How reliable is science? (The limitations of science)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Sunday, April 15, 2012, 13:52 (4603 days ago) @ dhw

Sorry for my silence over the last few days, but my wife had to be rushed to hospital and the last few days have been rather stressful. Hopefully things are now under control. With BBella's nasty shock and the medical concerns over Matt's wife (delighted to hear that things are going well), this website may be presenting us with an example of "convergence"!
> 
> Matt, I owe you a reply, and although the debate has moved on, the point I wish to make has not lost its relevance. In questioning the reliability of science, I wasn't thinking of technology, which of course has its own built-in criterion for "truth": either it works or it doesn't! My focus is on those branches relevant to our discussion on design versus chance, i.e. is there or isn't there an intelligence running the universe? I chose dating as an illustration because Tony had raised the subject, and it's an important factor in the debate. The design lobby argues that there hasn't been enough time for evolution to reach its present state, and the chance lobby says there has. The shorter the time, the greater the odds against chance, and vice versa. My argument about "constants" was only meant to refer to dating. After reading your post, Matt, I decided to investigate further, and came across this website:
> 
> http://www.buzzardhut.net/Crunch/Dating.htm
> -First off, I hope everything is fine! I understand how stressful that can be. I order plenty of rest for both of you! -TO the discussion: I don't think you can throw off technology so easily. The level of which we can say we understand some scientific principle, can ultimately be determined by the ability with which we can exploit that principle. Technology is how we humans apply what we've discovered, and is its own test on the validity of our theories. Your computer tests atomic decay, the speed of light, the conductance and capacitance of electricity, several kinds of radio waves if you have a wireless network... this list (just for computers) is extremely exhaustive. I can think of 3 scientific constants that *must* hold for a computer to "work" and I know there are more! (Not an electrical engineer.) -I will address the challenges of that website in a follow-up post. -
> This is Chapter 6 of a book called The Evolution Cruncher, which I suspect has a Creationist agenda. It's enormously long, and far too technical for me, but it's a scientific critique of current dating methods and it has truly devastating implications. Of course I'm in no position to judge its accuracy, but that is very much the point both Tony and I have been making: the layman has no way of judging the reliability of science. I agree that we have no choice, and in relation to the discussion you're now having with Tony, it's all too obvious that science like most human activities is double-sided, full of goods and bads. That is how God or Nature has made us. However, your defence that eventually science corrects itself doesn't help us a great deal, since at no given time can we ever be sure that the information we're being given (including the corrections) is accurate. We therefore need to regard its findings and above all its speculative conclusions with the Agrippan scepticism admired so much by our very own Xeno!-I will analyze that site for you, and inform the group of any objections/agreements I have. (It discusses 7 principles.) -I will have to say, that science has long since abandoned the realm of laypeople. And this isn't going to get any better!-We're in the process of seeing "robotic scientists," who can study phenomenon, and then spit out mathematical relationships. Some of these relationships (such as the one referenced in that article) are equations that span 30 printed pages and can contain up to 3 million variables. -NO HUMAN can easily understand that enough to be able to explain to even another technical scientist, much less distill it for the general public. -We're reaching a phase where "Ivory Tower" is going to have a much more priestly flavor in the future...

--
\"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.\"