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Author Topic: How do we know the laws of reality?  (Read 6275 times)

Hariti

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How do we know the laws of reality?
« on: May 10, 2020, 11:34:00 am »
I was a bit nervous to post this thread out of fear it would be taken as pseudoscience and moved to the Twilight Zone—but ultimately my desire to discuss the topic won out over my reticence. Ideally, the title of the thread would have the word know italicized because this is an epistemological question.

How do we know the things that we, as a society, claim to know? We rely on science to tell us how the world works, and it is a very useful method for doing so—but ultimately all science does is provide a body of evidence that something is true. Science does not (at least in my understanding) strive to prove definitive and inviolable truths about reality. Rather it strives to provide logical, reasonable, evidence-based models (hypothesis and theories) for how the world most likely works based on the evidence we currently have.

So with that in mind; at what point do we, as a society, decide that the body of evidence supporting a particular scientific model is sufficient that we treat is as truth? Do we do so after the very first study putting an idea forward? The seventh? The seventy-seventh? Or do we require more than studies to decide a thing is true rather than merely likely? Do we need empirical evidence that can be observed outside the laboratory? What about theories that postulate about things we cannot actually observe—like the origins of the universe or the various hypothetical particles, systems, and phenomena we have never actually observed?

Up until recently we had never seen a black hole, and yet the majority of society took their existence as abject truth anyway—based purely on mathematical models saying that they could and should exist. Is mathematics, then, the ruler by which we measure what is true or false? If you can prove it on paper than it must be true?

I'm not asking these questions to call science into question, to throw doubt upon it's usefulness or the discoveries it has made, but rather asking because it seems to me that it's a legitimately unanswered question. Some theories with mountains of evidence are highly doubted by the general public, while other theories with far less evidence are taken as gospel truth. It seems to me that the epistemology of science is all over the place, erratic and inconsistent and often boiling down to whatever an individual wants to believe is true.

To me personally, some of the more widely accepted scientific ideas seem fairly shakily proven.The second law of thermodynamics, for example. It's certainly a useful model for how reality might work, but it is just a model. I have never seen anything coming even close to conclusive proof that it's an indelible truth of the universe. Yet, that's how it's treated, to the point that any proposed model that questions is is immediately struck down for violating a 'law' of physics.

At what point does a model become law? Evolution isn't a 'law' yet, despite having (in my opinion) quite a lot more evidence than some of the things that are considered laws (second thermodynamics seeming the most egregious example to me). Why is that?

At what point did we as a society give science (a system designed to create models, hypothesis, and theories—any of which can be debunked if new evidence is found) the authority to create 'laws?' That seems quite contrary to the whole idea of science to me.

So I guess those are my questions here. How do we know that scientific discoveries are objective truths and not just good models? How do we decide which scientific ideas to treat as true rather than just likely, and at what point did science cross the line from being a observational tool to an epistemological one?
"The worshippers of the gods go to them; to the manes go the ancestor-worshippers; to the Deities who preside over the elements go their worshippers; My devotees come to Me." ... "Whichever devotee desires to adore whatever such Deity with faith, in all such votaries I make that particular faith unshakable. Endowed with that faith, a votary performs the worship of that particular deity and obtains the fruits thereof, these being granted by Me alone." - Sri Krishna

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Re: How do we know the laws of reality?
« Reply #1 on: May 11, 2020, 12:48:32 am »
So I guess those are my questions here. How do we know that scientific discoveries are objective truths and not just good models? How do we decide which scientific ideas to treat as true rather than just likely, and at what point did science cross the line from being a observational tool to an epistemological one?

Fair point. I would say that 'science' and its derivatives, engineering and so forth, are valid because they give consistent and repeatable results...right up until they don't.

If you dig back through the archives of the old forum, you might find a post I made asking something along the lines of "what are the limits of magic?" That was sparked, IIRC, by a discussion of a book/video/something about 'mapping the astral'. I raised the question about whether the astral even COULD be mapped, any more than a dream.

I was a sailor in the Navy and sailed into Sydney Harbour aboard the battleship Missouri (September 1986); while I have not been to Australia at all since 1988 I have no real doubt that if you gave me a properly provisioned and equipped small boat capable of making transoceanic passages I could sail into that very same harbor and find it in many regards just the same as it was then, despite the fact that I have not been there in over thirty years. Is such precision and repeatability even possible with magical matters? (Maybe one reason why we don't build elevators and bridges with magic, outside of a Dungeons & Dragons game?!)

And yet I'm not saying that magic/spirit/etc. isn't 'true'...it could be that this little corner of what we refer to as 'physical reality' is just so backwater and isolated that none of the Big Players have bothered to mess with it in the past few thousand/million/billion years of recorded/archaeologic/geologic history. Is it possible that could change? I think so...although I'm not placing any bets more substantial than a cold soda for any specific time window.

I'm thinking that even deities may not fully have the "big picture". You've mentioned before (IIRC) that in Hindu thought the universe goes through a multibillion year cycle where events are predestined to repeat over, and over, and over again with even the deities unable to do anything other than watch. Well, that dovetails exactly with my conceit that there are multiple "timelines" and that when a Big Player gets boxed into a corner with no other escape, he/she "hits the undo key" and resets events. But if that box is tight enough to prevent said Big Player from changing any of the underlying conditions...say, from making any changes macroscopic enough to be perceived above the quantum level...and if the Little Players, encountering the same macroscopic conditions, make choices consistent with those which they (unknowingly) made in previous 'iterations', then, well...
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Re: How do we know the laws of reality?
« Reply #2 on: May 11, 2020, 12:56:13 pm »

So I guess those are my questions here. How do we know that scientific discoveries are objective truths and not just good models? How do we decide which scientific ideas to treat as true rather than just likely, and at what point did science cross the line from being a observational tool to an epistemological one?

It has always been my understanding that we can't 'prove' anything is true, only that it isn't true.  And that pretty much all of science is trying to show why the thing you think is true works.  It's all 'working theories' that we trust because no one can show that they don't work...until they disprove them and we move to a new model.

I kind of take reality at face value.  I have a 'working understanding' of things.  I trust science because it is the ways in which other people have done the trial and error stuff for me.  But under all of it, I have this one part of my mind that also believes that nothing is real, that it might all be an illusion or a misunderstanding.  I dunno, it works in my head!
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Re: How do we know the laws of reality?
« Reply #3 on: May 11, 2020, 08:37:05 pm »
It seems to me that the epistemology of science is all over the place, erratic and inconsistent and often boiling down to whatever an individual wants to believe is true.

Well, yeah? You're describing the perceptions of science among non-scientists, usually with incomplete understanding of the topic and with wildly different frameworks of thought.

Quote
I have never seen anything coming even close to conclusive proof that it's an indelible truth of the universe.


Not to be flip, but, have you looked? I mean, have you taken university-level physics classes? Read academic texts about thermodynamics? Done any experiments yourself, or studied the methodology of experiments that have been done?

I find that, in general, popular works about science don't spend a lot of time on the evidence behind the conclusions, because that's boring, and also tend to gloss over the more advanced concepts because they require so much background knowledge (ie if you explained it fully you'd end up with the equivalent of a university class anyway).

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Evolution isn't a 'law' yet,  Why is that?

IIRC, in science terminology, Theories are considered even more solid than Laws. (Remember, a layperson's theory is a scientist's hypothesis.)

Quote
At what point did we as a society give science (a system designed to create models, hypothesis, and theories—any of which can be debunked if new evidence is found) the authority to create 'laws?' That seems quite contrary to the whole idea of science to me.

Probably the Enlightenment. Those Victorian gents were a tad bit full of themselves.

Quote
How do we know that scientific discoveries are objective truths and not just good models?

Er ... they *aren't* objective truths. And I don't think actual scientists claim they are.

Quote
How do we decide which scientific ideas to treat as true rather than just likely,

Yeah, there should be a system for deciding that. Like, a scientific method or something. (I'm still not sure if you mean how scientists decide which ideas are more true than others, or how broader society does. Those are two very different things.)
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Hariti

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Re: How do we know the laws of reality?
« Reply #4 on: May 11, 2020, 09:16:35 pm »
Not to be flip, but, have you looked? I mean, have you taken university-level physics classes? Read academic texts about thermodynamics? Done any experiments yourself, or studied the methodology of experiments that have been done.

Yes. I have taken college-level physics courses and read texts about thermodynamics. Neither of which was sufficient to convince me that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is truth. Not to be flip, but did you overlook the fact that this thread is about epistemology?

I am not trying to claim that the Second Law of Thermodynamics poorly describes observable reality based on the evidence we currently have. It does, in fact, describe the behavior of reality quite well, and I think it should be treated as a good model for how reality works.

None of the above makes it truth, however. Just because we have never seen anything that defies the Second Law of Thermodynamics (or the First, for that matter, or any other widely accepted scientific law)—doesn't mean such things don't or couldn't exist.

IIRC, in science terminology, Theories are considered even more solid than Laws. (Remember, a layperson's theory is a scientist's hypothesis.


That contradicts what I was taught in school—but you may be correct. I don't claim to be an expert on science terminology.

Either way, it's tangential to my point. My point is that science, as a methodological system, isn't meant to make absolute, unquestionable rulings about how the universe definitively works. Which is what the word 'Law' implies.

Science takes observations, creates hypothesis, tests them repeatedly, and then draws conclusions. Conclusions which aren't necessarily 100% true and accurate 100% of the time. They just happen to be the ones that best fit current evidence, subject to change when new evidence is uncovered.



Er ... they *aren't* objective truths. And I don't think actual scientists claim they are.


I believe there's been some misunderstanding here. I am not talking about what 'actual scientists' think at all. I am talking about the broader cultural attitude. Many people (who aren't necessarily scientists themselves) do treat scientific observations as objective truths—that's the whole point of this thread. To ask why so many people do that, and when they started doing it, and how it has seemingly become commonplace.

That said, I think you're overgeneralizing what 'actual scientists'; do and don't think and claim. I've met a lot of 'actual scientists' during my time in academia, and indeed, technically speaking, I have myself conducted research that was later published in peer-reviewed articles. I work in science.

I'm not mentioning that as an appeal to authority—but rather to explain that, during my time in science, I have met some scientists with really questionable views. There absolutely are some scientists who treat current theory as objective truth. Are they a majority? No. Most scientists are reasonable people, who understand how science is meant to work, but a minority of them—like many laypeople—conflate scientific observations with objective truth.

Those people (those specific people—and not the wider scientific community!) are who this thread is talking about. It doesn't apply to most scientists and I never claimed that it did. Hopefully that's cleared things up. I was never claiming that the majority of scientists were treating science as objective truth.

Yeah, there should be a system for deciding that. Like, a scientific method or something. (I'm still not sure if you mean how scientists decide which ideas are more true than others, or how broader society does. Those are two very different things.)


Two things here:
A) I am talking about broader society. There are some scientists who fall into the category of 'people who treat science as dogma' but they're a minority. It tends to be people outside science who do that.

B) When I say 'truth' in this thread, I am saying it in the philosophical, absolute sense. I know how scientists decide which ideas are more true than others, and that has nothing to do with the subject of this thread at all. "More true than others" =/= "Absolutely universally objectively true."

The whole point of this thread—the reason I wrote it—was to discuss people who treat science as the later, and to speculate on why they might do that. I fear we're having two different conversations because that doesn't seem to be how you've taken my original post. If I was unclear I do apologize and I hope that's cleared it up.

So to restate what I am trying to ask:

"Why do many people (both scientists and non-scientists alike) seem to want to treat scientific conclusions as (objective, indelible, unquestionable, universal, absolute) truth?"

I'm am not asking: "Why do we believe science?" or any variation thereof.
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Re: How do we know the laws of reality?
« Reply #5 on: May 12, 2020, 12:24:08 pm »

So to restate what I am trying to ask:

"Why do many people (both scientists and non-scientists alike) seem to want to treat scientific conclusions as (objective, indelible, unquestionable, universal, absolute) truth?"


Probably the same reason that some people want to treat any idea/belief/theory as Truth (the universal absolute kind, with a capital T!).  Some people fixate on things, they get an idea in their head and it must be True!!!!  And it doesn't matter how much proof you have for other theories or how many holes you can poke in their idea, they shove their fingers in their ears yell "la la la la" and continue to believe their Truth...because it makes their world secure and comfortable.  It puts them on firm ground...and often in the right (as in they are right and somehow better than everyone else who doesn't believe their Truth).  These are the same people who will call every other idea or thought out there a conspiracy or fake news or any other number of "you can't believe that...it's not True" explanations.
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Re: How do we know the laws of reality?
« Reply #6 on: May 12, 2020, 05:30:54 pm »
I was a bit nervous to post this thread out of fear it would be taken as pseudoscience and moved to the Twilight Zone—but ultimately my desire to discuss the topic won out over my reticence. Ideally, the title of the thread would have the word know italicized because this is an epistemological question.

How do we know the things that we, as a society, claim to know?

I suppose we don't. We don't really know anything for sure--we could all be living in a dream based on a snowglobe that happens to fascinate a poorly-depicted autistic child.

Quote
We rely on science to tell us how the world works, and it is a very useful method for doing so—but ultimately all science does is provide a body of evidence that something is true. Science does not (at least in my understanding) strive to prove definitive and inviolable truths about reality. Rather it strives to provide logical, reasonable, evidence-based models (hypothesis and theories) for how the world most likely works based on the evidence we currently have.

Yes. That's why it's ill-advised to build a worldview entirely out of science. It's one tool in our kit for understanding reality. We have to supplement it with others to get a full picture.

I'll believe climate scientists when they tell me we should reduce emissions, but I'll also believe my heart when I pray to my gods.

Quote
So I guess those are my questions here. How do we know that scientific discoveries are objective truths and not just good models? How do we decide which scientific ideas to treat as true rather than just likely, and at what point did science cross the line from being a observational tool to an epistemological one?

Slowly and carefully, as far as those scientific ideas go; as for the latter, again, I say the Enlightenment or so.
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Re: How do we know the laws of reality?
« Reply #7 on: May 12, 2020, 08:32:41 pm »
Not to be flip, but did you overlook the fact that this thread is about epistemology?

Well, I was certainly unclear on *which* epistemology you were trying to talk about: epistemology of science, epistemology of societal beliefs about science, or epistemology of your personal understanding of science. Your phrasing often came across as personal incredulity at how widely accepted some scientific concepts are, which led me to focus on the later.

Plus, you used the phrase 'epistemology of science' which I've only ever seen used to refer to 'how science works' rather than 'what society knows about science', so there's another source of confusion.

And yes, when someone says a scientific concept is "fairly shakily proven" and that they "have never seen anything coming even close to conclusive proof", my very first question is going to be how much knowledge they have on the topic.

Quote
None of the above makes it truth, however.

I'm agnostic on the existence of objective truth at all, so maybe I'm not getting why the issue is even important.

And I suspect most people who talk about scientific concepts as 'true' do not mean it in the sense of 'philosophically absolute truth' but rather 'reasonably accurate for one's purposes', if they even think about the nature of truth to that extent.

Quote
"Why do many people (both scientists and non-scientists alike) seem to want to treat scientific conclusions as (objective, indelible, unquestionable, universal, absolute) truth?"

Seeking a definitive answer to this is probably futile, in the 'ask n people, get n+1 answers' sort of way. People have so many different ways of thinking and of evaluating reality.
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Hariti

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Re: How do we know the laws of reality?
« Reply #8 on: May 12, 2020, 09:39:02 pm »
And yes, when someone says a scientific concept is "fairly shakily proven" and that they "have never seen anything coming even close to conclusive proof", my very first question is going to be how much knowledge they have on the topic.

I daresay you're stripping some important context from those statements.

Firstly, that I italicized the word proven. Perhaps my intent in doing so was not conveyed properly, but—the italics were meant to convey I was talking about proof in an absolute sense.

Secondly, you left out "an indelible truth of the universe" from the statement "I have never seen anything coming even close to conclusive proof that (the second law of Thermodynamics) is an indelible truth of the universe."

Ignoring those things completely shifts the discussion away from from what I was saying. I was not saying that, as you put it, "a scientific concept is "fairly shakily proven" or that " I have never seen anything coming even close to conclusive proof (of a scientific concept)."

I am not discussing the Second law of Thermodynamics as a scientific concept at all. I am discussing it as an alleged absolute objective truth of the universe which is above question and not subject to change or revision. Which, if I may say, is quite outside the realm of scientific discourse.

"The worshippers of the gods go to them; to the manes go the ancestor-worshippers; to the Deities who preside over the elements go their worshippers; My devotees come to Me." ... "Whichever devotee desires to adore whatever such Deity with faith, in all such votaries I make that particular faith unshakable. Endowed with that faith, a votary performs the worship of that particular deity and obtains the fruits thereof, these being granted by Me alone." - Sri Krishna

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Re: How do we know the laws of reality?
« Reply #9 on: May 12, 2020, 10:49:56 pm »
How do we know the things that we, as a society, claim to know?

Hariti, In my "opinion" the whole of human experience is based on perception. How you perceive the world is what is going to dictate your beliefs and understanding.

Twenty of us can sit in a circle and put an object in the middle of us. Those to our left and right are going to see something close to what we see. Those across from us are most likely going to see something totally different. Even though we are looking at the same thing.

This is in fact how I believe all the worlds religions have so many similarities yet still are and ends about specifics. They are all viewing the same source but they are sitting in different degrees of difference from each other's perceptions.

You speak as if science has answers. Do they really? Medicine uses chemical constructs based on naturally occurring substances. To me Science is nothing more than what we know as Magic "defined". So to speak Science is magic with all the magic or mysticism removed.

Perception to me is the key to living a magical life. While yes I do have to maintain a connection with my fellow beings I also need to accept the fact that they will never truly see what I see. But then there are "Truths" that science has defined that "in my opinion" are law because in my perception I see it occurring every day.

To put it in a modern pseudonym, "The Matrix has you Neo". There is a basic law of attraction that holds all of creation together. In the Bible it states "The faith of a mustard seed can move mountains." In science we know that splitting an atom can cause an explosion that can level a mountain. "Faith" after all is an energy. Same as the release of the covalent bond of an atom. That energy that holds those small particles together is huge enough to do amazing things. Beings are made up of an untold number of these atoms. All working together not only to power our existence but to allow us to influence the existence of what we view as our reality. The Bible also states that "we" are made in "his" image. I love expanding perception in these cases. Most people when viewing themselves in comparison to God, Nature, Goddess, Earth, Creation. View themselves a being small in comparison. So "Science" would tell you to look for patterns. What else is like the basic building blocks of us, atoms? Well if you think about how solar systems function moons moving about planets, planets moving about suns. Solar systems moving within galaxies, and galaxies moving within universes. This cosmic dance is not all that different from atoms powering our cells, cells creating our organs, and organs creating our being. So to say we are created in God's image could easily be perceived through that simple scientific observation. And in my thoughts that observation is indeed the basic "law" of attraction that binds all of creation together.

The manipulation of this attraction through ritual, meditation, prayer, sacrifice, sex, and simple force of will is what we call Magic.

So in short. How do I "KNOW" this is fact? Because I believe it. I know basically another Matrix reference. "Bending the spoon is impossible you simply have to understand the fact. There is no spoon." Defined.. You are creating your own reality simply by being and understanding that you are in control of your reality, bends the spoon.

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Re: How do we know the laws of reality?
« Reply #10 on: May 13, 2020, 06:30:08 pm »
Firstly, that I italicized the word proven. Perhaps my intent in doing so was not conveyed properly, but—the italics were meant to convey I was talking about proof in an absolute sense.

Such proof, according to my own belief and many forms of philosophy I know of, does not and cannot exist. Hence my confusion as to why you brought it up at all.

With respect to the main topic of conversation:

"Why do many people (both scientists and non-scientists alike) seem to want to treat scientific conclusions as (objective, indelible, unquestionable, universal, absolute) truth?"

I'm am not asking: "Why do we believe science?" or any variation thereof.

I think that, in general, there are a few things going on here.

- that some people have a poor understanding of how science works.

- that some people have a greater desire for certainty than others.

- that some people don't think about the nature of truth, or don't recognise a difference between absolute truths and practical truths. Thus, for them the two questions in the above quote would be essentially the same thing.

And, in another direction:

Quote
absolute, unquestionable rulings about how the universe definitively works. Which is what the word 'Law' implies.

I think you're putting more weight on this word than is generally intended. People may use words like 'Law' as a matter of convention, brevity or practicality. (Consider Poe's Law, Murphy's Law, Godwin's Law and Sturgeon's Law, which nobody would take to be absolute truths of the universe.)

Likewise, people may speak in absolute terms for practical reasons, even if their understanding is more complex; it's tiring, unnecessary and rude to 'well, actually,' any simplified statement you come across.

(except on TC where it's practically expected ...)
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