Unfortunately, that story was grossly misreported. Then again, it was a publicity stunt, not an actual scientific experiment, so no surprise. Jamie Goode, who is one of the smarter wine writers and researchers out there, did a devastating takedown of this story and the gullible reporters who mindlessly misrepresented it.
You mean this paper (which is linked to in the article) from AgEcon Search: Item 37328 "DO MORE EXPENSIVE WINES TASTE BETTER? EVIDENCE FROM A LARGE SAMPLE OF BLIND TASTINGS" was not a scientific experiment? It's conclusion was called into question?
Last edited:
Do you see a pattern? From the beginning of the thread to the present, there is the tendency that rather than provide some reasonable evidence to support extraordinary claims, instead we get some rationale that is supposed to prove that something is wrong with the skeptics. Common as the rain, and nothing new.
Mr. Schooler (couldn't make that stuff up) seems to be saying that if we just give literally all "scientifically discovered effects"* a chance, the light bulb will shine above our collective thick heads. I'm not buying what he's selling. The Information Age is enough of a misnomer as it is. So, yes, I consider his "decline effect" a bunch of baloney. Has he ever wondered how and why Pasteur changed our world and Mesmer just added a word to the dictionary? One could call it an example of the decline effect.
*That's what he calls them in his first sentence. Then he goes on to say that since future tests uncover different results than originally found, there must be something wrong with "us". See first paragraph above.
Mr. Schooler (couldn't make that stuff up) seems to be saying that if we just give literally all "scientifically discovered effects"* a chance, the light bulb will shine above our collective thick heads. I'm not buying what he's selling. The Information Age is enough of a misnomer as it is. So, yes, I consider his "decline effect" a bunch of baloney. Has he ever wondered how and why Pasteur changed our world and Mesmer just added a word to the dictionary? One could call it an example of the decline effect.
*That's what he calls them in his first sentence. Then he goes on to say that since future tests uncover different results than originally found, there must be something wrong with "us". See first paragraph above.
Yes of course, you're quite right, wouldn't want to marr you with ancient technology, grey cells not what they used to be....
Henry
If you think scientists have given up on belief, then just try challenging something they believe. You will often find that they react in just the same way as anyone else would. A belief which is considered to be well-founded on evidence does not cease to be a belief. As a generalisation, the generation of scientists who adopted a belief will be aware of its weaknesses and limitations; later generations will be taught it as fact and so may believe it more fervently than the pioneers did. They may find it harder to relinquish, in the light of new evidence, because they have never known anything else. If a belief becomes foundational (e.g. Darwinism for biology, symmetry/conservation laws for physics) then it is very hard to shift. Once disagreeing with something becomes unthinkable or socially unacceptable, then to that extent it is no longer science but a form of religion.wakibaki said:
Interestingly, physical scientists do try to test the limits of conservation laws and in some cases have found them to be partially broken (e.g. CP, neutrino colour oscillation). The analogous situation does not seem to occur to anything like the same extent in biology, although there are rumbles of discontent in some quarters.
re:'If you think scientists have given up on belief, then just try challenging something they believe' - yeah, Dawkins & his ilk proselytise in a very fundamentalist manner, their mistake is to fail to understand the psychological aspects of religion, (not that these aspects need to be understood in a traditional way, many 'believers' fail to understand them too. The soft science of psychology has come a long way since Siggy Freud, still got a long way to go...)
Disagree. Biologists, just like physical scientists, are quite interested in foundational shifts- but it takes evidence. The field is replete with all sorts of shifts when experimental results force such shifts (some aspects of my current research would fit that description). Overturning evolution via natural selection, as an example near and dear to your heart, will take as much solid evidence as it would take to overturn (say) the Second Law of Thermodynamics, since it is similarly well-established and is similarly completely consistent with the data gathered to date. And if I want to overturn the fundamental rules of toxicology ("the dose makes the poison") as I am currently trying to do, I have to have some VERY solid evidence. If I can get it, excellent. if I can't, well, it was a nice idea I had, just incorrect. That's the nature of science.
edit: Some other examples: the role of so-called junk DNA in organism development and phenotypical consequences of mutation in these sequences. The expectation of human gene complexity before the advent of sequencing ("Well, that wasn't what we were expecting or had predicted..."). The totally unsuspected feedback mechanisms in the previously-canonical DNA -> RNA -> protein foundational understanding. The non-heritable gene sequence changes. Many more that, when a real biologist explained them to me, made my head hurt.
There are those who would dispute that, although I am not in a position to argue the details. I have heard the claim that severe problems with evolution by natural selection crop up in many areas of biology, but in each case the local expert says "I know there is a problem in my field, but it is OK everywhere else so it must be true and anyway there is no alternative".SY said:
By the way, creationists believe in evolution by natural selection to a certain extent - that is how species emerge and adapt. We don't believe in a common ancestor, but a common designer instead. When biologists forget that we are listening they often use words like "design" (they then have to correct themselves to "the appearance of design") or concepts like "driven by natural selection" (natural selection can't drive anything but merely select from choices offered to it).
My own view, which may be completely wrong as I am not a biologist, is that when the cellular/molecular mechanisms of evolution are more fully understood then these mechanisms will themselves prove to be a stumbling block because it will be found that they are so 'clever' that it will be quite difficult to argue convincingly that they too just evolved from random changes.
A couple of examples would help. No biologist I know has ever said such a thing; in fact, quite the opposite: as our understanding in other areas of biology (e.g., some of the examples I cited) increases and our misunderstandings are corrected, the foundational idea of evolution via natural selection is strengthened further.
Supernatural explanations could be correct, but they are outside the purview of science as they cannot be tested and potentially falsified.
This is almost true, but not quite. Of course, if God kept popping up and fiddling with our experiments then we could not do science, but few theists believe in a God like that. On the contrary, it was belief in an ordered universe created by a wise God which was part of the foundation of modern science. There is no a priori reason why we should be able to do science, even less that mathematics we develop (or discover?) should have any relevance to how the universe works. Yet that is what we find. Having got started, science then thought it could dispense with part of its own foundation.SY said:
Science can look at the mechanisms by which things happen, it is weaker at looking at the presumed mechanisms by which things happened in the past, and it can say even less about the source of those mechanisms and ultimate origins. Problems occur when science starts to insist that the source of mechanisms and origins must be within the realm of science too.
So yes, in a sense supernatural explanations lie outside science but to the same extent so do strictly rationalistic explanations. To claim, as some now seem to do, that our current understanding can be extrapolated back to 'before' the Big Bang seems daft.
All that is needed is an emotion meter and we are back in the game,
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
If such mechanisms and origins are outside the realm of science, they're not amenable to be understood by science (yes, that's tautological). However, scientists continue to use naturalistic means to investigate and understand those mechanisms and origins and will continue to do so. And in this work, those mechanisms and origins have become clearer; science has been wildly successful in increasing the understanding of how our Universe works. If at some point, there is a demonstrable impasse, i.e., there are observations that can have no other explanation than the supernatural, then so be it. You believe that this will eventuate; I don't. Although I can't prove you wrong, I'm betting on a horse that has won race after race. He may not continue to win, but given his track record, it's a bet I'm happy to take.
The "some" in your second sentence is rather mysterious to me. Can you name names of "some" of those "some" who are serious contemporary cosmologists?
I wrote a story a long time ago which was turned down by several magazines (I'm apparently not a good fiction writer!) involving mathematicians suddenly discovering a sequence of ones and zeros in pi, said ones and zeros spelling out "I am that I am. You will say that he who is has sent me to you." The debate then raged, since in a transcendental number, all possible sequences will eventually appear. In case I ever find a publisher, I shall not reveal the ending.
I have a feeling that Stephen Hawking has recently said something along those lines, although I may be confusing him with someone else.
Regarding pi, I would not be caught by that story but I will admit that most theists would! This is because of the old problem of seeing what you hope to see. Of course, somewhere in pi it also says "there is no God and Dawkins is not his prophet". Funny things, transcendental numbers. I was once in the middle of a hairy calculation (about the Class E amplifier) and found that I could equate powers of pi across an equation as a consistency check, just like powers of x. Only works because pi is transcendental.
Regarding pi, I would not be caught by that story but I will admit that most theists would! This is because of the old problem of seeing what you hope to see. Of course, somewhere in pi it also says "there is no God and Dawkins is not his prophet". Funny things, transcendental numbers. I was once in the middle of a hairy calculation (about the Class E amplifier) and found that I could equate powers of pi across an equation as a consistency check, just like powers of x. Only works because pi is transcendental.
I would think that it would be difficult to confuse Hawking with someone else.
Locally, our resident cosmologist/atheist is Steve Weinberg. "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless." I trust his knowledge of cosmology more than I trust Dawkins's. Weinberg is adamantly against the sort of extrapolation which you attribute to physicists unknown.
I know Weinberg more as a good writer on elementary particles. Hawking's career as a scientist may have been much the same without his disability, but I suspect the media would not have paid him so much attention. I heard him at a Royal Society meeting back in the mid 70's - I think he was already in a wheelchair but was still able to speak using his own voice.
I don't believe you will find any scientific proof for the existance of God, that would make faith pointless...
We are creatures driven by a desire for incorporating the non-corporeal. Our brains have the abilities to have mystical experiences, and I for one believe nature wastes nothing, and will not go through the effort of developing these traits if it did not bestow some benefit.
We are creatures driven by a desire for incorporating the non-corporeal. Our brains have the abilities to have mystical experiences, and I for one believe nature wastes nothing, and will not go through the effort of developing these traits if it did not bestow some benefit.
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.