Why Science Needs Metaphysics

http://nautil.us/issue/29/scaling/why-science-needs-metaphysics

by dnetesn • 11 years ago

32 70 11 years ago

nautil.us

shasta• 11 years ago

Summary: Philosopher believes philosophy is important.

Next we ask this expert on extraterrestrial life whether extraterrestrial life exists.

jevgeni3• 11 years ago

Summary: Non-fibbler disparages fibbling.

debacle3• 11 years ago

Can Science Explains Everything

Yes.

Edit: I think a scary number of you guys are conflating the process of science with our current observational model. Quantum theory is the product of science, it's not science itself.

adrianN2• 11 years ago

Depending on how you define "explain" and "everything" the answer can also be no. Defining words seems to be the major occupation of philosophers.

debacle3• 11 years ago

Only if you have a limited definition of "science."

pjmlp3• 11 years ago

We need metaphysics mainly because of two things:

1 - Science hasn't yet discovered why something as it is => Metaphysical explanation

2 - Mankind needs an explanation for things they cannot understand => feel better with the unknown

Scientific knowledge is the enemy of any religion as it can eventually explain why something is the way it is.

foldr4• 11 years ago

Science hasn't yet discovered why something as it is => Metaphysical explanation

This is a bit of a myth. If you look at the metaphysical problems that, say, Aristotle was grappling with a few thousand years ago, pretty much all of them are still unsolved philosophical problems that have barely been touched by any developments in science. To pick an example at random: are statements about the future true or false?

(To say that these problems remain unsolved is not to say that there's been no progress. We understand the space of possible and plausible solutions a lot better than Aristotle did.)

TuringTest• 11 years ago

it can eventually explain why something is the way it is.

Not exactly. It can explain "how" it is, but not "why" it is that way.

Unless you take "why" as a shortcut for "how it works in a more detailed framework", which is not how philosophers understand it when doing metaphysics.

iamzultan• 11 years ago

Clearly you haven't looked into the current state of quantum physics. Lots of unexplained phenomenon.

dantillberg• 11 years ago

Quantum physics makes very specific predictions about the probabilities of outcomes. That is not the same as making strict, absolute predictions as with classical physics, but it does not leave it open for anyone to come along and whimsically insert whatever theory they want in there -- unless those whimsical theories are also consistent with the experimental results we have that underpin the predictions made by quantum mechanical theory.

Fede_V• 11 years ago

The poster didn't write that science explains everything. They wrote that science can explain everything.

There are some philosophers like Colin McGinn that think that some features of empirical reality are in principle impossible to explain with human science (it's slightly more complex than that but..) - but they are a distinct minority.

bottled_poe• 11 years ago

This is a strange belief to hold, considering we can prove this not to be the case with pure logic.

Suppose we observe that when A happens, B occurs. This does not imply that A causes B. In fact, we can never confirm that A causes B, regardless of how closely we measure the reaction. 'Preposterous!' I hear you say on the other end of the intertubes.. but alas, it is true. Beyond the realm of reality and hubris we might observe that in fact X causes Y, and that A is simply an observable effect of X. Similarly, B is just an effect of Y. If you really want to explode that mind, think about how broadly this concept can be applied.

debacle3• 11 years ago

Science is about creating a model that reflects the predictable outcomes in the natural world. If something is unpredictable, science works to understand why. If something that previously was predictable suddenly became unpredictable, science would happen and our model would change.

Science is not a mindset or field. It is an act of accomplishing understanding. If there is something mankind can reason about, we can also do science-y stuff with it.

snarfy• 11 years ago

This is a flawed argument. Nothing can be proven in that sense. We cannot even prove that 1 = 1. I cannot prove the sun will rise tomorrow, but there is a high probability it will.

xlm17172• 11 years ago

We might observe that X causes Y, and A is just an effect of X while B is an effect of Y.

When we observe this, we come up with explanations as to how it happened, describe it using mathematics or chemical symbols or whatever is appropriate. In this way, science is done.

There are still a lot of mysteries out there today. Scientists are working on explaining them.

sbuttgereit• 11 years ago

So can science explain how a photon traverses the slits in the famous two slit experiment? So far, it has provided any number of ideas about that, but it's not been able to settle the question: and some believe it's beyond the realm of knowing (the predominant position if I'm not mistaken.)

To be fair, I actually agree with you. Science may not have all the answers today, and it may not have some answers for a very long time. But I don't think there are aspects of the universe that are inherently "unknowable". Many times throughout history we have not had access to certain facts due mostly to our technical progression and eventually we have found ways to overcome those obstacles. I see a reality that is, in fact, real and knowable, even if our access to some of that knowledge is not yet possible.

Of course, that thinking would be due to my positions on metaphysics. :-) This is where metaphysics can be important; because it can inform your choices about what can even be pursued.

super_mario4• 11 years ago

Actually, science does explain how the photon traverses the double slit in the double slit experiment. That's what quantum mechanics is all about. It was literally invented to explain exactly that.

xlm17172• 11 years ago

Science can explain how a photon traverses the slits. The trick is explaining why it does so, which is still an active area of research.

stem_lord• 11 years ago

No.

Case in point: mathematics. It's completely misguided to think mathematics is empirical or within the realm of science. Math has empirical applications and is useful for scientific endeavors, but the actual discipline itself is entirely proof-based and rational.

petewailes3• 11 years ago

TL;DR: Man who's devoted his life to woolly thinking, thinks about things in a woolly fashion.

Note 1

"If we are embedded in a reality that can be beyond our reach, how can we hope to achieve any knowledge at all? Perhaps Kant was right, and what we think we know may simply reflect the categories of the human mind. We can perhaps only deal with things as they appear to us. How things are in themselves may forever be beyond our grasp. Alternatively, the reality that we seek to understand may not even be subject to rational understanding. It may be sufficiently chaotic and disordered to be unintelligible."

Note 2

"There is such a thing as scientific progress, and it happens through systematic trial and error or, in Karl Popper’s terminology, conjecture and refutation. A "scientific realist" has to be wary, though, about how such realism is defined. A realism that makes reality what contemporary science says it is links reality logically to the human minds of the present day. Science is then just a human product, rooted in time and place. Bringing in future science - or ideal science - may sound more plausible, but even then there is a distinction between science reflecting (or corresponding to) the nature of reality and it being simply a human construction."

That's the problem with the article, and a lot of Trigg's ideas. He assumes that "science is done by people", "people are flawed", ergo "the output of science is flawed". Which is obviously false, like saying science done by people who speak different languages would express itself differently. However you analyse the structure of an atom is irrelevant to its structure: it is what it is. Sine qua non. There's something which is an atom, whatever you call it and however you discover it.

The postulate that "the universe my not be ultimately understandable" should only be taken as a priori at the point where it appears that that is in fact the case. Which it doesn't. (Don't confuse this as a dismissal of uncertainty - that certainly exists, but even that lack of certainty can be expressed in certain terms and understood).

Editing for clarity:

By "the output of science is flawed" - I phrased this poorly. I don't mean that the interpretation of results is flawed, which it obviously can be. See phlogiston, early models of the solar system and so on. Rather, I meant that he seems to imply that the nature of what's being studied can change given the human looking at it and their understanding. Which isn't correct. Whether you understand how the solar system works or not makes no impact on what it's doing or why it's doing it.

I'd have been more accurate to say "the eventual output of the scientific process, upon where it has arrived at the correct answer, is flawed".

chestervonwinch2• 11 years ago

He assumes that "science is done by people", "people are flawed", ergo "the output of science is flawed".

I didn't read this anywhere in the article, nor did I feel it was implied. He is simply arguing that statements about the capability of science must be made outside of science, and that objective reality is independent of the method of discovery (science). I see nothing controversial about this.

The postulate that "the universe my not be ultimately understandable" should only be taken as a priori at the point where it appears that that is in fact the case. Which it doesn't.

I'm not sure this should be taken as an axiom, but rather could be a characteristic inherent of the system (à la Gödel's theorems).

super_mario4• 11 years ago

Really? There is no objective reality out there. It makes no sense to talk about reality independent of the physical model. Classical science is based on the belief that there exists a real external world whose properties are definite and independent of the observer who perceives them. According to classical science, certain objects exist and have physical properties, such as speed and mass, that have well-defined values. In this view our theories are attempts to describe those objects and their properties, and our measurements and perceptions correspond to them. Both observer and observed are parts of a world that has an objective existence, and any distinction between them has no meaningful significance. In other words, if you see a herd of zebras fighting for a spot in the parking garage, it is because there really is a herd of zebras fighting for a spot in the parking garage. All other observers who look will measure the same properties, and the herd will have those properties whether anyone observes them or not. In philosophy that belief is called realism.

Though realism may be a tempting viewpoint what we know about modern physics makes it a difficult one to defend. For example, according to the principles of quantum physics a particle has neither a definite position nor a definite velocity unless and until those quantities are measured by an observer. It is therefore not correct to say that a measurement gives a certain result because the quantity being measured had that value at the time of the measurement. In fact, in some cases individual objects don’t even have an independent existence but rather exist only as part of an ensemble of many.

vinceguidry2• 11 years ago

He assumes that "science is done by people", "people are flawed", ergo "the output of science is flawed".

What's so wrong about this? It seems so obvious it should be uncontroversial. The first several dozen scientific hypotheses to explain any given phenomenon are all bound to be very very wrong. Even the big-t Theories have to be adjusted many many times before and after they start to get referred to as such.

We have no idea what's true until long after the fact. Many respected scientists of the early 1900s believed in and contributed to the science of eugenics. Scientists we still respect today for their contributions to other fields.

Which is obviously false, like saying science done by people who speak different languages would express itself differently.

Again, why the scornful dismissal? The scientific establishment of the West differs in many ways from the establishment in the East. Not just language, but culture also produces differences. We managed to collaborate with the Soviets to do space missions, but it took an awful lot of work to do it. Medicine can have some very striking differences.

petewailes3• 11 years ago

Because those differences are a reflection in differences of understanding, not of how the underlying system being studied actually works. Whether or not you say that the sky being blue is because of light and the composition of the atmosphere and the current weather, or because the Sky God made it that way has nothing to do with the actual reason why. It's solely a reflection of your explanation. It is how it is for a reason, and that reason doesn't change because your explanation does.

cwyers2• 11 years ago

He assumes that "science is done by people", "people are flawed", ergo "the output of science is flawed".

This has the benefit of being right, at least. Look at the history of science. Look at all the models of planetary movement we've had -- a succession of incorrect models getting closer and closer to the truth. Look at any field of scientific inquiry, and compare the results of what they had 100, 200 years ago with what we understand to be correct today. Look at the speed of light:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light

In 1675 we thought the speed of light was 220,000 km/s. Jump into 1849 and it was measured at 315,000 km/s. Right now it's at 299792.458 km/s and is likely to stay there because we have now defined the meter in terms of the speed of light.

I mean, people know this. Everyone knows we still teach Newtonian physics in school even though Einstein proved them wrong before many of us on this website were even born. The history of science is a history in incremental improvement. Science IS flawed. There are plenty of things that we believe now because of science that will be disproven in the future -- some of them days or weeks from now, some of them decades away. To admit that science is flawed is not to take away from either the power or the importance of science, it is simply being honest about what we are doing.

petewailes3• 11 years ago

See my edit. Poor phrasing on my part with the conjecture. You're completely correct on this.

Lawtonfogle2• 11 years ago

That's the problem with the article, and a lot of Trigg's ideas. He assumes that "science is done by people", "people are flawed", ergo "the output of science is flawed".

And the output is flawed. Which is why science comes with a disclaimer 'to the best of our knowledge, this is how it works'.

We can never know how the universe works, only come up with a model that predicts all results we see. Unless that is how you define 'knowing how something works'.

draaglom2• 11 years ago

It's a shame that philosophy has gained such a poor reputation in certain circles.

I mean, it's understandable: the extent of most people's interaction with philosophy is with cartesian-style "but can we even know we exist??" navel-gazing -- or worse, with the intentionally obscure bits of continental philosophy.

Because of this reputation, many (the majority of?) scientifically-minded people view it as a binary choice: you're either a good empiricist or you're one of those damn poststructuralist lit-crit people from the humanities department.

IMHO: people who hold this mindset risk missing out on a powerful tool for their mental toolbox.

vinceguidry2• 11 years ago

People tend to forget how utterly limited the capacity we have for scientific inquiry is, and how those limits shaped history and science. Before there was ever science there was philosophy, and that philosophy was shaped by religion, and the same people did all three of those things throughout history.

If you took a king from the 1200s and had him look at our scientific establishment, he'd have called them monks. From this perspective, philosophy is religion without deity, and science is just philosophy of the empirical.

Disciplines of the mind do not have to have this hard separation, its a shame cynicism and scorn have been allowed to take over the public discourse. Not everyone who looks at the philosophy of science is a quack.

GFK_of_xmaspast• 11 years ago

I feel that this reflects an ignorance about (a) the lives and work of scientists in the modern day and (b) the lives and work of monks in the 13th century.

coliveira• 11 years ago

Not everyone who looks at the philosophy of science is a quack

True, but the problem with philosophy is that it is the study of how humans embrace reality, not the study of reality itself. For the simple reason that philosophy has no tools (other than science) to establish what is true or false in the world outside our own minds. If you understand philosophy as the ways we make sense of the world, instead of a tool of finding what is true, then we would have a better time dealing with it.

Retric3• 11 years ago

Step 1: Name a single piece of information* gained from philosophy that is not currently debated.

This is why people look down on philosophy. While people might pretend to disagree with this, I would take the complete lack of counter examples as agreement.

PS: And because debate about word choice is so popular, information: facts provided or learned about something or someone.

foldr4• 11 years ago

One neat result in metaphysics is the discovery that there can't be a property for every predicate, since this gives rise to analogs of Russel's paradox. (Does the property of being a non-self-exemplifying property exemplify itself?)

jevgeni3• 11 years ago

You mean, like the fact of Earth-centric solar system models everybody used to believe in?

This is not why people look down on philosophy. This is why STEM people fail to learn anything about it. Other people look down on philosophy, because it's close to impossible to make a living out of philosophy.

draaglom2• 11 years ago

If you want an example of genuinely valuable philosophy, I found "Kinds of Minds" by Daniel Dennett to be a compelling discussion of the origins of consciousness.

It's not "fact" but it does provide interesting ways to think about the issue; ways that could drive experiment or further enquiry. So under a "pragmatic" theory of knowledge I would say that there is information there.

But of course that's a philosophical stance that you should not feel compelled to debate me on ;)

Lawtonfogle2• 11 years ago

There are lots of facts gained from philosophy. The issue is that any subset of philosophy that produces useful results gets developed into its own field of knowledge. Thus, what is classified only under philosophy is a dead sea effect of sorts, resulting in the low opinion of philosophy.

glomph• 11 years ago

I mean all of physics is open to revision as well right? Should we look down on physics?

MichaelGG2• 11 years ago

I tried to see what it offered. For instance, those "A very short introduction" series of books. Tried out Philosophy of Science. I see things like "what does 'alive' really mean" as something that is what Philosophy of Biology would deal with. That seems... rather useless? Arguing over definitions and going round in circles without contributing, today, to anything? (Everyone used to be called a philosopher, so in years past I'm sure "philosophy" has done plenty.)

Looked at Philosophy of CompSci on the Stanford Plato site. Read a lot of ... words... that were just fascinated they could work "duality" into computer programs. Cause a program is source right? But it can also be object code. Ooooh. And what about interpreted scripts, what does all this really mean? ... This would appear to have no redeeming quality. Perhaps I'm wrong I've just yet to see how this could be useful or even really intriguing.

Then there's even top scientists like Feynman making mocking comments about philsci. So given even top scientists are unconvinced there's value, I start to think OK maybe I'm not missing out on much.

astazangasta• 11 years ago

We could easily pull up dozens of examples of spurious, dull or absurd results and claims from science. There are interesting things to be learned from philosophy even if some of it is dumb.

It's especially important to address the claims of science to be a perfect method of knowledge; in the absence of religious justifications for human activity science has been set up as a valid replacement and its important to examine its right to the throne. We have a long history of attempts at scientific decision making that claims an objectivity it ought not to have (see: forced sterilizations, eugenics, mass medication and medicalization of human behavior) and tremendous consequence resulting from this sort of claim (environmental catastrophe, for example).

If science is going to intrude on the domain of politics, of deciding what is human and who should be considered human, we seriously need to challenge the assumption of objective knowledge and think about science's fundamental dependence on metaphysical constructs. Easy to ignore if you are Feynman at the top of this pyramid, but scientific authority is just authority; it has to be accountable to something or it is going to produce monsters.

As the article states, this exploration can only occur from outside science; we can't answer claims about its validity or access to truth from within science.

jules2• 11 years ago

The argument is the same as some religious use: science can't explain everything, therefore we need religion. The counterargument is the same too: while science can't explain everything, religion and metaphysics explain nothing. The other inconvenient fact is that lots of things that were previously thought to be not explainable by science have since been explained by science. Science will continue to nibble at religion and metaphysics and the religious and meta-physicists will continue to move the goalposts.

camelNotation• 11 years ago

That's one of the key points of the article. You can't reasonably extrapolate that the goalposts will always move. Just because science is able to discern more than we expected in the past and will continue to do so in the future, doesn't provide us with any concrete reason to trust that its eventual scope is equivalent to the full breadth and depth of potential understanding. In fact, quite the contrary since the great virtue of science is that its scope is limited to empirical, quantifiable truths.

You can avoid that uncomfortable question by proclaiming empirical reality to be the only reality, but that's a metaphysical claim with no greater merit than its opposite.

nerd_stuff• 11 years ago

For anybody who studies science that isn't an uncomfortable question and it's over century old at this point. The last time the field of science had a high level of certainty that it would solve everything ever was probably the late 1800's.

I dealt with this question in high school physics, it's really no big deal. When you get to a point where all you can do is make a "metaphysical claim with no greater merit than its opposite" you go find something better to do with your time.

jackmaney• 11 years ago

Can Science Explains Everything

[cringe cringe twitch]

matthferguson• 11 years ago

are the four fundamental forces not already "metaphysics" ? such is the position of both philosophy and common language , great tools for cooperation and ethics , but subjective semantic arguments are most certainly dead ends when observing and determining the most probable reality.

snake_plissken• 11 years ago

This article reminds me of my first two years in college when I was studying physics and taking some philosophy courses. The professors and the department chair eventually found out who the science kids were and then vehemently tried to recruit us into double majoring, or at least minoring in philosophy. And then a few of the kids from philosophy came over to the physics side to take some classes and some of them got minors/double majors. I never did get that minor, but those philosophy classes were some of the best I took over the 4 years.

The sciences and the philosophies are incredibly intertwined and to argue otherwise or dismiss philosophy as useless is just being lazy. While in many ways they are different, fundamentally they are identical. We are seeking a better understanding and explanation of the world we live in.

brianclements• 11 years ago

Like many subjects in recent times (last 50 years or so), they've gotten really entrenched and dusty because they're afraid to go beyond their well defined borders (and then get more difficult to teach and make industry out of).

IHO, from a bigger anthropological viewpoint, philosophy and religion are extremely rich areas of idea prototyping. They came first. They are based on intuition and are good-faith efforts to understand our world. Science came later and was much better at it. What needs to happen culturally is that people need to all be philosophers, they need to have a reverence toward the sacred and toward the cultures that hold it dear. However, they can't let religion, or philosophy, prematurely cut off in their minds what the realm of science can embody. There are long lists of famous scientists that did this, and even they were proven too quick to place arbitrary limits on science and prescribe "everything else" as religion, or metaphysics.

To me, philosophy/religion/metaphysics are all "pre-physics" in a way. Intuitions without proofs...yet. The intuitions of many individuals, over many centuries, however seemingly incorrect scientifically, aren't completely worthless. It's like saying art is worthless. They may not explain mechanically how something behaves, but they offer insight and new ways of thinking, which are really at the core of how to truly understand something difficult.

Why Science Needs Metaphysics

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