Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996)

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Dubious
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Re: Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996)

Post by Dubious »

uwot wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 8:11 am Simply put; while human science might prove some theories wrong, human ingenuity will always be able to come up with alternative theories which explain exactly the same phenomena equally well. The other thing is whether a theory will predict all future observations; you can't know that until you have observed all future observations. So even if we do get to The Truth, we won't know it.
That's pretty close to how I think of it as well. Truth is the most undiscoverable thing there is therefore to progress we need not consider it overtly and only declare something true if it fits the data. It's the paradigms we create, the reality myths, which move us forward. The Ptolemaic system was as successful for as long as it was because it yielded the results as expected and true to the extent it managed to do that. Truth is as impossible to know as is the mind of god there being no separation between the two...whoever or whatever god is.
Belinda
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Re: Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996)

Post by Belinda »

Uwot wrote, regarding the metaphysical status of light(if I may say so, Uwot):
It depends what you mean by transcendental. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but one interpretation is simply 'beyond experience'. In that sense it's the epistemological version of the ontological 'metaphysics'. Einstein certainly believed in metaphysics - at least by 1915. The general theory of relativity is based on the idea that 'spacetime' is a substance. Prior to this, Newtonian mechanics treated space as the place where things happen and time as the amount of things that happen.
Spinoza thought that Nature's attributes are infinite in number, whereas there are only two attributes of Nature which we can know i.e. thought and extension. To say that 'spacetime' is a substance is like saying spacetime is what Spinoza called an attribute i.e. the attribute of extension. We humans can know spacetime(i.e. extension) via thought or via measurable means as extended in space and time. Or both those of course!

It is difficult to know where light fits into Spinoza's metaphysics. Light is separably subjective and objective and as such is like a mode of nature such as is the brain-mind. The latter is ,by modern neuroscientists and psychiatrists, taken to be the same despite its usually being viewed from its separate aspects of brain or mind.
However light is unlike brain-mind because blind people can think and feel whereas people with no brains can neither think nor feel. Therefore light is not metaphysically transcendental like one of Nature's secret transcendental infinite attributes.

N.B. Spinoza holds that bodies are not substances, but rather modifications of a single substance, (Stanford). Light is obviously not a finite mode such as is my dog, that particular oak tree, or Belinda's brain-mind. These are all modifications of the single substance (Nature)that you and I can perceive mentally or physically. My guess is that light is a heuristic such as is space, or time.
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Sculptor
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Re: Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996)

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uwot wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 8:11 am
Sculptor wrote: Mon Apr 26, 2021 8:38 pmDo you not think one is going to have to win out in the end?
Where is Phlogistan theory; theory of the Humours; Steady State theory; Lamarkism; Darwins gemules etc
All dead and buried. Yeah, that was the basic premise of Popper's falsification and of course some hypotheses are demonstrably wrong. The thing is that most physicists make a living by making things happen and if, for example, the mathematics of Newton's law of universal gravitation will get the job done, no one is going to worry that the idea of absolute and empty space it's based on is known to be untrue - it's that general rule that leads more pragmatic physicists to say philosophy is useless. Since Kuhn, Hume's critique of causality has morphed into underdetermination. Simply put; while human science might prove some theories wrong, human ingenuity will always be able to come up with alternative theories which explain exactly the same phenomena equally well. The other thing is whether a theory will predict all future observations; you can't know that until you have observed all future observations. So even if we do get to The Truth, we won't know it.
So, the reason I mentioned those, and I could have mentioned many more discredited sciences, was to draw a distinction between the paradigms of philosophy and those of science. Old science does properly die and the paradigms are fully replaced, but not so with philosophy which still discusses ideas that ought to have been long ago abandoned yet are not.
Science, once "natural philosophy", is DIFFERENT. And what characterises that difference is that science relates to the physical world and paradigms have to be replaced, philosophy never replaces paradigms, but collects them like a nurd collects comic books; philosophy relates not to the physical world but the world of ideas.

Where we are with science is where we have always been in that there is a hard core of observational stuff, with a range of interpretations upon it; between which there is good hard knowledge. As time moves on the the peripheries of science widen, as the deeper simpler stuff remians unchallengable and can grow. More observations means more periphery means more interpretation, but the core of certainly remians solid. But peripheries are bigger than the core, and competing theories remain.
Two things can happen. Either the some of those questions get answered, and the periphery grows, OR humans simply reach a point where their mental capacity is superseeced by the complexity of the theories needed to explain the periphereral stuff. We may have already reached that point. Only time will tell.
seeds
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Re: Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996)

Post by seeds »

seeds wrote: Sun Apr 25, 2021 4:03 pm In practical terms, how do you personally interpret what Schrödinger was saying in the quote you provided?
uwot wrote: Mon Apr 26, 2021 8:16 am That space is "perhaps a kind of ethereal "liquid-like" essence".
Ah, quoting the "real experts" now. Very good! :P

However, it's not just space that is "liquid-like," but also reality itself.
uwot wrote: Sat Apr 24, 2021 2:23 pm '"...space' is not a thing that can be directly experienced, it is simply what you get where there isn't any matter, so 'space' is infinite..."
I'm bored, so I apologize for nit-picking here, but the "space" we are talking about as it relates to Einsteinian "spacetime" is not "infinite." No, only pure and absolute "nothingness" is infinite.

The "space" in Einstein's spacetime is a "real and tangible" fabric that, again, can bend and contort in a gravitational field.

And my nit-picking point is that there may indeed be an unimaginably vast number of universes wherein Einsteinian "spacetime" is the invisible substance that binds their contents together,...

...but to think that such a real and tangible substance could be as infinite as infinity ("nothingness") itself, seems to be based on a very loose (and erroneous) definition of what the word "infinite" really applies to.

(Sorry, uwot. Again, I was bored, and my immediate choices for entertainment were torn between 1. watching cat videos on YouTube, or 2. picking on you. :D)
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uwot
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Re: Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996)

Post by uwot »

seeds wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 8:12 pmAh, quoting the "real experts" now. Very good! :P
Someone has to know what they are talking about.
seeds wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 8:12 pm
uwot wrote: Sat Apr 24, 2021 2:23 pm '"...space' is not a thing that can be directly experienced, it is simply what you get where there isn't any matter, so 'space' is infinite..."
I'm bored, so I apologize for nit-picking here, but the "space" we are talking about as it relates to Einsteinian "spacetime" is not "infinite." No, only pure and absolute "nothingness" is infinite.
Which is the Newtonian absolute space I was talking about in the bit you quoted (pedants who really know their shit might point to the spinning bucket, but I reckon I can let that slide here.)
seeds wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 8:12 pmThe "space" in Einstein's spacetime is a "real and tangible" fabric that, again, can bend and contort in a gravitational field.
You mean like
uwot wrote: Sat Apr 24, 2021 2:23 pm... to Einstein 'spacetime' was 'physical' in the sense that it is a real thing with mechanical properties...
seeds wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 8:12 pm(Sorry, uwot. Again, I was bored, and my immediate choices for entertainment were torn between 1. watching cat videos on YouTube, or 2. picking on you. :D)
Concentrate seeds! It's cats or uwot. If you're going to pick on me, at least get it right.
uwot
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Re: Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996)

Post by uwot »

Dubious wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 8:51 amTruth is as impossible to know as is the mind of god there being no separation between the two...whoever or whatever god is.
Dunno about that. Seems to me the truth is that there either is a god or there isn't, in the same way that there is or isn't a me. The fact that something about me is true doesn't make me the truth.
seeds
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Re: Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996)

Post by seeds »

uwot wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 10:00 pm
seeds wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 8:12 pmThe "space" in Einstein's spacetime is a "real and tangible" fabric that, again, can bend and contort in a gravitational field.
You mean like
uwot wrote: Sat Apr 24, 2021 2:23 pm... to Einstein 'spacetime' was 'physical' in the sense that it is a real thing with mechanical properties...
seeds wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 8:12 pm(Sorry, uwot. Again, I was bored, and my immediate choices for entertainment were torn between 1. watching cat videos on YouTube, or 2. picking on you. :D)
Concentrate seeds! It's cats or uwot. If you're going to pick on me, at least get it right.
uwot, old bean, I get it that you correctly referred to Einsteinian spacetime as being physical with mechanical properties, but you seem to have missed my point in questioning you as to how something with "physical and mechanical properties" could be "infinite" (but I reckon I can let that slide here).
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uwot
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Re: Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996)

Post by uwot »

Belinda wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 8:55 amN.B. Spinoza holds that bodies are not substances, but rather modifications of a single substance, (Stanford). Light is obviously not a finite mode such as is my dog, that particular oak tree, or Belinda's brain-mind. These are all modifications of the single substance (Nature)that you and I can perceive mentally or physically. My guess is that light is a heuristic such as is space, or time.
I'm not an expert on Spinoza. I still haven't finished the copy of The Ethics I've since since my undergraduate days, but I do think his material monism has an intuitive bite. It does sound like there are some elements of Spinoza in the Schrodinger quote I shared with seeds: What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space. The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one.
uwot
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Re: Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996)

Post by uwot »

seeds wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 10:32 pmuwot, old bean, I get it that you correctly referred to Einsteinian spacetime as being physical with mechanical properties, but you seem to have missed my point in questioning you as to how something with "physical and mechanical properties" could be "infinite".
Oh that:
seeds wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 8:12 pm...but to think that such a real and tangible substance could be as infinite as infinity ("nothingness") itself, seems to be based on a very loose (and erroneous) definition of what the word "infinite" really applies to.
To be honest, I don't trouble myself too much with the stuff I can't see, it's hard enough working out the surrounding 96 billion light years.
Dubious
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Re: Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996)

Post by Dubious »

uwot wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 10:10 pm
Dubious wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 8:51 amTruth is as impossible to know as is the mind of god there being no separation between the two...whoever or whatever god is.
Dunno about that. Seems to me the truth is that there either is a god or there isn't, in the same way that there is or isn't a me. The fact that something about me is true doesn't make me the truth.
I have no idea in what way this refers to what I wrote. But never mind.
uwot
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Re: Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996)

Post by uwot »

Dubious wrote: Wed Apr 28, 2021 2:35 amI have no idea in what way this refers to what I wrote. But never mind.
Well, I was more or less with you up until the no separation between truth and god bit. I'm not sure how seriously you mean that, but the rest of your post, I wouldn't argue with. I like the 'reality myths' phrase and while I have a gut feeling that scientific hypotheses are more than that, the more I think about it, the less I can explain why. In fact it might help me explain my position to Sculptor:
Sculptor wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 10:07 amOld science does properly die and the paradigms are fully replaced, but not so with philosophy which still discusses ideas that ought to have been long ago abandoned yet are not.
It is the 'myth' that dies. The idea of four 'Greek' elements that underpinned alchemy is dead, for example, but the equipment and a lot of the processes and information survived into chemistry under the new myth of atomic theory. I don't expect the basic premise of atomic theory to change radically, but there are all sorts of hypotheses about what atoms fundamentally are, some or all of which will turn out to be mythical. I think the essential difference between philosophy and science is that philosophy only has to explain - science has to work. So when Dubious says:
Dubious wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 8:51 amIt's the paradigms we create, the reality myths, which move us forward.
that is true. A good myth, or paradigm, accounts for past and contemporary observations and makes predictions about future observations that scientists can explore. That is what Kuhn called 'normal science'. It is when those future predictions stop coming true that we know something needs changing - the paradigm is in crisis and ripe for revolution in Kuhn's view.
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Re: Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996)

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uwot wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 11:09 pm
Belinda wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 8:55 amN.B. Spinoza holds that bodies are not substances, but rather modifications of a single substance, (Stanford). Light is obviously not a finite mode such as is my dog, that particular oak tree, or Belinda's brain-mind. These are all modifications of the single substance (Nature)that you and I can perceive mentally or physically. My guess is that light is a heuristic such as is space, or time.
I'm not an expert on Spinoza. I still haven't finished the copy of The Ethics I've since since my undergraduate days, but I do think his material monism has an intuitive bite. It does sound like there are some elements of Spinoza in the Schrodinger quote I shared with seeds: What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space. The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one.
I agree that Schrodinger quote and that Spinoza quote mean the same. I think I might also say "What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of light, or of time."
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Re: Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996)

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uwot wrote: Wed Apr 28, 2021 6:29 amSculptor:
Sculptor wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 10:07 amOld science does properly die and the paradigms are fully replaced, but not so with philosophy which still discusses ideas that ought to have been long ago abandoned yet are not.
It is the 'myth' that dies. The idea of four 'Greek' elements that underpinned alchemy is dead, for example, but the equipment and a lot of the processes and information survived into chemistry under the new myth of atomic theory. I don't expect the basic premise of atomic theory to change radically, but there are all sorts of hypotheses about what atoms fundamentally are, some or all of which will turn out to be mythical. I think the essential difference between philosophy and science is that philosophy only has to explain - science has to work.
No this is just not the case. Only the base empiricism survives a paradigm change. It forces the same evidence to be looked at in wholly different ways.
What you laughingly call the myth is the scientific paradigm.
If you don't beleive me - ask yourself, exactly what you think remains of humoral theory; and where is phogistan?
THe point is the the "EVIDENCE" is the material reality of the universe.
When Geocentrism was utterly replaced (not just some myth) all the previous astronomical observations, most collected with astology in mind, were all re-worked in the new paradigm.
So Kepler was able to prove ellipses by rejecting the paradigm of epicycles. Nothing of epiccles and geocentricity remained.
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Re: Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996)

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Sculptor wrote: Wed Apr 28, 2021 9:18 pmNo this is just not the case. Only the base empiricism survives a paradigm change. It forces the same evidence to be looked at in wholly different ways.
What you laughingly call the myth is the scientific paradigm.
If you don't beleive me - ask yourself, exactly what you think remains of humoral theory; and where is phogistan?
You are are describing a crude version of Karl Popper's falsificationism. Kuhn was inspired in part by that idea, and it is true that on the face of it, a new paradigm completely sweeps the old one away. In some cases it does, but science can be a bit more subtle. Take James Clerk Maxwell who unified electricity and magnetism and devised his equations based on his idea that “light and magnetism are affections of the same substance, and that light is an electromagnetic disturbance propagated through the field according to electromagnetic laws.” That substance became known as the luminiferous æther. Attempts were made to discover evidence for the æther, famously by Michelson and Morley. When they found nothing, Einstein used Maxwell's equations to deduce Special Relativity, but dumped the æther in the process. However, for General Relativity, he reinstated a version of æther calling it spacetime. First there's an æther, then there isn't and whoops, there it is again. I get that you don't like the word 'myth' to describe something that cannot be seen directly; how about 'ontological hypothesis commensurate with specific phenomena under investigation'? Scientists usually have several such hypotheses to hand which they can explore more readily that equations. Some of those hypotheses will turn out to be wrong, but it doesn't follow that the maths based on the idea is useless. Scientists do not throw the baby out with the bath water. Except if they're doing a cruel experiment.
Sculptor wrote: Wed Apr 28, 2021 9:18 pmTHe point is the the "EVIDENCE" is the material reality of the universe.
I happen to think that is untrue. I think some version of Kant's distinction between cause (noumenon) and phenomenon is probably correct.
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Re: Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996)

Post by uwot »

Belinda wrote: Wed Apr 28, 2021 11:02 amI agree that Schrodinger quote and that Spinoza quote mean the same. I think I might also say "What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of light, or of time."
Who knows? I'm used to thinking of space as something that can be shaped and time being changes in those shapes. Perhaps your views are very different, but it's the same universe we're talking about.
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