Having promised myself not to get involved in any instant coffee student philosophy discussions, I'm going to have to tread quite carefully around this. But Robin poked me on the subject and it does merit some thought. This still officially counts as an interlude ... I am loathe to attempt to formally define or question the concept of 'truth'. And I have previously stated that for current purposes, I'm assuming science is not a list of absolute facts (or truths).
The earth is flat.
What do we mean when we say something is true or false? I mentioned the flat earth model earlier so let us start with that. The statement "The earth is flat" is definitely false. (False is much easier to spot than true.) Here is a collection of photos of the earth taken from space. Conspiracy theorists may wish to dispute their veracity ... but not with me. Thanks all the same.
A flat earth model is very useful if you are building a house, but architects using the flat earth model know that the earth isn't actually flat. I hope.
What about the statement "The earth is round"? If you were pedantic to the point of being antisocial, you might argue that strictly speaking the earth is an oblate spheroid and not perfectly round at all. Is the statement still true? It's fairly accurate. It's probably the best single syllable description of the shape of the earth. It's not as if 'round' is a strictly-defined geometric term in any case. Biscuits are round. People's heads are round. Round-ish.
So in common usage 'true' and 'false' are not absolute black and white concepts.
The earth is 7000 years old.
Some biblical literalists use the creation stories in the Old Testament to assert that the earth is only six or seven thousand years old. Some will even couch this assertion in scientific terms and claim it can be supported by a legitimate use of the scientific method. A quick google will bring up a number of such papers.
This assertion is false. Uncontroversially and incontrovertibly false. This model of the earth's history is contradicted by a truly massive weight of evidence. It is as easily falsifiable as the suggestion that the earth is flat.
Note that this does not instantly disqualify it from being a scientific model. As I said earlier:
"Scientific models and theories are not 'true' or 'false'. They are 'useful' or 'not useful' in particular contexts."
and
"Science is a set of well-defined models that can be tested against observation."
If you can find a context where the assumption that the earth is 7000 years old has an application, and you can express it in terms that allow it to be tested against observation in that context, then it will become a useful scientific model.
I will buy an iPod for the first person who can give me an example of a context where this assertion is useful and a method for testing it. Any size and colour you like. The answers "to prove the literal truth of Genesis" and "by reading the word of God" will receive a mystery booby prize.
So ... being demonstrably false does not stop something from being science; failing to satisfy the simple criteria of a scientific model and not applying the scientific method stops something from being science.
I have no idea if this satisfies Robin's qualms about "true" versus "useful". I'm sure he'll tell me.
Friday, 25 January 2008
A further interlude: a bit on truth
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flat earth,
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science,
scientific method,
scientific model,
true and false,
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14 comments:
Nice blog...very interesting reading, even if bits of my brain that have gone stagnant are having to creak into action again ;)
This made me think a bit.
If a scientific model doesn't have to be true, just to be useful in some contexts, there's no requirement or guarantee of qualitative progress. Fresnel's "light is a wave through the aether" theory, for example, gave lots of useful predictions and revealed new things, while being demonstrably untrue after later work. It still has utility in explaining things at a basic level. Is it science?
It certainly seems more like science than, say, creationism. It belongs to the body of work known as "Science". It's also refuted more soundly than creationism (obviously, due to the nature of the respective studies), and it could be argued that creationism has utility in offering explanations. Far too much, in fact, to the point of utter uselessness. Surely the wave theory is better in some quantitative way than the Word, even if day-to-day more people find the latter a more useful explanation of The Way Things Are?
The point I'm ineffectually dancing and blustering around is that there *is* a progressive increase in truth, or accuracy or quality or scope, of scientific models. Or rather, the scientific models that Science incorporates. Relativity incorporates all of Newtonian mechanics and then more, but is a totally different view; Newton's mass is not the same as Einstein's mass. The former is scientific, and useful for almost all the humans in the world, but it's wrong.
True/false is binary language, and probably leads to worries that shouldn't be there. Science has mostly-truths and partial-truths and useful-half-truths and constantly strives to ratchet things closer to the truth end of the scale, at the cost of admitting its mistakes. The alternative is pre-defining a truth and ratchetting your facts and observations towards that.
Rereading this and your post, it seems we agree. I can't remember what prompted me to type all this, then, probably a worry about scientific subjectivism or anti-reality. But here you go, you're stuck with it now.
I like the ratchet analogy. I'll nick that at some point.
Science knows and acknowledges that the old models are limited or just plain wrong, even when they are still of use in some contexts.
And science assumes that the current models are limited or just plain wrong. Although scientists are only human, so pride may sometimes poke its nose in and make people defensive of their particular favourite models.
Keywords: pragmatism and humility.
I've just dropped my hobnob into my tea. I hold you entirely to blame.
I'm hoping I wont get flamed for being a thickie here, but reading both the blog post, and the comments that follow I have concluded that Creationism has one scientific purpose.
It's a theory that is so ludicrous it has made generations of biologists, geologists, physicists, astronomers and archaeologists say "Hold on...that theory is bollocks, there most be a better explanation than THAT"
A theory or construct is only useful whilst it works and makes sense. Once it fails to do either, it should be discarded without regret and without resentment.
Organised dogmatic faith fails to change with the needs of the human population, and eventually becomes outdated, useless and irrelevant to those who it claims to represent. They cling to outdated views and concepts and force their followers to do the same - and we are not designed to be that way.
As Shambles has said - 'pragmatism and humility'. It is a concept that most established religions fail to grasp - mainly because they prefer their followers to obey without questioning them closely.
Of course this is from a non-atheist point of view, so to an atheist I could be talking bollocks -
*looks all worried in case the bigger brains beat her up*
And now I think that I have just basically rehashed everything the big boys just said.
*blems at self and goes back to reading Pop Bitch*
Having said that ratchet stuff, I'm not so sure. It's certainly ratcheting away from ignorance, but I suspect it's more a Darwinian evolution to a Science that is most appropriate and useful for the circumstances, than an inexorable grind towards A Single Great Truth. Maybe it's both.
Wicca - these days, you could say that creationists provide science with a healthy level of sceptical debate. However, attempting to get intelligent design taught as science in schools is not helpful to anyone.
Historically, dogmatic faith has intimidated, suppressed and outright destroyed progress that wasn't in line with The Word. Up until the Renaissance, Europe was a bunch of theocracies and feudal societies so retarded that even the Mongols couldn't be arsed invading it - and they were never averse to a bit of invading.
There are still dogmas today - research that has potentially racist or sexist implications may be suppressed, ignored or shouted down, for example. But no-one's getting burned at the stake for it, at least.
Lisa said: *looks all worried in case the bigger brains beat her up*
This is a strictly open house. No beating up permitted ... well apart from I have the 'delete' option by everybody's comments. Power corrupts.
"so to an atheist I could be talking bollocks"
If science is done properly then the personal opinions of the people conducting it should have no effect on the conclusion.
Rich - according to a museum in Paris (I think it was either the sewers or the Panthéon, I'll have a look for links later) the Mongols got as far as Paris. St Genevieve is patron saint of Paris because she turned them back.
Also, I think the reason Fresnel's aether theory is still taught in schools is because it is taught as wrong, as part of the history of science and how we developed our current understanding. At least, that's how it was taught to me.
I'm going to rock the boat here and suggest that, evidence aside, there isn't actually any practical use for the knowledge that the Earth is four billion years old either, or that mankind evolved from apes. It's interesting, but to a very great extent it's knowledge for its own sake - just plain old curiosity. And if there's so much evidence for it as to convince any reasonable person, then why do they still keep doing even more paleontology?
I'm also going to verge on actually capsizing the boat with this. The statement that God created the world 7000 years ago actually isn't falsifiable at all, if one is to suppose He also created all of the "evidence" that He didn't. This is pure sophistry and irrefutable nonsense of the highest order. I reject it on aesthetic grounds - I just don't think God would actually DO that (whether He exists or not), and furthermore, it fails to increase my own personal understanding of anything at all, but rather, only serves to obfuscate the matter.
If you've ever used modern medicine you've benefited from knowledge of evolutionary biology, and that theory is all the better for the data we've got to help model it on.
It's probably true that most scientists do science because they find it 'interesting' rather than 'useful', though. To them, the theory and models are useful for finding out more interesting facts.
I'm really going to have to polish up my definition of 'useful' or find a better word. I think I know what I mean ... but I'm clearly making a bit of a pig's ear of explaining it.
Also: welcome ms. moon ... I'm about to read your comments properly over a cup of tea.
An understanding of the process of natural selection and genetics might be useful in modern medicine, but I struggle to see how the specific ancestry of the human race has any bearing on our ability to concoct a remedy in the here and now, much less so the ancestry of a specific sort of dinosaur whose fossil they just uncovered. They are continually rejigging it anyway. The definition of "ape" was only changed to include humans in the 1980s.*
It's also worth pointing out that no DNA exists older than a million years that is useful for any sort of analysis.
*I just checked that on Wikipedia. I'm sure it said it was in the '80s last time I looked. Now it says "a handful of decades ago", which is astonishingly vague. How many decades can one fit in one's hand?
On 'useful' ...
This is what I originally said:
"Scientific models and theories are not 'true' or 'false'. They are 'useful' or 'not useful' in particular contexts. That is, they either tell you something useful and accurate about the thing they are modelling, or they don't."
(in this post)
I'm not talking about practical applications of the technology and knowledge that comes out of science, I am talking specifically about the utility of the model within science.
So the models of DNA, random mutation, natural selection, et al are useful models of life on earth. They make useful predictions that can be tested against observations in biology and paleontology.
I agree that something like a scraping of DNA from the inside of a woolly mammoth tusk may turn out to be as useful as a chocolate teapot. But that's not the "useful" I'm talking about.
This is a fairly specific use (or probably misuse) of the word "useful".
I suppose it could be said that this sort of thing is useful for understanding, for creating a more complete, more consistent and less arbitrary model of the way things are. That is what scientists like to do, but a religious person has a different aim. The idea that God specifically and personally created the world in all its glory 7000 years ago, by contrast, serves instead a purpose of the psyche - namely, it elevates mankind above a purely naturalistic explanation of things that only leads to nihilism and "the cult of the animal self" (phrase my own). It unambiguously puts God in a position of absolute moral authority, which simplifies ethics a great deal for those who, frankly, struggle with the subtleties of ideas such as utilitarianism.
I don't know why I'm doing this. I don't even want an iPod.
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