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Effectronica posted:Those discoveries happened in the way Popper claims to be a myth- an observation was made, and then theory developed afterward. Quasiparticles are unobservables that explicitly do not exist- they are abstractions to better model certain behaviors. There are no real phonons or holes. This conflicts significantly with the scientific realist position on unobservables. What do you mean by "real" here, so that phonons aren't "real"?
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Sep 9, 2015 11:58
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Dzhay posted:What do you mean by "real" here, so that phonons aren't "real"? Phonons, as an object, do not exist. There are no particles that serve as quantized vibrators. As a mathematical abstraction used to model vibration at small scales, they're real, strong, my friend, etc.
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Sep 9, 2015 12:24
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Effectronica posted:Phonons, as an object, do not exist. There are no particles that serve as quantized vibrators. As a mathematical abstraction used to model vibration at small scales, they're real, strong, my friend, etc. As far as i know the nature of those quasi particles is best described as an 'interference' between two (or possibly more particles). Particles are (to my knowledge) just areas/volumes/points in a field which are 'exited', and if the come to close to each other the space in between them starts to display particle like behavior. Is this assumption true, or can somebody with a deeper understanding offer a better explanation?
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Sep 9, 2015 13:36
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Effectronica posted:Phonons, as an object, do not exist. There are no particles that serve as quantized vibrators. As a mathematical abstraction used to model vibration at small scales, they're real, strong, my friend, etc. What's an object, and why do I care?
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Sep 9, 2015 14:00
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Dzhay posted:What's an object, and why do I care? While scientific realism is bullshit, mindless pragmatism is little better.
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Sep 9, 2015 16:37
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Strudel Man posted:I think it's probably fair to want or to expect our operating theory of science to be reasonably cognizant of important discoveries that advance our understanding of the world. If it doesn't, or isn't - if it doesn't have a real name or categorization for them - one might judge it to be incomplete. Again, what do you mean by "cognizant"? Or "advance"? botany posted:You claim that they are insufficiently scientific, but what evidence do you have to back that claim up? My argument is that they clearly work, they progress. The issues that you mention I would understand as a natural part of good scientific work, not as defects. Their "progress" occurs to the extent that they already incorporate hypothetico-deductionist elements. There is no scientific "progress" that can be meaningfully defined beyond the destruction of prior statements. The issues I mention are symptoms of systemic expressions of incoherence and failures of communication in the scientific record, resulting in extended non-communication. botany posted:I have the book next to me, tell me what you're referring to and I'll go read it. To make this fair, I am talking especially about chapter three, in which he states very explicitly that he considers a scientific theory to be a universal quantifier statement. This is also logically necessary for his understanding of basic statements to work, by the way. But if he changes his mind somewhere down the line, I'd be interested to learn more. The rest of the book, especially the material on probability. But you can start by rereading page 15. Popper is, as he mentions all over the place, describing an ideal form of one part of the process, and argues it as a standard which scientists should hold themselves, or pursue. I love how scientists have less of a problem getting this than pure philosophers.
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Sep 9, 2015 16:49
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Discendo Vox posted:Again, what do you mean by "cognizant"? Or "advance"? I love that a failed lawyer wannabe and death-penalty-loving "bioethicist" is writing checks with his fingers that his brain can't cash, and preparing to argue that microbiology is unscientific, being founded by an unscientific process. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Sep 9, 2015 16:58
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Effectronica posted:I love that a failed lawyer wannabe and death-penalty-loving "bioethicist" is writing checks with his fingers that his brain can't cash, and preparing to argue that microbiology is unscientific, being founded by an unscientific process. Thanks for keeping things personal. That's not actually my position, though- I was genuinely asking because I can't tell what functions Strudel Man wants Popperian falsificationism to have that would make those points in history a problem.
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Sep 9, 2015 18:14
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This thread has taken a horrible turn.
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Sep 9, 2015 18:58
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chessmaster13 posted:As far as i know the nature of those quasi particles is best described as an 'interference' between two (or possibly more particles). A quasiparticle is something that acts like a particle. It's usually something that depends on a many-particle interaction between electrons, ions, etc, to give it a "vacuum" over which it can live. Phonons are easy in that they have a simple solid to start from, but Cooper pairs require a complicated interaction between electrons and phonons to provide the "vacuum". Are they real? I'm not sure if that's a good question, considering that "real" particles are also excitations over a vacuum, and that Quantum Field Theory assumes that any theory in question is just something lying over an unknown, more fundamental theory, otherwise you'd get ultra-violet infinities. If you have a theory that says "particles can only do this and that" then I think quasi-particles that do something else are a counter-example.
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Sep 9, 2015 19:59
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Discendo Vox posted:Thanks for keeping things personal. That's not actually my position, though- I was genuinely asking because I can't tell what functions Strudel Man wants Popperian falsificationism to have that would make those points in history a problem. Those points are a problem for falsification because, under Popper's understanding of science, they are not scientific. Galileo did not formulate a conjecture and then test it using the telescope, he discovered the Galilean moons and then developed his conclusions from that observation. Van Leeuwenhoek similarly did not formulate a conjecture and test it in order to develop microbiology, he discovered microbes and then developed conclusions from observations. That is, they operated inductively. For Popper, this means they did not do science, and any attempts to bring them within falsificationism require either ignoring the genesis of their theories or developing a convoluted, unparsimonious explanation.
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Sep 10, 2015 03:04
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Discendo Vox posted:Again, what do you mean by "cognizant"? Or "advance"? By "advance," I mean a discovery which increases in a meaningful way our body of knowledge about the universe. Knowing about microbes, when we did not know about them before, is a substantial addition. Discendo Vox posted:Thanks for keeping things personal. That's not actually my position, though- I was genuinely asking because I can't tell what functions Strudel Man wants Popperian falsificationism to have that would make those points in history a problem. Falsificationism itself is a valuable insight, though. Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Sep 10, 2015 |
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Sep 10, 2015 03:18
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Effectronica posted:Those points are a problem for falsification because, under Popper's understanding of science, they are not scientific. Galileo did not formulate a conjecture and then test it using the telescope, he discovered the Galilean moons and then developed his conclusions from that observation. To be fair, I believe "Galileo happened to be right about a lot of things, but he wasn't really much of a scientist" is a fairly common view among historians of science. It's generally acknowledged that he falsified the data for the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment. It used to even be a common view that he never actually did experiments at all, and just pretended to in order to justify ideas he came up with a priori, although this turned out to be wrong.
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Sep 10, 2015 03:43
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Strudel Man posted:By "cognizant," I mean that the theory under which we are working has a place in which the action fits. Popper's schema is cognizant, for example, of formal and even informal experiments - they are the method by which we attempt to falsify scientific theories. Strudel Man posted:I can't say I really know what I want it to have, either. The picture just seems a bit incomplete if it lacks any awareness of the kind of open-ended investigations that have been a vital part of the scientific world. Open-ended experimentation is usually considered as the means to developing formal, falsifiable theories, and thus is valid scientific practice- so long as it keeps going. Under a post-positivist model, all empirical claims are considered theory-laden- it's just that they're preferably used to develop clear falsifiable hypotheses. The distinction is that the stuff that's unscientific makes no real effort in that direction. It may help to understand the "science variable" as continuous, rather than binary- at the time Popper was writing, he was trying to distinguish stuff that was on the "are you kidding me" end of the scale, particularly historicist and metaphor-symbolic "theories". The debates held about what is scientific today tend to either be about the degree to which individual theories are sufficiently formalized in falsifiable form, and the role in the professional sciences of the unfalsifiable or formative or exploratory work that goes into developing theory- the EFAs and the CFAs, so to speak. Popper thought the development of theories based on empirical evidence was important, but basically not very interesting to describe because it could happen in basically any way, and thus didn't say much about how scientific or falsifiable the resultant theory was. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Sep 10, 2015 |
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Sep 10, 2015 04:31
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Discendo Vox posted:Open-ended experimentation is usually considered as the means to developing formal, falsifiable theories, and thus is valid scientific practice- so long as it keeps going. Under a post-positivist model, all empirical claims are considered theory-laden- it's just that they're preferably used to develop clear falsifiable hypotheses. The distinction is that the stuff that's unscientific makes no real effort in that direction. It may help to understand the "science variable" as continuous, rather than binary- at the time Popper was writing, he was trying to distinguish stuff that was on the "are you kidding me" end of the scale, particularly historicist and metaphor-symbolic "theories". The debates held about what is scientific today tend to either be about the degree to which individual theories are sufficiently formalized in falsifiable form, and the role in the professional sciences of the unfalsifiable or formative or exploratory work that goes into developing theory- the EFAs and the CFAs, so to speak. edit: Discendo Vox posted:Popper thought the development of theories based on empirical evidence was important, but basically not very interesting to describe because it could happen in basically any way, and thus didn't say much about how scientific or falsifiable the resultant theory was. Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Sep 10, 2015 |
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Sep 10, 2015 04:44
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Strudel Man posted:So what is it that happens, in a Popperian sense of science, when someone looks at Jupiter and sees moons for the first time? (And then I guess says to himself, "Aha! Jupiter has moons!")  On a simple level, the scientist could be said to construct a theory of the presence of moons on jupiter and that they observed corroboratory evidence. On a more complex level, one might say that the methods of observation and the definition of what a moon is are both contingent elements in a basic hypothesis test. The problem here is that the act of observation seems trivial enough that it's sort of assumed that the result of the observation must be correct. On a not very interesting level, you can't prove there are moons around Jupiter like you can't prove you're not a brain in a jar. On a more practical level, you can have multiple people look at different times and the moons would still be in their predicted positions. In any case, there's a latent theoretical framework needed to get from your observation to saying "Aha!"Popper's issue with ad hoc hypotheses was that they were post hoc justifications of unfalsifiable statement frameworks- settings in which any outcome would be held to justify the prior "theory". The framework was so loose that there was no meaningful allocation of uncertainty in terms of what parts of the prior statement framework were falsified. To continue the EFA/CFA statistics metaphor, such "theories" are the equivalent of setting an SEM in which all of your terms are allowed to covary- any outcome will fit your theory. This is actually part of the problem with the recent replication problems in psychology. A common defense against equivalent problems in the social sciences is context or sample effects- but that's a similar sort of post hoc justification. Unless the original theory is "revised" (meaning falsified and replaced), then it's just expanding to explain any possible outcome. The issue is that methodologically, it's really hard to create good social science theory- harder, I'd argue, than in the "hard" sciences where we have a clearer causal picture, better measures, fewer pointless terminology conflicts, etc. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 05:02 on Sep 10, 2015 |
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Sep 10, 2015 05:00
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Discendo Vox posted:
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Sep 10, 2015 05:17
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Strudel Man posted:That clearly gets the order backwards, though. In what sense? The basic idea of post-postivist science, which isn't in itself controversial, is that all observation is theory-laden. The scientist may not have formally written out what a moon is or how they were going to use the telescope, but they were making a set of logical assumptions that predicated their interpretation of what they saw to get to their conclusion. These assumptions probably aren't very interesting, but they are present. That's what I'm getting at with the "more complex level". All observations are contingent. Popper wrote it out formally, and, for example, (ugh) Latour gave some specific examples of its effects in coming up with actor network theory. These uninteresting assumptions and implicit theoretical contingencies become important because sometimes other people can't find the moons- or the moons turn out to be space stations. Modern, Popperian scientists can be said to do "more scientific" or "better" science because they more fully explicate the contingencies of their observations, and explain where they're getting them from. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Sep 10, 2015 |
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Sep 10, 2015 05:41
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Discendo Vox posted:In what sense? The basic idea of post-postivist science, which isn't in itself controversial, is that all observation is theory-laden. The scientist may not have formally written out what a moon is or how they were going to use the telescope, but they were making a set of logical assumptions that predicated their interpretation of what they saw to get to their conclusion. These assumptions probably aren't very interesting, but they are present. That's what I'm getting at with the "more complex level". All observations are contingent. Popper wrote it out formally, and, for example, (ugh) Latour gave some specific examples of its effects in coming up with actor network theory. These uninteresting assumptions and implicit theoretical contingencies become important because sometimes other people can't find the moons- or the moons turn out to be space stations. Modern, Popperian scientists can be said to do "more scientific" or "better" science because they more fully explicate the contingencies of their observations, and explain where they're getting them from. What about the first Moon? More generally, what happens when you run into the first instance of something entirely novel?
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Sep 10, 2015 05:50
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Absurd Alhazred posted:What about the first Moon? More generally, what happens when you run into the first instance of something entirely novel? You'll still be using some prior theoretical framework to describe or understand what it is you're dealing with-it's the basic problem of inductive regress in empiricism. This usually devolves into issues of linguistic philosophy- using prior concepts, whatever their origins, to explain whatever it is you're dealing with. These can be primitives or axiomatic, and they may suck, but to the extent that you know what they are, that's still OK- as long as the empirical statement that results can be falsified. Our first theories about things are often wrong, but the idea is that, as long as our theories are capable of falsification, we can analyze their bases and come up with something else, something that hopefully lasts longer (not necessarily "better", and never provably "right"). Popper's got a great quote on this: LoSD (2002) p. 94 posted:Science does not rest upon solid bedrock. The bold structure of its theories rises, as it were, above a swamp. It is like a building erected on piles. The piles are driven down from above into the swamp, but not down to any natural or ‘given’ base; and if we stop driving the piles deeper, it is not because we have reached firm ground. We simply stop when we are satisfied that the piles are firm enough to carry the structure, at least for the time being. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Sep 10, 2015 |
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Sep 10, 2015 06:34
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Discendo Vox posted:In what sense? The basic idea of post-postivist science, which isn't in itself controversial, is that all observation is theory-laden. The scientist may not have formally written out what a moon is or how they were going to use the telescope, but they were making a set of logical assumptions that predicated their interpretation of what they saw to get to their conclusion. These assumptions probably aren't very interesting, but they are present. That's what I'm getting at with the "more complex level". All observations are contingent. Popper wrote it out formally, and, for example, (ugh) Latour gave some specific examples of its effects in coming up with actor network theory. These uninteresting assumptions and implicit theoretical contingencies become important because sometimes other people can't find the moons- or the moons turn out to be space stations. Modern, Popperian scientists can be said to do "more scientific" or "better" science because they more fully explicate the contingencies of their observations, and explain where they're getting them from. I mean, it can kind of work, conceptually. But it's not a particularly elegant framework.
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Sep 10, 2015 07:13
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Strudel Man posted:So, under this paradigm, every time you look at something, you're carrying around a near-infinitude of theories for what you might potentially see there? The theory-ladenness part is the least controversial element of post-positivist science- it's pretty much how we get away from the bad 'ol days of direct correspondence positivism. This idea of "theory-ladenness" is basically an extension of linguistic theory and/or the problem of induction. You're not going to be able to describe a thing without having some conceptual toolbox to describe it with. What does all this poo poo I've been  ing about mean in terms of progress in the humanities? Mostly that the idea of "progress" isn't very useful in the sciences, so it's not a great standard to compare the humanities against, either. Both enterprises "progress", or otherwise satisfy their goals, to the extent that they inform and provide some sort of solution or insight into contemporary problems. That's continuing to happen- but, humanities or sciences, more funding and better publication practices would be nice.
Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Sep 10, 2015 |
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Sep 10, 2015 07:24
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Discendo Vox posted:The theory-ladenness part is the least controversial element of post-positivist science- it's pretty much how we get away from the bad 'ol days of direct correspondence positivism. This idea of "theory-ladenness" is basically an extension of linguistic theory and/or the problem of induction. You're not going to be able to describe a thing without having some conceptual toolbox to describe it with. Progress is not moving forward in a specific direction. That means we have to add at least another dimension to the model. I like to use this analogy to explain this: Let' say you have a giant pitcher of water and a barren, dry piece of earth. The barren, dry earth is the field you like to explore (for example maths). Let's assume our piece of barren dry earth is infinite in all directions for simplicity. The pitcher of water is also infinite, all we can do is adjust the amount of water that comes out and wiggle it around a little to try to moisten specific areas. We know nothing about the areas where the earth is dry. We have knowledge of the areas that are wet. We are actively exploiting the areas where stuff grows (building machines with out knowledge, getting solutions to problems etc.) Now the first human to do simple maths starts spilling the water. He tilts the pitcher a little and water flows out. He learned something! I tiny little seedling popped out of the earth when this guy used his newfound knowledge to calculate how many saber toothed tigers he needs to hunt so his wife can make cool looking jackets for the ungrateful kids. But oh wait, snap, he didn't write it down! And worse, he never told anybody about his groundbreaking solution! So the water evaporated and the floor became dry again. The poor seedling dried out, it's leafs an stem was taken away by the wind  You get the picture and with three firing neurons, you can expand it and use it as you see fit. This is OC btw. or at least I don't remember stealing this somewhere 
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Sep 10, 2015 10:24
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What about bad science is that like if someone jacks off onto the dry earth and some kudzu starts to grow
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Sep 10, 2015 18:21
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sugar free jazz posted:What about bad science is that like if someone jacks off onto the dry earth and some kudzu starts to grow You're no longer able to make weird historicist analogies about the inevitable progress of Science. For this analogy to work we would need to be comfortable with the water suddenly flowing backwards into the pitcher at any point in time, from any part of the earth. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Sep 11, 2015 |
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Sep 10, 2015 22:34
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