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6593323 No.6593323 [Reply] [Original]

Can an 'exact science' exist, or is there a degree of uncertainty in every subject area?

>> No.6593366

Exact science or exact knowledge?

>> No.6593372

>>6593366
'Knowledge' as attainment of all related affairs.

Considering the above as nonsense, I feel the only exact knowledge (Or science, as you would have it) is a full one.

>> No.6593375

>>6593323
No we would need to have exact precision in calculations of certain events. We always have assumptions.

>> No.6593375,1 [INTERNAL] 

Humanities departments and poststructuralists will say no exact knowledge is possible but they are full of it. Exact knowledge is possible, and things happen according to real physical laws. The rest is linguistic play by children who hide true knowledge from themselves. However, exact knowledge in some fields is of course not yet a reality. One can even predict and influence human behavior to a remarkable degree, even with all the variables that so confound most people. Erastothenes estimated the size of the earth and the distance to the sun by watching shadows move in a well and then almost 2000 years of fools thought the earth was flat.

>> No.6593689

Isn't the postulation of uncertainty , "exact knowledge", if that degree of uncertainty is present in every subject area?

>> No.6593697
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6593697

I found the cook.

>> No.6593702

>>6593689
It would, if said property was present in reality, but what if uncertainty is a property of our possibility to get to knowledge, and not of reality?

>> No.6593709

>>6593702
Well, isn't our possibility of accessing knowledge, part of reality?

>> No.6593717

A proper account of exactness incorporates the necessity of uncertainty.

>> No.6593748

>>6593709
Wouldn't it determine our possibility of accessing reality beforehand, and therefore determine our possibility of generating knowledge?

>> No.6593767

>>6593748
I guess we will never know exactly.
Have some Ramones, they're fun, funnier with beers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZTF2ovT4CI

>> No.6593891
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6593891

>>6593323
>Can an 'exact science' exist, or is there a degree of uncertainty in every subject area?
fallacy

there is no uncertainty, because there is no absolute in most cases (unless you output a integer say '' the number of persons in some room'')

in science, there is a choice of many things: of postulates/axioms/principles/methods for induction/methods for collection and treatment of experimental data


the output of the scientific method is a variety of models which describe and predict, more or less broadly, more or less accurately, more or less quantitatively, more or less qualitatively some phenomenon assumed to be repeatable within a framework determined by each model.


Then each person chooses her models that she likes the most and endlessly debates politically with the other persons in asking which method is better than the other, which must be applied in such fields, in such social doctrine.

>> No.6593932

>>6593891

> there is no uncertainty
> because there is no absolute in most cases

That is a contradictio in terminis

>> No.6593954

An unknown level of uncertainty doesn't prevent a science from being 'exact'. You can answer both yes.

>> No.6593960

>>6593323
Every experiment can have measurement error.

>> No.6593965

>>6593932
so what would be the proper sentence?

"there is uncertainty, because the scientific method considers no absolutes, just models?"

>> No.6593978

>>6593965

>>6593689
>>6593702
>>6593709
>>6593748
>>6593767

>> No.6594047

>>6593932
it is badly phrased, because it negates something that the opponent assumes without even being sure about it.

the right sentence is of the kind : before you talk about uncertainty, you must be acquainted to a notion of absolute, to a notion making you believe that there something certain, but that your result is just near this certainty (so the result is uncertain)


What are the absolutes ? They are the predictions, the outputs of the models. Each choice of model, by a person, is a matter of affinity, of belief, of ''I like, I do not like'', of preferences.

For instance, I can measure a thing with a ruler, ruler1, I get the number X. I choose another ruler, ruler2, I get the number Y. The number Y will always be gotten, in the process of applying the ruler2 to the thing to be measured, if the ruler2 is used.
But there is no necessity to use ruler2. There is not even a necessity to measure anything. Why do you want to measure something ?

Each model offer some mechanism, generally causal, about some phenomenon. Beforehand, though, each model describe, more or less partially, the phenomeon. If you venture on the WHYs and the HOWs, you engage yourself in metaphysics (literally, what is beyond the physics, the phenomenon and its acquirement by the senses).

The knowledge, the purest knowledge is descriptive (and solipsist). The knowledge is about ''at this location, at this time, such thing happened''. Once you acquire faith that other persons are humans, that China exists even if you never went to it, once you accept what are in the books in mathematics, physics, climatology, biology, geology and so on, you are left if some kind of objectivism inside a subjectivism (about the choice of the ruler).

>> No.6594053

>>6594047

this objectivism can be expressed once the choice of the test/the method is done.
For instance, the trendy subject to rate or evaluate anything. Once given a method, to rate at least one thing (that at least one human perceives as one thing), you mesure within a confidence interval all the quantitative data required by the method, you input these data into the model-method which outputs the rate/mark/grade, with a confidence interval, of the thing measured. This grade is judged as objective as it can be relative to the method.
But the method itself is purely a choice that is not objective at all. The conclusion is that an objectivity is relative to a subjectivity.

Here, the objectivity is the numbers. The objectivity relates to the repetition of the procedure as well as to the prediction. We believe that the quantitative data aforementioned are more objective than qualitative data, precisely because we believe that numbers are more objective than qualities, because they are derived from some algorithm. The point of the person choosing this algorithm, over some others, is to convince/persuade the other people that her choice is right/better/relevant.

>> No.6594220

We see with all this that the tragedy of the scientific method is its inability (so far) to advocate/prove (scientifically) its necessity and its sufficiency towards the goals that the humanity sets it up.

Indeed, under a monist stance, especially physicalist/naturalist, where everything is nature, the humanity and its thoughts included, the sciences must explain

-why do the human models which predict (accurately or not) do predict ?
(how come the maths are so useful in physics ?)

-why does the humanity hold the human predictions (from scientific models or not) as authentic knowledge about the world (as if there are two worlds, the world of the phenomenons and the world of the thoughts/predictions) ?

(for instance, if you can predict the output of some game, everybody on earth will tell you that you know about the world)

-is there knowledge that is not about prediction ?