@MontereyJack,
Quote:There are a bunch of different measures, with different sets of instruments measuring different facest of the subject and they all agree, it''s happening. There would have to be a worldwide conspiracy of different scientific disciplines in many different countries to pull of a fudge of the date. Going back decades before anyone ever even formulated the concept. For which there is no evidence of its existence. Not at all probable.
The Subjective Paradigm
The Subjective Paradigm, currently used in most scientific circles, suggests everything must be explained using Naturalism interpreted by Rationalism according to Materialism or Subjective Idealism.
Naturalism is a philosophical belief that only natural (as opposed to supernatural or spiritual) laws and forces operate in the world according to the laws of physics. According to the following quote from Wikipedia:
Naturalism is the implicit philosophy of working scientists, and the following basic assumptions are needed to justify the scientific method:
1. that there is an objective reality shared by all rational observers. "The basis for rationality is acceptance of an external objective reality." "Objective reality is clearly an essential thing if we are to develop a meaningful perspective of the world. Nevertheless, its very existence is assumed." Our belief that objective reality exist is an assumption that it arises from a real world outside of ourselves. As infants we made this assumption unconsciously. People are happy to make this assumption that adds meaning to our sensations and feelings, than live with solipsism." Without this assumption, there would be only the thoughts and images in our own mind (which would be the only existing mind) and there would be no need of science, or anything else.”
2. that this objective reality is governed by natural laws; "Science, at least today, assumes that the universe obeys to knowable principles that don't depend on time or place, nor on subjective parameters such as what we think, know or how we behave." Hugh Gauch argues that science presupposes that "the physical world is orderly and comprehensible."
3. that reality can be discovered by means of systematic observation and experimentation. Stanley Sobottka said, "The assumption of external reality is necessary for science to function and to flourish. For the most part, science is the discovering and explaining of the external world." "Science attempts to produce knowledge that is as universal and objective as possible within the realm of human understanding."
4. that Nature has uniformity of laws and most if not all things in nature must have at least a natural cause. Biologist Stephen Jay Gould referred to these two closely related propositions as the constancy of nature's laws and the operation of known processes. Simpson agrees that the axiom of uniformity of law, an unprovable postulate, is necessary for scientists to extrapolate inductive inference into the unobservable past in order to meaningfully study it.
5. that experimental procedures will be done satisfactorily without any deliberate or unintentional mistakes that will influence the results.
6. that experimenters won't be significantly biased by their presumptions.
7. that random sampling is representative of the entire population. A simple random sample (SRS) is the most basic probabilistic option used for creating a sample from a population. The benefit of SRS is that the investigator is guaranteed to choose a sample that represents the population that ensures statistically valid conclusions.
And this philosophical belief can be better understood using Rationalism.
Rationalism is a philosophy by which the truth is determined by intelligence and deductive reasoning instead of one’s senses. This use of intelligence to form a hypothesis using ideas that were not obtained solely from one’s senses is demonstrating one’s ability to imagine a point of view that is not subject to the five senses. That form of thinking allows intelligent beings to compare different points of view of the same event with the hope to develop a more objective conclusion than one that can be drawn using deductive reasoning about data obtained from the five senses.
For instance, this can be used to interpret evidence when trying to solve a crime. One can use deductive reason to gather circumstantial evidence and then, use the intellect and inductive reasoning, to imagine different ways the past could have happened to leave the evidence that your senses obtained from the scene of the crime. Then one can imagine different scenarios, compare the probabilities or likelihood that a given scenario is correct, and then hopefully develop the most plausible scenario of what happened at the scene of a crime. Rationalism allows one to develop a view as if you witnessed the situation from a more objective point of view even though you physically were not there. This use of the mind to develop a more objective point of view is very useful but has it risks because one can imagine things that are physically possible that did not (or maybe even cannot) happen. That is why inductive reason must meet the following conditions to help guarantee the validity of the objective assumption:
1. The number of observations must be large.
2. The observations must be made under very different conditions.
3. None of the observation statements can contradict the hypothesis statement.
At one time in the past, rationalism was opposed to empiricism, where the rationalists believed that reality has an intrinsically logical structure. Because of this, the rationalists argued that certain truths exist, and that the intellect can directly grasp that certain rational principles exist in logic, mathematics, ethics, and metaphysics that are so fundamentally true that denying them causes one to fall into contradiction. The rationalists had such a high confidence in reason that empirical proof and physical evidence were regarded as unnecessary to ascertain certain truths – in other words, "there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience". That lead to people taking things on Rational Faith which allowed for traditional religious beliefs to be a major guiding factor in science.
In the 17th-century Dutch Republic, the rise of the modern-period rationalism began to develop as a highly systematic school of philosophy for the first time in history. This had a major influence on modern Western thought. This gave birth to the "Age of Enlightenment". The Age of Enlightenment (also known as the Age of Reason or simply the Enlightenment) was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe during the 18th century.
Some consider the publication of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687) as the first major enlightenment work. The ideas of the Enlightenment undermined the authority of the monarchy and the Church and paved the way for the political and scientific revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on reason as the primary source of knowledge and advanced ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government and separation of church and state. The central doctrines of the Enlightenment philosophers were individual liberty and religious tolerance, in opposition to an absolute monarchy and the fixed dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church. The Enlightenment was marked by an emphasis on the scientific method and reductionism, along with increased questioning of religious orthodoxy.
This emphasis on the scientific method along with improved technology (like the telescope and microscope) was supposed to provide a more objective interpretation of the data that science was now able to obtain. I think, that this emphasis on the scientific method did not eliminate religious beliefs as a basis for beliefs, but instead replaced “traditional religious beliefs” with “secular humanistic religious beliefs” because Objective Idealism was eliminated as a philosophical interpretation.
Materialism was used to interpret Rationalism in the early years of physics when Newtonian Physics was all that there was. Materialism is closely related to physicalism which is the view that all that exists is ultimately physical. This lead many to believe that almost all of life could be predicted scientifically. Philosophical physicalism has evolved from materialism with the theories of the physical sciences like Newtonian Physics, to incorporate more sophisticated notions of physicality than mere ordinary matter, such as: spacetime, physical energies and forces, etc. . . Thus, the term "physicalism" is preferred over "materialism" by some, while others used the terms as if they are synonymous.
But Quantum Mechanics introduced the idea of matter interacting with space and causing more abstract ideas to develop (like electromagnetic fields and the Higgs Field, or quantum fluctuations) which cause virtual and real particles to appear and disappear. The inability of science to explain things like the double slot experiment, wave particle duality, along with “Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment”.
However, since Schrödinger's time, other interpretations of the mathematics of quantum mechanics have been advanced by physicists. One of these is Subjective Idealism, which even though being in contradiction with materialism, regard the "alive and dead" cat superposition as quite real. The Schrödinger's cat thought experiment remains a defining touchstone for modern interpretations of quantum mechanics. Physicists often use the way each interpretation deals with Schrödinger's cat as a way of illustrating and comparing the strengths, and weaknesses of each interpretation. This has led to the development of three types of Idealism as another way to interpret data in certain situations. Subjective Idealism, Transcendental Idealism and Objective Idealism. In this paper we will consider Transcendental Idealism a form of Subjective Idealism and refer to both as subjective Idealism from now on. (Later, in the section called The Higgs Boson and the Structure of the Higgs Field, I will show how Objective Idealism allows one to imagine a structure to all of space that allows one to picture what is happening in “physical reality” when a particle is in a quantum superposition. This picture then can assist in providing an interpretation of the data and mathematics of quantum mechanics that matches reality in all situations.)
Subjective Idealism (also known as immaterialism) describes a relationship between experience and the world in which objects are no more than collections or bundles of sense data in the perceiver. Proponents include Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, an Anglo-Irish philosopher who advanced a theory he called "immaterialism," later referred to as "subjective idealism", contends that individuals can only know sensations and ideas of objects directly, not abstractions such as "matter", and that ideas also depend upon being perceived for their very existence - "to be is to be perceived" This form of philosophy works well with current general theories in physics that describe the universe using mathematical models that are not intended to be intuitively understood or pictured such as, the Niels Bohr’s Copenhagen Interpretation which describes particles coming into existence through “quantum fluctuations”. As Bohr suggested (and some would say demanded) these quantum fluctuations then initiate a cosmology that can only be explained using complex mathematical models that are nearly impossible to picture. (But not completely impossible, as I will explain in a physical model developed using Naïve Realism and Objective Idealism rather than a mathematical model using Subjective Idealism, in the section “The Atomic Orbitals”) Therefore, according to the Subjective Idealism used by scientists like Bohr, what we picture in our mind as matter is just how our mind understands the mathematical model rather than an actual perception of an actual physical reality that can be physically pictured and modeled. With that philosophical viewpoint any mathematical model used in cosmology or quantum mechanics that accurately predicts measurements is possible whether we can picture how it physically happened or not. (An example of this is, picturing how the gravity that caused the universe to collapse into an infinitely small volume, which caused a Big Bang of inflation period, when matter wasn’t created in the form of Hydrogen and Helium till much after the initial inflation period was over.)
This limiting of scientific interpretations (to the philosophies of Subjective Idealism or Materialism over Objective Idealism and Naïve Realism) allows mathematicians to imagine things happening that do not have to fit our understanding of physical actions having a “real” physical initiation event that follows with “real” physical events happening in chronological order. This interpretation ensures that the current theories based on views that are at times contrary to Naturalism are accepted, because it allows one to start at a naturalistic point of view, and then determine which philosophy (materialism or subjective idealism) best fits the complex mathematical models. This allows people to be even more susceptible to bias when the group being sampled is small, because it is limited to a small group of very highly educated mathematicians that understand the math well enough to discuss it. Especially, when mathematicians prefer to use math to describe reality rather than picturing physical reality. This will be revealed later in the paper when leading mathematical theories that developed in various branches of physics (Like the Big bang, Inflation, Quantum fluctuations, and the emergence of gravity are discussed.)
Development of the Prejudice
Since the Enlightenment, Rationalism has centered upon, utilitarianism, secularism, and irreligion. This was later softened by the adoption by a view which assumed Rationalism could be used regardless of religious or irreligious ideology in society in general, but (as will be evidenced below) irreligion has become the only accepted view in the natural sciences. This requirement that philosophy be irreligious was an understandable response to historical events such as, the Roman Catholic Church’s treatment of Galileo when he introduced heliocentrism, causing Rationalism as a methodology to become socially intertwined with atheism as the only acceptable worldview to be used to interpret science. This adoption of atheism by the scientific community is explained in the following article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design
God of the gaps[edit]
Intelligent design has also been characterized as a God-of-the-gaps argument, which has the following form:
There is a gap in scientific knowledge.
The gap is filled with acts of God (or intelligent designer) and therefore proves the existence of God (or intelligent designer).
A God-of-the-gaps argument is the theological version of an argument from ignorance. A key feature of this type of argument is that it merely answers outstanding questions with explanations (often supernatural) that are unverifiable and ultimately themselves subject to unanswerable questions. Historians of science observe that the astronomy of the earliest civilizations, although astonishing and incorporating mathematical constructions far in excess of any practical value, proved to be misdirected and of little importance to the development of science because they failed to inquire more carefully into the mechanisms that drove the heavenly bodies across the sky. It was the Greek civilization that first practiced science, although not yet a mathematically oriented experimental science, but nevertheless an attempt to rationalize the world of natural experience without recourse to divine intervention. In this historically motivated definition of science any appeal to an intelligent creator is explicitly excluded for the paralyzing effect it may have on the scientific progress.--unquote
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design
The conclusion from above which states, “In this historically motivated definition of science any appeal to an intelligent creator is explicitly excluded for the paralyzing effect it may have on the scientific progress.” reveals that the culture of the mainstream physical sciences has decided to always exclude Intelligent Design because, “the astronomy of the earliest civilizations, although astonishing and incorporating mathematical constructions far in excess of any practical value, proved to be misdirected and of little importance to the development of science because they failed to inquire more carefully into the mechanisms that drove the heavenly bodies across the sky.” is based on a misunderstanding of the reason the Greeks failed to inquire further. It was not the type of philosophical interpretation the ancient societies used which caused them to rationally credit intelligent beings (Greek gods of mythology) for causing some of the changes in nature they were observing. It was due to their limited ability to obtain and manage information in an “objective” way. They had no telescopes, microscopes, or modern equipment of any sort to gather data. They had no standards for testing and recording data so that it could be managed and shared with other people (including future generations) to develop more objective conclusions. When, that is taken into consideration as the main problem with the ancient’s conclusions, rather than their conclusion that intelligence contributed in the creating or managing of the information management system they viewed as nature, progress can be made in understanding where science has a similar problem today. Mainstream science’s refusal to investigate or debate Intelligent Design theories as scientifically credible, is based on a consensus to limit Objective Idealism and Naïve Realism (not to be confused with Naïve Realism in psychology) as philosophical interpretations of the data that can be used, based on the conclusions of ancient civilizations rather than scientific data needs to be corrected to a more inclusive point of view. To solve this problem first we must understand how this cultural prejudice developed by a misuse of inductive reasoning.
Inductive and deductive reasoning are both forms of propositional logic. Propositional logic uses a series of facts and reasoning to develop a conclusion. Both types of reasoning have a premise and a conclusion. How each type of reasoning gets to the conclusion is different.
Deduction is a form of reasoning in which a conclusion follows necessarily from the stated premises, while induction is used to form, to infer, or produce propositions about unobserved objects or processes that are based on previous observations. It is used to formulate general statements or laws based on limited observations of recurring patterns in physical processes. For that reason, scientists must use inductive reasoning to hypothesize about events that happened in the ancient past especially if the conditions cannot be replicated experimentally today.
Fortunately, we can replicate (as we did earlier) logical reasons the Greeks reached their conclusions, that do not have to eliminate Objective Idealism as a type of philosophical interpretation in science. As we do that let’s remember inductive reason must meet the following conditions to help guarantee the validity of the objective assumption:
1. The number of observations must be large.
2. The observations must be made under very different conditions.
3. None of the observation statements can contradict the hypothesis statement.
Which, as it was pointed out earlier, explains why Naturalism is the implicit philosophy of working scientists and has these as four of the seven basic assumptions needed to justify the scientific method:
1. That there is an objective reality shared by all rational observers. "The basis for rationality is acceptance of an external objective reality. ." Our belief that objective reality exist is an assumption that it arises from a real world outside of ourselves. As infants we made this assumption unconsciously. People are happy to make this assumption that adds meaning to our sensations and feelings, than live with solipsism." Without this assumption, there would be only the thoughts and images in our own mind (which would be the only existing mind) and there would be no need of science, or anything else.” Objective reality is clearly an essential thing if we are to develop a meaningful perspective of the world. Nevertheless, its very existence is assumed.
2. That experimental procedures will be done satisfactorily without any deliberate or unintentional mistakes that will influence the results.
3. That experimenters won't be significantly biased by their presumptions.
4. That random sampling is representative of the entire population.
To form the conclusion Objective Idealism is an illegitimate type of philosophy, because Objective Idealism is the same philosophical interpretation the Greeks used for theorizing their gods were inputting information in the system they viewed as nature, is drawing a conclusion from one type of observation. That breaks all three conditions necessary in developing a conclusion using inductive reasoning. First, it is drawing a conclusion from a very small sample of ancient civilizations that had limited access to information because of their limited technology (lack of telescopes and information management systems).
Plus, eliminating Objective Idealism does not allow one to make assumptions using four of the seven basic assumptions needed to justify the scientific method for these reasons:
1. First, an “objective reality shared by all rational observers” implies that all people are viewing and interpreting the universe as information and have did so since birth which implies an innate understanding that is information and a basic information management system is passed on from generation to generation in our bodies.
2. Purposely eliminating Objective Idealism by eliminating the assumption that the universe is an information management system that is designed for that purpose limits the amount of complexity one can front load into the hardware of that information management system. (This need for front loading will be explained in the section The Quantum Nucleation event).
3. Eliminating Objective Idealism upfront is evidence that experimenters are significantly biased.
4. Eliminating philosophical interpretations from the discussion is not a random sampling. (Especially since most people in this world use Objective Idealism to interpret data when developing a personal and cultural understanding of the universe.)
Observations need to be taken with full access to today’s technology using all forms of philosophical interpretations including Objective Idealism. This can be done by using a larger and more diverse sampling of types of philosophies to interpret the data when developing a hypothesis about the possible initiation of the information management system we view as nature by taking multiple possibilities into consideration. These possibilities could include but not be limited to the following:
1. The information management system popped into existence by chance and just appears to be managing information from our point of view inside the system but from an overall universal view from outside our universe it isn’t. (This is the anthropic principle which is a widely accepted view by mainstream science.)
2. The information management system always existed, and is cycling through high and low entropy cycles, which just appears to be managing information from our point of view inside the system but from an overall universal view from outside our universe it isn’t. (This is another form of anthropic principle promoted by Roger Penrose, which is another widely accepted view by mainstream science.)
3. The information management system popped into existence as a simple system by chance and slowly evolved into a system that developed the intelligence to manage the complex system we currently view as nature and the information management system reveals the characteristics of the Intelligence.
A. This is the view taken by the ancient Greeks, as their Pagan gods came into existence after the universe, and they could just manipulate it and not create it.
B. This view is also gaining traction in the scientific community and is a form of Pantheism that easily incorporates into Hinduism and Buddhism.
4. There was an Intelligence that existed before the physical universe that is the author of the information management system we view as nature, and the information management system reveals the characteristics of the Intelligence. (This view easily incorporates into the mainstream monotheistic religions of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity but can be incorporated into Pantheism.)
So in conclusion, to guarantee the validity of inductive reasoning a larger number of diverse observations must be used by the scientific community than they used when they determined, “the astronomy of the earliest civilizations, although astonishing and incorporating mathematical constructions far in excess of any practical value, proved to be misdirected and of little importance to the development of science because they failed to inquire more carefully into the mechanisms that drove the heavenly bodies across the sky.” to conclude, “any appeal to an intelligent creator is explicitly excluded for the paralyzing effect it may have on the scientific progress”
This limiting of scientific interpretations (to the philosophies of Subjective Idealism or Materialism over Objective Idealism and Naïve Realism) allows mathematicians to imagine things happening that do not have to fit our understanding of “physical actions having a real physical initiation event that follows with real physical events happening in chronological order”. This interpretation ensures that the current theories based on views that are at times contrary to Naturalism are accepted because, it allows one to start at a naturalistic point of view, and then determine which philosophy (materialism or subjective idealism) best fits the complex mathematical models. This leads people to be even more susceptible to bias when the group being sampled is a small group of very highly educated mathematicians because only a small group understands the math well enough to discuss it. Especially, when mathematicians prefer to use Subjective Idealism when using math to describe reality rather than developing a picture of physical reality in their collective minds. This bias will be discussed in detail later in the paper when leading mathematical theories being developed in various branches of physics (Like The Big bang, Inflation, Quantum fluctuations, and the emergence of gravity.) are discussed.
I believe Objective Idealism and Naïve Realism should be used as an alternative to Subjective Idealism and Materialism when developing a theory using the following three assumptions of inductive reasoning:
1. The number of observations must be large.
2. The observations must be made under very different conditions.
3. None of the observation statements can contradict the hypothesis statement.
because:
1. A larger number of interpretations of the observations is now being used.
2. The observations are being interpreted under different conditions because people that use Naïve realism and Objective Idealism picture theories in their minds differently than people using Subjective Idealism and Materialism.
3. Naïve Realism based on Objective Idealism allows one to introduce intelligence into the theory as a natural source of new complex information similar to the inventive ability of human intelligence. This makes things like a Quantum Nucleation Event (to introduce the quantum information stored in the Higgs Field and Matter.) and a Big Bang Transition Event (To introduce the entropy and inflation we observe today.) much more acceptable than when interpreted using Rationalism and Naturalism.
