with a good sales and PR efort, enough scientists can be convinced that the idea has merit and then they can figure out how it can make sense logically.

The problem with science is that it is filled with arrogant scientists who think that they are right and everyone else is an idiot. That's why I prefer philosophy.

Originally posted by jessieg
In Physics, it has been demonstrated the observer can have a direct effect on some particles. So an experiment can not be run the say way twice. With the scientific method, I think you need to get the same results over and over again to prove a theory as fact. I think in physics, they are starting to believe that there could be other dimensions based on the movement of subatomic particles. These particles seem to move in different ways when observed by different people.

LOL NO.

Observer effect happens because of the "instruments that, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure in some manner".

Originally posted by rogerstigers
reply to post by buddhasystem

 

You are kinda both correct. The culture of scienctists tends to lend itself to boxe in thinking. A + B = C, etc. Anyone who even suggests that A= B might equal D is rediculed. However, there is nothing in the scienctific method or the principles of scientific study that prescribes this.

I don't think that anybody gets "ridiculed". There can be critical analysis, but in general what I see in science is a healthy dosage of open-mindedness.

Some of our greatest understandings of the universe and nature have come from tremendous leaps of imagnation and faith. M-Thoery and the Higgs Boson are both great examples of ideas that derived from "leaps of logic"

Not true at all. The Higgs theory is an extrapolation of our observations about symmetry breaking in nature -- if symmetry breaks, there is a field responsible for it.

However, with a good sales and PR efort, enough scientists can be convinced that the idea has merit and then they can figure out how it can make sense logically.

Not true again. There is a hypothesis that some people find more likely to be true than others, but nobody is "sold" on it until it's proven in an experiment.

The problem with science is that it is filled with arrogant scientists who think that they are right and everyone else is an idiot. That's why I prefer philosophy.

The problem with philosophy is that it is filled with arrogant philosophers who think that they are capable of passing judgment on science from their comfy armchairs and who proclaim that the scientists are ossified worshipers of dogma.

That's why I prefer science.

Science is the generation of theories/models.

These models are said to be 'true' if, when the model is utilised to make predictions within a system, the behaviour of the system conforms to the predictions to a higher degree.

The trueness of the model (or theory) is measured by comparison of the predictions against the actual behaviour of the system (or experiment).

Science is useful, as long as it is not misused. By this I mean trying to use science to answer questions not suited to science.

We live in our heads and we think we live out there.

Everything is metaphor. We make a world (models of understanding) that work within the boundaries of usefulness and practicality.

Do not use science to find meaning. All meaning starts in you and is projected outwards onto the external. The more useful question could be:

Why does one require meaning?

Would science be a useful way to find the answer to this question?

All arguments are just comparisons of models of understanding. These models are abstract (crude approximations) from that which stimulated them. It may be in some instances meaningless to make a comparison between two or more models (arguments, concepts) even though one may not see it. We lose sight of the fact they are only theories. In fact I would say very few people accept they are just theories (albeit extremely accurate and demonstrable). They take the leap of faith and except theory as 'truth'.



[edit on 23-7-2010 by Pentothal]

reply to post by buddhasystem


It would appear that you are rather sheltered in your exposure to the culture of science as a whole. People have had their entire careers destroyed because they backed an unpopular theory -- regardless of if that theory was ultimately proven. Hoyle is a grand example of this. He launched a smear campaign against "Big Bang" theory trying to redicule them in favor of Steady State theory. He was even the one who coined "Big Bang" as a way of mocking the idea.

As for "arm chair" philosophers, I have extensive education and training in Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, various areas of history, archeology, and anthropology from college, on the job training in three seperate careers, as well as side training from clients ranging from military to research hospitals.

All of this may not mean squat to you and I can respect that to you I am nothing more than words on a computer screen and could just as easily be a high school kid on summer vacation. *shrug* ultimately, I don't care.

I have no problems with science in and of itself. I have a problem with the arrogant culture of conformity that presents itself as "SCIENCE is right and you are an idiot".

Cheers!

Edit to add a link with stories illustrating my point: RIDICULED DISCOVERERS,
VINDICATED MAVERICKS

I especially find this quote timely to the discussion: "This foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an example of the absurd lengths to which vicious specialisation will carry scientists." -A.W. Bickerton, physicist, NZ, 1926

[edit on 7-23-2010 by rogerstigers]

Originally posted by rogerstigers
reply to post by buddhasystem

 

It would appear that you are rather sheltered in your exposure to the culture of science as a whole.

Granted. I'm an experimentalist by education and personal inclination.

People have had their entire careers destroyed because they backed an unpopular theory

Oh please, careers get created and destroyed in any walk of life. You should know, with your background. Science is no special and I posit more progressive than many fields of human endeavor.

Hoyle is a grand example of this. He launched a smear campaign against "Big Bang" theory trying to redicule them in favor of Steady State theory. He was even the one who coined "Big Bang" as a way of mocking the idea.

It's "ridicule", not "redicule".

As for "arm chair" philosophers, I have extensive education and training in Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, various areas of history, archeology, and anthropology from college, on the job training in three seperate careers

It's "separate", not "seperate". Regardless, I think it's great that you have such a wide range of experiences. In my life, I've been a farm hand, a construction worker, a student, a physicist, a mountaineer with search and rescue experience, a Wall street quant, and a system architect for a science project.

All of this may not mean squat to you

Oh, it does.

I have no problems with science in and of itself. I have a problem with the arrogant culture of conformity that presents itself as "SCIENCE is right and you are an idiot".

This is a simplistic understanding. There is no monolithic "SCIENCE".

Originally posted by rogerstigers
I have no problems with science in and of itself. I have a problem with the arrogant culture of conformity that presents itself as "SCIENCE is right and you are an idiot".

Edit to add a link with stories illustrating my point: RIDICULED DISCOVERERS,
VINDICATED MAVERICKS

I don't know if your link supports your point or attacks it:

While it's true that at least 99% of revolutionary announcements from the fringes of science are just as bogus as they seem, we cannot dismiss every one of them without investigation.

In other words, of the 100% of fringe ideas that sound bogus at first, only 99% of them really are. Sorting out which of the 1% is actually correct among all the bogus ideas may be a bit challenging and we may not get it right the first time, but if your source is correct, 99% of the time when science ridicules the fringe ideas they will be right. That's a pretty high accuracy rate if you ask me.

Not only that but I see plenty of fringe ideas getting published, like Poplawski's paper in another new thread here claiming we may all be inside a giant black hole. If science and the peer review process was as oppressive as some people suggest, it seems to me like it might be hard to get such a paper published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Science has never made me feel like an idiot. I may make myself feel like an idiot by failing to understand what a scientist is telling me, but if we do some homework and study the same arguments and evidence that scientists are looking at, how can we be made to feel like idiots?

I don't find your list all that convincing.

Take Goddard for example. Your list says this:

Goddard (rocket-powered space ships)

Goddard was relatively obscure until late 1944, when those disgusting Jules-Verne fantasies, the rocket-powered space ships, started raining down on London during WWII. (By analogy, imagine the consternation of the scientific community if Iraq responded to Desert Storm with fleets of glowing UFOs w/deathrays!)

"The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into space]...presents difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to dismiss the notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author's insistent appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed impossibility of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished."
-Sir Richard van der Riet Wooley, British astronomer, reviewing P.E. Cleator's "Rockets in Space", NATURE, March 14, 1936

"This foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an example of the absurd lengths to which vicious specialisation will carry scientists." -A.W. Bickerton, physicist, NZ, 1926

All that tells me is there were some detractors which will be true for any new idea. However it does little to condemn other scientists in general:

Robert Goddard's Legacy

It has been said that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. Dr. Goddard's claims — his public speculations, if you will — were indeed extraordinary (when he first made them)...If Dr. Goddard's claims were extraordinary enough to demand extraordinary evidence, I submit that he provided that evidence...

-Many (though not all) of Dr. Goddard's fellow scientists perceived the possibilities inherent in his experiments, and encouraged his efforts.
-Private groups in the U.S. and elsewhere fully appreciated the potential of Goddard's work, and saw where it might lead. Notable examples are the American Rocket Society and the British Interplanetary Society.

Do you really think anecdotes like this one about Galileo, while fascinating, tell us anything about how modern science works?

Galileo (supported the Copernican viewpoint)

It was not the church authorities who refused to look through his telescope. It was his fellow scientists! They thought that using a telescope was a waste of time, since even if they did see evidence for Galileo's claims, it could only be because Galileo had bewitched them.

The church finally apologized to Galileo in 1992 which seems a bit late since he died in 1642. Thank goodness the church is having a harder time meddling in science these days!

If we look at a more modern example from that list such as Stanley Prusiner, I think it's more realistic:

Prusiner, Stanley (existence of prions, 1982)

Prusiner endured derision from colleagues for his prion theory explaining Mad Cow Disease, but was vidicated by winning the Nobel.

So he won the Nobel prize in 1997, 15 years after publishing his paper. So his fellow scientists DID accept his idea, even if it didn't happen as fast as we might have liked. Einstein published his "miracle year" 4 papers in 1905 and didn't become a household name until 1919, so that's about 14 years. It does take a little time for a paper to be read, reviewed, tested, and accepted. And reading Prusiner's autobiography doesn't leave me with the impression science made him feel like an idiot:

nobelprize.org...

As the data for a protein and the absence of a nucleic acid in the scrapie agent accumulated, I grew more confident that my findings were not artifacts and decided to summarize that work in an article that was eventually published in the spring of 1982. Publication of this manuscript, in which I introduced the term "prion", set off a firestorm. Virologists were generally incredulous and some investigators working on scrapie and CJD were irate. The term prion derived from protein and infectious provided a challenge to find the nucleic acid of the putative "scrapie virus." Should such a nucleic acid be found, then the word prion would disappear! Despite the strong convictions of many, no nucleic acid was found; in fact, it is probably fair to state that Detlev Riesner and I looked more vigorously for the nucleic acid than anyone else.

While it is quite reasonable for scientists to be skeptical of new ideas that do not fit within the accepted realm of scientific knowledge, the best science often emerges from situations where results carefully obtained do not fit within the accepted paradigms.

Am I misreading that or did he just say that "it is quite reasonable for scientists to be skeptical of new ideas that do not fit within the accepted realm of scientific knowledge"? And yes he made a discovery outside the realm of accepted science so it took a little longer to accept. And despite the gripes about his radical idea, nobody ever proved him wrong:

Indeed, no experimental findings that might overturn the prion concept were reported from any laboratory. By the early 1990s, the existence of prions was coming to be accepted in many quarters of the scientific community

I'd say science worked in the Prusiner case about like I'd expect it to work, and even though Prusiner didn't relish the attacks against his discovery, even he understands and acknowledges this is the way the scientific process works. Radical new ideas must be tested and vetted...his was and it was found to be correct. I'd say this example is a vindication of the scientific method rather than a condemnation of it.

[edit on 23-7-2010 by Arbitrageur]

reply to post by Arbitrageur


I actually agree with 85.65% of your post (I made the statistic up, of course )

Really, I might have come across as more antagonistic to scientists earlier than I intended. I do feel that "fringe" scientists do get rediculed (did I spell it right this time, buddhasystem? It is one of my "problem words".. the other was just a typo) a bit more than what should be considered healthy. Also, while you are correct that the author I referenced quoted 99% (which I assumed to also be a hyperbole) of fringe scientists are debunked, some of those are probably just not passionate or strong enough to fight back.

I guess it probably could be looked at as something of a good thing that one has to fight so hard to change the consensus of the various sciences. It keeps up from wildly flying from one theory to another and accomplishing nothing.


As you can see, while I have a strong personal opinion about the suubject, I can't really bring myself to apply the mentality to all scientists, especially since I know some personally that it does not apply to. Also, I can tell when I feel strong enough about a subject that it might be "coloring" my opinion.



[edit on 7-23-2010 by rogerstigers]

Originally posted by rogerstigers
Also, while you are correct that the author I referenced quoted 99% (which I assumed to also be a hyperbole) of fringe scientists are debunked, some of those are probably just not passionate or strong enough to fight back.

The 99% refers to fringe science, not all science, so in that respect I'm not sure it's really hyperbole, though I'm not sure there's an accurate statistic either.

Also did you note that Prusiner said he tried harder to prove his own theory wrong than anybody else?

Despite the strong convictions of many, no nucleic acid was found; in fact, it is probably fair to state that Detlev Riesner and I looked more vigorously for the nucleic acid than anyone else

This isn't fighting back, it's more like joining the attackers to attack your own theory and being your own biggest "devil's advocate". This builds up confidence in your idea so that when someone attacks it, you've already attacked it the same way yourself so you can still have confidence in it.