SCIENCE USED TO BE defined as a set of methods followed in order to produce "objective reliable knowledge" about things. I think that's wishful thinking not only because there is no such thing as an objective view of things. That already sends the holders of scientistic ideology up a tree because their ideological positions are seriously damaged by that admission alone. They do that even as their own language gives away that they know that is the case. If you want to imagine that such an objective view is an absolute internal reproduction of things as they are, that should be "THE objective view" something that the use of the indefinite rather gives away as an impossible to achieve thing. And I'd love you to produce even two devoted materialist-scientistic experts who hold identical conceptions of any object within the purview of their expertise because, those conceptions being internal, they will never be identical. So what science deals with are agreed to, subjective conceptions of things and forces, etc. which are kept in bounds only through rigorous application of methods and the admission of when those are impossible to apply to what is desired to be studied, which, I think, is probably at least as important as the validity and rigor of the agreed to methods of science. And it is the first one to go out the window.
I think with all the problems it brings the only honest definition of science is that it's what scientists call science at any time, or what scientists allow to be called science because there is lots and lots of science that lots of scientists don't buy as valid science, even entire departments and schools in universities will not really have the respect of scientists in more rigorously scientific fields though they don't generally admit to it. If the public is gullible about the claims of such "science" and that that confusion is extended and exploited as we have seen - to the general damage to science and its public understanding - scientists share a good deal of the blame in that due to their allowing the social-sciences, science which exempts itself from the methods of science, etc. getting away with being called science in the first place.
The claim that I'm anti-science is absurd on its face when I've noted repeatedly that I have a problem when "science" is done, published and called "science" which doesn't follow the agreed to methods of science, sometimes in many different ways. I have repeatedly criticized everything from the impossibility of observation of claimed phenomena being filled in by the rankest of story telling to the demand by Stephen Hawking to allow science-fiction written in equations with no possibility of valid or even invalid testing of its claims in physical or empirical observation. The kind of thing that theoretical physicists and cosmologists, not to mention even earlier in the social so-called sciences pass off as science on a continuing basis.
That state of affairs was warned of 83 years ago by one of the most astute of that periods mathematical-scientific-philosophers Arthur Stanley Eddington during his Easter Term lectures published in The Philosophy of Physical Science. In chapter IX on The Concept of Structure he starts
Theoretical physics to-day is highly mathematical. Where does the mathematics come from? I cannot accept [James] Jean's view that mathematical conceptions appear in physics because it deals with a universe created by a Pure Mathematician; my opinion of pure mathematicians, though respectful, is not so exalted as that. An unbiased consideration of human experience as a whole does not suggest that either the experience itself or the truth revealed in it is of such a nature as to resolve itself spontaneously into mathematical conceptions. The mathematics is not there till we put it there. The question to be discussed in this chapter is, At what point does the mathematician contrive to get a grip on material which intrinsically does not seem particularly fitted for his manipulations?
So, even then the man who Einstein said had written the best mathematical treatment of his own theories, one of the preeminent mathematical physicists of that generation was considering what the immediately past and current generation of scientists does on a regular basis, especially in theoretical physics and cosmology but, also, in the life sciences and even more so in the academic lore that was allowed to get away with calling itself science when it never did science but, in its more sciency forms, figured pretending to do math about things that in no way were fitted for its manipulations tells you real things about reality. Not infrequently the things they did math about had no actual existence outside of their imaginations.
Rereading this chapter after a long time of not thinking about it makes me want to go through the whole thing here. It helped inform a lot of my skepticism about the more outlandish and ideological claims of scientists and gave me a lot more respect for science that is done well and of the fact that all of science as all of human thinking and work is imperfect, contingent, vulnerable to wishful thinking and error, and so fallible.
Oh heck, Eddington is worth reading so here goes. Don't let the talk about notation get you too bogged down, it isn't even math yet.
If in a public lecture I use the common abbreviation No. for a number, nobody protests; but if I abbreviate it as N, it will be reported that "at this point the lecturer deviated into higher mathematics". Disregarding such prejudices, we must recognize that the allocation of symbols A, B, C, . . . to various entities or qualities is merely an abbreviated nomenclature which involves no mathematical conceptions.
The next step is to introduce some kind of relation or comparison between A and B. If we examine the mental process of comparing two objects, I think we shall catch ourselves imagining a series of objects intermediate between them. We can best realize how they differ by considering what we should have to do to change one continuously into the other. If the idea of gradually modifying one into the other is too far-fetched, we simply decide that the two objects are so utterly unlike that a comparison would be meaningless. It will therefore be useful to introduce the conception of an operation which changes one object or quality into another. For example, the conception of an operation of expansion is useful when we have to compare objects of different size. Accordingly alongside our original A, B, C, . . . , we have a new set of symbols P, Q, R, . . . , standing for the operations that change A into B and A into C, B into C, etc.
But we are still in the stage of nomenclature, and mathematics seems as far off as ever. To continue, we must try to compare the operations P, Q, R, . . . with one another. Accordingly to our former conclusion this leads us to imagine an operation of changing the operation P into the operation Q. Thus we have a new set of operations (or hyper-operations) X, Y, Z, . . , which change P into Q, P into R, Q into R, . . . And so we go in an orgy of notation, introducing more and more symbols, but never getting beyond notation.
It is easy to introduce mathematical notation; the difficulty is to turn it to useful account;
“Let x denote beauty,-y, manners well-bred,-
“z, Fortune,-(this last is essential),-
“Let L stand for love”-our philosopher said,-
“Then L is a function of x, y, and z,
“Of the kind which is known as potential.”
“Now integrate L with respect to d t,
“(t Standing for time and persuasion);
“Then, between proper limits, ’tis easy to see,
“The definite integral Marriage must be:-
“(A very concise demonstration).” [ Prof. W.J.M Rankine, Songs and Fables]
At the start there is no essential difference between this example of mathematical notation, and the A, B, C, . . . , P, Q, R, . . . . , X, Y, Z, . . ., that we have been discussing. We must find what it is that turns the latter into a powerful calculus for scientific purposes, whereas the former has no practical outcomes - as the poem goes on to relate.
My suspicion is that what Eddington and Rankine mocked in the absurd over extension of mathematical thinking where it had no business going is exactly what has been done in the so-called social sciences from the start and even more so as they cover up their inadequate methodology with equations and numbers and claims about them, and also Darwinian speculation about the past, making up not love stories but of stories of nature red in tooth and claw (it all started and continued in economic lore), and now, as their abilities to do adequate observation of the physical objects they want to discover will never catch up to their ambitions, physicists and cosmologists. We've already gotten to the point where the least speculative branches of those, what particle physicists do, are demanding that an even bigger, groovier, particle accelerator be built for them with no even theoretical justification for doing so in plausibly observable science to back it up, but for them to impose imaginary universes on human notions of reality without any possibility of doing that in any conceivable future. If Sabine Hossenfelder is worried about scientists who cheat (listen to the last link) I'm not hesitant to point out that they've been doing it increasingly from the start. I think a lot of the public distrust of science, their refusal to accept science they don't like and the successful manipulation of that by fascist politicians like Jim Jordan - for the love of Mike - scientists overselling and lying about what they do, allowing frauds to go by the name of science certainly has a role in that.
I'll give more of this chapter from Eddington's book over the next little while, though I'm not sure how to handle the mathematical notation on blogger, I might have to learn something along the way. Which might be fun.
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