/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.5393878]

So I was arguing with my friends that everything that science studies in our universe is physics.

We jsut call biology/chemistry/etc certain knowledge areas that are too specific but based on physics principles, therefore, just "specialised physics"

Am I right?

[Anonymous No.5393883]

It's all just philosophy.

[Anonymous No.5393884]

>DNA replication, zipping and unzipping and all that jazz
>"specialized physics"
If you wanna be a pedantic and pretentious cunt, then yeah.
But if you wanna do actual science, you can, ya know, not be retarded.

[Anonymous No.5393894]

>>5393884
>biology
science

you could argue chemistry is science

[Anonymous No.5393898]

>>5393894
>I don't understand the definition of science nor do I understand the concept of experimental sciences

[Anonymous No.5393899]

>>5393898
there was a insincerity in my post, you got trolled : D

[Anonymous No.5393900]

>>5393878
>>5393883
>>5393894
how about you stop trying to categorise things you obviously don't understand

[Anonymous No.5393901]

>>5393899
lol epic

[Anonymous No.5393903]

>>5393878
>therefore, just "specialised physics"

in what sense is studying the migration of birds or the life cycle of a caterpillar just "specialized physics"

if you really want to be a troll you can just call all of science and physics "applied philosophy"

empirical philosophy to be exact.

What would this achieve other than rustling the jimmies of science-fans?

[Anonymous No.5394096]

That's retarded.

Sure, everything is made off atoms and hence physics, but if you take the atom approach to solving problems and mysteries as the basis for every question you get fuck all in return.

"So, Mr. Sherlock, who is the murderer?"-"I don't know Watson, let's start by analyzing what the floor is made out of."

Certain areas in science have certain theories and approaches. Yes they are all based on physics but it makes sense to categorize them to get satisfactory results.

[Anonymous No.5394105]

Mathematics
/thread

[Anonymous No.5394106]

>>5393900
>how about you stop trying to categorise things you obviously don't understand
Delicious vacuous babble. It's almost as if you expressed an actual point.

[Anonymous No.5394127]

its obvious that without chemistry, physics couldnt exist

[Anonymous No.5395116]

You were arguing with your friends about semantics, and the fact that you don't realize it should concern you.

[Anonymous No.5395150]

>>5394105
This.

[Anonymous No.5395166]

Just because something is explainable through physics doesn't mean it IS physics.

The divisions between the sciences reflect the jumps where the underlying theory becomes insufficient to predict the theory that utilizes it.

Molecular biology explores the function of enzymes that depend on and are explained by physical phenomena, but you can't predict the existence of enzymes when you start with only the physical interactions.

[Anonymous No.5395371]

Imo, all of these fields of science have different scales on which they are explaining phenomena. Biology explains the behaviour of organisms, chemistry explains the behaviour of compounds said organisms consist of, physics explain the behaviour of the elemental forces that drive these compounds and math as the very fundament explains the rules these drives undergo.
So the scale of preciseness, Biology > Chemistry > Physics > Math
That's the way I always have seen things. Sorry for my English if I made any mistakes here :)

[Anonymous No.5395392]

>>5395150
Logic
/thread

[Anonymous No.5395604]

>>5395392
Brain smarts

/thread

[Anonymous No.5395618]

>>5394105
Mathematics still has to be interpreted to make sense in regards to reality. It's just a tool in regards to predictive of physics.

[Anonymous No.5395623]

>>5395618
As English is a tool in regards to expressive of your retardation?

[Anonymous No.5395630]

>>5394127
>Yfw Newtonian physics were developed prior to the modern definition of chemistry

[Anonymous No.5395633]

gross oversimplification that adds no value or understanding to the topics other than to suggest that one discipline is superior for 'containing' the other.

these useless remarks brought to you by support from asinine sentiments, like these:
>feelings are just chemical reactions, what is love

thanks!

[Anonymous No.5395673]

It's kind of like programming languages. Physics would be like machine language, and the all the other sciences that rely on physics to work would be upper level languages like C, Java, Perl. If you really get down to the nuts and bolts of each language, yeah, physics is always involved, but you don't really touch physics when you're trying to make a user interface.

[Anonymous No.5395681]

>>5393878
fixed as:
>So I was arguing with my friends that everything that science studies in our universe is physics.

physics majors are just a bunch of weird ass motherfuckers who for some reason think they're the baddest motherfuckers on the block.

but they're not.

[Anonymous No.5395685]

Using your argument i can say all studies in the universe are maths (expect for lang ofc). However, that would be wrong. Physics ignores lots of the details while just focusing on behavior of that certain object, while bio includes all the details. Different.

[Anonymous No.5395716]

>>5393883
[spoiler]You're right

[Anonymous No.5395720]

A more interesting question is why this was a topic of conversation. How does the answer have relevance to anyone?

[Anonymous No.5395735]

>>5393903
>in what sense is studying the migration of birds or the life cycle of a caterpillar just "specialized physics"
Thanks for the laugh, bro

[Anonymous No.5395793]

>>5393899
no, you are just stupid, dude

[Anonymous No.5395900]

Physics is always more fundamental than any other science. If there is something more fundamental than it, it gets incorporated into physics. That fundamental frontier is one frontier of physics, and the other is all of the extraordinarily complex side effects of these fundamental objects and forces. Some of these side effects are still pretty close to the fundamental object or force and so still fall under most people's preview of physics; stuff like atoms, stars, magnets, and fluid vortices. The rest of the things that exist for study fall a certain (arbitrarily and inconsistently chosen) distance away from these fundamental objects or forces, and so are categorized differently. Stuff like oxy redux reactions or birds. But these are still side effects of the fundamental objects and forces. There is nothing that exists in biology that cannot be described by physics, there is nothing that exists in chemistry that cannot be described by physics, etc. but there are things in physics that cannot be described by geology or psychology or whatever your science of choice is.

That is not to say that those sciences are any less meaningful. On the contrary, once one adopts the view that those are all subsets of physics, as is the study of optics, fluid dynamics, or astrophysics, they are 100% as meaningful as physics, because they are physics, and until the universe is completely understood there is work to be done in all fields.

Practicality is another issue. It is not practical to constantly be thinking in terms of the fundamental objects and forces, and so for a biologist, knowledge of the fundamentals of physics is not necessary, and requiring it to be taught would be inefficient. It was put well by >>5395673. It is not efficient to be constantly working in the machine language, even though in the background that is actually what is controlling every interaction or phenomena observed in any science.

[Anonymous No.5395908]

>>5395900
CONT

This viewpoint >>5395166 is incorrect. The existence of organic enzymes may be the result of an incredibly chaotic system, but it is not something entirely outside the purview of physics. If one had the most powerful computer possible and ran the universe from t = 0 to t = inf with only the fundamental forces and objects, and repeated this experiment again and again, it is guaranteed that organic enzymes would arise at one point or another. In fact, our exact universe would arise at one point. Unless you can present something that exists in one of the other sciences that is not a side effect of the fundamental objects and forces plus time, everything falls under the purview of physics.

[Anonymous No.5395915]

>>5393878

The way I understand it is that what ultimately separates each field is the principles that can't be explained through another branch. Or that it would be so cumbersome to do so, that it's impractical. Trying to explain speciation with physics would be quite a feat. I assume someone will say that you connect speciation to DNA and then chemistry and then physics. But that's a bit fallacious as you're not explaining the actual phenomena or mechanism behind it, just the chemical and physical aspects. What is natural selection in terms of physics?

Now math is an entirely different beast. Mathematical biology exists that attempts to describe biological phenomena in a similar way that math describes physical principles.

[Anonymous No.5395924]

>>5395915
I would counter that when you have explained the chemical and physical aspects you have explained the phenomena. You ask for a mechanism behind it. There is no special force that drives natural selection other than mutation brought on by radiation damaging DNA and the complex chemical reaction of life that either passes or does not pass that DNA on. Talk of any special force outside of that is purely speculation and has a place, but not in science.

[Anonymous No.5395938]

Science is just natural philosophy. So biology, physics and so on are just a very specific part of the whole philosophy studies.|||

[Anonymous No.5395941]

>>5395924

I didn't say there was some force. Evolution isn't only natural selection and natural selection isn't only mutation. The best you can do is plug chemistry in between biological principles. A species doesn't turn out the way it does only because there was mutations. That doesn't explain why certain mutations exist as opposed to others or why some die out and some keep going. It's greater than the sum of its parts. That's all I'm saying. It does require a fact based, observable (or at least scientifically inferred), meta-analysis to string together purely chemical and physical processes into something that shapes life.

I'll say it a gain, math is better suited for the analysis than physics.

[Anonymous No.5395946]

>>5395938

natural philosophy doesn't use math as a language. natural philosophy isn't falsifiable. science has a different epistemological and ontological foundation. That's why they separated.

[Anonymous No.5395949]

>>5395938
But thats a misnomer, because philosophy describes nothing that cannot be described through physics. Your mind, and thus your perception, is a product of the fundamental objects and forces, so any philosophical conundrum it may wish to think on is a side effect of physics.

True, we are much further away from describing philosophical conundrums in the language of physics than we are chemistry in the language of physics, but given infinite time it is possible. However, even with infinite time it is impossible to describe everything in physics with philosophy.

[Anonymous No.5395974]

>>5395941
I think you are misinterpreting chaos for something that is fundamentally indescribable with physics. Chaos isn't indescribable, it's just really complicated.

A species does turn out the way it does because of physics. The mutations were caused by physics. The bottleneck event that killed 94% of the population was the result of a volcano exploding and covering half of the specie's preferred climate with lava, because the tidal forces brought on by the moon's orbit around Earth make our planet tectonically active, because the Earth was hit by a meteor billions of years ago and spewed some of its mass out to create a moon, and so on. The sexual selection that made it so that the species grew strange, red, globby appendages on their faces was a result of a quirk of the neurochemistry of that species that made the species more likely to choose a mate that had the red globby appendage than one without it.

Obviously I don't know all the details of speciation, but I assure you every one of them could be explained through physics. It may take days to write up how every single cause of speciation is a side effect of the fundamental forces, but it is.

If you are looking for an answer to WHY life is a side effect of the fundamental objects and forces, I think you are outside of the purview of science as a whole. Neither physics nor biology will help you answer that.

[Anonymous No.5395987]

>>5395974

I think you keep trying to paint me as someone who crave philosophy when I say no such things. I also think you're conflating why and why. I also think that you completely fail to understand biology or physics. I assure you that everything outside of physics isn't some grand rube-goldberg machine of inconsistent causal relationships between events. And if you think physics is strictly deterministic, you have a 19th century view of physics. Which isn't surprising as public schools rarely teach any major science development since the 1800's. And if you are arguing that it is deterministic, then it's you who are being philosophical in this situation, and it's preventing you from seeing anything beyond it.

Good day.

[Anonymous No.5396045]

probably you can view other sciences as useful shortcuts, but since no sciences can break the laws of physics (when we have found them al), you can describe each proces using physics. (but most biological processes are applied chemics and most chemical processen are applied physics, so it would take some time)

[Anonymous No.5396054]

>>5395987
Nowhere in my post did I make an appeal to determinism. In fact, in my earlier post I made a point to be sure I was not relying on a deterministic definition of predictable within physics. My definition of falling within the purview of physics was: 1) Take a computer capable of simulating the universe. 2) Encode into it the fundamental forces and objects. 3) Run the universe from t = 0 to t = infinity (or approximate heat death, or the big crunch, or whatever). 4) Do this an infinite number of times.

Anything that happens in any of the scenarios should fall within the purview of physics. The key step is step number 4. This takes care of the fact that the universe is not a deterministic place, because by running it an infinite number of times we are guaranteed to have one simulation come out exactly as our universe did.

I don't claim to fully understand biology, but I don't think I completely fail to understand biology. How can you assure me that everything outside of most people's definition of physics is not a grand rube goldberg if you cannot give me one example of something that doesn't fit into this rube goldberg?

I think you are not accepting my answers because you do not want your precious world view to have any holes poked in it, which is fully understandable. World views are fucking important for sanity's sake. If its any comfort, I think once you fully open to this viewpoint it has a certain beauty to it that is lost when one accepts the existence of special forces that govern the behavior of life that are entirely separate from the fundamental forces of the universe. If you open up to my view, you are a part of the universe, and the rube goldberg becomes, instead of belittling, completely awesome and fantastically lucky.

[Anonymous No.5396074]

>>5396054
>My definition of falling within the purview of physics was: 1) Take a computer capable of simulating the universe. 2) Encode into it the fundamental forces and objects. 3) Run the universe from t = 0 to t = infinity (or approximate heat death, or the big crunch, or whatever). 4) Do this an infinite number of times.

That's not science at all. There's nothing to indicate that something like this is would work other than the assumption that physics can describe everything. Thus this is premise and conclusion and therefore fallacious.

>How can you assure me that everything outside of most people's definition of physics is not a grand rube goldberg if you cannot give me one example of something that doesn't fit into this rube goldberg?

I tried to do that with natural selection and speciation but you can't seem to understand the concept enough. So even if I move one order higher to psychology, and how can physics explain analytical psych, you probably won't get it either. You'll just say biochemistry leads to physics. Thus oversimplifying principles of another field to the point it agrees with your assertions.

I am perfectly confident that electroweak theory doesn't describe generalized anxiety and quantum mechanics don't describe evolution. It seems self evident.

[Anonymous No.5396094]

>>5396074
I see your point. I think I was not accepting your answers because I did not want my precious world view to have any holes poked in it.

I'm still confused as to what you think is going on in speciation that falls outside of the purview of physics though, and we can't just argue back and forth with things like "I am perfectly confident that electroweak theory doesn't describe generalized anxiety and quantum mechanics don't describe evolution. It seems self evident." and "Obviously I don't know all the details of speciation, but I assure you every one of them could be explained through physics." and expect to get anywhere.

So lets start over. Physics has shown that even when starting with a very simple scenario, incredibly complex forms can emerge. Why is it that you think there must be a complex law that exists separately from the fundamental forces and objects in order to describe complex phenomena like evolution? I personally find the world view that there are only the simple fundamental forces and objects, and that any other scientific laws we discover aside from these are side effects of those fundamental laws, appealing. To me, this seems neat, and thusly seems like the most likely candidate for how the universe works.

Does evolution or anxiety pass some fundamental "complexity" threshold that means they are governed by their own universal laws?

[Anonymous No.5396119]

>>5396094

You seem to want to actually discuss this and you're being patient so, yes, let's start over.

>Allopatric speciation (from the ancient Greek allos, "other" + Greek patra, "fatherland") or geographic speciation is speciation that occurs when biological populations of the same species become vicariant — isolated from each other to an extent that prevents or interferes with genetic interchange.

Keep in mind that it is not my intention to put words in your mouth but when I argue I try to anticipate counter-arguments. I anticipate your response to the above definition would be that geological processes or weather or whatever separated two species which then failed to pass molecules to one another and through mutations (via radiation), turned into different species.

Here we encounter our problem again. What you've done is possibly describe the events that facilitated events that lead to specialization. You haven't actually described the principle itself. This is mostly a problem with how we relate words to causality and the real world. It's like saying that describing a delicious cake is the same as describing the temperature of the oven or the movement of air in the kitchen or the mallard reaction. Or even how it was made by describing those things. Describing how the conductive, inductive, or convective aspects of cooking work is not describing how to make a cake.

And that's the best way I can put it at 3:30am.

[Anonymous No.5396153]

>>5396119
Where I agree with you is that I would have tried to use that line of reasoning again. Where I disagree with you is your want to include the principle of speciation into the fundamental aspects of the universe, and your refusal to view speciation as a side effect of the fundamental forces. It is probably true that neither of us can be objectively correct in this matter because the problem we're arguing is fundamentally philosophical; its all caught up in the definition of what "physics" is really and what "biology" is really and what is "fundamental" is really (you've gotta bring out the scare quotes to do philosophy correctly).

So, my argument for my viewpoint over yours should be philosophical. In general, I think we can both agree that in science the theory that has less brute facts is usually the correct one. Just in case you aren't familiar with the term, a brute fact is something that must simply be accepted as true. There is no way to justify it other than "it just is", like the fundamental forces and objects. I wrote out a long example to illustrate the messiness of theories with many brute facts, but I realized it was a waste of my time and yours, so I'm going to assume you understand what I mean. It has happened often in science that when you have a theory with a many of brute facts, if you ask "why is it that all of these things must be so?", you find some simpler law that dictates why they exist, and so you have a neater view of the universe. Messy theories make scientists uneasy for a reason.

I think we can do the same thing with your law governing speciation. We could ask "why" all the way back to physics, and as long as there is no why that is left unanswered, why should we consider it as anything other than a side effect of the fundamental forces and objects?

[Anonymous No.5396162]

>>5396119
Also yeah, its 3:00 over here too and I'm sobering up. I should probably sleep, but I'll be checking this thread out tomorrow.

[Anonymous No.5397762]

bump

[Anonymous No.5397766]

I'll just leave this right here:

[Anonymous No.5397769]

>>5397766

''purity''

lel

[Anonymous No.5397780]

>>5397766

[Anonymous No.5397782]

>>5397780
mfw both are true

[Anonymous No.5397783]

>>5397782
oh shit wrong picture, meant to post pic related

[Anonymous No.5397789]

>>5397782
lel

[Anonymous No.5397794]

Everything is just an attempt to obtain the prisca theologia

duh guys

[Anonymous No.5397798]

>>5395371
But mathematics doesn't describe the laws of nature, it has no connection to the physical world. It has application yes but physics cannot be derived from something which has no grounding the physical world.

>>5393903
While some elements of philosophy are incorporated others are ignored. Physics is not derived from philosophy. Because of the problem of induction philosophy can never know anything about the physical world.

[Anonymous No.5397804]

Feynman says no.

[Anonymous No.5397806]

>>5397766
FIXED

[Anonymous No.5397827]

This thread kinda went to shit today... Anyone both reading the walls of text posted last night?
>>5396094
>>5396119
>>5396153

Whether math or physics is on top is a whole separate debate, but at least for science, lets start this shit up again. Someone explain to me why you would accept a law like Avagadro's law as a fundamental law that is separate from all other laws if it is a side effect of the underlying physical laws?

[Anonymous No.5397825]

>>5397806
"Purity" on that chart doesn't mean their love lives.

[Anonymous No.5397861]

>>5397825
how could it? with all the sodomy

[Anonymous No.5397874]

But mathematics doesn't describe the laws of nature, it has no connection to the physical world.

Mathematics was forged in the electrochemical signals coursing along your brain, kingdom of neurons that it is.

The information encoded therein, collectively in the minds of all sentient mathematicians throughout the history of the universe, is where mathematics has its connection with reality as a physical phenomenon.

And so too is information encoded in the ink splatters on Euclid's papyrus.

Minds were made to churn out more thoughts regarding mathematics via processes we need both physics and biology to understand.

[Anonymous No.5397876]

>>5397874

First line of this post was meant to be in quotation marks.

Do not misunderstand its context, nor attempt to troll me by doing so deliberately.

[Anonymous No.5397903]

Alright fuck it we're doing it live.

>>5397874
Yeah, this. Math exists because our brains do. Our brains exist because physics does. Even though physics can many times be described using math, math exists in the same realm that philosophy does (although it usually has a lot more rigor to it), and that realm's existence is a side effect of the physical laws.

Physics>All else, if one truly understands what the aim of physics is. (the > sign means more fundamental than, in this context, I'm not trying to imply it is objectively any better than another field, all of them are awesome in their own way)

[Anonymous No.5397926]

>>5397874
>But mathematics doesn't describe the laws of nature, it has no connection to the physical world.

This is true.
Math by itself can't describe any physical universe or it's laws.

It can't establish the existence of any particular universe either.

Of course.

It only deals with platonic ideals and artifacts of language.

[Anonymous No.5397931]

>>5397903
>and .. that realm's existence is a side effect of the physical laws.

this can't be established.
the idea of physical laws is a philosophical contrivance.

>Physics>All else, (meaning more fundamental)

Physics doesn't question it's own assumptions, how can it be fundamental at all?

i.e it assumes the future will be like the past.
this is illogical and can't be established by empiricism.

it also suffers from induction as all empirical matters do.

[Anonymous No.5397963]

>>5393878
My opinion on the matter:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/User:LiberalOfAnUnknownVariant#Physics_Reductionism

[Anonymous No.5397969]

>>5395908
Think about what you just said for a second..

[Anonymous No.5397971]

>>5397931
>standard religious apologetics
Oh boy, we have a live one here!

[Anonymous No.5398052]

Biology is the study of cells. The chemical reactions which take place within a cell are studied by any biologist who isn't 5 (most would at least study respiration or photosynthesis).
Chemistry is the study of two or more atoms reacting through electron sharing (aldol condensation/grignard/etc). Most chemists who made it through their first lesson eventually study thermodynamics and such things as the ideal gas law or Q=MCdT.
Physics is the study of the natural universe and is split into many categories such as thermodynamics (study of heat) optics (study of light/radiation) magnetism (study of OMFG HOW DO MAGNETS WORK WHAT DOES F=NILB MEANT?) atomic physics (what is a debroglie wavelength) and nuclear physics (study of the forces which hold an atom together).

Since physicists study quarks and gluons and energy in general and have been able to ascertain that everything is made of energy and explains things such as what atoms are made of and fusion/fission (which is basically chemistry in a way) and knowledge of the way in which atoms react given energy or within the presence of another atom is required in order for a chemist or biologist to study their field to the fullest it can be said that every science is merely a subset of physics.

If your friend doesn't like that explanation then just whine about how without the higgs field he'd have no mass or something.
Also maths is a seperate system devised by humans to help explain how the universe work and is not an actual science but rather the method with which science is carried out.

[Anonymous No.5398067]

>>5397931
>Physics doesn't question it's own assumptions, how can it be fundamental at all?

Physics is a field of study and you meant to say physicists don't question their own assumptions.

>i.e it assumes the future will be like the past.
this is illogical and can't be established by empiricism.

Physicists don't blindly assume that the universe will always continue to function as it does but merely make the logical assumption that the universe has worked this way for literally billions of years and the probability of the way in which the universe functions changing in any given second are less than 1*10^-99999999