Streven proposes a new explanation as to how and why science has advanced over time, that builds upon but is different from the widely accepted explanations proposed by Karl Popper ("science progresses by disproving false theories") and Thomas Kuhn ("science progresses when popular paradigms stop working").
Streven suggests that science adanvaces because scientists (quoting from the OP):
> have no choice. They are constrained by a central regulation that governs science, which he calls the “iron rule of explanation.” The rule is simple: it tells scientists that, “if they are to participate in the scientific enterprise, they must uncover or generate new evidence to argue with”; from there, they must “conduct all disputes with reference to empirical evidence alone.” Compared with the theories proposed by Popper and Kuhn, Strevens’s rule can feel obvious and underpowered. That’s because it isn’t intellectual but procedural. “The iron rule is focused not on what scientists think,” he writes, “but on what arguments they can make in their official communications.” Still, he maintains, it is “the key to science’s success,” because it “channels hope, anger, envy, ambition, resentment—all the fires fuming in the human heart—to one end: the production of empirical evidence.”
> Streven proposes a new explanation as to how and why science has advanced over time
There is another theory of how science advances - technology. Historically, the discovery of new technology has advanced science. Whether they be telescopes, microscopes, glass, etc.
Also, much of science derived from mysticism, chemistry -> alchemy, astronomy-astrology, so forth. Many times, new technology allows us to "see" ( production of empirical evidence ) to separate the mystic from the science.
Newton, one of our great scientists was deep into the occult.
See how the notion of resonance, which was the very essence of magic (e. G., two strings vibrating each other at a distance) was not adopted in science for 300 years. I suspect because of the magical association.
But then we take resonance scientifically seriously and we get wireless communication and other technologies that are absolutely magical.
Not all world views accept these axioms. Some think that what we perceive is an illusion or that the material world is 'evil' (e.g., Manichaeism); some that the forces of Nature are governed by capricious spirits or deities; others still that the natural phenomena do not have innate causal powers themselves but their actions are divinely willed.
Yes... but your comment is not germane to the OP, which is a review of a new book offering an explanation as to why science advances over time that departs from the widely accepted explanations by Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn.
No, this is false. Science is simply the process of seeking the best explanations for the observed data. It just turns out that the best explanation is some kind of external objective reality governed by natural laws. But it didn't have to turn out that way, and science certainly does not presuppose that it will or would turn out that it. It just happens that it does turn out that way.
these explanations are also judged with the aforementioned assumptions in the background. science absolutely presupposes that there is an objective reality governed by natural laws that are uniform throughout the observable universe, which is why experiments are constructed in a way to falsify specific hypothetical versions of those laws.
for example, if the laws were not uniform then astrophysicists would have no basis for assuming that the wavelengths of light emitted by a star is evidence for the composition of that star.
> if the laws were not uniform then astrophysicists would have no basis for assuming that the wavelengths of light emitted by a star is evidence for the composition of that star
Yes, that's true, but that does not mean that uniform laws are an assumption. They are not. They are a conclusion. Uniform laws are the best explanation that anyone has been able to come up with that explains all the observed data. But this was not assumed, and in fact it still isn't. The idea, for example, that physical constants change over time is very much a hypothesis that is given serious consideration. It just turns out that there's no evidence for it.
> Yes, that's true, but that does not mean that uniform laws are an assumption. They are not. They are a conclusion.
It was a fairly pervasive idea that God created an orderly universe:
> For when we call the builder the principle of the house, in the idea of such a principle is included that of his art; and it would be included in the idea of the first principle were the builder the first principle of the house. God, Who is the first principle of all things, may be compared to things created as the architect is to things designed.
The painting "God the Geometer" dates back to ca. 1220:
> Science, and particularly geometry and astronomy/astrology, was linked directly to the divine for most medieval scholars. The compass in this 13th century manuscript is a symbol of God's act of Creation. God has created the universe after geometric and harmonic principles, to seek these principles was therefore to seek and worship God.
Earlier natural philosophers (the word "scientists" was coined in 'only' 1833) looked for order and reason because they assumed it was there to be found.
Yes, uniform laws are an assumption; they aren't a better explanation based on testing, they are an assumption without which testing is meaningless. They are the key working assumption underlying the scientific method.
> The idea, for example, that physical constants change over time is very much a hypothesis that is given serious consideration
That's not an alternative to uniform laws, that's the idea that a particular term in the uniform law is variable rather than constant.
No, you are wrong. It is possible that we exist in a simulation, and if we are, that the creator of that simulation could change the code for that simulation whenever they wanted to. There is a lot of evidence that this is not actually happening. This is not an assumption.
> It is possible that we exist in a simulation, and if we are, that the creator of that simulation could change the code for that simulation whenever they wanted to.
That's true, though “simulation” and “creator” bear no real weight in that description.
> There is a lot of evidence that this is not actually happening
No, there's not and there cannot be. Because literally any evidence is equally consistent with that as it is with constant physical laws; more consistent, actually, absent a complete model of the actual physical laws supposedly at work.
The very concept of evidence requires assuming that there are constant physical laws governing the production of sense data from something else. Without that, nothing is evidence of anything.
Now, there are lots of other assumptions that get marshalled to justify that assumption as a conclusion (my personal favorite being “God exists and he wouldn't allow me to be deceived the way thay that not being true would entail”), but you can't have evidence for it, because you can't have evidence without it.
> literally any evidence is equally consistent with that as it is with constant physical laws
No, it isn't. The Kolmogorov complexity of the universe turns out to be very small. That is not consistent with an intelligent agent pushing changes to a simulation in real time.
> The Kolmogorov complexity of the universe turns out to be very small. That is not consistent with an intelligent agent pushing changes to a simulation in real time.
It's absolutely consistent if the intelligent agent is pushing such changes with Kolmogorov complexity as part of the criterion for selecting which changes to push.
Well, unless by “in real time” you specifically mean “while respecting the subjective experience and record of time for entities within the construct”; if you don't assume consistent laws on some level, nothing stops changes pushed fromm rewriting apparent history within the simulation to be consistent with the new model. If you assume you have an accurate unmodified record of the past observations—you are already assuming consistent laws.
> It's absolutely consistent if the intelligent agent is pushing such changes with Kolmogorov complexity as part of the criterion for selecting which changes to push.
Sure. If an intelligent agent applies a filter that filters out all indications of intelligence, then yes, the observed data is consistent with such an agent. But then the observed data is also consistent with a universe that is controlled by a herd of invisible pink unicorns.
> nothing stops changes pushed fromm rewriting apparent history within the simulation to be consistent with the new model
Congratulations, you have just re-discovered last-thursdayism:
The assumption of uniform laws is used when evaluating how evidence confirms or rejects a theory. The assumption of uniform physical laws is used when theories are compared to see which is the best explanation for the evidence.
> The idea, for example, that physical constants change over time is very much a hypothesis that is given serious consideration. It just turns out that there's no evidence for it.
In fact the hypothesis that the speed of light changes over time is a component of several heterodox physical theories that have appeared over the years. Whether or not there is evidence for a theory depends entirely on the assumptions used when attempting to explain a phenomenon.
> the hypothesis that the speed of light changes over time is a component of several heterodox physical theories that have appeared over the years
All of which have been rejected for being poor explanations.
> Whether or not there is evidence for a theory depends entirely on the assumptions used when attempting to explain a phenomenon.
That depends on what you mean by "assumptions". Yes, all evidence has to be evaluated against a background theory. That does not mean that the background theory has to be taken as an axiom. The background theory that there is an objective reality governed by laws that are invariant with time and space is not an axiom, it is a hypothesis that has emerged over literally centuries of work as the best current explanation for all the observed data. It is open to question, but if you want to question it you'd better have some damned good evidence.
> No, those are the axioms that we use to construct a theory.
No, they aren't.
> what is "best" is judged according to our fundamental axioms
No, it is judged by the community of people who engage in the scientific enterprise.
> given different fundamental axioms the same evidence leads to a different theory
That is certainly true. From different assumptions, different conclusions follow. But the existence of an objective reality is not an axiom, at least not a scientific one. It is an explanation for the observed fact that science is possible in the first place. It is an explanation of the observed fact that there are things that nearly all humans agree on, e.g. the fact that there appear to be lights in the sky, the fact that everyone more or less agrees what the repertoire of lights is (one very bright one, one not-so-bright-one, and lots and lots of much dimmer ones), and that they move with enough regularity that their future positions can be predicted with astonishing accuracy. No axioms are required to make these observations, nor to come up with the explanation that the reason that everyone agrees on all these things is that there are, in point of actual fact, sources of light out there in some objective physical reality.
> No, it is judged by the community of people who engage in the scientific enterprise.
That community of people judge theories using the aforementioned axioms.
> No axioms are required to make these observations, nor to come up with the explanation that the reason that everyone agrees on all these things is that there are, in point of actual fact, sources of light out there in some objective physical reality.
You seem to be ignorant of the fact that observations are theory-laden.
Actually, they are not. The whole idea of an axiom is part of a theory (formal logic) and that theory has no axioms. Even within the framework of formal logic, there are logics with no axioms, only rules of inference.
Sure. Go look at yourself in a mirror. Observe that the thing you see in the mirror looks very similar to other things around you that you call "people" or "humans". Observe further that the thing in the mirror behaves differently from other humans. You can control the behavior of the thing in the mirror in ways that you cannot control the behavior of other humans. Observe that when you try to touch the thing in the mirror it feels different than when you touch one of these other humans. It will feel cold, smooth, and hard, like glass, not soft and warm like flesh.
Now, go find another human and ask them to look in the mirror with you. Observe that you can now see a second human-looking thing in the mirror, but this second human-looking thing has yet another set of properties. For starters, this second human-looking-thing in the mirror doesn't look like you, it looks like the other human whose assistance you have solicited. If you try to touch the second human-looking-thing-in-the-mirror you will find that you will not be able to. The first human-looking-thing, the one whose behavior you have direct control over, will thwart your efforts and get in your way. You will find that the control you exercise over the first human-looking-thing-in-the-mirror is constrained in a way that makes it impossible to touch anything in the mirror other than it.
Now ask the other human whose help your have solicited what they see. You will find that their perceptions are similar to yours. They will (almost certainly) tell you that they also see two human-looking-things in the mirror, and that one of them, the first one, looks and acts just like you. You will find that your assistant will agree with you on many other observations as well. They will agree on the location of the mirror, the fact that it feels smooth and hard. If there are other objects nearby they will agree on the location and appearance of those objects.
Now turn out the lights. Observe that you can no longer see the mirror or any of the objects in it that you could see before.
From this and a whole lot of other similar observations you can construct the following theory: you are a thing that exists in space which has three dimensions. In this space there is this stuff called "light" which moves in straight lines (more or less) from sources and ultimately enters part of the space that you occupy that you call "eyes". When this happens, you obtain information about other things that occupy the same three-dimensional space that you do. Some of these things are very similar to you. They also have eyes and other body parts, all of which are things that exist in the same 3-D space and occupy particular subsets of that space. The particular subset of the space occupied by things changes, and this is an indication of the existence of something called "time", which is a radically different kind of thing from the kind of thing you are and the kind of thing light it. You and light exist in space. Time does not. Time is some seriously weird shit.
Do you need me to elaborate further, or are you getting the idea?
No, because I feel like there are a lot of background assumptions involved in that process, many of which are either unexamined or necessary for the theory-making process. These background assumptions are reinforced every time the theory allows me to make correct predictions and challenged every time I make incorrect predictions. Incorrect predictions allow me to update the theory or the assumptions.
When scientists do the a formal version of the same process as you have described, they make similar background assumptions. Perhaps you can explain how this whole process transpires without assuming anything?
In your informal example, I’m assuming that the person I’m speaking to is an honest interlocutor. In the scientist’s formal counterpart, he is assuming that the phenomena he observes correspond to the representation he assigns in the formal model. For a specific example, in order to infer the composition of a star, one must assume that the spectra emitted by a star are products of the same emission process as observed in a laboratory here on Earth.
> I’m assuming that the person I’m speaking to is an honest interlocutor.
OK, but you have taken it upon yourself to assume that. I never asked you to assume it. It is entirely possible that the person you are talking to is not being honest. They could be gaslighting you. It is even possible that they are not a person. They could be a shape-shifting space alien disguising themselves as a person as part of a grand conspiracy to prevent you from discovering the fact that you are a 13-dimensional being with super-powers who would take over the universe if you became aware of your true nature.
So... among these two theories which I have now proposed to explain your observations, which do you think is more likely?
I’m not sure which is more likely, I have interacted with honest interlocutors and with gaslighters before. That’s kind of the point, isn’t it? I can easily assume good faith and move forward, which involves an assumption of good faith. Or I can refuse to assume anything and do what now?
Seriously? You assign the same probability to classical physics as you do to people around you being shape-shifting space aliens disguising themselves as people as part of a grand conspiracy to prevent you from discovering the fact that you are a 13-dimensional being with super-powers who would take over the universe if you became aware of your true nature?
You'll have to excuse me if I find that hard to believe.
No, the 13th dimensional being was your theory. I just didn’t believe the person in the scenario you described, the same way you are doubting my sincerity in this little conversation.
The assumption of uniformity is necessary to disprove a hypothesis. Otherwise, I could say, "You haven't refuted me; you just live in a different universe." (Sometimes it seems like they do.)
Yes, you could say that. But you would be hard-pressed to convince anyone that that hypothesis is actually the best explanation for all the observed data.
>"God did it" accounts perfectly for every possible measurement
Yes, but it is a very poor explanation.
There are an infinite number of theories that are consistent with the data. But, it turns out, only one that is both consistent with the data and a good explanation.
Well, in the context of this discussion, the appropriate people to ask are scientists. You won't find many peer reviewed scientific papers advancing "God did it" as a serious hypothesis.
Except "scientists" didn't come around until 1833 (etymologically speaking). Before that the people doing the work were natural philosophers—which goes back to the original post of mine that kicked off this sub-thread: that there are certain metaphysical assumptions that you have to make before you start thinking you can explain the cosmos (kosmos, κόσμος).
> Except "scientists" didn't come around until 1833 (etymologically speaking).
What difference does that make? The correct people to ask about this today are the people who are doing science today. The label you choose to attach to those people is irrelevant.
> there are certain metaphysical assumptions that you have to make before you start thinking you can explain the cosmos
Friend, you know some people -- it is a small number even if you are a popular fellow. But let's say, for fun, that you know millions or even billions of living people.
These people, if pressed beyond a superficial level of conformity, would disagree _with one another_ on many points of _dogma_. They would mostly agree to practical compromise with one another and with reality. Doors open, Time passes, flame cooks food, arrows pierce flesh, machines must be repaired with new parts... and let's not fly hijacked aircraft into buildings to defend $ourdeity.
In short, these lots of people don't really agree very much among themselves. And some will kill others if they _believe_ enough. There isn't much uniformity of considered opinion among most people, but there is a good deal of pragmatism in action, if not in _word_.
> certainly more than half of humans who have lived
This argument is a sort of speculative vote by dead parliamentarians. And most of these parliamentarians couldn't even write or do high-school math.
The current living human population is larger than any that we can reasonably assume to have existed before. Let's assume that a parliament of 8 billion Homo sapiens is a sufficient indicator of diversity of superstition and practicality.
Other genus Homo may have been different, but Homo sapiens may _believe_ and or say just about anything. Homo sapiens is a practical animal that functions rather well given the mix of under-utilised rational capacity and noodles inside its head.
But it is clear that nonsense abounds in the human mind.
Quantum mechanics demolishes the first two bullet points, so in some sense, science has marched on and progressed past that naive ontic naturalism, and exchanged it for a humbler epistemic naturalism. The points become rephrased:
> that there is an epistemic reality about which all rational observers can know half of the ontic facts
> that this epistemic reality is governed by natural laws which are themselves epistemic
And so on. Crucially, there are no local hidden variable theories which can reproduce what we observe already; there are situations where there cannot possibly have been an objective ontic reality in the laboratory.
Science never in fact required ontic naturalism. The only real assumption is that "there exists something as opposed to nothing", i.e. that there are some phenomena independent of the subject doing science.
It is a tenable position to argue that the theory of general relativity (or quantum mechanics, or anything else) is not what the world is, but merely a model of the world, that we accept because it's useful and provides correct (or "correct enough") predictions.
Regardless of whether one agrees or not with that perspective, it's entirely possible to discuss a scientific theory with no consideration of its ontological status; one may at the same time disagree with the interpretation and agree with the mathematical account.
It doesn't seem to me like any kind of 'naturalistic' assumption is required for science to work.
>The only real assumption is that "there exists something as opposed to nothing", i.e. that there are some phenomena independent of the subject doing science.
It's rather difficult to make sense of the concept of 'existing' starting from the point of view that everything is the product of one's mind, but yeah, strictly speaking I used imprecise language (which is why I put that sentence in quotes). The actual assumption is the latter.
>It is a tenable position to argue that the theory of general relativity ... is not what the world is
It is not just tenable, but unavoidable, because GR is, in detail, incompatible with QM. QM has been tested overwhelmingly more thoroughly than GR, and GR doesn't seem to predict any of it.
I think that may have been true in the early days of QM, but I do not think that is the main viewpoint anymore. The ontic reality of QM is the wavefunction. The measurement problem we currently do not understand, but it is an active area of scientific research.
[0] is a 20min video which you can replicate for $20 at a convenience store. [1] has Conway explaining in detail, although it's not excruciating. I don't see why the burden of proof is on me; Bell's inequalities are not new.
But Conway's Free Will Theorem certainly does! The superdeterminism cannot help, either; either the world is so superdetermined that falsifiability and the scientific method are totally meaningless, or the world is not sufficiently deterministic and the Free Will Theorem neatly cleans up the remainder by invoking Kochen-Specker.
I recommend that you examine whatever underlying beliefs are forcing you to require determinism! They probably need to be questioned.
The question is whether Bell's inequalities really imply that there is an objective reality. If I understand correctly, the loss of objective reality is one explanation for Bell's inequality, but not the only one.
And no, I'm not going to watch a 20 minute video to find out what your argument is.
And as for the second point, even if you don't like "objective reality" in there, do you deny that there are natural laws that govern things? (Bell's inequality would be one such law.)
My argument is the same one that Bell, Kochen, Specker, Conway, and so many others have covered before: If photons were locally real, then we'd see different measurements from what we actually do see. The video covers the basic idea of witnessing this using polarizing filters, as well as explaining Bell's inequalities using basic discrete set theory and Venn diagrams.
We don't have to lose reality; we could instead lose locality. However, then we also lose most of physical causality and spatial relevance. [0] covers all of the material but takes more than 20min to read. At the end of it, we're left with a very weak theory that has trouble ruling out FTL influences.
On the second point, it doesn't particularly matter whether those natural laws exist; my point was that they're not fully knowable. There's no reason why the universe ought to admit a short legible encoding of its own structure, especially considering that such structure ought not be observable by creatures like us residing in the universe.
Rather than knowing the natural laws, we know predictive models which are good approximations. There is fundamental uncertainty preventing our approximations from sharpening to some arbitrarily fine precision.
I have long since given up on locality, and so have come to resent the persistent need, every time I move, to force my stubborn body to traverse every Planck length between here and there.
The apparent knowability of the universe, until recently, has always been its most astonishing feature. We should not be surprised to find limits on that; nor that we have not yet actually run up against those limits.
Yeah, losing locality instead of reality was what I was referring to. Although that would be pretty weird too.
But losing one or the other, and not knowing which one, is really uncomfortable. That leaves us with your comment about quantum disproving the first two points... well, I can say that it's not proven yet, but I also can't say that you're wrong.
Mainstream science largely resembles a secular theology. 'Observations' are the deity, scientists are the 'authoritative interpreters' of the sacred insights for the faithful. The inquisitions are less physically violent; only careers die.
Streven proposes a new explanation as to how and why science has advanced over time, that builds upon but is different from the widely accepted explanations proposed by Karl Popper ("science progresses by disproving false theories") and Thomas Kuhn ("science progresses when popular paradigms stop working").
Streven suggests that science adanvaces because scientists (quoting from the OP):
> have no choice. They are constrained by a central regulation that governs science, which he calls the “iron rule of explanation.” The rule is simple: it tells scientists that, “if they are to participate in the scientific enterprise, they must uncover or generate new evidence to argue with”; from there, they must “conduct all disputes with reference to empirical evidence alone.” Compared with the theories proposed by Popper and Kuhn, Strevens’s rule can feel obvious and underpowered. That’s because it isn’t intellectual but procedural. “The iron rule is focused not on what scientists think,” he writes, “but on what arguments they can make in their official communications.” Still, he maintains, it is “the key to science’s success,” because it “channels hope, anger, envy, ambition, resentment—all the fires fuming in the human heart—to one end: the production of empirical evidence.”