The science of poetry, the poetry of science

[Mic]

I was listening to a radio 4 programme (Great Lives) about Wittgenstein last night. The programme moderator was concerned that discussion about W's thinking would be just too mind-boggling and would blow a whistle if they got too deep into his philosophy rather than talking about his life.

I didn't really know anything about him before listening to this, but liked the idea of some of his thinking about things. Came across this quote this morning, when I looked him up:

"It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise."

Ludwig Wittgenstein

[Raincoat]

Yes science has GOT to be sceptical, we HAVE to keep questioning.

As a scientist - WE collect data - WE select the p level - WE decide a large enough study group - WE decide what locations we collect our data
and how do WE decide? We follow guides on what makes for accurate collection / analysis, we try and make it as objective as we can, but at the end of the day we are human and there are great scientists and some of us are just plain good scientists.

And anyone who picks up a journal and reads everything in there and accepts it as "truth" must be very careful. It's ok to read an article, but to step back and say ok, that's what they say, now I'm going to see if anyone has researched something which is contradictory. This is basic stuff that any student of science will learn in their first year. And conflicting research often occurs for example...

Look at the palm oil industry in Indonesia -companies were submitting data that they weren't committing illegal logging but the aerial footage data showed that they were - yet when conflicting data is published - many may consider it bias. So how do we escape this? We now have scientific consultancies such as Aidenvironment. They were paid as a neutral external agency to investigate Greenpeace's Burning up Borneo report and verified most of their evidence that companies were committing illegal logging. This shows that we do need things to rely on other than just the "data" we need external boards / agencies / we need people to KEEP ON BLOODY QUESTIONING.

[brianedwards]

It makes my piss boil when people say that science is "essentially the same" as religion

Goodness me, I am so glad to hear someone else describe the symptoms I suffer the same.

Just done a little digging on Ms Sahtouris, and it seems she subscribes to the much discredited Gaia hypothesis and the field of quantum mysticism - pseudo-science, often with a religious agenda. A nut, basically.

B.

[Ros]

And anyone who picks up a journal and reads everything in there and accepts it as "truth" must be very careful.

I don't think anyone is assuming that all results scientists come up with are 'truth' - as you say, they depend very much on context, on the group chosen, the specific thing analysed... but surely there is a selection of science where we can say - to the best of our present knowledge, this is reliable, repeatable truth that I would stake my life on. Hence aeroplanes, travelling to the moon, antibiotics, heart valves etc etc. We may know have complete knowledge of how everything works, but we do depend on a large sub-set of it to not be a lie.

Ros

[Raincoat]

And anyone who picks up a journal and reads everything in there and accepts it as "truth" must be very careful.

I don't think anyone is assuming that all results scientists come up with are 'truth' - as you say, they depend very much on context, on the group chosen, the specific thing analysed... but surely there is a selection of science where we can say - to the best of our present knowledge, this is reliable, repeatable truth that I would stake my life on. Hence aeroplanes, travelling to the moon, antibiotics, heart valves etc etc. We may know have complete knowledge of how everything works, but we do depend on a large sub-set of it to not be a lie.

Ros

yes true - the IPCC panel for example - I'm probably more inclined to believe the evidence in there regarding climate change because the research has gone before a panel of worldwide experts who will look at the methods / data etc.

on the other hand, I'm probably less inclined to believe any scientific data quoted in the daily mail regarding climate change....

and yes definitely agree about context, otherwise we end up with people who read one article and start believing things like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWQE--tj ... ure=fvwrel

[Raincoat]

It makes my piss boil when people say that science is "essentially the same" as religion

Goodness me, I am so glad to hear someone else describe the symptoms I suffer the same.

Just done a little digging on Ms Sahtouris, and it seems she subscribes to the much discredited Gaia hypothesis and the field of quantum mysticism - pseudo-science, often with a religious agenda. A nut, basically.

B.

Richard Dawkins did an interesting documentary about the increasing amount of this pseudo-science called the Enemies of Reason which was pretty good.
It seems like they need something "like a god" to believe in and some are turning to science which isn't a scientific way of looking at the world since this requires questioning rather than believing.

If they were really interested in science then they would pick up that book, pick it apart from chapter to chapter and then probably toss it on the floor rather than on a shrine.

[Mic]

Just done a little digging on Ms Sahtouris, and it seems she subscribes to the much discredited Gaia hypothesis and the field of quantum mysticism - pseudo-science, often with a religious agenda. A nut, basically.

Thanks for doing the digging there Bri. Ludwig Wittegenstein says the same thing as she does, but puts it better:

"It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise."

Mind you, he was probably a nut too!

Mic

[Mic]

[quote="Raincoat"]on the other hand, I'm probably less inclined to believe any scientific data quoted in the daily mail regarding climate change[/quote

Do you read Ben Goldacre? He is a crusader for evidence-based science:

http://www.badscience.net/

[brianedwards]

Thanks for doing the digging there Bri. Ludwig Wittegenstein says the same thing as she does, but puts it better:

"It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise."

Mind you, he was probably a nut too!

Mic

I'm sure Wittgenstein would have been more acknowledging of the power of experience than that de-contextualised quote suggests.

[OwenEdwards]

Thanks for doing the digging there Bri. Ludwig Wittegenstein says the same thing as she does, but puts it better:

"It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise."

Mind you, he was probably a nut too!

Mic

I'm sure Wittgenstein would have been more acknowledging of the power of experience than that de-contextualised quote suggests.

Wittgenstein actually thoroughly privileged experience - not out of any empirical philosophy but because it's only by living our language games that we come to any meaning (and even that is numinous). I'd imagine there he's saying - we won't know if the sun will rise tomorrow until we experience it doing so, each morning.

[Mic]

@ Bri - Maybe so. My sense is that implicit in what he is saying is the idea that just because the same thing has happened the same way lots and lots of times, it doesn't neccesarily follow that it will happen again. I'm pretty confident the sun will rise tomorrow. We can't know that it will, or prove that it will. And it is a pithy articulation of the generally accepted (I think!) idea that science can't definitively prove anything - what it can do - and does very well - is come up with some very compelling and workable theories.

[Mic]

I'd imagine there he's saying - we won't know if the sun will rise tomorrow until we experience it doing so, each morning.

- yes, that would be the sense I have of what he is getting at too.

[brianedwards]

Wittgenstein actually thoroughly privileged experience - not out of any empirical philosophy but because it's only by living our language games that we come to any meaning (and even that is numinous). I'd imagine there he's saying - we won't know if the sun will rise tomorrow until we experience it doing so, each morning.

But we do experience it rising every morning. Humans have been experiencing the rising sun for quite a few centuries. Therefore we can, now, trust the science that tells us why this is so. Reading theists roll out Wittgenstein is very reassuring to the contemporary Atheist (upper and lower case intentional) and furthers Hawking's assertion that Philosophy is dead.

[Mic]

It seems like they need something "like a god" to believe in and some are turning to science which isn't a scientific way of looking at the world since this requires questioning rather than believing.

I'm not religious, so I don't know too much about this, but I have got this impression from somewhere that doubt/questioning/enquiry is an important part of faith...

Mic

[OwenEdwards]

Wittgenstein actually thoroughly privileged experience - not out of any empirical philosophy but because it's only by living our language games that we come to any meaning (and even that is numinous). I'd imagine there he's saying - we won't know if the sun will rise tomorrow until we experience it doing so, each morning.

But we do experience it rising every morning. Humans have been experiencing the rising sun for quite a few centuries. Therefore we can, now, trust the science that tells us why this is so. Reading theists roll out Wittgenstein is very reassuring to the contemporary Atheist (upper and lower case intentional) and furthers Hawking's assertion that Philosophy is dead.

I assume by "theists" you don't mean me, as I wasn't rolling out Wittgenstein, merely explicating him - and indeed, explicating him in sympathy with your instinct that he was hardly dismissing the fruits of experience, as he saw them as the most reliable way of finding meaning (though even there he was sometimes sceptical). I've no idea why upper and lower cases would be significant to your argument, so I've missed that nuance, I'm afraid. But anyway, Wittgenstein was talking existentially, not scientifically.

Of course, the exciting thing about science is that we have one picture of why the sun rises now, and will have a better one in 100 years time, just as 500 years ago we had a very different, more deficient one. So we can "trust" scientific method because it improves upon its results - its not that we place unlimited trust in the results themselves, because they will be proved to be deficient as our knowledge increases. But then, you don't disagree on that point.

Is "Philosophy" dead? Well, if you mean is continental philosophy largely intellectually empty and morally bankrupt, then yes. If you mean we do not need intellectual reflection upon the things of the mind and the world because knowing about the heart valve's mechanism teaches us how to live without any further reflections, then no, that's patently ridiculous. In fact, the interesting thing about Dawkins' dual affirmation that the material universe is meaningless and random but that we have to live "well" (whatever that might mean, but let us say live lovingly) is an incredibly Sartrean/Camusian conclusion. We must make our own meaning and morality and live well by it, because the universe can't tell us how to.

(Also, in terms of contemporary philosophers, Scruton and Baggini are well worth reading.)

[brianedwards]

Owen, would you be willing to describe for us what god is, to you personally, and what role your faith plays in helping you make your own meaning and morality? As is often the case with seemingly science-savvy believers, I am perplexed by your ability to applaud the scientific method and yet exalt the most profound improbabilities.

[Mic]

Isn't the fact that we even exist profoundly improbable? Science exalts this everyday in the attention it pays to trying to get to the bottom of the 'problem'. Scientific method aims to discover and invevstigate phenomena through measurable evidence, but is, as agreed, hamstrung by the constraints of its current knowledge, tools and techniques. It seems probable to me that there is much that we don't know about and wouldn't begin to know how to measure or have the vocabulary for. Science often brings the profoundly improbable - e.g. the idea that the earth moves around the sun - into the realms of the probable. I can see where there might be room for God - profoundly improbable though it might seem - in all this.

Just my tuppenceworth.

(PS, this is what Einstein had to say on the subject: "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.")

Mic

[brianedwards]

Oh Mic, I don't deny the improbability of our existence, or the improbability of the countless other wonders in the known universe and beyond. And shouldn't we exalt the fact that science can tell us why these improbabilities are actual? What I said was that believers in god exalt the most profound improbabilities. Followers of the main monotheistic religions in the world today don't simply accept that there is "room for god" among all the other improbable, yet proven, elements in the universe, but that he had a hand in their creation, and continues to have an interest in human affairs, regardless of how improbable science informs us we are.

[Mic]

They could be right, couldn't they? Just like you could be right that they have got it wrong.

[Ros]

They could be right, couldn't they? Just like you could be right that they have got it wrong.

Well, they can't all be right, because they are contradictory. It's a matter of whether you choose to place more trust in things that we can see the evidence for, things that can be evaluated and tested, or something someone just claims is true with little real evidence.

Isn't the fact that we even exist profoundly improbable?

Don't see why it should be. We have no evidence one way or the other, though the fact that life seems to have begun on the Earth almost as soon as it cooled enough for it to happen seems to suggest it may not be that unlikely.

Ros

[brianedwards]

Yes, good point Ros. I meant improbable with regards to the vastness of the universe and the relative smallness of earth. Of course, once the right conditions were in place the evolution of life was inevitable.

[Mic]

This sort of discussion can get a bit tediously circular, can't it? As far as the Does God Exist question is concerned, in my experience people seem either to a) believe in a God b) believe the possibility of God c) don't believe the possibility of God. These all seem to be positions of faith.

As far a science is concerned, I do hope it does it's exploring with an open mind.

Mic

[Antcliff]

Hi Mic..in passing, the context of this remark from Wittgenstein will I suspect have been discussion/thought on something that is called "Moore's Paradox"..from a talk by his old tutor G. E. Moore. I won't explain what was going on because it would take too long (and no doubt be snoozy). But, the "paradox" was the supposed incoherence in asserting and asserting that you do not know. For example:

You are tall, but I do not know you are tall.

Wittgenstein was probably discussing the phenomena and suggesting the same for:

It is a hypothesis that sun will rise, I know it will rise.

Why talk of sun rising in example though? Simply because mention of the sun rising reflects the fact that it has been standard to use the example ever since Hume (note: the most famous Scottish philosopher) who pointed out in the 18th century that we cannot argue that the future will be like that past because the argument would presuppose the thing to be shown. The question of the faithlike status of the principle of regularity of nature..and it's basic role in science..has been often discussed. A warm souled philosopher called William James would often offer it as an example of something that we could hold rationally even though it was too basic to admit of inductive evidence (since inductive reasoning presupposes it).
Regards, Ant...happy to provide explanation..to the not-ranty.

Just done a little digging on Ms Sahtouris, and it seems she subscribes to the much discredited Gaia hypothesis and the field of quantum mysticism - pseudo-science, often with a religious agenda. A nut, basically.

Thanks for doing the digging there Bri. Ludwig Wittegenstein says the same thing as she does, but puts it better:

"It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise."

Mind you, he was probably a nut too!

Mic

[David]

But, the "paradox" was the supposed incoherence in asserting and asserting that you do not know.

I'm not ranty. Is there a word or two missing from that sentence, Ant?

[Antcliff]

Hi David.
The context is one in which a person is doing two things: asserting (e.g. Dean Martin is cooler than David Niven) and also asserting that they do not not know (that Dean Martin is cooler than David Niven).
Perhaps adding "both" would be of use. So:

..the supposed incoherence is asserting (that so and so) and asserting that you do not know (that so and so).

Two acts, bumping.

Ant

But, the "paradox" was the supposed incoherence in asserting and asserting that you do not know.

I'm not ranty. Is there a word or two missing from that sentence, Ant?