/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6520600]

Are there any strong modern criticisms of science?
Science at the moment is considered the best expression of our inherent desire to know how things work and find patterns.
Could it be said this base desire could or should be transcended? Is that what some religions try to do?
And does science find patterns and structures that exist in some obscure reality we can only partially grasp or is science our way of finding patterns where there are none? like seeing recognizable shapes in tv static..

[Anonymous No.6520608]

Award for vaguest non question of all time

[Anonymous No.6520611]

>>6520608
What is vague about it?

[Anonymous No.6520626]

>>6520600
science itself is a form of criticism, so the thing you're seeing could only be some form of quasi-science, maybe something like Novelty theory

[Anonymous No.6520628]

>>6520600
science is rife with scienticism

[Anonymous No.6520630]

there is nothing wrong with the scientific method. science as a whole includes many things that don't really follow it because they can't (neurology for example, you can't really experiment on someone's brain to test your theories) and it has been used to prove things that go against its own principles (usually social applications).
You could also see some issues in how science is considered the closing answer to everything when most scientists will tell you that new information can always come to light and change what we though was right. Following current science as some sort of end all is unscientific, meaning it's not an issue with science but how it's presented by the figures in power.

i know it's a touchy subject, but consider climate change. The 97% of "scientist agree" is an insulting commentary. 97% of people in the field that have studied the current models agree that they are as good as they can be with out current information, that's a very different statement that doesn't reel people the same way so they simplify it and imply that astronomers and biologist agree on a topic outside of their field, or that all people studying climate agree on something that they aren't currently studying, or that science is about democratic decisions instead of justified results. Not dissing or defending it, it's just an example of how science is abused in unscientific ways.

[Anonymous No.6520966]

>>6520600
>Could it be said this base desire could or should be transcended?

yes

by following ur heart

[Anonymous No.6521032]

>>6520600
Facts require a faith in being true. There are countless examples of scientist believing a theory to be true in the sense that whatever the theory models is the most accurate model of that phenomenon.
Fundamentally, science relies heavily on empirical data, which is probabilistic.
Most scientist will only accept a theory if it has undergone rigorous testing or has been modeled intensively using mathematics. The more a scientist's expectations have been met through the employment of repeated test, the more they will come to know as that phenomenon being true.

[Anonymous No.6521190]

The point is not what is wrong with science from our current perspective but what might be from another.
The current ideology/culture idealizes science.
But in general terms today's scientists are yesterday's priests.
The scientific method is valued because it solves problems that modern society describes and agrees upon.
Theology and religion solved problems that existed before. They did not solve them by today's standards because today's standards are different.
By today's standards religious problems are pseudo-problems and religious solutions are pseudo solutions yet back then they were considered real problems, believed to be real problems according to their own parameters and were judged to be solved or not according to their parameters.
Science solves certain problems that our culture finds important today.
Science gives us predictions and different simulations of reality based on different perspectives.
What we intuitively think of as "zooming in", looking at the biological or atomic or sub atomic level, is only better for solving certain problems that we decided are problems according to our own modern categories.
There might be no reason to think our problems, the way we formulate them and the way we decide if they were solved or not will not look absurd in 500 years.

We, as a society, a world society now, formulate what our problems are based on the tools we decided are correct to formulate problems, and we try to solve these problems based on the parameters we decide upon as a society for what solving a problem means.

Now, im not a religious person, I do not believe in "gods" but It seems to me that:
1)Science might not be as universal as some people want to think.
2)science gives us a different perspective and ways of looking at reality, only better by our modern criteria. We think they are better then those prior because we judge what is good differently and what a solution is differently.

In 500 more years we will look at reality differently, we will formulate problems differently and we will judge if a problem is solved or not differently.

In what way is our modern cosmological worldview inherently "more real"(here my point is that there is no ideal reality) then the one 1000 years ago? Because it gives better predictions that can be tested and examined the way we examine them now? Well, these are again based on our modern standards of what is real and what is good.
What has changed since then? Culture and population.
our culturally dependent perception of reality changed.
1000 years ago, a person today considered "insane" might have become a great prophet.
That society considered what we today call delusions(sensual experiences not shared by everyone) today as real things according to their definition of what is real.
Who is to say modern scientists would not be dismissed in some future culture?

[Anonymous No.6521234]

Science is just coherent inductive reasoning with some boundaries set by falsifiability.
Inductive reasoning is almost inevitable. Maybe we will see some evolution in the idea of falsifiability.

[Anonymous No.6521244]

Back then personal subjective experiences were valued and thought about. And why not? it is only by today's, invented standards of what constitutes a problem and a possible solution, that strictly subjective information does not or cannot solve a problem.
The example of an insane person is imo a good example. We judge someone to be not having real experiences of reality and decide the problem is with his perception, his brain is not working correctly to percieve reality apropriately.
We define what is real based on what most people perceive and then judge another to be malfunctioned, as if not grasping the "proper reality" we do.
We still have philosophers asking about fundamental questions because they never really get answered, they just mutate and our definitions of them mutate based on culture and population and accumulated assumptions.
Maybe It could be said that we modify our own reality not by individuality thinking it inot changing, but by culturally thinking it into changing, just incrementally.

[Anonymous No.6521249]

>>6521244
Well fucking said. I'm not even trying to be a brown-noser that was just a great way for me to understand how I feel about science.

[Anonymous No.6521287]

>>6521190
>>6521244
I wanna also add that within the definitions of what modern problems are and how and what can be considered a solution is noticeably changing right now.
We have a certain segment of world population defining climate change as a problem and we have scientists that propose scinetific solutions but they are none the less not implemented.
Why?
Maybe because besides "science" and scientific fetishism we also idealize and live within the cultural framework of capitalism.

We only see and able to seriously considered solutions within the framework of scientific fetishism and capitalism.

Think about it. We constantly as a society idealize science, "STEM" laugh at "continental philosophy" simply because(well maybe it needs to be criticized for certain reasons) it is not scientific enough.

We constantly want to ignore the impact of culture within the framework and values of science and capitalism.

[Anonymous No.6521301]

>>6521287
Maybe it is time to try to address culture more seriously as what shapes our very ideas of what problems are and should be, what solutions are, and what reality is.

[Anonymous No.6521343]

>>6520600
>Science at the moment is considered the best expression of our inherent desire to know how things work and find patterns.
>our inherent desire to know how things work and find patterns.
Pretty sure you're overstating the universality of either this desire or the phenomenological impact of modern science.
Now, Hegelian science--that's useful stuff. ;^)

[Anonymous No.6521591]

So essentially our world is in constant flux? If the parameters of reality and thus all our problems are a result of our culture then not only reality as it is now should not be judged by scientific dogmatic standards but so shouldn't the past.
Since what is real was different but not less wrong then our view of the past itself is governed by our cultural understandings.
The ancient view of the world on giant elephants or the earth surrounded by a shroud with holes in it or that the earth was made 6000 years ago or our view of the universe being 13 billion years old and a result of an expansion of space or the future views of the past are all just a manifestation of our culture.
If scientific standards are not universal then our view of the past is dictated by what we think it is.
Reality itself is not even stable in the present its just that science and capitalism are winning the cultural game and imposing the western worldview on everyone.

[Anonymous No.6521744]

>>6520630
But you're wrong
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmfKuHVfJdI

[Anonymous No.6521786]

>>6520630

>(neurology for example, you can't really experiment on someone's brain to test your theories)


I used to think STEM retards were obnoxious for talking about the humanities but the opposite is even worse.

[Anonymous No.6521791]

>>6521591
flux my nigga

[Anonymous No.6521812]

>>6521786
Explain to me how neuroscience accounts for qualia. You fucjing can't. Neither can it.

[Anonymous No.6521814]

Hegel.

[Anonymous No.6521821]

>>6521343
>>6521814

[Anonymous No.6521828]

>>6521812
>fucjing

[Anonymous No.6521847]

>Are there any strong modern criticisms of science?

There are a couple of studies that say most scientific papers are worthless. In neuroscience, I know one paper that says the results are of very low statistical power.and aren't likely indicating a significant finding.

The publish-or-perish paradigm of most universities now means the kind of seriously creative, ground-breaking work that we saw in the last century is becoming increasingly harder to do. In In several fields science today is stagnated in mediocrity..

[Anonymous No.6521849]

>>6521814
no

[Anonymous No.6521853]

>>6521812
What evidence is there for the existence of qualia?

[Anonymous No.6521879]

>>6521847
>scientific papers


The very existence of this is something to suspect, most studies are done with some (presupposition of) intuition or 'popular wisdom' for the sake of publishing something reassuring for the public.

[Anonymous No.6521924]

>>6520600
>are there any strong modern criticisms of science?
theres plenty:
on of the best known- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend
if u want some decent resources for philsophy of science check out these two links:
https://personal.lse.ac.uk/ROBERT49/ebooks/PhilSciAdventures/toc.html
https://personal.lse.ac.uk/ROBERT49/teaching/ph201/lectures/lecture1.html
in last link u can chance lecture number to continue

:)

[Anonymous No.6521941]

>>6520600
also http://mechanism.ucsd.edu/teaching/philsci/bechtel.pos.ch3.pdf

[Anonymous No.6521943]

>>6520600
>Are there any strong modern criticisms of science?
There aren't any strong criticisms about the modern scientific method that I'm aware of, but several philosophers of science (and some physicists as well) did some harsh criticism at the new proposed "scientific truth" at a string theory convention back in the 90's.
Basically some physicists, string theorist to be precise, proposed a scientific truth based not as much in empirical evidence but in descriptive models mathematically consistent. Long-story short: philosophers of science criticized such concept of scientific truth because there aren't any strong arguments to change the way physics has been done since Galileo, furthermore, there is a name for what descriptive models with no empirical evidence are: metaphysics; not something physcists were very happy to hear, but philosophers of science still consider some branch of physics, e.g: string theory and quantum mechanics, not strictly science, in the former because of the lack of empirical evidence for quite a long time, in the latter because the lack of a consensus of an interpretation of qm which, according to some philosophers of science, is a fundamental characteristic of scientific disciplines.

[Anonymous No.6521961]

>>6520600
You don't have to look for modern criticism, ancient one can be sufficient enough.

[Anonymous No.6521970]

>>6521943
mathematical models can carry all kinds of problems. fields like theoretical physics are a more or less healthy branch open to new analysis and questioning their ideas; but then you have things like the study of ecosystems that actually studies electrical models under the idea that nature has to self regulate. in that case the fundamental aspect is wrong and every time they tried to do a practical test the results had to be forced or directly faked because nature isn't inherently selfregulatory.

the second part of "all watched over by machines of loving grace" deals with that and it's pretty interesting. first part is about game theory, ayn rand and market crash and it's a bit insultingly obvious at parts if you know about the topics.

[Anonymous No.6522055]

>>6521287
What do you do for a living? You sound like an incredibly lonely person because the stupidity of humanity is too much for you to bear.

[Anonymous No.6522076]

>>6520600
>Science at the moment is considered the best expression of our inherent desire to know how things work and find patterns.

Well it is, isn't it? Even if a transcendental feeling about religion is what moved Michaelangelo to paint the Sistine chapel ceiling, the building wouldn't be there, if people didn't understand how buildings stay standing, physically speaking.

[Anonymous No.6522166]

There is Bruno Latour - Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts and there is overall a vast amount of, for example, sociological literature questioning the construction of scientific facts. Foucault points in that direction to some extent. Not really my area thought.

[Anonymous No.6522343]

>>6521853
Are you denying that you have subjective experiences?

[Anonymous No.6522369]

>>6522343
Experience is just a reaction, like this post is a reaction to your post. It's impossible to say otherwise because every statement is a physical reaction to something.