Re: SCIENCE ANYONE?

["Matthew Bonnan" <mbonnan@hotmail.com>]

Hi Brian.  Hope all is well with you.

You said/asked:
"Your definition of science was intriguing:
<Science -- a narrow discipline that seeks to pose answerable questions
about the physical universe.>

'A narrow discipline...' sounds like a warning.  Assuming you're taking
'discipline' as a branch of knowledge and 'narrow' to mean limited, what
limits it?"

Well ... it is sort of a warning.  People don't realize how limited science 
actually is.  Most of what people see around them and think is science in 
reality is what I would call technology ... which I get to below.  Also, 
some folks make the mistake of applying the narrow assumptions of science to 
their personal philosophy of life -- in other words, certain scientists use 
scientific assumptions to claim there is no God or supernatural world, for 
instance.  Well, that is beyond what science does -- it cannot test for the 
presence or absence of the supernatural because that is not within the 
physical universe.  On the other hand, some folks want science to deal with 
the supernatural to support their personal belief in supernatural things -- 
again, beyond the realm of what science does.

"So anything involving engineering is not science?  Once you have an answer
to an answerable question, using that answer to make something happen, like,
say, building a bridge would be outside the definition."

Exactly.  Engineering, by my definition, is not science but applied science 
or technology.  Engineers use scientific findings about the physical 
universe to construct bridges, bombs, or automobiles, things with moral 
value.  They are not seeking to pose answerable questions about the 
universe, but are instead seeking to use scientific principles to invent or 
construct things, for good or bad.  Again, science is a very narrow 
discipline -- and accordingly, engineering is not science in this narrow 
sense.  Science is amoral -- its application, in the form of engineering or 
medicine, has moral value.

"Also, in this phrasing, science only poses ... questions.  You would be
satisfied if you could prove logically that an answer exists, even if you
never found that answer."

Well, maybe not satisfied, but that's the uncertainty you have to be willing 
to put up with.  When we try to understand how dinosaurs lived or how they 
are related to one another, we are already coming to the table with missing 
data and many unknowns.  We are seeking to pose potentially answerable 
questions about dinosaur lives and relationships based on the data available 
to us, but we may never get an "answer" to our questions.  The important 
point to stress is that the questions should be answerable; not, for 
instance, questions like, "what happens when an immovable object meets an 
irresistable force?"

"That's a very intellectual definition!"

Thanks!

"Manipulation toward a goal definitely includes engineering, and the answers
to questions are definitely expected to be found.
Partly I wanted to follow by connecting to the scientific method, and partly
I wanted to counter the idea that because we cannot be certain that we have
arrived at the complete truth that it is never possible to find truth at
all.
Your definition, including '...answerable questions...' as it does, also
implies that answers (truths) are available to us."

But again, we just don't deal with truth in science in the same way you 
would in philosophy.  Maybe it's possible to find some sort of ultimate 
truth about the world or dinosaurs, but that's beyond what science is 
capable of.  That's more for philosophy or religion to decide -- we don't 
seek ultimate truths in science.  I tell my students to avoid the words 
"truth," "proof," and "fact" in my courses because they imply something 
about ultimate answers or truths, and science doesn't deal with these sorts 
of absolutes.

"Then you connect paleontology to the limits in the definition:
<Notice that the definition says nothing about manipulating anything or
reaching a goal -- in paleontology, at least with the primary data (i.e.,
fossils), we can do very little manipulation in the sense of an experimenter
manipulating variables, yet we are still doing science.  We are seeking to
pose answerable questions about dinosaurs in this case.  I'm not going to
touch phylogenetic systematics -- yet. =)>
Here's the advantage to leaving out engineering:  you are limiting yourself
to thought experiments, not touching your subject matter.  Still,
paleontology is not the only science..."

I would disagree -- we are not limiting ourselves to thought experiments.  
In physics or chemistry, if you want to know why a gas expands when you heat 
it, you conduct real experiments.  That's science -- how is that a thought 
experiment?  Similarly, I want to understand how certain dinosaurs might be 
related.  I collect anatomical data from the bones, I dissect living 
relatives of dinosaurs, and I frame my question about their relationships in 
such a way that it can be answered, tested, falsified, and predict certain 
relationships or evolutionary pathways.  How is this a thought experiment?  
Just because I'm not mixing chemicals together or physically manipulating a 
variable in a control group, I am still using data from the physical world, 
and relying on physical world assumptions that other scientists do -- 
paleontology is just as much science as physics.  If you wish to say that 
physics is somehow "better" than paleontology because one science is 
experimental and the other is historical, well, I guess you can, but that's 
just personal preference.

"Then you say:
<We also assume a number of things in science:
1. There is a physical universe outside of our minds/bodies.
2. The properties of that physical universe can be tested and understood.
3. Methodological naturalism -- everything in this physical universe has
natural causes and effects.>
Notice that '[t]he properties of the physical universe can be tested and
understood.'  So, science does involve manipulation with purpose (what else
is testing?), and again you reinforce the idea that truth is available to
us; 'understood' means have correct knowledge of, I assume."

Again, I disagree -- yes, variables and objects can be manipulated with a 
purpose, but ultimately, science is about posing answerable questions about 
the physical universe, not manipulating with purpose -- that is more what 
technology does.  Manipulation does not need to occur to pose answerable 
questions.  Manipulation suggests to me that we have an answer a priori and 
we are seeking to get a result by manipulating variables, etc.  This is not 
how science works -- we start with a question, or hunch, or dream, or idea, 
and then compile and examine data to see if our hypothesis is borne out by 
the data or is falsfied.  You can test various hypotheses in astronomy, for 
instance, without manipulating any of the data -- you can't go out and 
manipulate stars.

"<snip>Now, the probability reference is familiar to me from the quantum 
mechanics
principle about locating something.  That may be true, but remember we have
discovered that truth."

Careful here -- we don't deal with truth in science.  Only probability.  
Based on examination of the data, and through the results of various 
experiments, we explain certain atomic phenomena through theories like 
general relativity or Heseinberg's Uncertainty Principle, but we don't know 
for sure that this is "true."  No one has ever seen an atom -- we have ways 
to "see" them, but we don't know if our idea of the atom is ultimately true 
-- we never will.  Our chemical and physical data support the atomic theory, 
but are atoms true?  Are they facts?  That's beyond what we do in science.

"The true inference is about the existence of the
probabilities of location, not the location itself.  (Assuming for the sake
of argument it is true.)"

Again, I disagree as above.

"So, either you are contradicting yourself about the existence of actually
answerable questions, or you mean that truth when found concerns a range of
possible values."

I don't like the word truth in science.  It does not belie what we do.  How 
about I answer this statement by saying "neither."  We pose questions in 
science that can be answered -- whether they will ultimately be answered 
depends on many factors.  What does "actually answerable" mean?  Ultimate 
truth?  Well, then no.  Probabilistic answer?  Yes.  This is different than 
saying we manipulate with purpose -- we do not.  This is different than 
saying we discover truths about the universe -- we do not.  Nor are we 
saying something is more true or more likely true than others -- truth is 
just not part of our discipline.

"As somebody said in an article I quoted awhile ago,
neither of those would satisfy someone who needs to build a bridge that will
stand or hit Mars with a rocket where it will be in a few months."

Again, this is applied science or technology.  You are not discovering new 
scientific principles or asking answerable questions about the physical 
universe when you build a bridge or rocket -- you are using established 
scientific findings to build or move something.  But you are now doing 
technology and not science.

"May I suggest that some truths we can find are precise and some exist 
within
a range?"

You may, but that is not what science deals with.  Like Jack Nicholson says, 
"You can't handle the truth!"  We don't.

Hope this clarifies things???????

Matthew F. Bonnan, Ph.D.
Department of Biological Sciences
Western Illinois University
Macomb, IL 61455
(309) 298-2155
mbonnan@hotmail.com
MF-Bonnan@wiu.edu

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