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What a difference a decade can make (startrek.website)

submitted 8 months ago by Stamets@startrek.website to c/memes@lemmy.world

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[-] Isoprenoid@programming.dev 15 points 8 months ago

Also science way back: "Hey guys, isn't phlogiston just the absolute best? And lobotomies are so cool they deserve a Nobel prize."

[-] agent_flounder@lemmy.world 24 points 8 months ago

Lol fair.

But the difference between science and superstition: science gets closer to the truth over time in spite of ourselves while superstition either keeps the same bullshit or makes up new bullshit regardless of evidence or lack thereof.

[+] Isoprenoid@programming.dev -13 points 8 months ago

science gets closer to the truth over time

Now we step into epistemology. This claim cannot be substantiated. We don't know if science is getting closer to the truth because we don't know what the truth is.

Science finds what works, it may or may not be finding the truth. It's incredibly useful, and gets more useful over time, but we cannot claim that it gives us the truth. We cannot measure the "truthiness" of a science claim.

Unless you assume "If something works, then it's the truth.". I wouldn't support this statement though.

[-] agent_flounder@lemmy.world 14 points 8 months ago

I believe we already were talking about epistemology. :) Science is a means of obtaining knowledge. About what, though?

I suppose "truth" could mean different things in this context. I should have avoided that loaded term or tightly scoped what I meant by it. I meant science is interested in knowledge about how the universe behaves.

Hopefully that doesn't imply science somehow peeks behind the proverbial curtain to see why things behave as they do. Or answering questions like "what is an electron, really".

For example, science has progressively refined models describing how quantum mechanics behaves that can be used to make predictions. But it in no way offers any explanation for why quantum mechanics is the way that it is or what particles are, really.

Scientific experiments test whether models predict outcomes or not, thus determining if the models need to be further refined or even replaced.

The point is simply that science is the best way humanity has this far devised to learn how the universe works.