Sphalerite
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Posted - 2004.03.26 11:44:00 -
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Edited by: Sphalerite on 26/03/2004 11:47:41
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However. I was trying to show how science should not be automatically assigned the vaunted position of absolute truth! Faith and beleif are not allowed that lofty status so why should science have it? At the moment for example we have one bunch of very inteligent scientists telling us.
Within 50 years 1 million species will be dead or extinct because of global warming. The Atalntic conveyor will be truned off and Northern Europe will be in the beginnings of another ice age!
In the other camp we have a bunch telling us that this is just normal earth climatic change and nothing to worry about!
Both groups are convinced in thier truth and both can provide endless studies, methods of measurements and models to assert this. However both groups cannot be right so one must be incorrect! One groups measurements must be incorrect or indeed their intepretation of the data. Science is an evolving truth just like religion and faith are.
I don't think you understand what science is.
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Science - a method of learning about the physical universe by applying the principles of the scientific method, which includes making empirical observations, proposing hypotheses to explain those observations, and testing those hypotheses in valid and reliable ways; also refers to the organized body of knowledge that results from scientific study
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Didnt scientists once believe that the earth was the centre of the universe? Were these not learned men of their time? Are we in our time as learned as those that will follow us? Or do we in our time purport to know everything now?
It doesn't matter what scientists belive. Some believe in God, some believe in reincarnation. that doesn't make it true. What matters is the body of knowledge and the method of adding to it that science is.
BTW, science has never said the earth is flat. anyone who's ever seen a lunar eclipse or a masted ship on the horizon can figure it out. the Greeks and tons of even older cultures got that one right.
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This is what I was trying to show. I think we need as much faith to believe in science as we do in God. Can you tell me as an absolute truth that the string theorists will be proved wrong? Because if the string theorists are proved right then our current scientific model of reality gets thrown on its asss.
Again, you show a lack of understanding of what science is. string theory won't make gravity turn off, or make electrons crash into their nuclei or make atomic weapons break. it would just help make predictions under extreme circumstances.
we describe things in terms of colored quark balls and particle/wave dualities not becuase the universe is made up of little balls that go around doing their business, but becuase thats the easiest way to describe them. It doesn't matter if stuff is made of waves or balls or strings or anything, what matters is the math, which works except for under some extreme circumstances, which is why scientists are playing with string theory and its friends in the first place.
Science is built on theories on theories on theories that all work out. If you can prove something wrong, you havn't nullified science, you've done it a favor, because science isn't the theory you just killed, its a search for truth. Maybe the Absolute Truth you're looking for, or maybe not. I'll tell you if I find it.
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