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scientific limitations


open quotation markThe whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.    Albert Einstein, 1938.

Like a computer, science can only engage with the inputs it is given. The less clear the questions it processes the less clear the answers it gives, and the more its processes resembles GIGO.

quoteleftMathematics is able to deal successfully only with the simplest of situations, more precisely, with a complex situation only to the extent that rare good fortune makes this complex situation hinge upon a few dominant simple factors. Beyond the well-traversed path, mathematics loses its bearings in a jungle of unnamed special functions and impenetrable combinatorial particularities. Thus, the mathematical technique can only reach far if it starts from a point close to the simple essentials of a problem which has simple essentials. That form of wisdom which is the opposite of single-mindedness, the ability to keep many threads in hand, to draw for an argument from many disparate sources, is quite foreign to mathematics.    Jacob Schwartz, 1992.

When the intrinsic limitations of science are not recognized a reliance is fostered on the assumption that machines of loving grace guide the "united cabals of ambitious citizens" who govern us.

quoteleftIt may seem natural to think that, to understand a complex system, one must construct a model incorporating everything that one knows about the system. However sensible this procedure may seem, in biology it has repeatedly turned out to be a sterile exercise. There are two snags with it. The first is that one finishes up with a model so complicated that one cannot understand it - the point of a model is to simplify, not to confuse. The second is that if one constructs a sufficiently complex model one can make it do anything one likes by fiddling with the parameters - a model that can predict anything predicts nothing.    John Maynard Smith, 1999.

It is generally assumed that scientific inquiry is transparent; however, "a man may not have two masters", and as well as targeting it the interpretation and application of scientific research is directed by the cupidity of its funding, not by social need. Yet the assumption continues to drive perception, and conceptual confusions are dismissed. Divorced from elementary reasoning however, science is nonsensical, and easily misrepresented then to justify zenophobia, for instance, or the denial of climate-change.

quote leftScience, cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends.    Albert Einstein, 1949.

The frame of reference in which words are understood determines their meaning. Divorcing content from context is impossible, and trying to do so then only leads to 'contested jurisdictions', the intransigence of which frustrates the application of knowledge in every field from theoretical physics to psychology, climate-change, and wellbeing.

quoteleftThe confusion and barrenness of psychology is not to be explained by calling it a "young science"; its state is not comparable with that of physics, for instance, in its beginnings. (Rather with that of certain branches of mathematics. Set theory.) For in psychology there are experimental methods and conceptual confusion. (As in the other case conceptual confusion and methods of proof.) The existence of the experimental method makes us think we have the means of solving the problems which trouble us; though problem and method pass one another by.    Wittgenstein, 1945.

Well-being (eudaemonia) is a subjective and abstract state of being. It is a composite of similar complex qualities, such as contentment and success, none of which can be isolated from individual experience, and is then unavailable for any objective scientific observation. While each of us, personally, entirely and unavoidably, engages with it, and despite its being self-evident, substantive and priceless, science can actually then say very little about it.

quote left..I hope even readers sceptical of this particular conclusion might be persuadable of the general point that the deadlock in discussions of interpretation can be broken — or at least, our understanding of the problem can be deepened — by focussing less on specifics of the particular interpretative strategies, and more on what we should reasonably require of a solution.    David Wallace, 2017.





from: Physics and Reality, published in the Journal of the Franklin Institute, Vol. 221, Issue 3, March 1936, pp. 349-382.


Jacob Schwartz (Prof. of computer science, mathematician), in: The Pernicious Influence of Mathematics on Science, 1992.


John Maynard Smith (theoretical evolutionary biologist, and geneticist) and Eors Szathmary (Prof. of theoretical evolutionary biology), in The Origins of Life: From the Birth of Life to the Origin of Language, 1999.


Albert Einstein, May 1949, "Why Socialism?". (see also: Wikiquote.)


Philosophical Investigations, Pt.2, XIV, by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Cambridge, January 1945, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe.


Prof. David Wallace, in 'Quantum theory as a framework, and its implications for the quantum measurement problem.' 2017, p.4.

science


edit 3 Sep. 2023.

Science is essentially a learning loop comprised of three-stages relying on reasoning to make sense:

Observe > Theorize > Experiment

The 'same' learning process partners selection to drive the evolution of life:



reasoning


edit 18 Jan. 2023.

The relationship between science and reasoning is not as straightforward as commonly imagined. Not only is science intrinsically limited, but the role in it of interpretation and focus is key. As Franz Boas noted:

quoteleft..the silence and neglect of science can let truth utterly disappear or even be unconsciously distorted.
Professor Boas, in his Commencement Address, Atlanta University, 31 May 1906.

On the fundamental place of reasoning, John Stuart Mill wrote:

quoteleftHe is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.
from John Stuart Mill's Inaugural Address at University of St. Andrews, Scotland: 1 Feb. 1867.

Science cannot justify unreasonable behaviours, instead, the truth, and effect of it depend upon its being continuously interrogated, not by simplistic argument and debate, but by the rigour of an elementary reasoning.



truth


20 Jan 2023.

The mathematics of science appears to be unarguably true; 2 + 2 = 4, for instance. However, if this expression were in base 3, not base 10, then the truth is that 2 + 2 = 10 (one zero) —just as in base 2, binary, 1 + 1 = 10. The context of any expression, even in mathematics, is always central to its meaning.

Reference-frames are central to the elementary expressions of mathematics. However, while in the complex, natural expression of social communication too the misunderstandings of obfuscated context arise these are often sensed as threats to our perception, and violent emotions are roused as the most trivial error in this can be fatal.

However, to develop we must integrate and reconcile differing experience, often needing to recalibrate our existing understandings. To drive this process, reasoning is therefore required; facts alone are insufficient.



spherical chickens


17 Jan 2022.
A farmer, perplexed that his hens were not laying, called on a theoretical physicist for help. A few weeks after investigating the problem, the physicist returned with detailed calculations and announced: "I have the answer", helpfully adding "and it holds for all spherical chicken in a vacuum."
after: A Spherical Cow, referred to in a letter, Allocation of Natural Resources, 28 Dec 1973, to 'Science Magazine' from Stephen D. Stellman, Dept. Biochem. Princeton University.


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