How reliable is science? (The limitations of science)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Wednesday, April 11, 2012, 22:17 (4607 days ago) @ dhw

"And how on Earth can we be sure that over all these thousands of millions of years, there have been any such constants? "-This is really the only thing I can comment on. -The reasoning is akin to why we infer that the sun will rise tomorrow:-The rates of atomic decay can be predicted with what I would call a pretty extreme precision. While I wholeheartedly appreciate skepticism, (scepticism in your case ) there is very little reason to infer that these constants are anything but. The speed of light being an important one. The team that thought they beat the speed of light last year has been slowly churning out where their statistical errors occurred, and the only real challenge to the constant in 100yrs is turning out, essentially, to be a mistake at best, hoax at worst. -So yes, I agree, we shouldn't lose the forest for the trees, we shouldn't forget that scientific models are models, but if we can exploit properties--like constants--with the level of precision that we have, there really is little question to be asked. -If you ask me how these things are exploited, I will point you to the computer you're using to read and respond to me. Constants are invoked *everywhere* in the design of computers. If the constants weren't "constant," your machine wouldn't work, its as simple as that. -As for evidence that constants miraculously "suspended" at points in our past, the only evidence we have for that would be tracing the big bang back to the singularity. -Black holes are one place where at least one constant can be "beaten"--but not fully. (Black holes still radiate.) -In terms of how reliable science is, in most cases--namely physics, just rerun the damn experiment. Everyone is free to come up with another explanation for how acceleration works, for example. But that explanation will have to answer everything the old one did as well as answer something new that the old one didn't cover. -Tony has at least one thing backwards however. If you read Darwin, he started from the evidence, and worked forward from there. He had no intention of eliminating God at all, and all evolutionary theory is ultimately expanded upon Darwin's base. It *IS* looking at the evidence, only from an extremely conservative empirical perspective. I've met Jewish and Muslim doctors and scientists that have no problem with evolution as it is taught today. And it isn't because they feel bullied. -Where Dawkins goes wrong, isn't in terms of science, its in terms of his normative stance that the scientific perspective alone takes precedence. That's something for an individual to decide, not Dawkins.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"