Science Fiction & Philosophy discussion

As I grew up I always considered our scientific laws to be immutable, the 'gold standard' of knowledge in the universe. There have been changes, like the replacement of Newton physics, but until recently the new and the old relied upon the same classical laws - that is until the arrival of quantum physics. Now we are witnessing phenomena that doesn't conform to our classical laws and (as the article below demonstrates) in the wider universe it seems our classical laws may not apply either.

So we have a set of 'laws' that are limited to human observation of the macro-world, restricted to our galaxy. If so, what does that limitation tell us about the nature of 'laws'? Are they no longer immutable or are what we think of as our classical laws simply a manifestation of some much deeper laws, showing us just a surface glimpse - the skin on a rice pudding?


Dark Matter News

Just add more epicycles I say.

I can only defer, once again, to the work of Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in pointing out that scientific paradigms continue to evolve through the centuries. In the currently accepted epistemological school of thought, science doesn't produce laws (leaving that to politicians), it produces theories, which continue to hold until refuted or replaced with better ones. In this way, our collective body of knowledge continues to be a work in progress and our understanding of the universe continues to expand.

I think that's the question - will our understanding expand or be replaced?

Scientific inquiry is a method. I don't believe it was ever expected to yield absolutes, though in popular media as well as classrooms, scientific 'laws' are disseminated as truth. When some aspect has not been disproved or refined for sometime people begin to think of it as an immutable fact. I suppose this is just human nature, and another aspect of those in the know leading the sheep astray.

Watching the astronomy programs, I see several 'theories' stated quite confidently when there is little to back such speculation. Case in point -- the origin of heavy elements beyond Iron were long said to come from supernovas. This I learned in school. This could, in part, be true, but recent revelations by the gravity wave detector, LIGO, corroborated by spectroscopy for the same event locations shows that a collision between massive neutron stars can produce many, many times the Earth's mass of Gold alone along with a salad of other heavy elements like lead, mercury, thallium, uranium, etc. Such collisions are not supernovas. A neutron star is basically, just one fantastically huge atomic nucleus. Of course it can produce heavy elements or light ones. No one ever wondered what would happen if two of them collided I guess.

Once scientist pointed to the shelves behind him and said, "All of these books will have to be rewritten."

While you are all here, I thought I would pass along this article with a collection of places paying for sci-fi / speculative fiction short stories.

From our discussions, I get all kinds of ideas for both short or long stories I could pursue.

Here is the Link

Peter wrote: "I think that's the question - will our understanding expand or be replaced?"

I suspect that both will happen at one time or another. Some theories will prove to be false (aka 'All swans are white'). Some will expand to incorporate new knowledge.

I don't think that bona fide scientific laws (in the sense they are 'a statement of fact, deduced from observation, to the effect that a particular natural or scientific phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions are present,') are replaced. Classical mechanics still holds...

It's a matter of (at least partly) scale. The smaller or further or more detailed our observations are, the laws need refinement to account for the phenomena observed. Or some new laws with proper bounding need to be developed.

My quick two cents...

Manuel wrote: "I don't think that bona fide scientific laws (in the sense they are 'a statement of fact, deduced from observation, to the effect that a particular natural or scientific phenomenon always occurs if..."

Refinement is the key word there. People who don't understand certain concepts can only speak with generalities and sweeping statements that don't take into account all of the known nuances.

I remember more than once taking a physics class where the instructor would say, "Remember when we taught you X, Y, or Z? Well, we lied to you."

This meant they were going to give us another level of detail because the 'simple cases' we looked at before did not always hold, or held with only a specific set of assumptions. The Simple Harmonic Oscillator would be a good example. When oscillations are small enough, the equations do a good job, but when they get larger, other elements need to be considered.

In general discussions in public venues like TV those things are never really covered.

We keep coming back to physics, which, I agree, describes the universe at its most fundamental level. But the language of physics doesn't work very well at the higher levels of structural complexity: microbiology, physiology, psychology, sociology. (I am not saying that it doesn't play a role, only that it doesn't provide useful terminology or theories to describe the phenomena in other disciplines.)

At this higher level of structural complexity, our knowledge is still very limited and talk of 'laws' would be very premature. From that perspective, I think our knowledge will continue to expand, drawing on both physical observations and social theories to produce new concepts and ways of describing existence.

Khira wrote: "We keep coming back to physics, which, I agree, describes the universe at its most fundamental level. But the language of physics doesn't work very well at the higher levels of structural complexit..."

Khira,

I guess we speak of physical 'laws' or models because in order to break things down to where we can understand them, we like to simplify or isolate 'systems' that we can study. Truly understanding something is demonstrated by the fact that from these 'laws' we can extrapolate or actually predict an outcome based upon certain conditions.

Not to say that physics is not guilty, but plenty of other fields come up with their own 'laws' based upon far less than what the physicists come up with. Case in point: Psychiatry and Psychology can be seriously flawed. The DSM has been incredibly harmful! The list of so-called 'ailments' has ballooned out of proportion and quite often is based upon the whims of the politically correct and incorrect. Homosexuality was once in the book. We know that this is just matter of fact within a small percentage of the population and that homosexuality is not a 'disorder'. There are all kinds of newer, even more sinister diagnoses entering the fray such as a 'disobedience' disorder. Throughout history, anyone thinking contrary to societal 'norms' has been singled out. Psychiatry can be very useful if used thoughtfully, however, it has always been used as a tool of the State to shut down dissenters.

I agree that there is more out there than just physics or chemistry, but they are still very useful tools. Even for 'complex systems' as you have described, mathematics and physics are useful. Chaos Theory comes to mind. Chaotic behavior is something that up close would be described as disordered, but with a grander view reveals order. Think of a flock of birds, or a school of fish. Only when we see them as a whole, does the order reveal itself. This is an exciting new field in physics and math called complexity theory.