I can go on for hours about the brilliance of Karl Popper. In a nutshell - after Einstein broke Newtonian physics, thereby effectively breaking SCIENCE, Popper was the guy kneeling on the floor, picking up the bits and saying 'don't worry, it's still good...'
Among the insights was this unbelievably important gem:
Science can't prove anything. It can only disprove things.
Consider the famous black swan example:
A scientist spends her life observing swans. She observes that all the swans she has ever seen are white. Based on this empirical evidence, she posits a theory that all swans are white. This theory is good, solid, SCIENCE.
One day she travels to Australia, and sees - GASP! - a black swan.
Her theory is disproven. But that doesn't mean it wasn't science when she thought of it. Now she can posit a new theory: Swans can be white or black. And again, the new theory is science.
You cannot prove science. You can only disprove it. That is what makes science science.
Isn't that terrific?
So - the connection to business models, especially as relates to the business of distributing content on the internet. As far as e-business models go, we have seen a lot of black swans. And green, and blue, and every other colour.
There have been a hundreds of different theories about how to make money from content on the internet, and one by one, they have pretty much all been disproven.
The plaguing question - 'how do I make money from content?' has not been answered. Content producers are, rightly, very worried. But for every disproved theory, we edge closer and closer to a theory that works.
The gaping flaw here is, of course, that there might not actually be a way to make proper money from content on the internet. And even once some good, viable ways are found, they are always open to being disproved. But if there is a way to do it, the only way we're going to find out is by observing, hypothesising, and testing, for as long as it takes.
Or until bankruptcy, whichever comes first.
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And that, of course, is what makes creationism, and indeed most claims of most religions, nonsense. They cannot be disproved.
ReplyDelete@Zoe:
ReplyDeleteone the biggest challenges (as I see it) in terms of making money from content on the intertron is that Uniqueness Sells, but there are very few producers who are consistently unique enough to make people part with their money. Or more to the point, the web is huge, and you're as likely as not to find the same thing in many different locations, for free. So you essentially need to ditch the swan model and become a duck.
I freely admit that that's a glib response, and I have more to say about it (specifically with an eye to our debate yesterday), but I'll save it for later.
@John (disclaimer, I am not a creationist - I am, in fact agnostic):
Yes & No. As you say, Creationism cannot be considered via scientific methods, but then that's hardly a problem for creationists, given that God's existence is a given for them (as the inviolate truth of scientific method is for the rest of us) & the foundations of scientific thought don't apply to Him. All that really achieves is to remove Logical Positivism as a viable discussion point.
To add fuel to the Creationist fire, as Zoe pointed out, science itself is subject to Logical Positivism in a kind of meta-critique, and could be demonstrated to be completely empty, whereas God cannot.
Don't get me wrong, I fully agree that it's not a logical point of view, but then that's the whole point of faith :)
@ChrisM OH NO RELIGION!
ReplyDeleteHere is where I super-cautiously enter the fray...
I'm an Anglican. I go to church, sing the songs, (try to) love my neighbour - the whole shebang.
I also love my science. I really do.
So I am (tentatively, cautiously) going to disagree with one thing you've written above -
"...God's existence is a given for them (as the inviolate truth of scientific method is for the rest of us)..."
Here's the thing: I'm down with the inviolate truth of the scientific method. I really am. Most of us religious types are. I don't see faith in God and science as being even slightly at odds.
And for most of human history - neither did the scientists. The perceived division is actually very recent.
Islam got this spot-on back in the Medieval era. When Europe was still talking about the four humours, Islamic scholars had a pretty good understanding of how anatomy worked and some pretty solid models of disease (and astronomy and maths and so on and so on). The point they were working from was this:
God made the world, and he made human beings with the capacity to understanding the world. Therefore, using God-given intelligence to understand the God-made world brings greater Glory to God.
...and that's kind of my take too. Science is what shows us just how amazing the world is. The alternative - trying to squeeze the magnificence of the universe into one story (especially when the story contradicts itself, which it does) - that is the very definition of Doing It Wrong.
(Unfortunately, Islamic science eventually fell to bits, but that's another story...)
See, I agonised over that comment for ages before I slapped it down, because I knew you'd come back with something like this :-p
ReplyDelete1) I used the word 'inviolate' quite deliberately. If you have a God which does not conform to scientific method, then you surely accept that said method is no longer inviolate? Not a criticism on my part, just a statement of How It Is.
1b) "...the rest of us" sounded discriminatory, but wasn't - I didn't want to eat up too much of the comment space by being more specific.
So, in conclusion:
I agree, there's WAY more to the universe than the human mind can currently encompass. I don't *think* you were talking about trying to squeeze a description of the Magnificence of Being into one scientific theory, but if you were, I have another response for that. (ask me about Immaterialism when you have an hour to spare). Science is, in fact, a great many stories; they just all happen to be in the same anthology.
I'm not suggesting that religion can't exist alongside science, because I agree that spiritualism has value. However, I do believe that there are some things which cannot be discussed to a satisfying conclusion between the two fields.
By definition, Creationism is incompatible with Logical Positivism because it cannot be disproven (is that even a word?). That's also not a criticism, but it does mean that Scientific Method and Creationism can't be debated in those terms, and that Creationists implicitly accept that Karl Popper gave us an incomplete set of tools. (Whether a complete set of tools exist is a different question entirely). Does that make sense?
OK. *Rubs hands in an 'I'm thinking' manner*
ReplyDeleteYou write "If you have a God which does not conform to scientific method, then you surely accept that said method is no longer inviolate?"
To which I would say - if God is, then God is perfect, which means God can't be contradictory to truth because that would make God imperfect. And the scientific process is about revealing truth.
By 'one story', I was actually going for the Bible - sorry that was unclear :) So basically my point there could be better expressed as:
'Creationism, and all other instances of trying to force scientific truths to conform to religious stories, are not just unscientific. By failing to appreciate the true glory of the world, which is revealed through science, creationism et al is an insult to God (and probably idolatrous, for that matter).'
Which is to say - the Creationists are Doing It Wrong.
Clearer?
Logical presumptions aside, IF God is, then Truth is defined as a function of God & God's actions. Therefore, if the Scientific Method fails to explain or integrate with God or God's actions, irrespective of it's intended purpose, that is because it is an incomplete or inaccurate human (read "flawed") system. However, this only holds if you accept premise 1 :) If you don't, then Scientific Method lives to fight another day, and Creationism becomes a tautological argument.
ReplyDeleteI'm in agreement with point number 2. In all honestly, I just wanted to point out that Logical Positivism is as much a weapon FOR the Creationists as against them.
There's one step here that I think can pull all the threads together:
ReplyDeleteIf God is, then God, God's purpose, and God's actions, are all both a) unknown and b) unknowable.
Therefore, even if the scientific method is not compatible with God/God's actions/God's purposes, we as human beings will never know about it. Which is basically the same as there being no difference.
This actually goes right back to the start of the argument, because the scientific method has a failsafe in falsifiability exactly to accommodate for incomplete and inaccurate (flawed) results. In accordance with the method, valid scientific results can be wrong. If God is then God cannot be wrong. Therefore the scientific method is a system that brings us not to the truth but *closer* to truth, which is God's, which is why I back the Islamic science model.