OK, thanks. I still don’t have a good bead on what “scientism” means, and near as I can tell, its usage is “relies on science more than I think warranted”. And by that measure, I’m probably a… “scientismist”(???) around here. Others have said if I don’t think science can answer all of life’s questions, I don’t qualify, and I certainly don’t hold to that idea, so who knows? It’s a word that is just finding its feet as an epithet (or maybe just a benign adjective).
Scientism, as I understand it, is the doctrine of considering only that evidence that can be directly supported by the scientific method in terms of valid (neccesarily physical) evidence, on an absolute basis. “Supported”, in practice, often essentially translating as “conceivably supportable”
“Nothing” is an exceedingly mysterious concept, and quite possibly the trickiest concept I could suggest if you are looking for deep mystery. “Absence” of course, has to borrow its semantics from a “something”. Doesn’t help to use baroque terms, either – “privation” has the same problem. If “nothing” obtains, there is no absence, as that would imply a something to be absent from.
I’ll stop there, but “nothing” is a fun one for me, when people profess to talk about it in meaningful and coherent ways. It just takes a few questions and everyone gets wrapped around the axles of the term…
Oh come sir! “nothing” is a fairly straightforward concept!
No. I understand this to be a meme of sorts in some circles, but as of today, it’s only the Higgs Boson which remains “undiscovered”. Fermions and neutrinos are empirically supported, for example – an electron is an sub-atomic particle, a type of fermion, and you’re well aware of the empirical evidence for electrons, at least, right?
I’m aware that the calculations based on the theory that electrons exist is there, but they cannot themselves be directly detected, can they? And hence, are not actually empirically evident…
No, it can’t, which really is a good way to bring this back to the topic of the thread. To the extent that something like the Higgs Boson is “inferred”, it’s a quantitative inference, values that emerge from the math models that don’t have a name, until given one as a placeholder, a “theoretical particle”. The story of the neutrino, it’s original conjecture, and the struggle for the evidence that makes it a fact of nature, is fascinating.
Isn’t it? It will be fact of nature or not, however, whether we like to think it is or not, whether the scientific establishment declares it ‘proven’ or not, and regardless of whether or not we can invent new sub-atomic particles to balance the calculations next time we figure out they’re wrong… again, whilst including the neutrino in the latest revision
If only theists were willing to treat God like the Higgs Boson in terms of testing, integration into physical models, etc!
it’s that inability to cope without the need for the “integration into physical models” which lays an assumption of the possible/probable nature of God (and, well, everything else) that constantly limits the ability of modern man to consider and reason freely, which I find most enlightened, and liberating, in theology
I claim it’s the reverse – that the man on the street is typically quite unaware and unappreciative of the depth and robustness of the hard evidence and empirical strength of the theories maintained in modern physics. That’s something we can do an evidential review on, if needed, and I think it will be a lopsided argument if so. One of the reasons I like to hang out at this forum is because here I find lots of sensible thinkers who really just are not aware even at a basic level how science works, how strong it is in terms of hard-core evidence, and how strongly it militates agains the “folk wisdom” mentality of much of organized religion, Catholicism being no exception, if a damn sight better at grasping the issues than the Protestant community.
Brought up a good Catholic, I was also taught to believe science was far more robust and empirically proven than those misapplied terms infer, or at least it certainly seems to me whenever I take an interest in the evidence, and nature of empiricism as it’s applied by the scientific community - I suspect the obfuscation of the low degree of factuality of many of the claims of Scientific authority is unlikely to be even guessed at by your average chap on the street
I can’t think of what you might mean by a “catastrophically disproven theory”. Newton’s physics was wrong, but not catastrophically so, by any means, and even “wrong” is harsh terminology; Newton was good as far as it went, but was simplistic, incomplete. You could, and still can, fly your spaceship to the moon and land it there relying on Newton rather than Einstein.
Maybe you can point me to one of the “catastrophically disproven theories” you are thinking of? All I can come up with are theories like Becher’s “phlogiston”. A failed idea, to be sure, but one that neither got far enough along to be “catastrophic” as a failure in the first place, or garnered enough empirical support to be considered, by modern standards, a “theory” rather than a hypothesis in the first place.
What comes to mind when you think “catastrophically disproven theory”?
The tragically miscalculated rate of radioactive decay?
Darwin’s model of racial competition?
That smoking is good for you?!?
Virtually everything linked to Freudian psychology?
All offhand, like
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