Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it is
Speaker 1: Vault time. We're going into the vault for a classic
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind episode from September. And in
Speaker 1: this episode, we explored a question about the nature of science.
Speaker 1: Is there such a thing as post empirical science. A
Speaker 1: lot of you science fans out there might be thinking,
Speaker 1: what that sounds like an oxymoron, and it really does
Speaker 1: kind of seem like an oxymoron. But there are some
Speaker 1: people who would make a case otherwise, maybe some people
Speaker 1: in the physics community, some people in the mathematics community.
Speaker 1: And so we take a look at what it would
Speaker 1: mean for a post empirical type of science to exist.
Speaker 1: Does that idea even have any merit? Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: an interesting one to revisit following our recent episodes on
Speaker 1: black holes. I think yeah. So we hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this episode about the nature of science. Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And Robert, I want
Speaker 1: to put you in a scenario. All right, let's do it. Okay,
Speaker 1: So just recently, I was at a family gathering, a
Speaker 1: wedding and old family event. And when you go to
Speaker 1: a you know, family reunion type event, you meet a
Speaker 1: lot of people you haven't seen in a long time.
Speaker 1: You get to catch up on what they're doing. So
Speaker 1: imagine you are at a family reunion type event and
Speaker 1: you're talking to a distant cousin of yours who's going
Speaker 1: to night school to get her graduate degree. And you're like, oh, cool, yeah,
Speaker 1: I do I do a science show. What are you
Speaker 1: studying at your your school? And she could give you
Speaker 1: a couple of answers. Let's contemplate the first one. The
Speaker 1: first answer is, oh, I study radio astronomy. So we
Speaker 1: look at distant objects in the sky by measuring the
Speaker 1: radio frequency energy they admit. And you're like, cool, so
Speaker 1: how does that work? And she says, so we aim
Speaker 1: radio telescope arrays at far away stars and galaxies, and
Speaker 1: we collect the data and faded into computers, and that
Speaker 1: allows us to draw conclusions about the physical properties of
Speaker 1: those objects. All right, sounds legit. Okay, here's another answer
Speaker 1: she could give. She says, oh, yeah, I study psychic
Speaker 1: astro sociology, so we study distant civilizations in the Milky
Speaker 1: Way galaxy by tuning into the psychic energies that they
Speaker 1: beam to our planet through their Numa transmitters. Okay, their
Speaker 1: number of red flags already. Yeah, So you don't even
Speaker 1: really have to be a scientist or even very scientifically
Speaker 1: literate to tell that one of these answers refers to
Speaker 1: real science and the other one does not. But the
Speaker 1: question you should ask yourself is what is the criterion
Speaker 1: you have used. You've intuitively used some kind of rule
Speaker 1: to rule in one of those answers as real science
Speaker 1: and rule out the other one as fake science pseudoscience.
Speaker 1: It sounds like garbage. So you know the difference when
Speaker 1: you see it, But what is the principle that actually
Speaker 1: makes the difference? Right? And and this question becomes ever
Speaker 1: more important when you when you move away from the
Speaker 1: obvious examples and you get into that that stretch of
Speaker 1: gray area, that that that borders the dividing line. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: in terms of pseudoscience, I do want to throw in
Speaker 1: real quick that the oldest known use of the word
Speaker 1: pseudoscience dates back from when the historian James petite Andrew
Speaker 1: referred to alchemy as quote a fantastical pseudoscience, And certainly
Speaker 1: you can make that case for that with alchemy. Well
Speaker 1: maybe if you have a close of mine, I'm going
Speaker 1: to get some gold eventually. I mean, in some ways
Speaker 1: alchemy was kind of a proto science. But the the
Speaker 1: actual scientific properties in alchemy, and this is kind of
Speaker 1: a topic for another day, um are kind of lost
Speaker 1: amid all the the occult concerns. But in the philosophy
Speaker 1: of science, exactly this problem, this problem of what rule
Speaker 1: do you use to tell the difference between science and
Speaker 1: pseudoscience has a name. It's a named problem, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the demarcation problem. Yeah, you're drawing the boundary, setting the
Speaker 1: border between one side and the other, between truth and falsehood,
Speaker 1: between good and bad, between sin and virtue. I mean
Speaker 1: it and it sounds pretty simple, but it's a it's
Speaker 1: a very important concern for the philosophy of science for
Speaker 1: a couple of different reasons. From a purely theoretical point
Speaker 1: of view, Uh, it's important philosophers talking to each other
Speaker 1: about what things mean and the depth of their meaning.
Speaker 1: But also from a very practical point it's because obviously
Speaker 1: science is humanity's most reliable font of knowledge. It's the
Speaker 1: tower we've built that we use to ascend to new heights. Uh,
Speaker 1: technologically speaking, cosmologically speaking, it's our it's our best method
Speaker 1: for advancing solutions, and something we're constantly touting in advertising, healthcare,
Speaker 1: criminal justice, environmental policy, entertainment, politics, and everything in between. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so science is applied to science. Isn't just uh, intellectual
Speaker 1: endeavor taking place in a vacuum. Once we have a
Speaker 1: scientific conclusion, we very often take that conclusion out and
Speaker 1: do something with it. Yeah, it's not just in the
Speaker 1: monastery on the hill. It's down in the marketplace, it's
Speaker 1: in the household. It's it's factoring in your decisions. I mean,
Speaker 1: like we're saying earlier, it's one thing to to hear
Speaker 1: someone's diet tribe about some very fringe e topic and
Speaker 1: and instantly judge, oh, well, that's that's complete malarchy, that's pseudoscience.
Speaker 1: But where it gets gets weirder is when you're picking
Speaker 1: up a product at the super at the supermarket, you know,
Speaker 1: or you're you're you're, there's a vitamin supplements the hand,
Speaker 1: and then you start trying to figure out, wait, this
Speaker 1: is speaking the language of science. It's not hitting those
Speaker 1: crazy keywords that my cousin knows throwing out at this
Speaker 1: imagined wedding. Uh, what am I to do? Mega vitea
Speaker 1: fan burns fat fast? Should I trust this? I mean? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So it has real implications in the real world that
Speaker 1: it impacts your wallet, and it impacts the budgets of
Speaker 1: countries that fund scientific research. You don't want the government
Speaker 1: funding research in something that is complete bunk, right, So
Speaker 1: getting to this question of demarcation, like how do you
Speaker 1: tell the difference? What rule do you use? One? One
Speaker 1: common dictionary definition of pseudoscience is something like quote a
Speaker 1: collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based
Speaker 1: on the scientific method. Well that's not very helpful, is it, right,
Speaker 1: because that that just it's circular. It invokes the concept
Speaker 1: of science to say what's not science? So it's not
Speaker 1: helpful for solving the demarcation problem because it just says
Speaker 1: pseudoscience is that which appears to be science but is
Speaker 1: not those who are entering the tower of science and
Speaker 1: not doing science there, or something to that effect, because yeah,
Speaker 1: because the uh, the the scientific method is still present
Speaker 1: at least it's invoked, right, so it becomes difficult to decipher. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So to really solve the problem, you'd want to come
Speaker 1: up with some descriptive rule that exclusively describes science. It's
Speaker 1: like a descriptive statement that describes everything that is science
Speaker 1: and rules out everything that is not science. But it's
Speaker 1: hard to come up with a rule like that, isn't it. Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean again, especially as you you become closer and
Speaker 1: closer to the boundary line. You know it's um because
Speaker 1: as we'll discuss here, it's it's kind of like imagine
Speaker 1: the border between two states and you have you have
Speaker 1: a couple, you have a couple of towns, right, and
Speaker 1: one's just immediately on one side of the state line,
Speaker 1: the others on the other. And if you're applying of
Speaker 1: it's a very strict understanding of boundary lines here, then
Speaker 1: this one is definitely in Arkansas, and this one's definitely
Speaker 1: in Tennessee. But then if you start saying, well, actually
Speaker 1: there's a little room uh to to go on either side,
Speaker 1: then it just then you're confounded, All right, is this
Speaker 1: one in Tennessee or is this one in Arkansas? How
Speaker 1: about this one? Are they both in both states or
Speaker 1: is it just how I feel when I visit that town. Right, So,
Speaker 1: a lot of the solutions to the demarcation problem try
Speaker 1: to draw some clear line. Okay, here we have an
Speaker 1: exclusive rule that makes the distinction. So I know a
Speaker 1: lot of scientists and some philosophers of science would probably
Speaker 1: want to make a distinction based on empiricism as as
Speaker 1: the first criteria. Right. So, empiricism is the idea that
Speaker 1: it involves observations. You know, it's what you see or
Speaker 1: what you can measure externally. That science can't be just
Speaker 1: an internal logical exercise that has no contact with something
Speaker 1: you see happening in the real world. Yeah, there has to.
Speaker 1: It has it's evidence based. Right then. Of course you've
Speaker 1: also got the you know, the scientific method that you
Speaker 1: learned in elementary school. Some people would look at that
Speaker 1: and say, okay, you know, that's basically how science works.
Speaker 1: You ask a question, you make educated guests, that's your hypothesis.
Speaker 1: You do some kind of empirical test on observable reality
Speaker 1: to see if your guess is correct. Then you analyze
Speaker 1: the results and draw conclusions. And you know, that's a
Speaker 1: good simplified version for kids to learn yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: how do you walk into a dark room and find
Speaker 1: out what what what the room contains and accurately judge
Speaker 1: it without you know, hitting your head on something. But
Speaker 1: there's a problem with that if we're trying to describe
Speaker 1: science as it happens in the real world of professional discoveries,
Speaker 1: because it doesn't. That method doesn't very closely describe the
Speaker 1: process by which we came up with all kinds of
Speaker 1: important and correct scientific theories in history. Like lots of
Speaker 1: theories in physics, for example, we're just conceived simply as
Speaker 1: abstract thought experiments, and they went for a long time
Speaker 1: without empirical testing. Now we've empirically tested them and we know,
Speaker 1: but they just started in Einstein's head. There are a
Speaker 1: number of scientific concepts that were conceived, or certainly they
Speaker 1: the people behind them attributed their conception to dreams, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's hard to fit the dream world into any
Speaker 1: serious contemplation of scientific method, right. Yeah. So there are
Speaker 1: plenty of examples you can go through through history of
Speaker 1: scientific theories that we didn't have empirical confirmation of for
Speaker 1: a long time, even after people had accepted them as
Speaker 1: probably true. You know, one good example that it comes
Speaker 1: up in the debate we're gonna be talking about today
Speaker 1: is the question of atoms. For a long time, scientists
Speaker 1: knew that matter was based on atoms, but there was
Speaker 1: no test they could do to confirm the existence of atoms.
Speaker 1: Now there are, fortunately, but we didn't. We didn't have
Speaker 1: those tests for a long time. Another problem with the
Speaker 1: basic scientific method you learn an elementary school is that
Speaker 1: if you just have some bad methodology, you can rule
Speaker 1: in plenty of pseudoscience. Right, Like, if you just use
Speaker 1: the scientific method, but you use it poorly, you can
Speaker 1: prove the existence of psychics, ghosts, aliens, whatever you want. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we see this time and time again. Right,
Speaker 1: They'll be one guy who is able to create a
Speaker 1: zero gravity state in a lab, and then any and
Speaker 1: everyone else tries to replicate it and they don't get
Speaker 1: the same results. And therefore either either what everybody's wrong,
Speaker 1: and this one guy got it right once. No, it's
Speaker 1: the reverse. Yeah, he used the method, he just did
Speaker 1: a really bad job of using the method. Another way
Speaker 1: that I think some people would address how to define
Speaker 1: science and uh and solve the demarcation problem is I
Speaker 1: think totally useless and they define science in a kind
Speaker 1: of post talk back engineered pragmatic sense, as in, they
Speaker 1: define sciences the method of inquiry which produces correct and
Speaker 1: useful results. This is obviously not a helpful solution to
Speaker 1: demarcation problem. Now if you're hearing all of this and thinking, yeah,
Speaker 1: but then again, I mean, scientists are just doing their
Speaker 1: scientific work. Do they really need to worry about all
Speaker 1: of this, Uh, this philosophical back and forth, Like, is
Speaker 1: this just a lot of talk that doesn't really amount
Speaker 1: to anything? I would argue, no, it is not. I
Speaker 1: think these philosophical concepts are crucial to doing good science. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, especially when you when you start facing the
Speaker 1: realization that you can't just do the science right. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a wonderful quote from Daniel Dennett from
Speaker 1: his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, which we've discussed this in
Speaker 1: a previous episode, but he says, quote, scientists sometimes deceive
Speaker 1: themselves into thinking that philosophical ideas are only at best,
Speaker 1: decorations or parasitic commentaries on the hard, objective triumphs of science,
Speaker 1: and that they themselves are immune to the confusions. That
Speaker 1: philosophers devote their lives to dissolving. But there is no
Speaker 1: such thing as philosophy free science. There is only science
Speaker 1: whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination. I
Speaker 1: entirely agree with that quote. I think that's right on
Speaker 1: the money. I mean, if you hear a scientist say,
Speaker 1: I don't bother with philosophy. I'm not interested in philosophical
Speaker 1: content concepts. I just do the science. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like if you had a person running for president who says, look,
Speaker 1: I'm not political, I'm just gonna govern. Would you trust
Speaker 1: that person? I mean, the reality is what they are
Speaker 1: going to be governed by some kind of philosophy, whether
Speaker 1: they acknowledge it or not. And uh in the person
Speaker 1: who claims not to have a philosophy or not to
Speaker 1: have you know, any kind of ideology guiding them is
Speaker 1: just advertising the fact that they haven't thought very deeply
Speaker 1: about this. Yeah, they because I like the idea of
Speaker 1: a non political uh individual just judging without just ruling,
Speaker 1: without any kind of uh, you know, weird hang ups
Speaker 1: and constraints and agenda. But for that to really work,
Speaker 1: you'd have to have like a superhuman you have to
Speaker 1: have someone with like a self moving soul with someone
Speaker 1: who could who could think and approach the task at
Speaker 1: hand with just pure logic, unmoved by the endercurrents of opinion, bias, trauma,
Speaker 1: or longing. Uh. You know, part of the the the
Speaker 1: issue here is that science itself, with the scientific method
Speaker 1: as its backbone, it's kind of a perfect engine, right
Speaker 1: uh and and we're it's flawed operators. So perhaps you
Speaker 1: know what we need here if would look at like
Speaker 1: the Dune universe, we need like Mentat scientists, um or
Speaker 1: we would need Dounyane scientists or bodhisatvas of scientific inquiry.
Speaker 1: What do you mean, Duniane? What is that? Oh? They're
Speaker 1: a there are people that are kind of like Mentats
Speaker 1: and m are Scott Baker's Second Apocalypse saga. So they've
Speaker 1: been able to just really through just generations and generations
Speaker 1: of selective breeding and uh and and personal training, they've
Speaker 1: managed to enter the two to breed a people that
Speaker 1: are completely in the now, completely in control of their
Speaker 1: of their soul and their mind states. So they're not
Speaker 1: governed by uh, you know, past concerns, and when they
Speaker 1: encounter people that are not douniating, they can just completely
Speaker 1: manipulate them because they sort of stand outside of that path.
Speaker 1: Humans engineered to no longer have preferences to only be
Speaker 1: computers sort of. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. And but that's
Speaker 1: the other thing. Maybe what we need is an advanced hypercomputer,
Speaker 1: some sort of you know, super AI that could do
Speaker 1: all of the science that could that could be science
Speaker 1: without the human concerns. Yeah, but we don't have that
Speaker 1: right now. We just have the humans with some help
Speaker 1: from the computers. Right. So today, the main topic that
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about is the idea of
Speaker 1: empiricism and falsifiability in science. And we're gonna get to
Speaker 1: what those what falsifiability means in a second, but also
Speaker 1: about whether we have entered a phase in science where
Speaker 1: there is room for a concept to known as post empiricism.
Speaker 1: And if that sounds crazy to you, we will explain
Speaker 1: what the arguments are just a bit. But we should
Speaker 1: bring it back to the history of this demarcation problem.
Speaker 1: How do you separate the science from the pseudoscience? And
Speaker 1: one of the most common answers given by scientists today
Speaker 1: would be traceable back to the twentieth century philosopher of
Speaker 1: science Carl Popper So who was Carl Popper. Popper was
Speaker 1: an Austrian British philosopher generally regarded as one of the
Speaker 1: twentieth centuries greatest philosophers of science, and he identified demarcation
Speaker 1: as the chief problem in the philosophy of science. Again,
Speaker 1: how to judge science separated from from pseudoscience, separate the
Speaker 1: sin from the virtue? Here to draw a really firm
Speaker 1: line in the sand that we can stick by and
Speaker 1: judge everything accordingly. And he thought he came up with
Speaker 1: an answer to the problem, right, Yeah, yeah, he thought
Speaker 1: he came up with with a pretty solid answer. And really,
Speaker 1: I was reading about his life like he's stuck to
Speaker 1: his guns, like towards the end of his life, you know,
Speaker 1: he had he had he had plenty of critics who said, actually,
Speaker 1: this doesn't work, blah blah blah. We'll get into the
Speaker 1: specifics in a second. But he was devoted and he
Speaker 1: would he spent his time either clarifying what he had
Speaker 1: said or shooting down his critics. So, yeah, he's stuck
Speaker 1: to his guns on this. But what was his answer?
Speaker 1: How can you tell the difference between science and pseudoscience?
Speaker 1: What qualifies something as real science? Yeah? What is what?
Speaker 1: Is the litmus test. Right. The answer he gave is falsifiability.
Speaker 1: So what does that mean? So, according to Popper, in
Speaker 1: order for a proposition right or wrong, to be scientific
Speaker 1: in nature, it has to be falsifiable, meaning you have
Speaker 1: to be able to describe empirical results, test results in
Speaker 1: the real world that would show the proposition to be false.
Speaker 1: And then in order to strengthen a theory, to build
Speaker 1: confidence in it, you have to continually seek these exceptions
Speaker 1: to your rule. You have to keep looking for ways
Speaker 1: to break your theory, and you have to fail to
Speaker 1: attain them over and over. Yeah, and this means there
Speaker 1: has to be such thing as a critical test for
Speaker 1: any given proposition proposition in order for it to be
Speaker 1: scientific in nature. Right. And so let's give some examples
Speaker 1: in science just throughout a theory what the rule is,
Speaker 1: and then explain how how could you falsify it? So
Speaker 1: here's one. Einstein's special theory of relativity says the speed
Speaker 1: of light and a vacuum is the same for all observers. Now,
Speaker 1: if you could get people in spaceships moving at different
Speaker 1: speeds to measure the speed of light and a vacuum
Speaker 1: and get different results than special relativity is wrong. It's falsified.
Speaker 1: The theory is, in principle falsifiable. Another one would be
Speaker 1: how about common descent uh. Common descent says that all
Speaker 1: life on Earth is related and it evolved from a
Speaker 1: single organism known as the last universal common ancestor or LUCA.
Speaker 1: So if we looked at the genomes of plants and
Speaker 1: animals and bacteria, all the different kingdoms of life, and
Speaker 1: we found that they had all completely different genes and
Speaker 1: use different genetic tools to accomplish the same basic survival
Speaker 1: tasks like say, uh, metabolism, metabolizing sugars or something, this
Speaker 1: would probably falsify common descent. It would make it look
Speaker 1: like the kingdoms of life had multiple different origins. But
Speaker 1: that's not what we find. So there there is support
Speaker 1: for common descent. And here's one example that's often was
Speaker 1: often touted by Paper himself. So astronomers of the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century looked to the the the orbit of Uranus. Okay,
Speaker 1: something seemed a bit off here, So two separate astronomers
Speaker 1: they pointed out that the orbit of uran Is could
Speaker 1: be explained via Newtonian physics as being caused by a
Speaker 1: seventh and previously unknown planet, which of course turns out
Speaker 1: to be Neptune. Astronomers subsequently discover Neptune, and it's exactly
Speaker 1: where these two different astronomers predicted that it would be.
Speaker 1: So Papa argued that in this Newton's theory was subjected
Speaker 1: to a critical test and it passed. But critics would
Speaker 1: have a different view of this. Critics such as uh
Speaker 1: immor Octose point out that if they'd been in error,
Speaker 1: if the if the two scientists here had been wrong,
Speaker 1: if we hadn't found Neptune exactly where it is, we
Speaker 1: wouldn't have thrown out Newtonian physics, right, We would have
Speaker 1: looked for other possible culprits, any of the number of
Speaker 1: reasons that those of that their their their theory here
Speaker 1: could have been wrong. So it was hardly a test
Speaker 1: of Newtonian physics at all. The falsification corroboration disjunction might
Speaker 1: very well just be too simplistic. Yeah, and that's true
Speaker 1: that there are plenty of criticisms of the poparian is
Speaker 1: that the word poparian the falsification criteria in the philosophy
Speaker 1: of science. But but this has been one of the
Speaker 1: big ones that people have have latched onto over the
Speaker 1: past century. Now to continue exploring falsification. On the contrary,
Speaker 1: imagine what it's like to have a proposition where you
Speaker 1: can't come up with any in principle empirical test that
Speaker 1: would provide strong evidence against it. If you have something
Speaker 1: like that, this is not a good thing. So imagine
Speaker 1: a psychic medium claims to get information from the spirit world. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: well let's come up with some tests for this. Let's say,
Speaker 1: let's test the information that he's getting from the spirit
Speaker 1: world and find out if it accurately reflects information about
Speaker 1: dead people that he wouldn't have been able to know.
Speaker 1: He can always say, well, actually, wait a minute, my
Speaker 1: powers aren't going to work in the presence of the
Speaker 1: negative energy created by skeptics. Uh so, well, well, maybe
Speaker 1: we can put some believers in place and blind them
Speaker 1: to the test and see if you're getting accurate information.
Speaker 1: The psychic could still say, well, wait a minute, there
Speaker 1: are also malicious spirits who are responsible for feeding me
Speaker 1: incorrect information. Uh So, in the end, there is no
Speaker 1: evidence that could really count against his powers. Anything that
Speaker 1: could count against it is explained away. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: see this with a lot of supernatural ideas, Like one
Speaker 1: of the big ones of core one that I often
Speaker 1: think about is the hand of God. Uh. Analogy here, So,
Speaker 1: if God exists outside of our universe, all right, if
Speaker 1: he's outside of our universe, we can't really do anything
Speaker 1: to disapprove or prove, right, because he's not a part
Speaker 1: of the observable universe that we can test and we
Speaker 1: can measure. Now, it's been argued that if the hand
Speaker 1: of God then reaches into our universe to do things
Speaker 1: you know, uh, you know, create life, turn a city,
Speaker 1: to solve whatever, then that hand has to interact with
Speaker 1: our universe. It has to interact with atoms and molecules,
Speaker 1: and therefore we would be able to measure a supernatural presence,
Speaker 1: a presence from the outside reaching into our own by
Speaker 1: the way it moved our molecules are atoms our world.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so that makes it sound like the presence
Speaker 1: of supernatural interaction should be in theory testable. But when
Speaker 1: you bring that up, people because because then you say
Speaker 1: when we've never observed that, people will say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: he doesn't have have to he or she does not
Speaker 1: have to move the molecules. And then but then you're
Speaker 1: just saying, oh, well, then they don't have to obey
Speaker 1: any of the laws, and so it's super untestable. Right.
Speaker 1: You're removing all possible conditions that could falsify what you're claiming. Right.
Speaker 1: It kind of becomes like an argument between kindergarteners about
Speaker 1: who just blasted who with a laser gun on the playground,
Speaker 1: Like they can both deny that they've been vaporized by
Speaker 1: a laser gun based on, uh, you know, increasingly preposterous
Speaker 1: ideas about how the laser gun worked and what kind
Speaker 1: of imaginary armor they were wearing. Right, But of course,
Speaker 1: theories that are unfalsifiable in nature don't necessarily just appeal
Speaker 1: to the paranormals, psychics and you know, ghosts and aliens
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. You could also have secular, unfalsifiable theories.
Speaker 1: How about this one, We are living inside a computer simulation.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I love this one. Now, there might be
Speaker 1: some ways that smart people could come up with to
Speaker 1: test whether or not this is true. You could say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, on a computer simulation, we'd expect to find X.
Speaker 1: If we don't find X, that's evidence against it. Maybe,
Speaker 1: But as far as I know, there's no test you
Speaker 1: could perform to falsify the statement that we're living in
Speaker 1: a computer simulation. There's no way to prove this isn't correct,
Speaker 1: and thus it's just sort of like one of those things.
Speaker 1: Well that's interesting to think about, but it seems unscientific
Speaker 1: in nature, because if we're in a perfect simulation, we're
Speaker 1: in a perfect simulation, and how would you possibly see
Speaker 1: outside of it? It's um, it's kind of like this. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a fabulous description of human sight that was related
Speaker 1: to me over the weekend, and that's the idea that
Speaker 1: when you look at something with your through your vision um,
Speaker 1: you're essentially regarding a timeline of the evolution of human vision.
Speaker 1: So the corners of your eyes, you you're encountering just
Speaker 1: blurry shapes, less color, less detail, and as you move
Speaker 1: in towards the center of your eye, that's where you
Speaker 1: can actually make out the details and and and very
Speaker 1: precise movements and changes and and so it's a it's
Speaker 1: a timeline that converges at the center. But then that
Speaker 1: makes it kind of difficult, if not impossible, to envision
Speaker 1: things further along in the timeline because it's not a
Speaker 1: linear system. You know, huh, it's a it's it's closed
Speaker 1: to us. I guess if that makes sense. That's a
Speaker 1: very interesting statement. I've never heard that before. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I keep keep thinking about it because it's I think
Speaker 1: it's appliable to a lot of things, a lot of
Speaker 1: topics concerning the limits of our of our observation, the
Speaker 1: limits of our of our experience, completely unrelated side note.
Speaker 1: Did you know that if you have people hold up
Speaker 1: colored flags at the very edge of your vision, you
Speaker 1: will not be able to tell what color they are? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that makes sense because, to go with the timeline analogy,
Speaker 1: you are seeing out of your corner. How you're seeing
Speaker 1: with a very primitive form of vision. But we have
Speaker 1: the illusion that the corners of our eyes have color.
Speaker 1: To that, oh yeah, when you look, Yeah, my peripheral
Speaker 1: vision has just as much color as the center of
Speaker 1: my vision. You can test this and show it to
Speaker 1: be false. That statement is falsifiable and has been falsified,
Speaker 1: because when you hold up these red flags at the
Speaker 1: very edge of your vision, you can't tell the difference
Speaker 1: between red, blue orange. Try it out. Yeah, yeah, no
Speaker 1: matter what your memory says, because your mind is up
Speaker 1: stitching it all together into some form that makes sense
Speaker 1: at least, you know, at a glance. Okay, so we've
Speaker 1: got this criterion here for for the demarcation problem. Real
Speaker 1: science is falsifiable. It makes predictions, and it says, if
Speaker 1: this were true, my theory would be false. Ideas that
Speaker 1: don't conform to this are in our experience, in our experience,
Speaker 1: incredibly annoying to interrogate. And also I would say, in
Speaker 1: our experience, do not generate accurate predictions, technologies or new knowledge. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because if it's just if it's an idea that you
Speaker 1: can't test, you can't prove, you can't do experiments on it,
Speaker 1: all you can do is just sort of is either
Speaker 1: nod along or shake your head, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: conduct any experiments and learn something more about the the
Speaker 1: the inner workings of reality. Yeah. One last distinction I
Speaker 1: want to make before we start to get to this
Speaker 1: weird world of the idea of post empiricism. So there's
Speaker 1: another type of empirical theory of science that's simply a
Speaker 1: coral area I would say, a falsification, and that's verification.
Speaker 1: And this is actually the older theory. So it's they're
Speaker 1: both empirical they're really two halves of the same coin, right,
Speaker 1: But with verification, you make a positive prediction and then
Speaker 1: you test to see if that's the case. So my
Speaker 1: prediction is that all cows on earth are brown. Um,
Speaker 1: so you go out and look, and let's say you
Speaker 1: find some brown cows. Oh, what do you know? My
Speaker 1: theory is correct. So you can sort of see the
Speaker 1: problem with this. You can keep testing and looking for
Speaker 1: brown cows and finding brown cows, and if you were
Speaker 1: to regard these the fact that you keep finding brown
Speaker 1: cows as an evidence that your theory is correct. Instead,
Speaker 1: what you should be doing is looking for non brown cows,
Speaker 1: and you keep looking for them, and eventually, if you
Speaker 1: find a non brown cow, then your theory has been falsified. Right.
Speaker 1: It's like finding a black swan. Yeah, and then it
Speaker 1: changes what you know about swans as they actually exist. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, the fact that all the statement that all
Speaker 1: cows are brown is wrong. That is wrong, even if
Speaker 1: it is formulated in such a way that it could
Speaker 1: be falsified. An unfalsifiable version of the same idea would
Speaker 1: be cows that appear brown to all observers and instruments
Speaker 1: are nevertheless not really brown. That that is worse than
Speaker 1: being wrong. It's not even wrong, it's unfalsifiable. But so
Speaker 1: one takeaway from this, of course, is that you never
Speaker 1: actually verify a theory under the criterion of falsifiability. There's
Speaker 1: no such thing as one confidence that the theory is correct.
Speaker 1: You just keep building up higher and higher levels of
Speaker 1: confidence every time you try to find an exception, every
Speaker 1: time you try to falsify it, and you can't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that I mean, in that sense, the boundaries of
Speaker 1: scientific understanding are constantly shifting, the constantly changing um at
Speaker 1: least you know, in the realms beyond like extremely verified fact. Right,
Speaker 1: But his red wine good for you? Is coffee good
Speaker 1: for you? This is a line that is that is
Speaker 1: continually changing. Right, And that's a problem because that that
Speaker 1: question is not well defined. What do you mean good
Speaker 1: for me on average? How do you compare the different
Speaker 1: goods versus bads? Goods and bad What are studied by science?
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna take a quick break, but when
Speaker 1: we come back, we're going to get into post empiricism. Okay,
Speaker 1: So we've established that some scientists and philosophers of science
Speaker 1: have latched onto this idea of falsifiability or at least
Speaker 1: some version of impure coal confirmation, as as the criterion
Speaker 1: you use to tell science from pseudoscience. But are there
Speaker 1: any scientific problems that would lead a non quack that
Speaker 1: would lead a respectable scientist who does real work with
Speaker 1: with real data, to propose a non falsifiable hypothesis. Actually,
Speaker 1: there are some cases where we have very smart, very
Speaker 1: respectable scientists who are doing work on hypotheses that are
Speaker 1: widely agreed to be non falsifiable, at least today. And
Speaker 1: so how about fundamental physics. What's at the bottom of
Speaker 1: our physical theory of the universe? Well, depends on who
Speaker 1: you ask, But if you ask a certain portion of
Speaker 1: the scientific community and the philosophic community, they will say
Speaker 1: string is at the bottom of everything. Yes, And we're
Speaker 1: of course talking about string theory. Now, I know what
Speaker 1: you're thinking out that are you thinking, Hey, Robert and Joe,
Speaker 1: I didn't sign up for string theory this episode? While
Speaker 1: you're getting some string theory. But well, we're gonna blow
Speaker 1: through just a very quick definition of what it is,
Speaker 1: a reminder of what it is so that we can proceed.
Speaker 1: And uh, we're we're gonna be fairly limited in this.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're not gonna go too
Speaker 1: deep on this. Uh. I mean, you can really leave
Speaker 1: it at just imagining a cartoon character and a sweater
Speaker 1: and what happens when someone pulls on the threat at
Speaker 1: the bottom of everything unravels. That is true, that is
Speaker 1: the full scientific definition. But but to go a little deeper. Um, okay,
Speaker 1: So you have particle physicists to define elementary particles or
Speaker 1: fundamental particles as the smallest building blocks in the universe.
Speaker 1: In other words, particles such as leptons and quarks have
Speaker 1: no substructure. There As small as it gets, you can't
Speaker 1: split them up. Now, that's not the case for string
Speaker 1: theorists to think we need to venture deeper or smaller
Speaker 1: than our current technology allows. So they propose that each
Speaker 1: so called fundamental particle fundamental particle actually contains a tiny, vibrating,
Speaker 1: one dimensional loop of string. The vibration of the string
Speaker 1: determines the charge and mass of the greater particle. So
Speaker 1: superstring theories take this idea and build the entire universe
Speaker 1: from the bottom up. Uh. And it's it's a challenging task,
Speaker 1: and that's why we speak of string theories in the plural,
Speaker 1: because there are several different string theories that attempt to
Speaker 1: make it all work. At least ten dimensions are called
Speaker 1: for um. A lot of maths physicists proposed that any
Speaker 1: dimensions beyond time and visible space are folded up out
Speaker 1: of sight into these you know, very complex, uh extra
Speaker 1: dimensional shapes that you often see are rendered with computer
Speaker 1: graphics on string theory articles, tiny extra dimensions that that
Speaker 1: that we can't even measure. They're they're just too small
Speaker 1: for us to perceive, crawling with shadow creatures that come
Speaker 1: out to grab children. Um, so and and is and
Speaker 1: is that that what indicates a superstring theory is still developing,
Speaker 1: meaning that physicists continue to work out the kinks in
Speaker 1: the individual string theories, but they're eventually What they're aiming
Speaker 1: to do is is fulfill Einstein's unrealized goal of unifying
Speaker 1: general relativity with quantum theory. And that's why string theory
Speaker 1: is also sometimes called a theory of everything because it
Speaker 1: would serve someday as a foundation for all future scientists,
Speaker 1: scientific discovery, and innovation. The idea that it is an
Speaker 1: incomplete section in this grand bridge. Yeah, so another way
Speaker 1: string theories often characterized is that that it's a unification
Speaker 1: as it attempts to bring together macrophysics, things like relativity,
Speaker 1: you know that happen on huge energies and and and scales,
Speaker 1: with microphysics, the stuff in the quantum world, you know,
Speaker 1: very very small. Right now, we have strong theories of
Speaker 1: microphysics that explain very well what we see at those scales,
Speaker 1: and we have strong theories of relativity that explain very
Speaker 1: well what we see, you know, with gravity at huge scales.
Speaker 1: But they just don't mesh together very well. And so
Speaker 1: string theory would attempt to explain all those things with
Speaker 1: one underlying theory that that implies both of them. And
Speaker 1: in reality, the theory is just a set of mathematical models,
Speaker 1: right It's mathematical models showing the behavior of these strings
Speaker 1: and how they could produce the effects of the universe
Speaker 1: we see at these different scales. But there's a problem,
Speaker 1: right String physics phenomena are too tiny to observe even
Speaker 1: with our most powerful experimental instruments. They can't be found
Speaker 1: by our particle colliders or anything else we're likely to
Speaker 1: build in the near future. So we can make a
Speaker 1: mathematical string theory model that very beautifully explains everything we
Speaker 1: already know, but we can't use it to predict any
Speaker 1: new physical results that we'd be able to detect and
Speaker 1: use to confirm or falsify it. So that's sort of
Speaker 1: a problem. Right, Is this still science? Wait a minute, now,
Speaker 1: If we're just coming up with mathematical instruments that explain
Speaker 1: what we already know but don't make predictions that we
Speaker 1: can experimentally test, what is it science? And is it useful? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It's it sounds like it's like putting the car in
Speaker 1: if not park, then at least neutral, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's going to stop moving after a while. Right right? Uh,
Speaker 1: here's another one. How about cosmology? Oh yeah, what's the
Speaker 1: ultimate nature of the universe. It's a big question with
Speaker 1: big answers, big answers that we often cannot test, um
Speaker 1: generally cannot test and going you on one side just
Speaker 1: say the existence of God or God's but also you
Speaker 1: get into multiverse theory, the idea that our universe is
Speaker 1: just one of many and essentially the library of Babbel
Speaker 1: right right, yeah, so it's that movie Multiplicity. Wait, what
Speaker 1: was that movie? Is that the one one more jetly
Speaker 1: kills all the other jet leads to game power. No,
Speaker 1: I think that's the one that's a really good one. Though,
Speaker 1: now I'm thinking, what's the one that has lots of
Speaker 1: Michael Keaton? Yeah, that the clone Michael Keaton's I think
Speaker 1: it's multiplicity, Okay, yeah, no, no, no no, I was confusing
Speaker 1: it mentally with virtuosity. The one oh that has with
Speaker 1: the Russell Crowe is like a synthetic human clone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Denzel Washington, Yeah, yeah, each other. I just remember
Speaker 1: he had like there's a blue blood or something like that. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: like string theory, there's this idea of the multiverse that's
Speaker 1: pretty much untestable. It's but it could be a very
Speaker 1: elegant outworking of the data we already have. So we
Speaker 1: have a bunch of observations. We say, if there were
Speaker 1: many many universes, it would explain some of the things
Speaker 1: we see. But we can't make a prediction based on
Speaker 1: the belief in the many many universes that we can test.
Speaker 1: At least, there's not a clear one. In fact, I
Speaker 1: think I have read some physicists suggesting that multiverse could
Speaker 1: maybe be potentially tested in theory based on something out
Speaker 1: spacetime geometry. But I think that's an ongoing debate that
Speaker 1: I don't fully understand. Yeah, a lot of this kind
Speaker 1: of it boils down to the prospect of building a
Speaker 1: bridge into the darkness, and how far into the darkness
Speaker 1: are you willing to build that bridge accepting that the
Speaker 1: necessary substructure will be there? Right? Okay, Well, in this case,
Speaker 1: if we are talking about science and you know, real
Speaker 1: science and maybe multiverse cosmology or string theory being except
Speaker 1: some people would have a problem with that statement exactly. No,
Speaker 1: no, no no, I'm saying, if we consider these things science, uh,
Speaker 1: it seems like we need to sort of revise what
Speaker 1: are demarcation problem solution is right, assuming we were starting
Speaker 1: with false fiability, which a lot of modern philosophers of
Speaker 1: science probably wouldn't um. And so here's where we get
Speaker 1: into the idea of post empiricism, the idea of so
Speaker 1: just meaning after empiricism, after only being based on observations
Speaker 1: and physical tests. And I want to talk about a
Speaker 1: theoretical physicist turned philosopher named Richard Davitt who has studied
Speaker 1: and written in favor of the concept of post empiricism.
Speaker 1: On behalf of string theory, and he he had this
Speaker 1: interview with three AM magazine that was published in July.
Speaker 1: He but he also wrote a book called String Theory
Speaker 1: and the Scientific Method, and he tries to make a
Speaker 1: case for a new sort of philosophy of evaluating the
Speaker 1: scientific merits of theories that isn't just based on empirical testing. Uh,
Speaker 1: that sounds kind of crazy, right, But let's see what
Speaker 1: he has to say. So, you've got string theory. You've
Speaker 1: got this problem that you can paint a self consistent
Speaker 1: picture of the mathematical properties of strings. And if they existed,
Speaker 1: they'd answer a lot of questions, right, they would help
Speaker 1: unify our view of physics. But there's currently no way
Speaker 1: we know of to directly text strings or their effects.
Speaker 1: So in what sense his string theory different from saying
Speaker 1: invisible acid gremlins push all the particles in the universe
Speaker 1: around to produce the effects we interpret as microphysics and
Speaker 1: general relativity. Is it any better? And and Davitt would
Speaker 1: argue that these are not equally valid claims, that string
Speaker 1: theory is actually much better as a scientific claim, even
Speaker 1: if it's not empirically testable. And the thing is that
Speaker 1: that feels like a true statement, right, Yeah, but not
Speaker 1: everyone would agree. So instead, Davitt thinks that even in
Speaker 1: cases where you can't falsify a theory empirically, you can
Speaker 1: establish confidence in the theory with the use of philosophical
Speaker 1: and probabilistic arguments. Sort of about the research program that
Speaker 1: produced the theory. It's sort of a meta science. It's
Speaker 1: judging the quality of science by the scientific situation that
Speaker 1: create at it. Okay, so let's try to give some
Speaker 1: examples of the arguments he would give on behalf of
Speaker 1: something like string theory. One argument is the lack of
Speaker 1: alternative theories. Okay, so it kind of goes back to
Speaker 1: Sherlock Holmes logic. Yeah, it's it's the only game in town.
Speaker 1: Davitt says, string theory is the only theory that integrates
Speaker 1: into one overall theory our topical understanding of high energy
Speaker 1: physics based on gauge field theory, and our understanding of
Speaker 1: cosmology based on general relativity. So he's saying that there
Speaker 1: just aren't any other theories that explain all this stuff.
Speaker 1: It's the only one we've come up with that seems
Speaker 1: viable and do. It also argues that in the past,
Speaker 1: when we had no alternative to a consistent theory, that
Speaker 1: theory was often later shown to be correct. So there's
Speaker 1: sort of a precedent for saying, well, when scientists are
Speaker 1: working on a question and they come up with a
Speaker 1: theory that answers the question, even if it's not empirically
Speaker 1: testable at the time, we later learned that they were
Speaker 1: right if it was the only theory they could come
Speaker 1: up with. Right, Yeah, and that makes sense, right, you
Speaker 1: to proceed to actually push forward, sometimes you have to
Speaker 1: envision what the reality may be. You have to create
Speaker 1: this model and then see how it plays out over
Speaker 1: time exactly. So he also says, look, it has proven
Speaker 1: conceptually useful. That's a second argument. So Dobvitt suggests that
Speaker 1: string theorists have given physicists insights into other problems in
Speaker 1: physics that they weren't originally setting out to solve when
Speaker 1: the theory was conceived, So it explains more than it
Speaker 1: was originally meant to explain. That seems like another good
Speaker 1: tick in the evidence column. In other words, it's not
Speaker 1: predicting a physical outcome that we tested, but it's sort
Speaker 1: of yielding some mathematical results. That that that fit together
Speaker 1: in interesting ways. And then the last major argument he
Speaker 1: gives is sort of that the way I would put
Speaker 1: it is that it grows from proper scientific soil. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not like saying saying acid gremlins. That it comes
Speaker 1: out of a research project of high energy physics. And
Speaker 1: this research project of high energy physics has generated all
Speaker 1: kinds of other ideas that have been testable empirically and
Speaker 1: have been accurate. All right, well, all three of these
Speaker 1: are making sense. He seems logical, sure, And he gives
Speaker 1: another example from the past. I think it's when we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, but he says, you know, if if you
Speaker 1: look at the past, what about atomists, people who thought
Speaker 1: that the matter in the world was made of atoms?
Speaker 1: According to Devitt, scientists thought that the world was made
Speaker 1: of atoms long before they had any way of experimentally
Speaker 1: confirming predictions of atomic theory. Of course, we have those
Speaker 1: experiments now, but atomic theory was the only serious theory
Speaker 1: of matter on the table, so there were no altern natives.
Speaker 1: It yielded insights that it didn't set out to yield, Like,
Speaker 1: it explained more than it was designed to explain. That's
Speaker 1: his second case with string theory, and he says it
Speaker 1: emerged from a research program that had success in making
Speaker 1: other predictions that were empirically verified, you know, not from
Speaker 1: It didn't come from demonology. It came from chemistry and physics.
Speaker 1: So that's interesting to me. Now we're going to get
Speaker 1: into some serious criticisms of this way of thinking, but
Speaker 1: this does kind of broaden the picture and suggest that
Speaker 1: maybe our way of thinking about what's a good scientific
Speaker 1: idea should be more complicated than just saying like, well,
Speaker 1: it's something where you can do a physical test with
Speaker 1: an observable result, and you can say what would falsify it?
Speaker 1: And you show that that's not the case. Yeah, it,
Speaker 1: you know, And I can't help but think of examples
Speaker 1: such as geocentricism, uh, heliocentricism, you know, in terms of
Speaker 1: all of you know, certainly false theories that we eventually realized,
Speaker 1: oh well, the Earth isn't the center of the universe,
Speaker 1: the Sun is at the center of the universe, and
Speaker 1: yet all those theories were still they were still useful
Speaker 1: models thinking about the structure of the Solar system before
Speaker 1: we really had a more nuanced understanding of what it was.
Speaker 1: But with with something like string theory, it's such a
Speaker 1: complex and robust uh creation. You know that it was
Speaker 1: such a robust theory that it seems like there's there's
Speaker 1: much more on the line, and there's much more room
Speaker 1: to potentially create something that is not so Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and with string theory also, should we treat string theory
Speaker 1: differently than other theories because it's supposedly a final theory,
Speaker 1: you know, if it's the ultimate theory of matter in
Speaker 1: the universe, should there be different rules for assessing it
Speaker 1: than there would be for assessing you know, some theory
Speaker 1: of gene selection or some other you know, some theory
Speaker 1: in in biology, g or regular chemistry or something. Because
Speaker 1: it doesn't set itself up to evolve. And of course hindsight,
Speaker 1: but you look back at heliocentricism and you can see
Speaker 1: its place in an evolution of thought. But but certainly
Speaker 1: when people are arguing strength theory, they're not saying, well,
Speaker 1: this is strength theory and hopefully we'll work up to
Speaker 1: wool theory and nylon theory, you know, or whatever. Right,
Speaker 1: like you said, it's it's it's it's argued as a
Speaker 1: as a as a as a fix to the end
Speaker 1: of the line. But yeah, that's that's a very good
Speaker 1: point you make about heliocentrism, because it's like, um, it
Speaker 1: was less wrong. That was the important thing, was that
Speaker 1: it was less wrong than geocentrism, even though it was
Speaker 1: still wrong, and it still allowed you to have a
Speaker 1: pretty accurate understanding of the of immediate solar mechanics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so to me, there does seem to be something interesting
Speaker 1: going on in what Davitt is saying, Like it's not um,
Speaker 1: it's not just a bunch of junk. Then again, there
Speaker 1: might be limits to how far you can extend these
Speaker 1: ideas he's propounding in in how you're going to define science.
Speaker 1: It almost makes it seem like it would have to
Speaker 1: be a case by case scenario. You'd have to take
Speaker 1: him on a case by case basis, and that that
Speaker 1: means there's no absolute rule. It thinks there's just some
Speaker 1: guidelines and then we have to weigh in on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I want to read some some criticisms. One of
Speaker 1: them is the theoretical physicist Sabine Hassenfelder. She responded to
Speaker 1: this interview that I mentioned, and first of all, she
Speaker 1: says flatly, post empirical science is an oxymoron, just flat
Speaker 1: out that there is no such thing. Now, David actually
Speaker 1: defends himself by saying that he doesn't advocate quote post
Speaker 1: empirical science, just post empirical theory assessment, which is honest,
Speaker 1: I have to admit as a distinction which I have
Speaker 1: failed to grasp the significance of. But well, it's maybe
Speaker 1: there's something there. But anyway, Hassenfelder, her response to this,
Speaker 1: had a really good quote that I wanted to read
Speaker 1: that I thought sums up the attitude of the critics
Speaker 1: of post empiricism pretty well. She said, quote this non
Speaker 1: empirical theory assessment, while important, can however only be means
Speaker 1: to the end of an eventual empirical assessment without making
Speaker 1: contact to observation. A theory isn't useful to describe the
Speaker 1: natural world, not part of the natural sciences, and not physics.
Speaker 1: These insights that Davitt speaks of are thus not assessments
Speaker 1: that can ever validate an idea as being good to
Speaker 1: describe nature, and a theory based on non empirical assessment
Speaker 1: does not belong in the natural sciences. So I think
Speaker 1: she's acknowledging that maybe there is something to non empirical
Speaker 1: theory assessment ownly in the sense that it might help
Speaker 1: bridge us along until we can get to a time
Speaker 1: when there is empirical confirmation. Maybe if we can eventually
Speaker 1: come up with ways of testing the predictions of string theory.
Speaker 1: But and but if we don't ever get there, then
Speaker 1: this assessment is type of assessment is useless. Right, And then,
Speaker 1: of course, how do you get to the point where
Speaker 1: you can test it if you're not working towards that point,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't just say, oh, accidentally, we're now
Speaker 1: in a position to test out this theory that we
Speaker 1: refused to give credence earlier. Now, another voice on this
Speaker 1: matter that we came across is a cow Tech physicist,
Speaker 1: Sean Carroll, who wrote on edge dot org answering the
Speaker 1: question what scientific idea is ready for retirement? His answer falsifiability. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, he he sticks by empiricism, but once a
Speaker 1: different empirical paradigm, not post empiricism, but post falsifiability. Simply put,
Speaker 1: and this is a quote from from his paper, refusing
Speaker 1: to contemplate their possible existence on the grounds of some
Speaker 1: a priori principle, even though they might play a crucial
Speaker 1: role in how the world works is as non scientific
Speaker 1: as it gets. Yeah, and I think Carol makes a
Speaker 1: good point. They're like, so there may in fact be
Speaker 1: strings at the bottom of reality, you know, matter, the
Speaker 1: universe may be based on strings and and membranes. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there may in fact be a multiverse. There may
Speaker 1: be other universes out there and stuff like that. It
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense for us to say, well, we can't
Speaker 1: entertain that possibility because it doesn't fit with our model
Speaker 1: of the solution to the demarcation problem. You know, He's
Speaker 1: saying we should have we should be coming up with
Speaker 1: ways to assess these things, even if it doesn't classically
Speaker 1: fit the philosophy of science, definition of science. And of
Speaker 1: course Carol, he posits a couple of different criteria, so
Speaker 1: he he still wants to stick with empiricism, but he
Speaker 1: proposes I think that that it must be what definite
Speaker 1: and empirical rather than falsifiable, so that it has to
Speaker 1: be a theory that is scientific in nature, has to
Speaker 1: be well defined, it's described in a clear, unambiguous way,
Speaker 1: and it also has to interact with empirical data in
Speaker 1: some way, like it has to take into account what
Speaker 1: we know empirically about the universe, which, of course, like
Speaker 1: string theory and the multiverse do, they explain what we
Speaker 1: already know. The problem is they don't make predictions about
Speaker 1: what we could know in the future that can be tested, Right,
Speaker 1: So you couldn't you couldn't use it as a way
Speaker 1: to prop up your own hollow earth theories. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: So what else do we have here in terms of criticism, agreement, etcetera.
Speaker 1: In the stream wars Well, I've came across a Nature
Speaker 1: comment piece from December by the mathematician George Ellis and
Speaker 1: the physicist Joe Silk called scientific method defend the integrity
Speaker 1: of physics, and they were taking a stand against post empiricism,
Speaker 1: or against at least some uses of it. Uh so
Speaker 1: that they start off by saying that, you know, some
Speaker 1: scientists now argue that if a theory is quote sufficiently
Speaker 1: elegant and explanatory, it doesn't have to be tested experimentally.
Speaker 1: And some examples they give our string theory, the kaleidoscopic multiverse,
Speaker 1: the many worlds interpretation of quantum reality. That's one, you know,
Speaker 1: So you've got the the equations of quantum physics. We
Speaker 1: those are very well tested. We know they're accurate, But
Speaker 1: what do they mean when you have the you know,
Speaker 1: the supposed collapse of the way of function or whatever,
Speaker 1: What do they mean really happens in reality when a
Speaker 1: probabilistic wave function event happens. Well, one way of interpreting
Speaker 1: it is saying, Okay, every time there's a quantum event
Speaker 1: that could go one way or another, reality actually splits
Speaker 1: into different realities and you have different worlds or both
Speaker 1: are true, and now we're in the multiverse, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: different type of multiverse, the many worlds quantum reality multiverse.
Speaker 1: Another one would be pre Big Bang concepts. They say,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to do math about what happened before
Speaker 1: the Big Bang? If that makes any sense? Yeah, like
Speaker 1: what happened before the initial singularity of all existence? Like
Speaker 1: was it in a giant's pocket to some marvels on
Speaker 1: the back of a turtle? Yeah, exactly that. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so they say, if you if you d couple science
Speaker 1: from experimental false falsification quote, theoretical physics risks becoming a
Speaker 1: no man's land between mathematics, physics, and philosophy that does
Speaker 1: not truly meet the requirements of any i love that quote.
Speaker 1: That's a great quote from from the article. Yeah, does
Speaker 1: it become this own purely? You know, does it become
Speaker 1: just an abstraction? Right? Has it left the realm of
Speaker 1: the natural sciences without yet just becoming a philosophical discuss
Speaker 1: shan or or abstract mathematics in in truth. So they
Speaker 1: make a couple of specific examples about string theory where
Speaker 1: they disagree with with Davitt's arguments um, But then they
Speaker 1: also go on to say, you know, look, history is
Speaker 1: full of examples of elegant and compelling theories ideas that
Speaker 1: lead scientists in the wrong direction. They cite Ptolemy's geocentric universe,
Speaker 1: Lord Kelvin's vortex theory of the atom, Hoyle's steady state universe,
Speaker 1: you know, the the eternal unchanging universe. And in the
Speaker 1: end they say, quote, in our view, the issue boils
Speaker 1: down to clarifying one question, what potential observational or experimental
Speaker 1: evidence is there that would persuade you that the theory
Speaker 1: is wrong and lead you to abandon it. If there
Speaker 1: is none, it is not a scientific theory. So here
Speaker 1: they're staking out basically with falsification. They're saying it's got
Speaker 1: to be falsifiable in in a testable physical way, or
Speaker 1: it is not science. This is not meeting the definition.
Speaker 1: And they also mentioned some practical considerations that that are
Speaker 1: worth considering. One of them is that they say, you know,
Speaker 1: even if there's some merit to post empirical theory assessment
Speaker 1: in niche subject areas where we can't perform experiments like
Speaker 1: string theory and stuff, public discussion of this could have
Speaker 1: disastrous consequences. It could cause confusion and undermine public confidence
Speaker 1: in h in science generally, and especially in politically charged
Speaker 1: scientific ideas like climate change, evolution, vaccines, GMO safety, all
Speaker 1: of which are empirically based. But if you start introducing
Speaker 1: this idea but what waits some science isn't based on
Speaker 1: empirical testing, you're going to hurt people's confidence in the science.
Speaker 1: That is. Yeah, it ceases to become this this pure
Speaker 1: engine of learning and knowledge and truth and becomes this
Speaker 1: more abstract thing. Great, people you're always asking what he
Speaker 1: was driving it? Yeah, people are asking the wait a minute,
Speaker 1: so what is just people doing weird intellectual experiments in
Speaker 1: their ivory towers that can't be confirmed or denied by
Speaker 1: by experiments. Um And then so they go on to
Speaker 1: say also that claiming the theory is too good for
Speaker 1: testing opens the door to two genuine pseudoscientists who would
Speaker 1: claim the same thing about their ideas. My my psychic
Speaker 1: powers are are just too elegant and too well explanatory,
Speaker 1: you know, they explain the facts too perfectly to be
Speaker 1: suggested subjected to this you know, prediction problem. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is kind of the scenario. You get into the hand
Speaker 1: of god argument or conversation that one might have with
Speaker 1: with someone where you can you throw out the criticisms
Speaker 1: just you point out to where it wouldn't work. But
Speaker 1: then they can always they can always change the argument
Speaker 1: until it's it's there's no way to possibly refute it right,
Speaker 1: And so they end by saying the imperimeter of science
Speaker 1: should be awarded only to a theory that is testable.
Speaker 1: Only then can we defend science from attack. And to me,
Speaker 1: these seem like concerns that are a very important part
Speaker 1: of the conversation about science communication. It's almost more about
Speaker 1: what you and I do, Robert, But they don't seem
Speaker 1: especially relevant to me, at least to the internal conversation
Speaker 1: between scientists about what kind of work in physics is
Speaker 1: worth doing, and how much confidence we should have in
Speaker 1: ideas like string theory. I don't know what you think
Speaker 1: about that, but it seems to me like that that's
Speaker 1: kind of irrelevant. That's more just a public policy conversation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would, I would agree, though, I mean, when it
Speaker 1: comes to reading about physics, I have to admit I
Speaker 1: would probably choose to read about theoretical physics before I
Speaker 1: would read anymore about experimental experimental things. Yeah. Um, And
Speaker 1: of course we should point out that not all theoretical
Speaker 1: physics is is removed from experiment. I mean, I think,
Speaker 1: I think most theoretical physics, you know, they're interacting with
Speaker 1: particle colliders and and and all the experiments that we're
Speaker 1: out there doing gathering data on. But yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're supposed to do in these
Speaker 1: cases where where it's not just that string theorists decided
Speaker 1: that they didn't want to test their their theories. You
Speaker 1: know that they are by necessity dealing with a part
Speaker 1: of reality that we can't access experimentally. That that's just
Speaker 1: how it is. They didn't design it that way, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like, they didn't pick it. It's
Speaker 1: just a problem with our powers. And another thing I
Speaker 1: think I would acknowledge is that it seems like almost
Speaker 1: all of these people who are critics of the the
Speaker 1: idea of post empirical theory assessment, you know, using these
Speaker 1: criteria other than physical testing, acknowledge that there's something to it.
Speaker 1: They seem to say, okay, yeah, they would probably admit
Speaker 1: that string theory has more going for it than the
Speaker 1: acid Grimlin's hypothesis. There So there is something to the
Speaker 1: non empirical uh theory assessment. They just don't seem to
Speaker 1: say that it's enough to call it science. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I can't help me. Be reminded in all this of
Speaker 1: nineteenth century German philosopher Frederick of Wilhelm Joseph Schelling's Natural
Speaker 1: Philosophy Um Philosophy of Nature in German um. And this
Speaker 1: is a concept um he developed as a sort of
Speaker 1: augmentation to science that would allow science to investigate the
Speaker 1: human spirit, because he saw nature or the force nature
Speaker 1: and the human spirit or the forced geist as the
Speaker 1: two great opposing forces in cosmos, with the human mind
Speaker 1: at the center of everything. So nature, according to two Shilling,
Speaker 1: is the visible spirit of the invisible spirit of the mind.
Speaker 1: But again, the mind is very much at the center
Speaker 1: of the equation um. Now he was this This concept
Speaker 1: was attacked for, among other things, lack of empirical orientation,
Speaker 1: and indeed a lot of it seems to hinge on
Speaker 1: the investigation of invisible the comprehension of the scientific getting
Speaker 1: unverifiable through the lens of something at least linked to
Speaker 1: the substance of science. So it's it's hard to I
Speaker 1: think I thought of that a lot when I was
Speaker 1: reading over some of the material, because it seems like
Speaker 1: a good example of sort of bad post empirical science. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the idea that you're gonna you're gonna, you're gonna take,
Speaker 1: you're gonna go as far as science will take, and
Speaker 1: then you're just gonna completely extrapolate it into the unseen um.
Speaker 1: But then the counter argument is, then, how is that different?
Speaker 1: How is that ultimately different from something like string theory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we're back to the demarcation problem, right, Yeah, like,
Speaker 1: what is the rule we're using to tell the difference?
Speaker 1: I sense a difference to a sense that there's something
Speaker 1: much more respectable about string theory and multiverse cosmology than
Speaker 1: there is about the the invisible spirit um, but it's
Speaker 1: hard to articulate exactly what that is though, though I
Speaker 1: would say that Davits criteria are somewhat useful in that regard.
Speaker 1: They give you some criteria for saying, Okay, we're not
Speaker 1: running a test, but here are some characteristics of these
Speaker 1: theories that do seem to make them probabilistically and historically
Speaker 1: more likely to be correct than just gremlins or invisible spirits.
Speaker 1: You know, it reminds me of something else, and that
Speaker 1: is the the Ian and Banks Culture books, which I
Speaker 1: know would bring up a lot but but but he
Speaker 1: managed to fit a lot of science into these, at
Speaker 1: least in the earlier books. It's established that in this uh,
Speaker 1: in this culture known as the culture, you have all
Speaker 1: these AI minds that are really ruling everything, that rule
Speaker 1: these giant warships, and they make all the decisions, and
Speaker 1: they they do all the heavy thinking and heavy lifting
Speaker 1: for the humans and humanoids that make up the culture.
Speaker 1: But they keep the human humans around and they occasionally
Speaker 1: have the humans, you know, engaging and very important roles.
Speaker 1: And part of this UH, it's it's it's a proposed
Speaker 1: is because the humans will occasionally make leaps in judgment
Speaker 1: or in theory that the machines do not cannot, Which
Speaker 1: comes back to that that idea that I put forth
Speaker 1: earlier about how if you had a pure computer, a pure,
Speaker 1: pure logical entity doing the science, Um, would there be
Speaker 1: limitations to that? Would would there be this place where
Speaker 1: you would need a non empirical jump in logic that
Speaker 1: only a human who is a bound and shackled to
Speaker 1: their prior beliefs and their philosophies, that only they could
Speaker 1: make what a what a skeptical engine? You know, a
Speaker 1: computer of scientific investigation not be able to make intuitive speculations.
Speaker 1: You would have to have the the the Devil's advocate computer, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: throw weird ideas out there and then allow for testing.
Speaker 1: Oh this this veil of testing. And uh so, one
Speaker 1: more thing I wanted to mention before the end of this.
Speaker 1: I was actually inspired to do this episode by reading
Speaker 1: a really good article on this whole subject of you know,
Speaker 1: post empiricism and falsifiability in science by the philosopher of
Speaker 1: science Massimo Peliucci that he wrote in Eon magazine, which
Speaker 1: is always one of our favorites. Around her and their
Speaker 1: nonprofit now so if you really like what they're doing
Speaker 1: over there, you can donate to the cause, by the way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but uh so Peleucci mates makes a point in his
Speaker 1: approach to this topic. He wonders if what if science
Speaker 1: is not it can't be demarcated in a way that
Speaker 1: a word like triangle can. So there's a word triangle
Speaker 1: that has a very clear definition, has what he would
Speaker 1: call quote necessary and jointly sufficient properties, and that just
Speaker 1: means it has a description which includes everything that could
Speaker 1: possibly be a triangle and rules out everything that is
Speaker 1: not a triangle. It has three angles that add up
Speaker 1: to degrees um perfect description of all triangles and nothing else.
Speaker 1: What if science is simply not like that? There aren't
Speaker 1: statements that are a perfect description of science and nothing else.
Speaker 1: And rather science is more a concept that is based
Speaker 1: on what Wittgenstein would call family resemblances, in that it's
Speaker 1: a term like game. Now, could you come up with
Speaker 1: a definition or a description of what games are that
Speaker 1: includes everything that's a game and excludes everything that's not
Speaker 1: a game? Yeah, this is actually something that comes up
Speaker 1: a lot when I play games, such as my argument
Speaker 1: that apples what apples to apples apples to apples. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not a game. Um as fun as the other one is?
Speaker 1: What is it with all the awful cards in it?
Speaker 1: Cards against Humanity? Also very fun? But not a game
Speaker 1: according to you. According to me, some people would say
Speaker 1: it's a game. Is chopping would a game? You know?
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, I really love chopping wood.
Speaker 1: Some people think that as a chore, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: I guess it was just fun to swing an axe. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: certainly that's the thing. You can turn non games into
Speaker 1: games by establishing a set of rules for your completion
Speaker 1: of that task. Yeah. Yeah, you can turn things that
Speaker 1: shouldn't be a game at all into a game. But
Speaker 1: you could get a room full of people to have
Speaker 1: a list of activities like chopping wood, apples to apples,
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of things like that, and say is
Speaker 1: this a game or is it not? And mostly I
Speaker 1: think they'd agree. You know, you'd get general agreement on
Speaker 1: the on the use of this term as it applies
Speaker 1: to things. And yet we can't come up with this
Speaker 1: necessary and jointly sufficient description of what games are. Maybe
Speaker 1: science is like that. So in a sense, science is
Speaker 1: a thing that would not be able to see itself,
Speaker 1: it would not be able to get itself because it
Speaker 1: itself does not fall into the uh specificity of form
Speaker 1: that science requires. That could be I don't know. Um,
Speaker 1: I find this topic very interesting because I don't quite
Speaker 1: know what the answer is. I'm not sure how I
Speaker 1: feel about it. Obviously, I'm not a physicist, so I'm
Speaker 1: not I'm not working in these fields like multiverse cosmology
Speaker 1: and string theory, so I'm not even educated enough in
Speaker 1: them to really judge the intrinsic merits of the ideas,
Speaker 1: but just accepting that they are very good theoretical solutions. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I think this is the that this is the appropriate
Speaker 1: feeling to have about it, because we're talking about theories
Speaker 1: that take us to the edge of human understanding and
Speaker 1: extrapolate beyond right and that's that is a place who
Speaker 1: I think where we can all agree it's okay to
Speaker 1: feel inadequate, It's okay to feel befuddled and unsure, because
Speaker 1: that is the nature of the age. Yeah yeah, um
Speaker 1: so yeah, I guess in the end, like I, I
Speaker 1: sort of see what Dovid is saying, like his his
Speaker 1: distinctions do make sense to me. I also see what
Speaker 1: the critics are saying about that not quite being science,
Speaker 1: or at least not science in the same way that
Speaker 1: all the science we really care about is. Uh. I
Speaker 1: wonder how that should work out in terms of practical
Speaker 1: concerns like funding, Like should we be funding using public
Speaker 1: money to fund string theory research in the same way
Speaker 1: that we're funding stuff that is being tested and falsified. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it seems to me you often encounter problems
Speaker 1: when you start opening up the discussion to the merits
Speaker 1: of this particular scientific inquiry versus all the others. You know,
Speaker 1: you kind of get into that hole, why are you
Speaker 1: doing this when we haven't cured cancer? And then your
Speaker 1: answer is like, wow, this is this is theoretical physicist
Speaker 1: physics here. We weren't going to actually achieve a cure
Speaker 1: for cancer, as that's not our area of expertise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like the the sort of false assumption of a zero
Speaker 1: sum game in the investigation of science. This is something
Speaker 1: that comes up a lot, you know, as somebody does
Speaker 1: a study that has an interesting but not necessarily early
Speaker 1: technological result, and people comment under the article, why are
Speaker 1: they studying this when they could be curing cancer? Right?
Speaker 1: As though, what the shrimp on a treadmill scenario, where
Speaker 1: it's just become Oh, I can't believe it. Our tax
Speaker 1: dollars are paying for shrimps on a treadmill. And then
Speaker 1: you ignore the fact that well, it's it's it's still
Speaker 1: advancing science. If it's a you know, it's a valid study,
Speaker 1: it's just maybe not as as sexy or as a
Speaker 1: uh you knows, as obvious an advancement, and you don't
Speaker 1: even know in the future in what ways it may
Speaker 1: inform future technologies and other applications. I mean, that's always
Speaker 1: the thing with science. We we don't always know what
Speaker 1: the outcomes are going to be of learning something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as this thing called science continues to creep out, sometimes
Speaker 1: it is snail's pace, uh, sometimes a bit faster into
Speaker 1: the unknown. Alright, So how about you, how do you
Speaker 1: feel about this particular topic, And do you think the
Speaker 1: so called string wars that we're talking about here, do these,
Speaker 1: as some critics charge, distract from the real battle that
Speaker 1: should be going on against pseudos science and the misuse
Speaker 1: of science by various outlets. Is this kind of the
Speaker 1: you know, the wars of the of the Seven Kingdoms
Speaker 1: that are occurring while the white Walkers of pseudoscience march
Speaker 1: down from the north. That that is true. Also, I mean,
Speaker 1: are are we sitting here arguing about what physicists should
Speaker 1: or shouldn't be contemplating? Meanwhile, we've got alternative medicine peddlers
Speaker 1: who are at the gates. Yeah, who knows. Uh. We'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from all you guys and gals about that.
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