Science is mere info/data?

[TINNY]

Is it correct to say that science is mere data about nature?

From wikipedia.org:

Science is both a process of gaining knowledge, and the organized body of knowledge gained by this process. The scientific process is the systematic acquisition of new knowledge about a system. This systematic acquisition is generally the scientific method, and the system is generally nature. Science is also the scientific knowledge that has been systematically acquired by this scientific process

 

To make it relevant to human beings, we term that as philosophy?

Philosophy is now widely used to designate the pursuit of knowledge or wisdom about fundamental matters concerning life, death, meaning, reality, being and truth.

 

So science in itself is meaningless unless we philosophize?

[sanctus]

Science is not meaning less without philosophizing, but I would say that science becomes incomprehensible the more abstract it becomes and therefore you need to recur to philosophy.

[TINNY]

You mean that philosophy is the basis of scientific assumptions when science gets incomprehensible?

[sanctus]

No, not the basis, but I believe it to be the best and easiest way to understand it and once philosophy helped to understand it, one can make scientific assumptions based on logic.

[TINNY]

Hmm. What you're saying is rather vague. Is it something like this:

 

We can see progression of matter all around us. Starting from sub atomic particles, it culminates into atoms. A group of atoms forms molecules, a group of molecules form complex molecules (eg :DNA) and so on till it progresses towards animal life. So right now, we start to philosophize that matter progresses into more complex organizations. Then we make logical assumptions that evolution takes place as matter gets more complex till the end of the line we have human beings.

 

So is this what you mean? If not, give your example.

[sanctus]

No I was not saying what you wrote and I thought I wasn't vague, as in my head everything seemed clear :wink: . But here I give you an example:

 

How can you understand the implications of quantum mechanics without philosophizing about it's consequences. Quantum mechanics very roughly say that t any event has a certain probaility to happen,this probaility might be one but it doesn't have to.

 

Well, I let you think about that and tell me you if you didn't need philosophy to understand that and its implications.

[Tim_Lou]

philosophy and science... gotta use both of your brains--left and right.

 

thats symmetry!

what am i talking about??... :wink:

[TINNY]

Sanctus, I still don't understand.

How can you understand the implications of quantum mechanics without philosophizing about it's consequences.

You're going round in circles here. Is the implicatoins of quantum mechanics scientific or philosophical? What difference is there between implications and consequences?

tell me you if you didn't need philosophy to understand that and its implication

Hey, what do you mean by philosophy here? How can philosophy help understand QM? I thought the scientific discovery came first, then the philosophical implications of it.

[sanctus]

Sanctus, I still don't understand.You're going round in circles here. Is the implicatoins of quantum mechanics scientific or philosophical? What difference is there between implications and consequences?

 

It's both scientific and philosophic, for me they are strongly married.

 

Hey, what do you mean by philosophy here? How can philosophy help understand QM? I thought the scientific discovery came first, then the philosophical implications of it.

 

You're right scientific discory comes first..... sometimes; in the case of quantum mechanics you can't really say what came first. It all started by trying to explain the radiation of a black body, which is very scientific. Planck found an explanation which needed the quantification of the frequency (i.e h*nu=n with n a natural number) of emission, which is still very scientific. But this isn't yet the QM,it's the starting point of the theory to which usually it's referred to as the "old quantum theory" . Now at this stage, philosophy comes into the reasoning. Somebody (I think still Planck) thinks about the universe, the particles, how it could and couldn't be a comes up with the idea that particles have as well a quantified frequency (after the model from DeBroglie to every particle one can associate a wave length and therefore a frequency). This means that the energy of a particle isn't continuos, but has to be quantified. Well, in our daily life the energy of any object seems to be continuos, but this theory says not. The only way you can get out of that Dilemma and start to understand what is going on is that you sart to philosophize of its implications.

That's exactly what Bohr, Planck,Einstein, Heisenberg,Schrödinger, Sommerfeld and friends did and so they eventually got to the theory today called QM.

 

Just about the philosophical need to interprete the probability thingy of my earlier post: until that people used to think that the universe was deterministic, well after QM you cannot (and not because we are not smart enough!!) predict how the universe will be in 4 seconds! Tell me how can you understand that without recurring to philosophy? You may just say mathematics and experiences proves it to be so, but then then you understand it and what it implies? To understand it you have really to think, to philosophize about it and its implications and then you may come up with something new.

[TINNY]

That's great Sanctus. You have a clear mind. ;)

The only way you can get out of that Dilemma and start to understand what is going on is that you sart to philosophize of its implications.

can you elaborate a bit on this? what do you mean by philosophyzing its implications. is it the thought experiments?

[sanctus]

I can't explain it better, it seems to me it's always the same questioon you ask.

Tell me what you understand under philosophyzing it's implication.

[crevevo12]

OK I see that you guys are having trouble defining the realm of science. Science is about what is observable, yes it is primarily data but science can also draw conclusions from that data. Reasoning does have place in science.

 

The problem with most scientists they try to apply science beyond what is observable. Evolution for example.

[Fishteacher73]

There is strong evidence for evolution that is observable, both morphologically as well as molecularly..

 

What do you suppose is an obsevable hypothesis?

[UncleAl]

Science is a collection of mathematical models constrained by empirical observation. Science is a good wrench. What you do with the wrench is up to you, but... if you don't have the wrench you don't have anything. God helps those who help themselves to others.

 

"Best efforts will not substitute for knowledge," W. Edwards Deming

 

Compare the Third World to the First World. It's the same genome. Marxism was a planetary disaster not because it was a collection of philosophically really bad ideas (the Internet is massively Marxist in outlook - donate what you can, take what you need) but because Liberal Arts-dedicated Marx was completely ignorant of technology. Nobody will accept feudal agricultural society when Las Vegas is an equally accessible option - unless they have god pressing down real hard. Ignorance can be educated, stupidity is inescapable.

[C1ay]

God helps those who help themselves to others.

You're slipping a bit there Al, who's God? :shrug:

[C1ay]

Is it correct to say that science is mere data about nature?

No, science is observation, theorization, intellectual analysis, and much much more. It generates the data, but it is not the data.

[Qfwfq]

Don't forget, folks, that Science is only the modern terminology for Natural Philosophy.

 

Science is Latin for knowledge, philosophy is Greek for care of knowledge. One might conclude from thence that philosophy means "care of science" but that's not exactly how it is, it's really just a matter of history. Philosophy and science are just two ways of saying knowledge and the endeavour to understand more, only in recent times natural philosophy came to be viewed as something quite separate from the other fields of philosophy.