WEBVTT - From the Vault: Post-Empirical Science 0:00:05.800 --> 0:00:08.200 Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:08.240 --> 0:00:11.160 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it is 0:00:11.240 --> 0:00:13.520 Vault time. We're going into the vault for a classic 0:00:13.520 --> 0:00:18.479 Stuff to Blow Your Mind episode from September. And in 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:22.760 this episode, we explored a question about the nature of science. 0:00:23.280 --> 0:00:26.480 Is there such a thing as post empirical science. A 0:00:26.480 --> 0:00:28.440 lot of you science fans out there might be thinking, 0:00:28.520 --> 0:00:31.560 what that sounds like an oxymoron, and it really does 0:00:31.640 --> 0:00:33.640 kind of seem like an oxymoron. But there are some 0:00:33.720 --> 0:00:36.840 people who would make a case otherwise, maybe some people 0:00:36.880 --> 0:00:39.600 in the physics community, some people in the mathematics community. 0:00:39.960 --> 0:00:42.040 And so we take a look at what it would 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:45.800 mean for a post empirical type of science to exist. 0:00:46.159 --> 0:00:48.440 Does that idea even have any merit? Yeah, this is 0:00:48.440 --> 0:00:51.760 an interesting one to revisit following our recent episodes on 0:00:51.800 --> 0:00:54.680 black holes. I think yeah. So we hope you enjoyed 0:00:54.720 --> 0:01:01.600 this episode about the nature of science. Welcome to Stuff 0:01:01.640 --> 0:01:10.840 to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:12.680 welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is 0:01:12.760 --> 0:01:15.440 Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And Robert, I want 0:01:15.440 --> 0:01:17.919 to put you in a scenario. All right, let's do it. Okay, 0:01:17.959 --> 0:01:21.000 So just recently, I was at a family gathering, a 0:01:21.000 --> 0:01:23.560 wedding and old family event. And when you go to 0:01:23.640 --> 0:01:25.880 a you know, family reunion type event, you meet a 0:01:25.959 --> 0:01:27.520 lot of people you haven't seen in a long time. 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:29.560 You get to catch up on what they're doing. So 0:01:29.720 --> 0:01:32.959 imagine you are at a family reunion type event and 0:01:32.959 --> 0:01:35.880 you're talking to a distant cousin of yours who's going 0:01:35.920 --> 0:01:40.280 to night school to get her graduate degree. And you're like, oh, cool, yeah, 0:01:40.360 --> 0:01:42.800 I do I do a science show. What are you 0:01:42.800 --> 0:01:46.400 studying at your your school? And she could give you 0:01:46.480 --> 0:01:48.760 a couple of answers. Let's contemplate the first one. The 0:01:48.760 --> 0:01:52.320 first answer is, oh, I study radio astronomy. So we 0:01:52.400 --> 0:01:54.840 look at distant objects in the sky by measuring the 0:01:54.960 --> 0:01:58.280 radio frequency energy they admit. And you're like, cool, so 0:01:58.320 --> 0:02:00.920 how does that work? And she says, so we aim 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:04.800 radio telescope arrays at far away stars and galaxies, and 0:02:04.880 --> 0:02:07.600 we collect the data and faded into computers, and that 0:02:07.640 --> 0:02:11.160 allows us to draw conclusions about the physical properties of 0:02:11.200 --> 0:02:14.880 those objects. All right, sounds legit. Okay, here's another answer 0:02:14.960 --> 0:02:18.120 she could give. She says, oh, yeah, I study psychic 0:02:18.160 --> 0:02:22.480 astro sociology, so we study distant civilizations in the Milky 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:25.440 Way galaxy by tuning into the psychic energies that they 0:02:25.520 --> 0:02:28.880 beam to our planet through their Numa transmitters. Okay, their 0:02:28.960 --> 0:02:32.240 number of red flags already. Yeah, So you don't even 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:35.640 really have to be a scientist or even very scientifically 0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:38.880 literate to tell that one of these answers refers to 0:02:38.919 --> 0:02:42.720 real science and the other one does not. But the 0:02:43.040 --> 0:02:46.359 question you should ask yourself is what is the criterion 0:02:46.520 --> 0:02:50.080 you have used. You've intuitively used some kind of rule 0:02:50.800 --> 0:02:54.280 to rule in one of those answers as real science 0:02:55.080 --> 0:02:58.280 and rule out the other one as fake science pseudoscience. 0:02:58.320 --> 0:03:00.680 It sounds like garbage. So you know the difference when 0:03:00.760 --> 0:03:03.720 you see it, But what is the principle that actually 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:07.200 makes the difference? Right? And and this question becomes ever 0:03:07.280 --> 0:03:10.040 more important when you when you move away from the 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:13.880 obvious examples and you get into that that stretch of 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:21.160 gray area, that that that borders the dividing line. Um. Now, 0:03:21.280 --> 0:03:23.040 in terms of pseudoscience, I do want to throw in 0:03:23.080 --> 0:03:25.839 real quick that the oldest known use of the word 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:31.160 pseudoscience dates back from when the historian James petite Andrew 0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:36.600 referred to alchemy as quote a fantastical pseudoscience, And certainly 0:03:38.040 --> 0:03:41.080 you can make that case for that with alchemy. Well 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:43.560 maybe if you have a close of mine, I'm going 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:45.960 to get some gold eventually. I mean, in some ways 0:03:46.000 --> 0:03:49.720 alchemy was kind of a proto science. But the the 0:03:49.720 --> 0:03:52.720 actual scientific properties in alchemy, and this is kind of 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:55.400 a topic for another day, um are kind of lost 0:03:55.920 --> 0:04:01.280 amid all the the occult concerns. But in the philosophy 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:05.040 of science, exactly this problem, this problem of what rule 0:04:05.200 --> 0:04:09.040 do you use to tell the difference between science and 0:04:09.080 --> 0:04:13.040 pseudoscience has a name. It's a named problem, right, Yeah, 0:04:13.080 --> 0:04:16.719 the demarcation problem. Yeah, you're drawing the boundary, setting the 0:04:16.720 --> 0:04:21.520 border between one side and the other, between truth and falsehood, 0:04:21.560 --> 0:04:24.000 between good and bad, between sin and virtue. I mean 0:04:24.000 --> 0:04:28.160 it and it sounds pretty simple, but it's a it's 0:04:28.200 --> 0:04:31.239 a very important concern for the philosophy of science for 0:04:31.440 --> 0:04:34.480 a couple of different reasons. From a purely theoretical point 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:38.160 of view, Uh, it's important philosophers talking to each other 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:40.280 about what things mean and the depth of their meaning. 0:04:40.520 --> 0:04:44.120 But also from a very practical point it's because obviously 0:04:44.200 --> 0:04:47.600 science is humanity's most reliable font of knowledge. It's the 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:52.720 tower we've built that we use to ascend to new heights. Uh, 0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:57.640 technologically speaking, cosmologically speaking, it's our it's our best method 0:04:57.720 --> 0:05:03.360 for advancing solutions, and something we're constantly touting in advertising, healthcare, 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:09.520 criminal justice, environmental policy, entertainment, politics, and everything in between. Yeah, 0:05:09.560 --> 0:05:13.640 so science is applied to science. Isn't just uh, intellectual 0:05:13.720 --> 0:05:16.400 endeavor taking place in a vacuum. Once we have a 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:20.200 scientific conclusion, we very often take that conclusion out and 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:22.280 do something with it. Yeah, it's not just in the 0:05:22.279 --> 0:05:25.320 monastery on the hill. It's down in the marketplace, it's 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:28.800 in the household. It's it's factoring in your decisions. I mean, 0:05:29.960 --> 0:05:32.360 like we're saying earlier, it's one thing to to hear 0:05:32.440 --> 0:05:35.679 someone's diet tribe about some very fringe e topic and 0:05:35.680 --> 0:05:40.040 and instantly judge, oh, well, that's that's complete malarchy, that's pseudoscience. 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:43.520 But where it gets gets weirder is when you're picking 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:46.320 up a product at the super at the supermarket, you know, 0:05:46.480 --> 0:05:49.640 or you're you're you're, there's a vitamin supplements the hand, 0:05:49.720 --> 0:05:51.880 and then you start trying to figure out, wait, this 0:05:51.920 --> 0:05:54.280 is speaking the language of science. It's not hitting those 0:05:54.600 --> 0:05:58.240 crazy keywords that my cousin knows throwing out at this 0:05:58.360 --> 0:06:01.960 imagined wedding. Uh, what am I to do? Mega vitea 0:06:02.040 --> 0:06:06.200 fan burns fat fast? Should I trust this? I mean? Yeah? 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:08.880 So it has real implications in the real world that 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:13.080 it impacts your wallet, and it impacts the budgets of 0:06:13.120 --> 0:06:16.320 countries that fund scientific research. You don't want the government 0:06:16.440 --> 0:06:21.599 funding research in something that is complete bunk, right, So 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:24.200 getting to this question of demarcation, like how do you 0:06:24.279 --> 0:06:26.760 tell the difference? What rule do you use? One? One 0:06:26.839 --> 0:06:30.880 common dictionary definition of pseudoscience is something like quote a 0:06:30.960 --> 0:06:35.280 collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based 0:06:35.360 --> 0:06:39.400 on the scientific method. Well that's not very helpful, is it, right, 0:06:39.440 --> 0:06:42.839 because that that just it's circular. It invokes the concept 0:06:42.880 --> 0:06:46.160 of science to say what's not science? So it's not 0:06:46.240 --> 0:06:50.640 helpful for solving the demarcation problem because it just says 0:06:50.839 --> 0:06:53.839 pseudoscience is that which appears to be science but is 0:06:53.880 --> 0:06:58.120 not those who are entering the tower of science and 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:01.080 not doing science there, or something to that effect, because yeah, 0:07:01.080 --> 0:07:05.039 because the uh, the the scientific method is still present 0:07:05.080 --> 0:07:09.520 at least it's invoked, right, so it becomes difficult to decipher. Yeah, 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:11.560 So to really solve the problem, you'd want to come 0:07:11.600 --> 0:07:16.040 up with some descriptive rule that exclusively describes science. It's 0:07:16.040 --> 0:07:20.840 like a descriptive statement that describes everything that is science 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:24.880 and rules out everything that is not science. But it's 0:07:24.880 --> 0:07:27.559 hard to come up with a rule like that, isn't it. Yeah? 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:31.440 I mean again, especially as you you become closer and 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:35.800 closer to the boundary line. You know it's um because 0:07:35.800 --> 0:07:39.000 as we'll discuss here, it's it's kind of like imagine 0:07:39.400 --> 0:07:42.320 the border between two states and you have you have 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:44.320 a couple, you have a couple of towns, right, and 0:07:44.400 --> 0:07:47.400 one's just immediately on one side of the state line, 0:07:47.400 --> 0:07:49.560 the others on the other. And if you're applying of 0:07:49.640 --> 0:07:52.720 it's a very strict understanding of boundary lines here, then 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:56.080 this one is definitely in Arkansas, and this one's definitely 0:07:56.080 --> 0:07:59.440 in Tennessee. But then if you start saying, well, actually 0:07:59.440 --> 0:08:03.239 there's a little room uh to to go on either side, 0:08:03.280 --> 0:08:05.440 then it just then you're confounded, All right, is this 0:08:05.480 --> 0:08:07.120 one in Tennessee or is this one in Arkansas? How 0:08:07.160 --> 0:08:09.360 about this one? Are they both in both states or 0:08:09.400 --> 0:08:12.760 is it just how I feel when I visit that town. Right, So, 0:08:12.880 --> 0:08:15.920 a lot of the solutions to the demarcation problem try 0:08:16.000 --> 0:08:18.520 to draw some clear line. Okay, here we have an 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:22.120 exclusive rule that makes the distinction. So I know a 0:08:22.160 --> 0:08:25.160 lot of scientists and some philosophers of science would probably 0:08:25.160 --> 0:08:28.240 want to make a distinction based on empiricism as as 0:08:28.280 --> 0:08:32.440 the first criteria. Right. So, empiricism is the idea that 0:08:32.559 --> 0:08:36.320 it involves observations. You know, it's what you see or 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:39.880 what you can measure externally. That science can't be just 0:08:40.000 --> 0:08:44.720 an internal logical exercise that has no contact with something 0:08:44.760 --> 0:08:47.480 you see happening in the real world. Yeah, there has to. 0:08:47.520 --> 0:08:50.360 It has it's evidence based. Right then. Of course you've 0:08:50.360 --> 0:08:53.360 also got the you know, the scientific method that you 0:08:53.440 --> 0:08:55.840 learned in elementary school. Some people would look at that 0:08:55.880 --> 0:08:58.560 and say, okay, you know, that's basically how science works. 0:08:58.559 --> 0:09:02.080 You ask a question, you make educated guests, that's your hypothesis. 0:09:02.120 --> 0:09:06.080 You do some kind of empirical test on observable reality 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:08.560 to see if your guess is correct. Then you analyze 0:09:08.600 --> 0:09:11.040 the results and draw conclusions. And you know, that's a 0:09:11.080 --> 0:09:13.760 good simplified version for kids to learn yeah, I mean, 0:09:14.240 --> 0:09:16.439 how do you walk into a dark room and find 0:09:16.440 --> 0:09:22.120 out what what what the room contains and accurately judge 0:09:22.160 --> 0:09:24.600 it without you know, hitting your head on something. But 0:09:24.760 --> 0:09:27.280 there's a problem with that if we're trying to describe 0:09:27.320 --> 0:09:30.640 science as it happens in the real world of professional discoveries, 0:09:30.640 --> 0:09:34.280 because it doesn't. That method doesn't very closely describe the 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:36.960 process by which we came up with all kinds of 0:09:37.000 --> 0:09:41.440 important and correct scientific theories in history. Like lots of 0:09:41.480 --> 0:09:45.040 theories in physics, for example, we're just conceived simply as 0:09:45.120 --> 0:09:48.840 abstract thought experiments, and they went for a long time 0:09:49.160 --> 0:09:52.880 without empirical testing. Now we've empirically tested them and we know, 0:09:52.960 --> 0:09:56.200 but they just started in Einstein's head. There are a 0:09:56.240 --> 0:09:59.880 number of scientific concepts that were conceived, or certainly they 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:05.320 the people behind them attributed their conception to dreams, you know. 0:10:05.480 --> 0:10:10.200 So it's hard to fit the dream world into any 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:14.520 serious contemplation of scientific method, right. Yeah. So there are 0:10:14.520 --> 0:10:17.120 plenty of examples you can go through through history of 0:10:17.600 --> 0:10:21.440 scientific theories that we didn't have empirical confirmation of for 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:25.040 a long time, even after people had accepted them as 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:28.600 probably true. You know, one good example that it comes 0:10:28.679 --> 0:10:30.600 up in the debate we're gonna be talking about today 0:10:30.679 --> 0:10:34.359 is the question of atoms. For a long time, scientists 0:10:34.440 --> 0:10:37.080 knew that matter was based on atoms, but there was 0:10:37.120 --> 0:10:40.680 no test they could do to confirm the existence of atoms. 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:44.079 Now there are, fortunately, but we didn't. We didn't have 0:10:44.120 --> 0:10:47.040 those tests for a long time. Another problem with the 0:10:47.080 --> 0:10:50.280 basic scientific method you learn an elementary school is that 0:10:50.320 --> 0:10:53.040 if you just have some bad methodology, you can rule 0:10:53.080 --> 0:10:56.719 in plenty of pseudoscience. Right, Like, if you just use 0:10:56.840 --> 0:11:00.280 the scientific method, but you use it poorly, you can 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:05.640 prove the existence of psychics, ghosts, aliens, whatever you want. Yeah, 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:07.920 I mean we see this time and time again. Right, 0:11:07.920 --> 0:11:10.160 They'll be one guy who is able to create a 0:11:10.240 --> 0:11:13.600 zero gravity state in a lab, and then any and 0:11:13.720 --> 0:11:16.559 everyone else tries to replicate it and they don't get 0:11:16.559 --> 0:11:20.960 the same results. And therefore either either what everybody's wrong, 0:11:21.000 --> 0:11:23.600 and this one guy got it right once. No, it's 0:11:23.600 --> 0:11:25.800 the reverse. Yeah, he used the method, he just did 0:11:25.840 --> 0:11:29.360 a really bad job of using the method. Another way 0:11:29.400 --> 0:11:31.560 that I think some people would address how to define 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:35.079 science and uh and solve the demarcation problem is I 0:11:35.400 --> 0:11:38.319 think totally useless and they define science in a kind 0:11:38.360 --> 0:11:42.719 of post talk back engineered pragmatic sense, as in, they 0:11:42.720 --> 0:11:46.360 define sciences the method of inquiry which produces correct and 0:11:46.480 --> 0:11:50.400 useful results. This is obviously not a helpful solution to 0:11:50.480 --> 0:11:54.160 demarcation problem. Now if you're hearing all of this and thinking, yeah, 0:11:54.200 --> 0:11:57.200 but then again, I mean, scientists are just doing their 0:11:57.240 --> 0:12:00.680 scientific work. Do they really need to worry about all 0:12:00.720 --> 0:12:03.720 of this, Uh, this philosophical back and forth, Like, is 0:12:03.760 --> 0:12:05.880 this just a lot of talk that doesn't really amount 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:08.679 to anything? I would argue, no, it is not. I 0:12:08.720 --> 0:12:14.839 think these philosophical concepts are crucial to doing good science. Yeah, 0:12:14.920 --> 0:12:17.960 and uh, especially when you when you start facing the 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:23.160 realization that you can't just do the science right. Uh. 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:26.160 There's a there's a wonderful quote from Daniel Dennett from 0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:29.280 his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, which we've discussed this in 0:12:29.280 --> 0:12:33.600 a previous episode, but he says, quote, scientists sometimes deceive 0:12:33.679 --> 0:12:37.160 themselves into thinking that philosophical ideas are only at best, 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:43.280 decorations or parasitic commentaries on the hard, objective triumphs of science, 0:12:43.600 --> 0:12:46.720 and that they themselves are immune to the confusions. That 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:51.080 philosophers devote their lives to dissolving. But there is no 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:54.520 such thing as philosophy free science. There is only science 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:59.280 whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination. I 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:02.480 entirely agree with that quote. I think that's right on 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:04.920 the money. I mean, if you hear a scientist say, 0:13:05.000 --> 0:13:08.360 I don't bother with philosophy. I'm not interested in philosophical 0:13:08.440 --> 0:13:11.640 content concepts. I just do the science. It's kind of 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:14.920 like if you had a person running for president who says, look, 0:13:14.960 --> 0:13:18.360 I'm not political, I'm just gonna govern. Would you trust 0:13:18.440 --> 0:13:22.480 that person? I mean, the reality is what they are 0:13:22.559 --> 0:13:25.640 going to be governed by some kind of philosophy, whether 0:13:25.679 --> 0:13:29.160 they acknowledge it or not. And uh in the person 0:13:29.200 --> 0:13:32.080 who claims not to have a philosophy or not to 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:35.280 have you know, any kind of ideology guiding them is 0:13:35.360 --> 0:13:38.400 just advertising the fact that they haven't thought very deeply 0:13:38.440 --> 0:13:41.680 about this. Yeah, they because I like the idea of 0:13:41.720 --> 0:13:47.480 a non political uh individual just judging without just ruling, 0:13:47.520 --> 0:13:50.800 without any kind of uh, you know, weird hang ups 0:13:50.800 --> 0:13:53.680 and constraints and agenda. But for that to really work, 0:13:53.720 --> 0:13:56.199 you'd have to have like a superhuman you have to 0:13:56.240 --> 0:13:59.760 have someone with like a self moving soul with someone 0:13:59.760 --> 0:14:02.080 who could who could think and approach the task at 0:14:02.120 --> 0:14:06.880 hand with just pure logic, unmoved by the endercurrents of opinion, bias, trauma, 0:14:07.040 --> 0:14:09.600 or longing. Uh. You know, part of the the the 0:14:09.679 --> 0:14:13.040 issue here is that science itself, with the scientific method 0:14:13.240 --> 0:14:15.960 as its backbone, it's kind of a perfect engine, right 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:20.200 uh and and we're it's flawed operators. So perhaps you 0:14:20.240 --> 0:14:21.960 know what we need here if would look at like 0:14:22.000 --> 0:14:25.280 the Dune universe, we need like Mentat scientists, um or 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:30.120 we would need Dounyane scientists or bodhisatvas of scientific inquiry. 0:14:30.560 --> 0:14:33.240 What do you mean, Duniane? What is that? Oh? They're 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:35.760 a there are people that are kind of like Mentats 0:14:36.120 --> 0:14:40.120 and m are Scott Baker's Second Apocalypse saga. So they've 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:43.760 been able to just really through just generations and generations 0:14:43.760 --> 0:14:49.960 of selective breeding and uh and and personal training, they've 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:53.520 managed to enter the two to breed a people that 0:14:53.800 --> 0:14:57.960 are completely in the now, completely in control of their 0:14:58.840 --> 0:15:01.240 of their soul and their mind states. So they're not 0:15:01.320 --> 0:15:04.360 governed by uh, you know, past concerns, and when they 0:15:04.400 --> 0:15:07.280 encounter people that are not douniating, they can just completely 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:10.760 manipulate them because they sort of stand outside of that path. 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:14.720 Humans engineered to no longer have preferences to only be 0:15:14.840 --> 0:15:17.640 computers sort of. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. And but that's 0:15:17.680 --> 0:15:20.920 the other thing. Maybe what we need is an advanced hypercomputer, 0:15:21.400 --> 0:15:24.040 some sort of you know, super AI that could do 0:15:24.120 --> 0:15:26.800 all of the science that could that could be science 0:15:27.200 --> 0:15:30.720 without the human concerns. Yeah, but we don't have that 0:15:31.240 --> 0:15:33.520 right now. We just have the humans with some help 0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:37.040 from the computers. Right. So today, the main topic that 0:15:37.080 --> 0:15:39.840 we're going to be talking about is the idea of 0:15:40.400 --> 0:15:44.800 empiricism and falsifiability in science. And we're gonna get to 0:15:44.920 --> 0:15:48.440 what those what falsifiability means in a second, but also 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:51.520 about whether we have entered a phase in science where 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:55.520 there is room for a concept to known as post empiricism. 0:15:55.560 --> 0:15:58.760 And if that sounds crazy to you, we will explain 0:15:58.840 --> 0:16:01.120 what the arguments are just a bit. But we should 0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:05.120 bring it back to the history of this demarcation problem. 0:16:05.200 --> 0:16:08.160 How do you separate the science from the pseudoscience? And 0:16:08.280 --> 0:16:10.840 one of the most common answers given by scientists today 0:16:10.840 --> 0:16:13.720 would be traceable back to the twentieth century philosopher of 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:18.360 science Carl Popper So who was Carl Popper. Popper was 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:21.560 an Austrian British philosopher generally regarded as one of the 0:16:21.560 --> 0:16:26.520 twentieth centuries greatest philosophers of science, and he identified demarcation 0:16:26.600 --> 0:16:29.560 as the chief problem in the philosophy of science. Again, 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:33.920 how to judge science separated from from pseudoscience, separate the 0:16:33.960 --> 0:16:36.640 sin from the virtue? Here to draw a really firm 0:16:36.720 --> 0:16:39.520 line in the sand that we can stick by and 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:42.840 judge everything accordingly. And he thought he came up with 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:45.240 an answer to the problem, right, Yeah, yeah, he thought 0:16:45.280 --> 0:16:47.480 he came up with with a pretty solid answer. And really, 0:16:47.640 --> 0:16:50.640 I was reading about his life like he's stuck to 0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:53.560 his guns, like towards the end of his life, you know, 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:56.240 he had he had he had plenty of critics who said, actually, 0:16:56.240 --> 0:16:58.080 this doesn't work, blah blah blah. We'll get into the 0:16:58.080 --> 0:17:01.160 specifics in a second. But he was devoted and he 0:17:01.200 --> 0:17:04.239 would he spent his time either clarifying what he had 0:17:04.280 --> 0:17:08.400 said or shooting down his critics. So, yeah, he's stuck 0:17:08.440 --> 0:17:10.479 to his guns on this. But what was his answer? 0:17:10.520 --> 0:17:13.240 How can you tell the difference between science and pseudoscience? 0:17:13.280 --> 0:17:17.520 What qualifies something as real science? Yeah? What is what? 0:17:17.600 --> 0:17:22.840 Is the litmus test. Right. The answer he gave is falsifiability. 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:25.879 So what does that mean? So, according to Popper, in 0:17:26.040 --> 0:17:29.480 order for a proposition right or wrong, to be scientific 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:33.560 in nature, it has to be falsifiable, meaning you have 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:37.879 to be able to describe empirical results, test results in 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:41.400 the real world that would show the proposition to be false. 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:45.080 And then in order to strengthen a theory, to build 0:17:45.080 --> 0:17:48.680 confidence in it, you have to continually seek these exceptions 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:51.000 to your rule. You have to keep looking for ways 0:17:51.280 --> 0:17:53.879 to break your theory, and you have to fail to 0:17:53.920 --> 0:17:56.720 attain them over and over. Yeah, and this means there 0:17:56.840 --> 0:18:00.399 has to be such thing as a critical test for 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:03.119 any given proposition proposition in order for it to be 0:18:03.160 --> 0:18:06.720 scientific in nature. Right. And so let's give some examples 0:18:06.840 --> 0:18:10.280 in science just throughout a theory what the rule is, 0:18:10.320 --> 0:18:12.439 and then explain how how could you falsify it? So 0:18:12.960 --> 0:18:16.240 here's one. Einstein's special theory of relativity says the speed 0:18:16.240 --> 0:18:20.440 of light and a vacuum is the same for all observers. Now, 0:18:20.560 --> 0:18:23.240 if you could get people in spaceships moving at different 0:18:23.280 --> 0:18:25.560 speeds to measure the speed of light and a vacuum 0:18:25.560 --> 0:18:29.560 and get different results than special relativity is wrong. It's falsified. 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:34.000 The theory is, in principle falsifiable. Another one would be 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:37.840 how about common descent uh. Common descent says that all 0:18:37.880 --> 0:18:40.399 life on Earth is related and it evolved from a 0:18:40.400 --> 0:18:44.240 single organism known as the last universal common ancestor or LUCA. 0:18:44.960 --> 0:18:47.240 So if we looked at the genomes of plants and 0:18:47.280 --> 0:18:51.040 animals and bacteria, all the different kingdoms of life, and 0:18:51.080 --> 0:18:54.879 we found that they had all completely different genes and 0:18:55.000 --> 0:18:58.960 use different genetic tools to accomplish the same basic survival 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:03.520 tasks like say, uh, metabolism, metabolizing sugars or something, this 0:19:03.560 --> 0:19:06.480 would probably falsify common descent. It would make it look 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:09.439 like the kingdoms of life had multiple different origins. But 0:19:09.680 --> 0:19:12.119 that's not what we find. So there there is support 0:19:12.160 --> 0:19:15.159 for common descent. And here's one example that's often was 0:19:15.200 --> 0:19:19.159 often touted by Paper himself. So astronomers of the nineteenth 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:24.120 century looked to the the the orbit of Uranus. Okay, 0:19:24.680 --> 0:19:27.680 something seemed a bit off here, So two separate astronomers 0:19:27.680 --> 0:19:30.200 they pointed out that the orbit of uran Is could 0:19:30.240 --> 0:19:34.480 be explained via Newtonian physics as being caused by a 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:38.600 seventh and previously unknown planet, which of course turns out 0:19:38.640 --> 0:19:43.919 to be Neptune. Astronomers subsequently discover Neptune, and it's exactly 0:19:43.960 --> 0:19:47.359 where these two different astronomers predicted that it would be. 0:19:48.040 --> 0:19:51.760 So Papa argued that in this Newton's theory was subjected 0:19:51.800 --> 0:19:56.480 to a critical test and it passed. But critics would 0:19:56.520 --> 0:19:59.080 have a different view of this. Critics such as uh 0:19:59.160 --> 0:20:03.680 immor Octose point out that if they'd been in error, 0:20:03.720 --> 0:20:06.000 if the if the two scientists here had been wrong, 0:20:06.280 --> 0:20:09.920 if we hadn't found Neptune exactly where it is, we 0:20:09.960 --> 0:20:13.439 wouldn't have thrown out Newtonian physics, right, We would have 0:20:13.800 --> 0:20:16.600 looked for other possible culprits, any of the number of 0:20:16.640 --> 0:20:20.720 reasons that those of that their their their theory here 0:20:20.720 --> 0:20:23.480 could have been wrong. So it was hardly a test 0:20:23.520 --> 0:20:28.600 of Newtonian physics at all. The falsification corroboration disjunction might 0:20:28.760 --> 0:20:31.440 very well just be too simplistic. Yeah, and that's true 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:36.000 that there are plenty of criticisms of the poparian is 0:20:36.040 --> 0:20:41.199 that the word poparian the falsification criteria in the philosophy 0:20:41.240 --> 0:20:43.399 of science. But but this has been one of the 0:20:43.480 --> 0:20:47.359 big ones that people have have latched onto over the 0:20:47.400 --> 0:20:52.119 past century. Now to continue exploring falsification. On the contrary, 0:20:52.600 --> 0:20:55.439 imagine what it's like to have a proposition where you 0:20:55.560 --> 0:20:59.800 can't come up with any in principle empirical test that 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:03.439 would provide strong evidence against it. If you have something 0:21:03.480 --> 0:21:06.400 like that, this is not a good thing. So imagine 0:21:06.480 --> 0:21:11.120 a psychic medium claims to get information from the spirit world. Okay, well, 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:13.520 well let's come up with some tests for this. Let's say, 0:21:13.600 --> 0:21:16.160 let's test the information that he's getting from the spirit 0:21:16.240 --> 0:21:20.680 world and find out if it accurately reflects information about 0:21:20.720 --> 0:21:22.520 dead people that he wouldn't have been able to know. 0:21:23.040 --> 0:21:25.280 He can always say, well, actually, wait a minute, my 0:21:25.359 --> 0:21:27.840 powers aren't going to work in the presence of the 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:31.840 negative energy created by skeptics. Uh so, well, well, maybe 0:21:31.840 --> 0:21:34.120 we can put some believers in place and blind them 0:21:34.160 --> 0:21:36.679 to the test and see if you're getting accurate information. 0:21:37.320 --> 0:21:39.479 The psychic could still say, well, wait a minute, there 0:21:39.520 --> 0:21:42.959 are also malicious spirits who are responsible for feeding me 0:21:43.080 --> 0:21:47.960 incorrect information. Uh So, in the end, there is no 0:21:48.200 --> 0:21:52.439 evidence that could really count against his powers. Anything that 0:21:52.520 --> 0:21:56.240 could count against it is explained away. Yeah, you can 0:21:56.240 --> 0:21:59.040 see this with a lot of supernatural ideas, Like one 0:21:59.080 --> 0:22:01.200 of the big ones of core one that I often 0:22:01.240 --> 0:22:05.080 think about is the hand of God. Uh. Analogy here, So, 0:22:06.040 --> 0:22:10.600 if God exists outside of our universe, all right, if 0:22:10.640 --> 0:22:12.960 he's outside of our universe, we can't really do anything 0:22:13.000 --> 0:22:15.440 to disapprove or prove, right, because he's not a part 0:22:15.480 --> 0:22:18.040 of the observable universe that we can test and we 0:22:18.040 --> 0:22:21.960 can measure. Now, it's been argued that if the hand 0:22:22.000 --> 0:22:25.439 of God then reaches into our universe to do things 0:22:25.520 --> 0:22:28.240 you know, uh, you know, create life, turn a city, 0:22:28.280 --> 0:22:33.320 to solve whatever, then that hand has to interact with 0:22:33.400 --> 0:22:36.760 our universe. It has to interact with atoms and molecules, 0:22:36.960 --> 0:22:40.960 and therefore we would be able to measure a supernatural presence, 0:22:41.280 --> 0:22:43.679 a presence from the outside reaching into our own by 0:22:43.680 --> 0:22:47.719 the way it moved our molecules are atoms our world. 0:22:47.880 --> 0:22:50.320 Oh okay, so that makes it sound like the presence 0:22:50.359 --> 0:22:54.240 of supernatural interaction should be in theory testable. But when 0:22:54.240 --> 0:22:56.960 you bring that up, people because because then you say 0:22:56.960 --> 0:22:59.080 when we've never observed that, people will say, oh, well, 0:22:59.480 --> 0:23:02.480 he doesn't have have to he or she does not 0:23:02.600 --> 0:23:04.760 have to move the molecules. And then but then you're 0:23:04.800 --> 0:23:06.640 just saying, oh, well, then they don't have to obey 0:23:06.680 --> 0:23:09.240 any of the laws, and so it's super untestable. Right. 0:23:09.240 --> 0:23:14.320