I'm only human, so I have my prejudices and blind spots. My strength lies in good reading comprehension combined with a wide interest and (for my age) a lot of experience reading scientific articles and popular science critically. I can't really support this opinion of myself online, so you can take it with a pinch of salt if you like. I can try to convince you by saying that people tend to seek out and trust my judgment — people sometimes come to me when they've read about something in the newspaper and want to know what it's about. So I usually understand things very quickly, and I've made it my business to learn a little about everything. Okay, so what?tinythinker wrote:Just curious: how much from science do you evaluate before accepting it, and what is entailed in such validation? It is certain that no one could be well trained enough and have a sufficient background let alone have the time, materials and access to thoroughly evaluate something someone claims to be true.QuantumTroll wrote: I think science is a valid form of knowledge. One of the better sources, because it (by definition!) yields truth derived from multiple perspectives and no matter who's doing the investigation. So I accept scientific facts as things that are known to be true. If I believe something, and science suggests me to be wrong, then I change my mind (after evaluating the science, of course!).
Many things have been scientific facts that are now considered wrong, and correcting such facts wasn't strictly a matter of recursive testing and data sifting in a self-correcting set of mechanisms. People had a cultural and personal biases which led them to think certain ways, propose certain ideas, and identify particular observations as reliable and meaningful (i.e. facts). This is especially problematic when there are competing ways of explaining something within the scientific community in terms of deciding what is or isn't true or accurate for a given area of study.
Some people reject prevailing scientific ideas and investigate other kinds of scenarios and facts with a scientific approach even before there is any legitimate reason from the viewpoint of the scientific model to seriously doubt or challenge the conventional view, and these people are often ridiculed. Yet some of them are later "accepted" and lauded for their insights.
None of this is to trash the reliability of science, but I know too much to think that merit via logic and evidence are the sole drivers of scientific opinion or consensus. Arguments from popularity, appeals to authority, peer pressure from cliques within a particular field of study, attempting to define problems and evidence in a way that favors one view over another (i.e. privileging some models or data sets a priori), cultural and historical influences, personal experiences and psychological disposition. These are all involved. Too often I have found that it is presumed that science is immune to such influences, or is influenced by them only minimally. This is problematic because it then allows such biases to hide under the popularized image of science as always being objective, impartial, and self-correcting. Minority views and views frowned on by the mainstream opinion are almost automatically presumed to be flawed with inferior evidence or logic (else why wouldn't they be more popular and more widely accepted?).
In another recent thread I gave a couple of examples, of the number of species of hominid (Ernst Mayr insisted there could be only one so that "rewrote" the commonly accepted taxa for decades) and the observation of what used to be referred to as continental drift, which eventually led to the idea of plate tectonics (continental drift was opposed by Simpson, who felt his biogeographic models made more sense). There are of course many more. And these at least are more reasonable examples with some compelling arguments. Some arguments "seemed" to fit so well within a larger framework of scientifically compatible or established assumptions that for a time they cut off serious speculation or investigation of alternatives. As someone who works in science I hope I am not presuming too much that you will find at least a ring of truth in what I write here.
The universe is coherent. Puzzle pieces fit together. Things that do not fit are either wrong, or the puzzle has been laid wrongly in the past. I'm good at laying this scientific puzzle and can usually spot things that do not fit.* I can often spot poorly done statistics and claims that go beyond the evidence as well, which is a good skill to have when reading articles. What's more is that I tend think critically about these things even when I agree with the conclusion of the articles. Probably less, but still enough that I've criticized people I've agreed with. So I'm pretty confident that I can determine correctly whether a puzzle piece fits or not.
But what if a whole patch of the puzzle is wrong? What about paradigm shifts? Can I base a worldview on what is essentially an opinion that can change completely in a decade? Here, I like to bring up history of science, and the historical fact that science doesn't work the way it used to. It used to be that people believed one thing without sufficient cause, and then a scientific discovery overthrew the old paradigm. People believed Lamarckism not because they had evidence, but because they had no way of determining if it was a good theory. Ditto Hobbe's Plenism. If you examine the history of paradigm shifts, they've only occurred when ignorance is replaced with new data and a theory to explain it. We've never really overthrown a previous known, just a previously adored belief. And we're running out of those, quite frankly. I try to be open-minded about open questions, but I can't help but look at the entire puzzle as a whole and extrapolate to the areas that aren't covered.
Thus far, I've discussed only science and scientific questions. Keeping the puzzle analogy, we can see science as an image of a game board, describing the rules and playing field for existence. Everything we do is done within the confines of this board, and everything that happens is a result of the rules defined by the board. What we don't get by examining the board is an answer to questions like "what should we do", "what do we want to do", "what is it like". Questions like "what can we do", which seem to be theoretically answerable by looking at the game board, can be so complex that we only get the vaguest of answers from that quarter. For these kinds of questions, we need something that isn't science.
*(This is a game I've played, actually. Someone picks a surprising scientific fact that they suspect nobody else knows, and says a topic (e.g. mammals or sex chromosomes or particle physics). The other participants invent "facts" that sound plausible but are false. Then we guess at which "fact" is the true one. Very fun and often very funny stuff! Anyway, my experiences playing this game gives me confidence in the breadth and accuracy of my scientific erudition.)
Hmm, I'd say "yes" and "no". "Yes", in the sense that someone might be able to distract himself from ever thinking about the big questions in life that yield beliefs. "No", in the sense that someone opening the door into a dark room will automatically believe that the room is empty. Is that a satisfactory answer? I'm not sure I understood the intent of your question...Do you think it is possible for someone to be mentally coherent or to function without beliefs?QuantumTroll wrote:I do not think that science is the only valid form of knowledge. I think that's a patently ridiculous assertion, because I know lots of unscientific things. I know that I love the flowers in the spring, the berries in the summer, and the mushrooms in the fall. I know that my wife is beautiful and that having a baby would be wonderful. I know how to explain math and computers to interested young people. I know something ineffable about people. I know that the universe is consistent, and I believe that a good and omnipotent God with a personal interest in humans is not consistent with the way the universe appears. These are various forms of unscientific bits of knowledge and a belief.