Philosophers, Physicists and Cranks

[sol invictus]

suppose we run the forecast model 100 times with slightly different initial condution, the distribution of initial conditions reflecting our uncertainty in the current state of the atmosphere. and 80 of those 100 had rain at the space-time point in question. we'd like to say there was an 80% chance of rain there-then.

I understand what you're saying, but that sounds like a rather ill-defined procedure. How do you put a measure on the distribution of initial conditions? Suppose I give you a measure, and you find that moving a fixed distance in some direction in initial condition space makes a very big difference to the prediction, while moving that same distance in another direction doesn't. But if you change the measure, you'll move a different distance in those two directions and so you might get a completely different answer for the probability.

 

[lenny]

I understand what you're saying, but that sounds like a rather ill-defined procedure.

welcome to the wonderful world of Bayesian philosphy.

How do you put a measure on the distribution of initial conditions?

place a probability density reflecting uncertainty in the initial condition on the state space of your model, then drawn from that distribution to form your ensemble of model initial conditions.

 

[sol invictus]

welcome to the wonderful world of Bayesian philosphy.

I'm not sure what this has to do with either Bayes or philosophy. I thought we were talking about meteorology.

place a probability density reflecting uncertainty in the initial condition on the state space of your model, then drawn from that distribution to form your ensemble of model initial conditions.

You didn't answer my question. How do you draw from that ensemble? To do so, you might divide it up into a grid and then check each grid point. But how do you determine the grid? What's the definition of a "square" (or cubic or whatever) grid? There is no natural way to define that, as far as I can see, and the answer (for the probability of rain) is probably extremely sensitive to that arbitrary choice.

 

[Acleron]

all we can have before human trials is the expectation of "some sort of gain".

the example is real, and i expect "valid". i am told some drug trials in Europe have different stopping rules than in the US, this due in part to the differences in the definition of the "number of patients".

there is a large literature on when to stop trials early, which i do not know. but the basic question is simple: a balance is sought between doing harm to the patients in the study and stopping the study early due to a statistically meaningless fluctuation.

if we only count the individuals in the test set, then we will stop the trial earler than if we consider the potential benifit lost by future patients IF we stop the trial "too early" and in fact fail to recognize an effective treatment as such.

continuing the trail puts those in (an ensemble of) trail(s) at risk.

stopping too early puts those that would have benefited from the incorrectly rejected treatment at risk.

the question of who to consider is not one of statistics or science, yet it plays a major role in the experimental design.

i hope that is a bit clearer.

No it is not. If there is a measure by which you can decide to stop the trial then that is science, if there is no measure it is not science. If you claim this is in the provenace of philosophers then it is merely an opinion, which then means it has no more weight than the opinion of the general public.
I have asked several times if anyone can point to where a philosopher can help a scientist. The nearest has been a response that philosophy can help in the thinking process. This is quite insulting, any scientist who doesn't know how to think is suffering a severe handicap, and a philosopher is unlikely to be of any help.

 

[Skwinty]

I have asked several times if anyone can point to where a philosopher can help a scientist. The nearest has been a response that philosophy can help in the thinking process. This is quite insulting, any scientist who doesn't know how to think is suffering a severe handicap, and a philosopher is unlikely to be of any help.

I understand your feelings here as posters on this forum tend to cherry pick points from an opinion to which they reply. Now, given that I started this thread, my point of reference was Einstein and his opinion of philosophy. Now, I know that Einstein died in 1955, but my belief is that his opinion is just as valid today as it was back then, although there has been significant progress in science since 1955.

Now, Einstein did not approve of all philosophers or philosophy. In 1922, Einsteins theory of Relativity, which has philosophical tones, was the centre of discussion in philosophical circles. Bergson challenged this theory whilst others embraced it. Of Bergson's philosophy Einstein said "May God forgive him".

On Mach, Einstein said, "The critical reasoning required for his discovery of the special theory of relativity was decisively furthered by his readings of Machs philosophical writings"

This was in spite of the other opinions Einstein had on Mach, "Mach's system consists of the study of relations which exist between experimental data, and according to Mach, Science is the totality of these relations. That is a bad point of view: in effect Mach made a catalog and not a system. Mach was as good at mechanics as he was wretched at philosophy. This short sighted view led him to reject the existence of atoms"

Einstein also said that he had always believed that the invention of scientific concepts and the building of theories upon them was one of the creative properties of the human mind. Einsteins view was opposed to Mach, because Mach assumed that the laws of science were only an economical way of describing a large collection of facts.

 

[godless dave]

In 1922, Einsteins theory of Relativity, which has philosophical tones,

In what way do Special Relativity and General Relativity have philosophical tones?

As you've worded them, those two statements do not in any way conflict.

 

[Zelenius]

Einstein's philosophy

Without a doubt Einstein was a very influential genius in a class by himself, but he was a theoretical physicist above all else, not a philosopher. I notice that a few people keep claiming Einstein was a philosopher aside from being a scientist or that he was a philosopher primarily - this is wrong I believe.

The truth is, Einstein was a scientist who was deeply influenced by philosophy, and this appears to have played an important role in his thinking. Isaacson's biography, which I just read, focuses on Einstein's evolution as a scientist/thinker, of which his shifting philosophical views played an important part.

Einstein was influenced by Hume, Kant, Spinoza and Mach, among others. In my understanding, early on Einstein was basically an empiricist, but later he became more of a realist. As we all know, Einstein had a hard time accepting quantum mechanics. He was one of the most vocal critics of quantum mechanics, and vigorously attacked it - his attacks seemed just as much philosophical as they are scientific. As Einstein developed into a full-fledged realist, his belief in an objective reality, existing independently of our subjective experience, became increasingly important to him.

As much as his relativity theories "over turned" much of the old Newtonian order, he still envisioned the universe as well-ordered, mechanical, deterministic, harmonious, and governed by eternal, unbreakable mathematical laws. Of course, another reason he thought quantum mechanics was "flawed" or "incomplete" was because it was increasingly obvious to scientists that QM was irreconcilable with general relativity. Einstein also thought he stood a good chance of discovering the ultimate "theory of everything", but unfortunately, the probabilistic, often non-deterministic, counter-intuitive, "weird" world of QM threw a huge monkey wrench into Einstein's deterministic universe("God does not play dice"). QM was almost the opposite of Einstein's universe, he was like a fish out of water when it came to dealing with this new quantum universe. Perhaps it can be argued that Einstein attacked QM more as a "philosopher" than as a scientist, and perhaps his strong philosophical views prevented him from trying to work with QM to make newer scientific discoveries; by the 1920s, Einstein was falling behind the times as QM took over. His biases and prejudices seemed to have very strong philosophical roots, rather than scientific roots, although he was still a scientist primarily. Einstein completed almost all his most important scientific work before the 1920s.

As far as influence on philosophy goes, Einstein's discoveries do not seem to have influenced philosophy all that much, except perhaps for using his ideas as metaphors. I'm not saying his ideas had no influence, just that his influence wasn't particularly strong, and in no way does this imply a weakness on Einstein's part(part of the reason for this may be that not enough people made the effort to understand his theories, including philosophers). Darwin's ideas seem to have been far more influential than Einstein's when it came to philosophy, but few people call Darwin a "philosopher". To get a good idea of Einstein's philosophy, it would be a good idea to read his correspondences with Niels Bohr and Kurt Godel, and then get back to me and explain it to me in simple language, since I am a layman, not a scientist.

 

[lenny]

In what way do Special Relativity and General Relativity have philosophical tones?

isn't the issue that Einstein felt that, thinking merely within the "physics of the day" he would not have come up with these theories?
and that Hume's philosophy helped him take a different/more productive view, making the discovery of GR possible.

if so, doesn't that count as a philospher (Hume) doing something of value in/to science?

 

[lenny]

The nearest has been a response that philosophy can help in the thinking process. This is quite insulting, any scientist who doesn't know how to think is suffering a severe handicap, and a philosopher is unlikely to be of any help.

so would you claim a mathematican cannot help a physicist without insulting her (as any scientist who doesn't know how to do mathematics...) ?

 

[Acleron]

Originally Posted by Acleron
The nearest has been a response that philosophy can help in the thinking process. This is quite insulting, any scientist who doesn't know how to think is suffering a severe handicap, and a philosopher is unlikely to be of any help.

so would you claim a mathematican cannot help a physicist without insulting her (as any scientist who doesn't know how to do mathematics...) ?

Let's break this down so that even Lenny can understand.

I did not and do not equate a mathematician with anything do with philosophy.

I did not assume all physicists are female.

Anyone who doesn't understand the basics of mathematics (adding, subtraction, division, multiplication and Boolean logic is not a scientist).

Your statement is fatuous.

 

[fishkr]

I have asked several times if anyone can point to where a philosopher can help a scientist. The nearest has been a response that philosophy can help in the thinking process. This is quite insulting, any scientist who doesn't know how to think is suffering a severe handicap, and a philosopher is unlikely to be of any help.

I'm hoping you're being a bit disingenuous here, rather than naive or simply arrogant. Surely you must know as part of your education that at one time Science and Philosophy were one and the same thing. It is only the passage of time that has separated them. Aristotle, Democritus, Newton and Bohr are a lineage, not a discontinuity. Philosophy doesn't need to "help" your thinking process. It IS your thinking process.

As things stand, a contemporary field biologist may not have much to say to a Q mechanic, but that may mean nothing other than "knowledge" is spreading out, becoming ever more specialized. It doesn't mean they aren't connected.

Philosophy and the rest of Science -) have, historically and contemporaneously, been efforts to find structure, context and meaning in the midst of the incomprehensible. In that regard, nothing has changed (except for the Post Modernists that is).

Furthermore, arguments to the effect that a cetain field of knowledge can't be informed by a competing field of knowledge are kind of silly. Scientific knowledge is nothing if not born up by the past, the mistakes and triumphs, each wrong-turn probably representing a personal sacrifice made by a now forgotten researcher, made to the advance of the totality of human understanding. The ways in which Scientific knowledge, including Philosophy, weave a connected, mutually re-enforcing 3000 + year web of study, evidence, and documentation are so numerous you'd have to be a Creationist to overlook them.

Evidence: well, maybe you give me an example of a specific model or experiment or trial and I'll do my meager best to provide context and projection based on the classical argument I'm making. ?

Maybe I just see your posts as a bit arrogant, frankly, in that way one might view a teenager who suddenly knows "everything", until they grow up and realize that most of what they know they learned from Mom and Dad. Or the neighbor's promiscuous daughter. You Think, Therefore You Know.

 

[fishkr]

On Philosophy and Science

As todays physicist often say that the "WHY" question is better left to the philosophers because it has no consequence in physics.

Why? How and why have virtually the same meaning in an empiracle context. If you mean to imply the will of God or some such thing all bets are off, but . . . "Why does the electron have no measurable position?" and "How is it that an electron has no measurable velocity?", or, "How does a gene mutate?" (its DNA structure changes due to inherent instability or environmental factors) and, "Why does a gene mutate?" (outside factors or inherent instablity) mean the same thing. ?

 

[lenny]

Let's break this down so that even Lenny can understand.

thank you. it would help me understand where you are coming from if you also answered the "yes/no" question i asked.

I did not and do not equate a mathematician with anything do with philosophy.

no you did not, i was drawing an analogy.

Anyone who doesn't understand the basics of mathematics (adding, subtraction, division, multiplication and Boolean logic is not a scientist).

i aimed to tease out the difference between "basics of mathematics" ("knowing how to think") and the advancement of mathematics (knowing which concepts to think about/question/reject)

mathematicians create tools, not necessarily with the aim of advancing science but nevertheless often of great value to science. philosophers sometimes play an analogous role regarding the methods and concepts used in science.

a good deal of scientific research is done within a given framework, one way mathematicians and philosophers "help scientists" is by providing tools and context, "help" which is of value in suggesting how one might profitably change the framework itself.

 

[Acleron]

I'm hoping you're being a bit disingenuous here, rather than naive or simply arrogant. Surely you must know as part of your education that at one time Science and Philosophy were one and the same thing. It is only the passage of time that has separated them. Aristotle, Democritus, Newton and Bohr are a lineage, not a discontinuity.

Your first sentence is purely strawmen, I am none of them. Because you cannot dissociate logic and thinking from speculation do not include me in your world view of philosophy. If you had read my earlier posts you may have realised that I had already stated your precise point about the convergence of philosophers and scientists over time. That does not mean that philosophers at present have anything to say about science or anything else unless they can prove it.

Philosophy doesn't need to "help" your thinking process. It IS your thinking process.

And what definition of philosophy leads you to this conclusion.

As things stand, a contemporary field biologist may not have much to say to a Q mechanic, but that may mean nothing other than "knowledge" is spreading out, becoming ever more specialized. It doesn't mean they aren't connected.

If by Q you mean somebody who can work with quantum mechanics, so what? Your statement has as much relevance as saying that a pest control officer may have nothing to say to a computer programmer. They may be connected, they may be brothers, so what?

Philosophy and the rest of Science -) have, historically and contemporaneously, been efforts to find structure, context and meaning in the midst of the incomprehensible. In that regard, nothing has changed (except for the Post Modernists that is).

Here is where you confuse the definitions of philosophers and scientists over time. When most things were very uncertain, the people who investigated this uncertainty were first called philosophers. As people like Newton, Hooke and Maxwell showed that vague hand waving was unnecessary and that precise equations could predict how the world and the universe worked, the philosophers had a choice. They could either become scientists, or they could retreat into the strange world of non-science. To their discredit, that is precisely what they have done, and post modernistic bollocks is all they have achieved in science. I ask you, the same question, what can they do that helps either a scientist or science. I suspect more hand waving as per your post.

Furthermore, arguments to the effect that a cetain field of knowledge can't be informed by a competing field of knowledge are kind of silly. Scientific knowledge is nothing if not born up by the past, the mistakes and triumphs, each wrong-turn probably representing a personal sacrifice made by a now forgotten researcher, made to the advance of the totality of human understanding. The ways in which Scientific knowledge, including Philosophy, weave a connected, mutually re-enforcing 3000 + year web of study, evidence, and documentation are so numerous you'd have to be a Creationist to overlook them.

What this has to do with the argument, I suspect only a philosopher would be able to discuss, it has nothing to do with the question I asked.

Evidence: well, maybe you give me an example of a specific model or experiment or trial and I'll do my meager best to provide context and projection based on the classical argument I'm making. ?

Maybe I just see your posts as a bit arrogant, frankly, in that way one might view a teenager who suddenly knows "everything", until they grow up and realize that most of what they know they learned from Mom and Dad. Or the neighbor's promiscuous daughter. You Think, Therefore You Know.

Yes, well at least I don't go for ad hominems, and what this has to do with your neighbour's daughter I have no idea.

But although I asked for evidence for another posters assertions and you have given none at all, I'll give you an example of something that was achieved in science with no help from modern or ancient philosophy at all.

QED

 

[Acleron]

thank you. it would help me understand where you are coming from if you also answered the "yes/no" question i asked.

I apologise, I missed that question, can you reference the post it was in?

no you did not, i was drawing an analogy.

You cannot draw an analogy by implying I didn't say something.

i aimed to tease out the difference between "basics of mathematics" ("knowing how to think") and the advancement of mathematics (knowing which concepts to think about/question/reject)

mathematicians create tools, not necessarily with the aim of advancing science but nevertheless often of great value to science. philosophers sometimes play an analogous role regarding the methods and concepts used in science.

There is great debate about the role of mathematicians in science, but nobody I know confuses a mathematician with a philosopher.

a good deal of scientific research is done within a given framework, one way mathematicians and philosophers "help scientists" is by providing tools and context, "help" which is of value in suggesting how one might profitably change the framework itself.

Well, I suppose I now know somebody who does confuse them, yourself. BTW, the mathematician rarely supplies context, that is normally done by the scientist.

 

[balrog666]

I apologise, I missed that question, can you reference the post it was in?


You cannot draw an analogy by implying I didn't say something.





There is great debate about the role of mathematicians in science, but nobody I know confuses a mathematician with a philosopher.



Well, I suppose I now know somebody who does confuse them, yourself. BTW, the mathematician rarely supplies context, that is normally done by the scientist.

There is no debate. Mathematics is simply a tool, nothing more. And while all tools have uses, not all tools are useful for all applications.

And, on the contrary, philosophy is not a tool as there is no useful function for it.

 

[lenny]

I apologise, I missed that question, can you reference the post it was in?

no worries. the question was in my post 169.

you quoted it in full in your post 170.

 

[Acleron]

no worries. the question was in my post 169.

you quoted it in full in your post 170.

Then read 170.
Mathematicians cannot be equated with philosophers.

 

[fishkr]

Your first sentence is purely strawmen, I am none of them.

[No straw there anywhere. Or do you mean first para? In any case I wasn't trying to refute your argument, just establish the narrowness under foot.]

And what definition of philosophy leads you to this conclusion.

[P and S both hang their hats on the application of organized observation, critical interpretation of observed data or behavior, the rejection of "magical thinking" in favor of empirical explaination, etc., etc. and the formulation of reason based descriptions of how things are, what they mean, how they fit together. Philosophy and Science have far more in common than they have in contrast. Science places more emphasis on the strict, "hypothosis, experiment, confirmation" formula whereas Philosophy might take a looser, "observation, maybe experiment, don't quite confirm, and extend the period of speculation" approach, which is probably why you and many others take exception . . .

But nonetheless, I would hold up the example of Newton vs. Goethe on Color Theory as a good example of how a (fundamentally) philosophical approach (Goethe) and a more rigorous scientific one (Newton) can both yield very important results. ]

If by Q you mean somebody who can work with quantum mechanics, so what? Your statement has as much relevance as saying that a pest control officer may have nothing to say to a computer programmer. They may be connected, they may be brothers, so what?

[So what? They are both using tools which come from the exact same factory. The pest contoller is spraying an engineered petroleum based product predicted and formulated by a chemical engineering team guided by the work of the same men who laid the groundwork for QED and the silicon chip, the whole enchilada. Unless the programmer is working on a UFT on the side, they are both just technicians. Tool users.]

Here is where you confuse the definitions of philosophers and scientists over time. When most things were very uncertain, the people who investigated this uncertainty were first called philosophers. As people like Newton, Hooke and Maxwell showed that vague hand waving was unnecessary and that precise equations could predict how the world and the universe worked, the philosophers had a choice. They could either become scientists, or they could retreat into the strange world of non-science. To their discredit, that is precisely what they have done, and post modernistic bollocks is all they have achieved in science.

[And here is exactly where your arrogance is most flagrant:

"When most things were uncertain . . ."

Exactly how do you propose to judge the amount of what was known/unknown in Aristotle's time against what is known/unkown in ours?

Incrementally? "We now know that the sum total of our knowledge, though incomplete, is greater than before . . . . "

In the Absolute? "Although the sum total of our knowledge will never be complete, and as it seems, the more knowledge grows so does the unknown, at least we can take solice in the future of Mystery . . . "]

I don't go for ad hominems, and what this has to do with your neighbour's daughter I have no idea.

[How do you know that calling me a philosopher isn't an ad hominem?]

[Regarding the "neighbors daughter" , maybe you should rent a sense of humor . . .]

I'll give you an example of something that was achieved in science with no help from modern or ancient philosophy at all.

QED

So QED erected it'self without context, without pre-existing ideas, without . . .

We can both agree on Post Modernist Bollocks, by the way.

And do look again at Newton/Goethe, it really is interesting how they each found important truths from such differing methodologies.


Peace,

M

 

[lenny]

Then read 170.
Mathematicians cannot be equated with philosophers.

i do not think anyone has suggested that they could be.
i was suggesting that the service mathematicians provide to scientists is in some ways similar to that provided by philosophers to scientists.

I apologise, I missed that question, can you reference the post it was in?

so would you claim a mathematican cannot help a physicist without insulting her (as any scientist who doesn't know how to do mathematics...) ?

the yes/no question was: can a mathematican help a scientist without insulting him/her. i expected you would say "yes". i would say "yes".

i admit i am curious why you asked for a pointer to the question and then again failed to answer it!

i did not mean it as a trick question, but simply to propose that a mathematician helps scientists by supplying tools, doing so does not imply that the scientist cannot handle basic maths (or to imply that a professional mathematician can handle basic maths!).