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If science can't explain it,,,,

If science can't explain it, does it mean it isn't real, didn't happen, or isn't possible?

  • Yes

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • No

    Votes: 42 100.0%

  • Total voters
    42

Heyo

Veteran Member
I do not think that science solves any problems. Problem-solving is usually the domain of engineering, although the two do frequently overlap.

Science also does not deal with abstractions. It deals only with what exists concretely, and with cause-and-effect. Anything which claims the existence of a thing or a causative correlation between things falls under the domain of science.

Abstractions are left to non-scientific fields like logic, mathematics, statistics, and philosophical schools like theology, aesthetics, metaphysics, linguistics, etc.
Yes and no. Yes the natural sciences (a.k.a. "hard" science) only deals with real things. But we also have the "soft" sciences like sociology, psychology, etc. which do study abstracts.
 

PoetPhilosopher

Veteran Member
If science can't explain it, we should smother it in gasoline, light a match, and burn it over the waters as the smoke ascends past the gaze of our ice cold drinks.
 

Ella S.

Dispassionate Goth
Yes and no. Yes the natural sciences (a.k.a. "hard" science) only deals with real things. But we also have the "soft" sciences like sociology, psychology, etc. which do study abstracts.

I suspect a bit of miscommunication here.

In psychological studies, for instance, they have developed tools for measuring and assessing certain states of mind in more empirical ways, using self-report scales and observing particular behaviors, for instance.

While the soft sciences might not be as rigid as the natural sciences, hence the name, they do still try to ground themselves in the concrete as best they can.

This is quite different from how a purely abstract field like math works, which does not ultimately rely on empirical data.
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
I suspect a bit of miscommunication here.

In psychological studies, for instance, they have developed tools for measuring and assessing certain states of mind in more empirical ways, using self-report scales and observing particular behaviors, for instance.

While the soft sciences might not be as rigid as the natural sciences, hence the name, they do still try to ground themselves in the concrete as best they can.

This is quite different from how a purely abstract field like math works, which does not ultimately rely on empirical data.

Another thing you learn in soft science, is to check science, when it "goes overboard". E.g. there are no real things, indeed both are in fact abstracts and not real. They are categories in the mind.
 

Ella S.

Dispassionate Goth
Yes, I know. It is a standard Western cultural "thing" to in the mind to consider experiences coming for outside the mind more real. Now tell me the properties of real.

Concrete things exist external to our mind, and we experience them (in a limited and fallible way) through our senses.

I think the cultural "thing" is to deny that reality exists, which is unfortunately common globally.
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
Concrete things exist external to our mind, and we experience them (in a limited and fallible way) through our senses.

I think the cultural "thing" is to deny that reality exists, which is unfortunately common globally.

I don't deny objective reality as independent of the mind. But that is a rational abstract category in philosophy.
I believe in this: that there is an objective reality shared by all rational observers.
Philosophy of science - Wikipedia

But if you can do better than a belief, you would be the first human in recorded history to do that.
 

Ella S.

Dispassionate Goth
I don't deny objective reality as independent of the mind. But that is a rational abstract category in philosophy.
I believe in this: that there is an objective reality shared by all rational observers.
Philosophy of science - Wikipedia

But if you can do better than a belief, you would be the first human in recorded history to do that.

I try not to deal in beliefs. Instead, I deal with justified claims, and I am hardly the first human in recorded history to do so.
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
I try not to deal in beliefs. Instead, I deal with justified claims, and I am hardly the first human in recorded history to do so.

Yeah, and you hit in part Agrippa's Trilemma, the Evil Demon by Descartes, the problem of what the-thing-in-itself is in itself and the is-ought problem and then some more.

Here it is - Christians and other believers try justified claims using reason and logic. They can't. How come you believe you have solved the problem of justification which is close over 2000 years old.
 

Ella S.

Dispassionate Goth
Yeah, and you hit in part Agrippa's Trilemma, the Evil Demon by Descartes, the problem of what the-thing-in-itself is in itself and the is-ought problem and then some more.

Here it is - Christians and other believers try justified claims using reason and logic. They can't. How come you believe you have solved the problem of justification which is close over 2000 years old.

Christians can and do use reason and logic to arrive at justified claims, and have done so for nearly 2 centuries now.

We have developed more rigorous and complex methods of data analysis during that time period, but the core methodology has been the same since at least ancient Greece.
 
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