Setanta wrote:Answers-dot-com wrote:em·pir·i·cal (ĕm-pîr'ĭ-kəl) adj.
1.
a. Relying on or derived from observation or experiment: empirical results that supported the hypothesis.
b. Verifiable or provable by means of observation or experiment: empirical laws.
2. Guided by practical experience and not theory, especially in medicine. (emphasis added)
Note the conjunction "or" in the definitions above, which i have highlighted. Empirical proofs do not axiomatically require observation.
Presumably the experiment would have to be observed, would it not?
You've kinda-sorta got a handle on that - when studying such things as cosmologyor evolution, or atomic theory, for that matter, among others, experimentation consists of extrapolating from the evidence at hand - we have this, this and this. An exptrapolation might go something like "If such and such is so, based on what we think is indicated by this, this, and this, we would expect, under given parameters, to find that, that, and that, and to find no example of some other things". The extrapolations are compared to further and/or continued observation. If the findings are consistent, if that, that, and that are borne out, and the other things are not evidenced, the experiment is considered to have supported the original hypothesis, and would further serve to add confirmation to the assessment of the components of the original sample set. Its quite a bit more involved than that in actual practice, but that's the general idea - a feedback loop of sorts. If you get back what you expect, you are on the right track. If the feedback is not consistent with what was expected, then you look through the chain to find where and why the results are not as expected, and apply that information to the original assessment, the idea being to refine the predictability aspect of any hypothesis derived from the original components.
By and large, the scientific method is not so much "Proving what we think works" but rather more consists of discovering what does not work and why it does not work, the aim being thereby to close in ever more precisely on what does work, and why. As it involves concrete, linear thought, wholly objective, evidence-based assessment, multiply independently derived confirmation and corroboration, consistency with known laws and accepted theories, and rigid discipline, the scientific method is something very difficult for some religionists to grasp.
That of course, precisely is why some religionists constantly embarrass themselves and their propositions through forwarding such absurdities as often are reflected in your posts, rl; they just don't get it.
I get a kick out of the "Hot news about extinctions". While these are always good reads and contain a bit of science I dont buy it until the fat lady sings. In the case of chixclub, we now know that it wasnt a "terminator" event because some dinosaurs actually passed throught the impact event and lived right up until the T boundary. (In most cases the T of the K/T boundary is an erosional surface so we dont really know whats been removed from the top of the K sediments).
There are many reasons for gravity anomalies even overlain by "false terrane" fetures. The entire inner Piedmont of the Appalachians ((half of New jersey, S Pa, maryland up to Montgomery county and parts of Va) all show a huge "gravity glide" feature from the latest continental collision of the Paleozoic (the continents opened and shut about 3 times during this period) So, rather than saying "hey neat" we found it. Im quite dubious until some real "hard" data becomes available. Now is only the time to say, hmmmm heres an interesting anomaly. The problem with many scientific publications is that they are starting to get on a tabloid bandwagon and rather than helping people understand how science works, they publish crap which later may have to be retracted. Consider poor Walt Alvarez.
The fact that the suture lines of West Antarctica converge nicely on the South African suture and the Indian subcontinent was tucked nicely along both margins doesnt allow this to be a simple "Meteor did it" cause and effect, especially since the suture zone for the splitting of Gondwana , go all the way up to Nova Scotia, this would have to be one big mother smackdown. The radiozircon dates for splitting up the Gondwana land portion of Pangea have all got screwey start times to be able to assign them to a single rifting event. Also, we have good data that shows that Antarctica was already rifted and then collided in the mid Paleozoic with a large quiet zone in the main part of the continent. Im gonna have to see the data that shows the "pressure fabric" rocks and "shocked trydimite and coisite" and these rocks (unlike what they didnt do at chixclub) will have to be measured in oriented core samples becuase the chixclub, once it was analyzed more closely, is now suggesting that there were 2 impacts separated by a few hundred thousnd years, and neither was a single killer of dinosaurs.
Then what was the killer of the dinosaurs? If Chixclub wasn't the cause did it contribute to the cause?
Dinosaurs were already in a rapid decline before chixclub, and in a few cases they persisted a few meters past chixclub, a number of hypotheses have been forwarded but none have evidence or possibilities of evidence until some chance finds can help. The chixclub hit, we now feel, was composed of 2 separate events actually. Some scientists feel that there ws another hit sonewhere else and that the meteor came in at slightly different times (100k years apart)
Sometimes such events like extinctions dont lend themselves to clear unambiguous interpretations .
The old maxim really works here
"The more you know, the less you really understand"
real life wrote:Setanta wrote:Answers-dot-com wrote:em·pir·i·cal (ĕm-pîr'ĭ-kəl) adj.
1.
a. Relying on or derived from observation or experiment: empirical results that supported the hypothesis.
b. Verifiable or provable by means of observation or experiment: empirical laws.
2. Guided by practical experience and not theory, especially in medicine. (emphasis added)
Note the conjunction "or" in the definitions above, which i have highlighted. Empirical proofs do not axiomatically require observation.
Presumably the experiment would have to be observed, would it not?
I suggest you're attempting to play with definition. Measurements constitute an observation, and experiment can help to confirm a theory by establishing inferential assumptions. Example: were there a singularity which had amassed all mass and energy, and this created an explosion, what evidence of this would we find? Two answers are evidence of matter spreading out in all directions, and residual radiation.
The theory of cosmological origins which was sneeringly referred to as "the Big Bang," actually came from a Belgian priest, long before astronomers had the tools to investigate the implications of such a theory. Most modern popularizers of science make the mistake of saying that evidence of the red-shifted galaxies lead to the theorem known as "the Big Bang." In fact, it had already been theorized, but ridiculed as "the Big Bang," and thereafter ignored. However, the discovery (by Hubble, i believe) that all galaxies were red-shifted, brought back for consideration, an idea which had been roundly criticized for a decade or more, and which was only tentatively accepted, at best.
One of the implications of accepting the theory of a singularity as cosmological first cause would be residual radiation. Astronomers looked for, and when they had tools sufficiently sophisticated, they found what the great majority of them conclude is "background radiation," for which the theory provides the best explanation. Do they actually, physically "see" the radiation? Of course they don't. Are they able to measure it, to see the evidence which such ratiation produces. Yes they do.
You are attempting to suggest the impiricism requires that someone be able to see an event, an object, or the effects thereof. That is false. The ability to measure the effects of an object or event constitute experimentation which impirically establishes the validity of a contention or a theory.
Damn, I hate not knowing.
timberlandko wrote:By and large, the scientific method is not so much "Proving what we think works" but rather more consists of discovering what does not work and why it does not work, the aim being thereby to close in ever more precisely on what does work, and why. As it involves concrete, linear thought, wholly objective, evidence-based assessment, multiply independently derived confirmation and corroboration, consistency with known laws and accepted theories, and rigid discipline, the scientific method is something very difficult for some religionists to grasp.
A similar technique is used in medical diagnosis. Upon the admission of a patient to a hospital, the doctor may well provide a written definition which beings: "Rule out . . ." So, if someone had breathing difficulties, a fever, large amounts of phlegm and a high white blood cell count, the diagnosis might be "rule out bronchitis, rule out pleurisy, rule out tuberculosis." The latter is easily accomplished with an x-ray and a skin test. That would leave bronchitis and pleurisy. Since bronchitis can be concommitant with or occasioned by pleurisy, the diagnosis would have been reduced to "rule out pleurisy." If x-rays and cbcs (complete blood counts--i.e. of the number and type of cells and other solid bodies in the blood) are consistent with pleurisy, and standard remedies for bronchitis failed to abate the symptoms, the physician might then change the diagnosis to "pneumonia"
Or to quote a video game of which i am fond: "Sometimes knowing where your enemy is not is just as important as knowing where he is."
Well, one hypothesis that seems to be catching some respect is that CO2 had increased in one of its episodic blips. EWvidence for this is there because at the same time at trhe end of the K, specific gymniosperms (ferns) and angiosperms (grasses) exploded across the planet. Their biomass was increased 100X and they are very effective :miners" of CO2 . Maybe dinosaurs were succumbing to a lower O2 level, especially since you look at their sizes and consider the rule of metabolism efficiency being inversely proportional to size. Many of the large dinos were over adapted to a specific environment , which began seriously changing in mid K (continents were drifting and ocean currents changed, thuse screwing with climates).
GSA had published a proceedings on extinction a couple years ago. Its a kind of publication that is all chockablock with pompous scholarly bullshit language but has no reason to be so. I bitched to the ed board when they worked on this
To further piss of the fundamentalists who can't conceived of mankind having any direct relationship to the animal world, a recent scientific study has pointed toward early hominids sexually mating with the chimpanzee, our closest relative, and the "pure" hominid did not survive. I can see the fumes rising from their heads and it doesn't smell nice. My mammal done told me.
Setanta wrote:real life wrote:Setanta wrote:Answers-dot-com wrote:em·pir·i·cal (ĕm-pîr'ĭ-kəl) adj.
1.
a. Relying on or derived from observation or experiment: empirical results that supported the hypothesis.
b. Verifiable or provable by means of observation or experiment: empirical laws.
2. Guided by practical experience and not theory, especially in medicine. (emphasis added)
Note the conjunction "or" in the definitions above, which i have highlighted. Empirical proofs do not axiomatically require observation.
Presumably the experiment would have to be observed, would it not?
I suggest you're attempting to play with definition. Measurements constitute an observation, and experiment can help to confirm a theory by establishing inferential assumptions. Example: were there a singularity which had amassed all mass and energy, and this created an explosion, what evidence of this would we find? Two answers are evidence of matter spreading out in all directions, and residual radiation.
The theory of cosmological origins which was sneeringly referred to as "the Big Bang," actually came from a Belgian priest, long before astronomers had the tools to investigate the implications of such a theory. Most modern popularizers of science make the mistake of saying that evidence of the red-shifted galaxies lead to the theorem known as "the Big Bang." In fact, it had already been theorized, but ridiculed as "the Big Bang," and thereafter ignored. However, the discovery (by Hubble, i believe) that all galaxies were red-shifted, brought back for consideration, an idea which had been roundly criticized for a decade or more, and which was only tentatively accepted, at best.
One of the implications of accepting the theory of a singularity as cosmological first cause would be residual radiation. Astronomers looked for, and when they had tools sufficiently sophisticated, they found what the great majority of them conclude is "background radiation," for which the theory provides the best explanation. Do they actually, physically "see" the radiation? Of course they don't. Are they able to measure it, to see the evidence which such ratiation produces. Yes they do.
You are attempting to suggest the impiricism requires that someone be able to see an event, an object, or the effects thereof. That is false. The ability to measure the effects of an object or event constitute experimentation which impirically establishes the validity of a contention or a theory.
Hi Setanta,
Of course, one of the problems of assigning 'first cause' to a singularity which had 'amassed all mass and energy' is that it wouldn't be first.
Something ( mass and energy) apparently existed prior.
Where did the mass and energy come from?
Yet another is: Since it wasn't amassed and had to be so, it must have occupied space, therefore the idea that the BB event generated or created the dimensions of space is false.
And then : Since it wasn't amassed and had to be so, it must have taken some time to do so, therefore the idea that the BB event generated or created the dimension of time is false.
Sorry I'm such a doubter. It annoys some folks but I appreciate your patience.
Hope you're having a good day.
Quote:GSA had published a proceedings on extinction a couple years ago. Its a kind of publication that is all chockablock with pompous scholarly bullshit language but has no reason to be so. I bitched to the ed board when they worked on this
Ya, it would be nice if we could find updated and reliable information written in layman terms.
If you know of any good websites that do this let me know.
One I like to visit is this ;
http://loom.corante.com/
Lightwizard wrote:To further piss of the fundamentalists who can't conceived of mankind having any direct relationship to the animal world, a recent scientific study has pointed toward early hominids sexually mating with the chimpanzee, our closest relative, and the "pure" hominid did not survive. I can see the fumes rising from their heads and it doesn't smell nice. My mammal done told me.
HIV is thought by some to have originated in chimps. So perhaps these relationships are being experimentally attempted in recent times by overzealous researchers, but the evidence for the distant past is somewhat more sketchy.
The human and chimp genome have many more differences (about 40 million at last count) than speculators had previously hoped to see (about 1/4 to 1/2 of that -- worse case was desired) . It made the math considerably more difficult and the prospect of them 'evolving' from a common ancestor considerably more unlikely.
Human beings seem incapable of conceiving of "limitlessness." If you say that the cosmos is infinite, people are still inevitably lead to ask what is on the other side. If you say the cosmos is eternal, people are still inevitably lead to ask what came before. The desire to resolve the issue of incomprehensible limitlessness has lead many people to assert that there is a deity. But said deity needs to be eternal and omnipotent in order to account for the cosmos and all it contains. This can be easily challenged by asking who or what created the creator, and if the reply is that the creator is eternal, one is back to square one. If one is going to assume that anything can be eternal, it is just as well that one assumes that the cosmos is eternal, in the absence of any evidence that a deity exists. The mere notice of the existence of the cosmos is not a good reason to assume a deity.
Where did that last piece of "scientific" hogwash come from? Source please.
Here's the Science News article about hominids and the hybridization with chimps:
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060520/fob4.asp
Read on, Mr. Doubter, your illusions are full of cracks and you're treading on eggs.
A deity is assumed because it's almost as comforting as a cup of camomile tea. It also saves these egotists from the thought of having an ancient chimpanzee relative although reading their bilge, I believe they have received more than their share of chimpanzee grey cells.
timber wrote-
Quote:By and large, the scientific method is not so much "Proving what we think works" but rather more consists of discovering what does not work and why it does not work, the aim being thereby to close in ever more precisely on what does work, and why. As it involves concrete, linear thought, wholly objective, evidence-based assessment, multiply independently derived confirmation and corroboration, consistency with known laws and accepted theories, and rigid discipline, the scientific method is something very difficult for some religionists to grasp.
The description of scientific method which timber gave above this quote was a long-winded version of explaining trial and error which is a natural method of proceeding even for animals. It was a decent description mind you.
But only of the scientific method. It offered no explanation of scientific attitude. It was described as a method without an operator and the qualities of the attitudes an operator might have. Such things are what distinguish science from technology.
Braudel says that-" In a way, everything is technology: man's most strenuous endevours but also his patient and monotonous efforts to make a mark on the external world..."
He quotes Marcel Mauss saying-" What I call technology is a traditional action made effective."
Putting them together one might get- Trial and error repeated over the generations in order to " make a mark".
Pure science has nothing much to do with either and can as easily be applied to literature and social organisation and many other things as to physical objects. It has no interest in making a mark. All it needs is society's recognition and funding.
And metaphysical notions and insiprations have historically played a part in the scientific project which really began in Gothic times with the religious fascinations with light and perspective and motion on the part of the priestly caste and intimately linked with the technological processes which provided the space and the time for such a caste to indulge in contemplation. Trying to get to know God who provided these mysterious manifestations. In a spirit of profound humility.
Quote:Human beings seem incapable of conceiving of "limitlessness." If you say that the cosmos is infinite, people are still inevitably lead to ask what is on the other side. If you say the cosmos is eternal, people are still inevitably lead to ask what came before. The desire to resolve the issue of incomprehensible limitlessness has lead many people to assert that there is a deity. But said deity needs to be eternal and omnipotent in order to account for the cosmos and all it contains. This can be easily challenged by asking who or what created the creator, and if the reply is that the creator is eternal, one is back to square one. If one is going to assume that anything can be eternal, it is just as well that one assumes that the cosmos is eternal, in the absence of any evidence that a deity exists. The mere notice of the existence of the cosmos is not a good reason to assume a deity.
Suprisingly I have never given this much thought, why would the material need a beginning if we don't even have to give one to a supposed deity? Interesting...this is probably what I'll be thinking about today during the boring graduation ceremony.
This is where RexRed says something about the universe being God...
