I was thinking about some of the biggest things I’ve achieved in life. At the outset to large tasks I’ve had no idea how the crap I would get them done (my dissertation springs to mind as a good relatable example) but usually what has meant I completed these things is just having faith that I could do it.
I’ve heard/read that is one of the main things alot of the great scientists put above being smarts and stuff- that and imagination. Same with business; they say determination and perseverance are king.
So in these cases where you don’t yet have any empirical evidence to support your belief that such and such must be so one must continue on the assumption that it is so or else they would never try and then prove or disprove what they set out to. On second thought does even believing you can do something and setting out to do something mean you’ve already made some preliminary assumptions about the field? I guess it must.
I dunno if it is total blind faith though. I’m more sure of myself now than when I was younger when starting new tasks simply because, although I know nothing/very little about the new task, I know I’ve figured out hard stuff in the past so am confident I will be able to figure out the task at hand.
Copernicans believed in a heliocentric model long before Kepler showed that a heliocentric model was mathematically more elegant (and hence likely to be true) than a geocentric one.
Gregor Mendel’s experiments on genetics needed for him to believe in his hypothesis and its conclusions to even start the experiment. Even after that, the results he obtained are, today, believed to have been cooked up to agree with his hypothesis, since the probability of obtaining the results with as few samples as he did is found to be extremely low. His results, whether cooked up or not, were necessary to convince others to take his ideas seriously and do their own experiments to be convinced of its validity.
Often, in science as in life, conviction about the truth of something precedes evidence. Usually such conviction is the result of the appeal of the model itself. But if such conviction doesn’t produce mechanisms to verify/falsify the model, it is not of much use in science.
From what you say above aren’t we getting into quantum double slit type stuff.
I.e. We create what we think.
Thought preceding matter.
It would follow Nietzshce’s perspectivism in there being no truth with a capital T just infinite perspectives.
I dunno about that.
I’ve become much more of an empiricist since finishing my philosophy degree so I have generally steered clear of metaphysics although I should not shy away from it if the breadcrumbs are pointing me in that direction.
I was just thinking…
In such preliminary stages you don’t have to believe the thing in question is true but just that it is possible.
What could this mean?
Not necessarily that everything IS true, but maybe everything could be true if you make it so.
Like with the guys who made the 1st airplane. It certainly wasn’t true and they had no previous examples to go on to say that it could be so but they believed it was possible and made it happen.
If everytime someone were convinced about a hypothesis he could generate evidence from such conviction, yes. But as it happens, the number of times such convictions prove to be wrong after gathering evidence is much more frequent than the number of times they come out right. No one remembers the times they were wrong, they are too numerous.
Science has to do with the nature of things. We are interested and curious about what is this shit. I don’t think faith plays an important part. You come up with an idea and then you need to prove it with repeated hard evidence. We are hard wired to be asking what is it all about. We can’t help it unless we have neurosurgery or booze.
Anyway that is OT to my OP (not blaming you, was my own fault there).
I’m inquiring into why some people will be losers and follow the pack and say ‘oh I can’t do that, it’s impossible’ whereas others will be trailblazers and change the world.
I spose that is what I am interested in within the field of science.
faith can be useful in cases where there is a placebo effect. zeus’s existence, mythra’s existence, jesus’s existence, god’s existence are not subject to the placebo effect. believing in them won’t make it true - and not believing in them won’t make it false as well (though that’s probably not an issue ).
Not necessarily. It would remain a hypothesis until proven to be true or false. But one necessarily has to come out with stating what kind of evidence once gathered will prove it or disprove it. If not, it cannot be a scientific hypothesis. So if any scientific hypothesis continues to remain a hypothesis, it can only be because the conditions necessary for gathering the evidence (that proves it/disproves it) are not here yet.
For example, Einstein’s General Reativity predicted bending of light near massive bodies. Since detecting the bending as calculated by General Relativity using the technology of the day was possible only for objects as massive as the sun and the sun itself is a source of light, they had to wait for a few years until the total solar eclipse of 1919 to gather evidence one way or another. If light from other stars did bend around the sun, General Relativity would be true in principle and false if it did not. As it turned out light did bend around the sun and to the degree calculated from General Relativity establishing General Relativity as a valid theory, since no other theory of the day could account for the behaviour. If the predicted behaviour had not happened, General Relativity would have been considered wrong, not that they gave up before they proved themselves right.
So between 1915, when General Relativity was proposed, and 1919 it was an unproven, but falsifiable hypothesis.
Coming out with a hypothesis doesn’t count for much by itself in science regardless of how impressed the originator/defender is with the hypothesis. The onus is on the originator/defender of the hypothesis to come out with a way of verifying/falsifying the hypothesis i.e, predicting phenomena hithero unknown and whose existence cannot be explained by any existing theory or competing hypothesis and whose absence automatically invalidates the hypothesis.
If you are attempting to make the existence of God or some such supernatural entity a scientific hypothesis, that is what you have to do: predict a phenomenon hitherto unknown and whose occurance cannot be explained/predicted by any existing scientific theory or competing hypothesis and whose absence would automatically mean no God or supernatural entity exists.
For example you could claim that you are God and will make the moon disappear forever at exactly 00:00 hrs on Jan 01, 2011 GMT. Since there is no scientific theory predicting such a phenomenon and there is no competing hypothesis that would do the same, whether you are God or not will be evident by Jan 01, 2011 GMT and everyday after that (at least for those who have seen the moon before you made it disappear forever). If a hundred others like you make the same claim before the event, it may be a little tricky to find out which one of you is God (assuming only God, and not a lesser one like an angel, could have made that event happen) and further evidence would be required to verify the claim.
I am really interested by the scientific method itself and the factors which make it all up.
I’ve found it quite tricky to find any reading on just the scientific method itself, i.e. just the bearbones model and all it entails as with most science reading it is about a specific subject and the scientific method is usually presumed and taken for granted.
Could you recommend any books/reading which may offer a rigorous analysis of the scientific method itself?
I heard an audiobook by Sagan on it once but that was pretty introductory. That was fine at the time but I want to go more in depth on it to understand its parameters more.
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