How close to reality can a scientific model get?

[Philosophy Explorer]

In my opinion, Einstein's Theory of Relativity comes closest because every one of its predictions (except two - gravity waves and wormholes) have been verified.

Is it the same as reality? One of the difficulties in understanding it is the warping of space. As it is a theory or model, what it's actually saying is imagine that it's assumptions are good because it explains the warping of space (more exactly, space is being twisted) since light is being bent and many other phenomena. Whether space actually bends, who knows directly?

PhilX

[cladking]

A model can only approach reality where the reality is one dimensional.

No reality is one dimensional with the possible exception of Time itself.

[surreptitious57]

Now science does not investigate reality as that is a question pertaining to philosophy
However it investigates observable phenomena that may or may not constitute reality
One should not assume therefore that phenomena are reality as this cannot be proven

[cladking]

One should not assume therefore that phenomena are reality as this cannot be proven

I believe another science needs to be invented that postulates phenomena are reality.

I believe this is the type of science used by beavers to invent dams and ancient man to invent agriculture.

This science quickly becomes exceedingly complex but computers could handle it.

[Lawrence Crocker]

It might well be that science can get better and better, at least in the sense of understanding and making fewer or less serious errors without ever getting closer to a fundamental truth about reality because there is no such fundamental truth (nothing expressible in any language or at least nothing having the sort of laws amenable to any science). Alternatively, and not quite so bad, there might be a fundamental lawlike truth about reality that is infinitely far from our best possible theories. Then we do better and better without getting closer (as we can count higher and higher without getting closer to infinity.) Slightly more encouraging still, there might be a fundamental lawlike reality that we get closer and closer to, but by ever smaller degrees, and never get very close. (The asymptote for science might be a long way from the truth -- because passing beyond it would require a conceptual revolution we are incapable of.)

All of these possibilities are projections from Feynman's conception of science as onion peeling. If you feel like following Feynman's suggestion through some heavy going, some of which is doubtless wrong as well as turgid, see http://lawrencecrocker.blogspot.com/201 ... overy.html

[Dalek Prime]

A model of a finite system can feasibly be on par with the system it models. But never a system of all.

[JSS]

It might well be that science can get better and better, at least in the sense of understanding and making fewer or less serious errors without ever getting closer to a fundamental truth about reality because there is no such fundamental truth (nothing expressible in any language or at least nothing having the sort of laws amenable to any science).

Can I ask why you believe that?

Why do you believe that such would be an infinite journey?

[Lawrence Crocker]

It might well be that science can get better and better, at least in the sense of understanding and making fewer or less serious errors without ever getting closer to a fundamental truth about reality because there is no such fundamental truth (nothing expressible in any language or at least nothing having the sort of laws amenable to any science).

Can I ask why you believe that?

Why do you believe that such would be an infinite journey?

I am not making a claim that there is no fundamental truth or lawlike fundamentals or an infinity between science and reality, even an infinity of ever smaller steps. I only think that all of these, as well as far more optimistic possibilities, are possibilities.

[JSS]

Ummmm...

because there is no such fundamental truth (nothing expressible in any language or at least nothing having the sort of laws amenable to any science).

I am not making a claim that there is no fundamental truth ...

I only think that all of these, as well as far more optimistic possibilities, are possibilities.

[attofishpi]

How close to reality can a scientific model get?

So close that eventually (if we don't annihilate ourselves at some point) we will evolve into a virtual reality based on such a model simply because entropy is a fucker, eventually there will be an operating system..an AI running reality that some may refer to as 'God'.

[surreptitious57]

Science is primarily inductive and is eternally self correcting although there can never be a
time when it knows exactly what constitutes reality. Greater knowledge and understanding
however can provide a more accurate representation of what that reality is supposed to be

[Michael MD]

Don't need "God" in "parentheses." -Contemporary physics with its "big bang" model, and other hypothetical constructs, ignores the concept of creational, non-random, influence in the cosmos. One glaring example would be "what happened to all the antimatter that according to physics theory would have annihilated the universe upon its origin?"

This is an essential basic question. Instead of ignoring it, and going on to complex hypothetical constructs about a purely-random "big bang" universe, we should seriously reconsider more basic theoretic issues, especially those regarding cosmic origins, to include creational non-randomness, in order to rationally deal with such inexplicable, fundamental, questions.

An originally-aetheric origin-model of the cosmos, such as I have presented in this Forum previously, also could help in developing a new model thar could deal with how anti-matter, or anti-mass, could have been bypassed.

[Dalek Prime]

How close to reality can a scientific model get?

So close that eventually (if we don't annihilate ourselves at some point) we will evolve into a virtual reality based on such a model simply because entropy is a fucker, eventually there will be an operating system..an AI running reality that some may refer to as 'God'.

All hail the great demiurge, Unix!

[Michael MD]

To continue my last post.

In my model of an aether as it originated, in a pre-universe world-setting, it was composed of elemental uniform, vibrating, aether units, that resonated with each other, as their outward vibrations formed interconnections. This led to further linkages in the aether, forming linear energic entrainments, and foci of energy, that produced somewhat-larger energy units ("aetheroidal" units).

Our present world's quantum energy units, such as electrons, formed via the same kind of linkage-process. -But the anti-electrons that we know "should" have appeared with each "positive" electron are not seen in our universe at all. What happened to account for "disappearance" of the "anti" electrons and other anti-matter particle units?

I submit that there is only one possible explanation: that creational input selectively "removed" anti-particles, as a necessary step in forming a positive-particle, "matter," or material, universe.

In the aforementioned origin-world, where aether forces predominated, the aether units were ulimately tiny, and therefore extremely energic (innumerable energy units per volume of space, compared to the much-larger units they were forming, through their linkages). Later, when a new, material, universe was desired, its material units, being much larger and thus much-less-energic than the aether that was being used to create the material universe, were capable of being energically manipulated by using the powerful pre-existing aether-scale forces. Anti-electrons would have had a specific energic "signature" within this aether/aetheroidal/emerging-quantum setting, different from positive electrons, a difference which, creationally, could then be used to mentally, and creationally, channel antiparticles out of the way of the positive particle units about to make up our universe.

[The Voice of Time]

In my opinion, Einstein's Theory of Relativity comes closest because every one of its predictions (except two - gravity waves and wormholes) have been verified.

Is it the same as reality? One of the difficulties in understanding it is the warping of space. As it is a theory or model, what it's actually saying is imagine that it's assumptions are good because it explains the warping of space (more exactly, space is being twisted) since light is being bent and many other phenomena. Whether space actually bends, who knows directly?

PhilX

The question of whether space is bent can be proven, only as long as it is bent in relation to something else. If all of space was bent, it would also be none-bent, because nobody could determine whether it was bent (given that all of it was bent to an equal degree). The degree to which something is curved, is relative to the curvature of the observer.

If you went all around the universe, and found yourself back in the spot you started, you could theoretically say that all of space is bent, of course, but you couldn't actually prove it, because you would never be able to find the curve, and any list of other things could be the source of this phenomena you happened upon.