What is the European Science?

Actually, European science (or the empirical, systematic study of nature) goes all the way back to at least classical antiquity (although its methods underwent some refinement during the renaissance and enlightenment era), so it’s rather old, and so is the word fact.

My enquiry was a simple one, which I await Guide to answer, before I reply more indepthly.

It starts with Archimedes.

The point is sensible, but it hinges on some representation of science that is not actual. Science as spiritual totalitarianism seems to me the dreaded vision of a dystopian future that need not to ever be.
Philosophers are pissed off at the idea that science has the monopoly of truth, but the problem is not science, instead it is with truth. This is a notion part of our heritage that is struggling to cope with our time, and if it has to be propped by the traditional semantics, something like the adequacy of words with the world, then it is no longer viable. It posits absolute points of view that are ultimately anti-perspectival (this is some neologism that you can understand given some references we share).

It is, however, true that science, for a long time. has presented itself as the torchbearer of the same search for truth that used to be at the core of Christianity, notably if seen as Platonism for the masses. So there were these first generations of scientists strained by the effort to accommodate science and faith, and found themselves to be heretics (and it ended quite badly for some of them - by the way, this also shows that the world of ‘poetic correspondences hospitable to open ended ideas’ is not exactly where we come from). Yet, at some point in the XIX century God died, That was, probably, the greatest gift of science to mankind - possibly quite misused to date.
Anyway, in my view, there’s not (or no longer) such a thing as a spiritually totalitarian science and I don’t share the view that science per se produces value judgements (my take is that value judgements are formed in perspectives, where science may be a possible background, but not the perspective itself). Nor science produces meaning. Instead, it grants (a godly) power.

Fact is a very recent concept, a recent way of thinking. Thought and the expression of thought are largely indistinguishable. The new way of thinking, could as easily go by the word “truth”, rather than “fact” and conceal the substantive change in human thinking (could and often does). The word used to mean what it still does in a few legal contexts, such as “accessory after the fact”, i.e., a conscience act for which one can be held culpable, a deed. A “ignoble fact”, to use the old phrase.

The meaning we now take for granted, thoughtlessly, was developed in the debates between the Royal Society (especially with Boyle and his empirical vacuum) and Thomas Hobbes. Fact came to take the primary meaning of reliably repeatable experimental, a kind of act. From there it developed a vulgarization to the present usage, the result of the act as “fact”. And then, simply anything in like echo.

The meaning now in power has a second, more recent, origin, in the working out of the results of Nietzsche by Georg Simmel. It spread to the universities most powerfully through Max Weber. There it separated the traditional truth, beauty, and good (tagged “values”) from the phenomena or appearances.

These meanings have slipped into vague everyday prattle.

Truthing, telling the truth, was never a scientific statement. One tells the truth, for instance, when one says one’s opinion truly. Opinion was not set off against “facts” (which always in former times meant acts or deeds) until quite recently.

Probably Gorgias would argue that’s not so recent, after all - but that’s not relevant.
I guess we can agree that it is not because I say that I state the truth that it makes it truthful.
So, what is it, exactly, “when one says one’s opinion truly”?

No. There is no theory of facts in antiquity. Or, of “neutral” / “objective” truth. Gorgias understands rhetoric (or what he teaches) to improve human beings. Underlying this is the naive view that truth must be good. Never was the view that truth is good challenged in antiquity or even imagined as a question at least until Lucretius, and there only half consciously. As, much later, Nietsche finally said it, the truth might be deadly (leaving out the “might be”, in his statement: truth is deadly).

A specific theory of un-concealment in the Greek aletheia, appears in the Gorgias, aletheia translated: truth. Our word truth is not “un-concealment” (e.g., of the good). For us, truth is tacitly thought as “neutral”, e.g., scientific in the modern sense of true or valid outside of (mere human) thought. For the Greeks, truth means the same as “inside” human thought (at least thinking it backwards from ourselves), perfection of the “unconcealed” as human truth. The Greeks assume the world exists for, essentially concerns, humans.

To be absolutely pedantic science does not deal in truth or reality which are philosophical terms
All science deals in is observable phenomena and their properties / capabilities and nothing else

75, You’ve been under the spell of the Positivists for too long a time. I can never subtract the meta from the metaphysics. After all it has given birth to the physics, as a subtraction, a differentiation, as if it was so very different.
Repetition came next, and we’re all rooting for unfavorable repeatable outcome ! (By some kind re-differentiation) into something elemental corresponding to the coming of the One World Order vis.some unified field. The way are now, languages only compound the problems.

The political charades ongoing, is representative to the orders of difficulty in finding some public support for a veritable Hydra.

Yea, authoritative conventions replace genuine search for truth in the current “science” which is only the part of science or philosophy now in power. And then whatever goes outside the conventions of the mathematical physics become the pejorative “philosophy”, since one is only interested in the current game rather than thinking through its foundation into the open. This is all obvious and the source of the current plight of the human abandoned to the mere chance occurrences of an abiotic resource (not a properly human activity but mere techne) productive of human ruin as much as relief.

Is there a “theory of facts”? I did not know that. It should be interesting. Is it something like how a set of loose observations comes to constitute a ‘fact’? Would you expand on this, please? I suspect it must be very recent, as you have insisted on that. How recent? When was it started? Any reference you can point me to?

You certainly know that Sextus Empiricus reports the core thesis in Gorgias ‘On Nature’ through these propositions:

How and/or why that (regardless if one accepts the thesis, or rejects it) would be outside the scope of the “theory of facts”?

I don’t know if that is meant to answer my question about “when one says one’s opinion truly". Anyways, if truth is «the same as “inside” human thought (at least thinking it backwards from ourselves)», I don’t really get it. I confess I have a problem in literal comprehension, but even after some conjecturing, then I don’t see what would distinguish truth from opinion or belief. Yet, if that is your thesis, viz. that truth and belief are indistinguishable, then it’s said…
I expected something different. Also because I am at odds compounding this with your reference to Plato’s Gorgias.
Here it is Socrates who supports the view that “truth must be good” (or, better, conducive to good), while Gorgias confines himself to rhetoric as the art of discourse and not for the betterment of man, rather for man’s empowerment («That good, Socrates, which is truly the greatest, being that which gives to men freedom in their own persons, and to individuals the power of ruling over others in their several states», which is not at all ‘truth will set you free’). Socrates, instead, states (and Gorgias agrees) that «knowledge and belief differ», and, with a more comprehensive view to the dialogue, if we assume that knowledge means holding something for true or false, then it seems to point to something else than “inside human thought”. In many points (e.g. from 517 to 522) Socrates assesses the use of rhetoric - as Gorgias intends it - in politics, his point being that rhetoric is dangerous if not committed to truth. And, through some kind of metaphor with gymnastic and medicine, it looks like Socrates indeed implies that truth proceeds from knowledge - and might result in bitter prescriptions. So truth would not be deadly, yet occasionally hurtful.
It might be that this still implies “inside human thought”, in the sense that Socrates hints to truth as one’s possession, but that’s not so forthcoming to me.

As for the Greeks holding this idea of truth, would that apply apply to Aristotle too?

I’m not your nurse. So, I’ve already mentioned its sources. It’s not something one can debate (since its an empirical issue and that would be a waste of time like arguing with people who deny death camps existed). Your tone is rude, so, I’m not going to point you to the best reference work on the history of this concept unless you ask more polity. I really could care less if you want to remain a naive fool your whole life that’s your business.

don’t ask guide… we should no longer want to know what would sir george martin do. there is an easier way to address this question.

first, ask not about what a ‘fact’ may or may not be, but about how the word ‘fact’ is used in language. next ask if there are any ways in which it is used that, if it is used in a ‘wrong’ way, would result in senselessness and/or confusion. finally, ask what this senselessness and confusion would be like; does it derive from an unusual use and relationship to other words in the grammar (e.g., ‘that fast blue fact jumped’), or does it derive from uses in which an error with its use would yield tangible consequences… for instance, you were mistaken to believe it wasn’t a fact that you could get a speeding ticket if you sped, and got a speeding ticket because of that. here it is clear how the word ‘fact’ is used and what it means, and being mistaken about what it means, in this instance, can be experienced.

now compare any number of philosophical theories regarding the definition of what a ‘fact’ may or may not be beyond what signification it grants when it is used in language in an ostensive way. you will find hundreds of philosophers explaining what they believe a ‘fact’ is or is not, and you’ll notice that if any of them were wrong, it wouldn’t make any difference in an ostensive way. of course, a specific use of the word ‘fact’ in a philosophical language is able to result in a confusion and senselessness, but only because there is a conflict of proper meaning in the grammar of the particular language game it is used in, not because of some tangible result in using or understanding what the word means in the wrong way… as in the case of getting the speeding ticket because you failed to recognize that it was a fact that you could get one, if you sped.

a study question: what would happen if you failed to recognize what the word ‘fact’ means in these statements:

  1. there are no facts, only interpretations
  2. a ‘fact’ is ‘what is the case’, but things, processes and events that constitute ‘the case’ are always changing, therefore there are no facts.
  3. the phenomenological eidetic reduction of the object of experience presents the fact of the thing independently of the nature and properties of the thing experienced.

A fact is given by consensus.

Science does not produce facts but truths, which are given in (not by) experience.

Something is not a fact if people disagree that it is, even if it is a truth.

Truths must be understood to be apprehended. Facts don’t need to be understood to govern an outlook.

The overgrowth of description by way of meaning is the inescapable result of searching meaning by usage. That currency is responsible for the unawareness of mixed factual truths.
That that subtle sense of the difference can not be properly understood either through direct observation , nore through the epoche of set boundaries in situ thus defined, approximating the boundaries without which any meaning can be sensibly defined, apart from such current usage.

The lack of these different meaning sets may or may not overlap, therefore creating the possibility for misinterpretation through and for common sense.

Nietzsche didn’t say that. He spoke about phenomena, in the old sense of appearances. "…keine moralischen phänomene; sondern nur eine moralische Interpretation gewisser
Phenomena (eine Irrtümliche Interpretation!) " What he says is more like: There are no moral phenomena, only moral interpretations of phenomena (an erring interpretation!).

Phenomena aren’t facts. Far from it. The “fact” part came in only as Nietzsche’s early readers bought it in to make Nietzsche readable, sanitized, in the academy. One has to think through the change there to see where we live. Fact / Value has its own history which Nietzsche did not live to see. He dealt with phenomena and, on the other hand, the true, the beautiful, and the good. He also, despite what his translators often lead one to believe, knew nothing of values in the sense of this “fact/value” account which controls contemporaneity.

We all receive a vague and decayed account of these ideas as traditional authority represented in the vernacular. Most people don’t know it is the authority of the tradition speaking through them.

Note:
One should not confuse Husserl and so-called “modern” Phenomenology with the older determination of phenomena, which was not a “bracketing” based on the “ultimate doubt”.

Give a example.

Now Meno, you have been forbidden, have you not, to play with dead ideas? Marx, too, never heard tell of facts in the sense of fact/value, though he had the echo of the Hobbes Boyle usage (known also to Locke it should be said), fact as repeated act of experiment. What he thought of, was appearance and truth. Facts are not appearances. An appearance must be the appearance of something. Ergo, of reality. Facts don’t correspond to anything beyond themselves, as you mentioned, they are supposed to be “positive”. One says here, are these facts values? Or, are the values facts? Scientism wants to say: the “value”, a dependent variable of the “fact”. Logically this doesn’t quite get there does it?

Facts are not logically related as appearances even of the will supposes to link it that way, of course. Appearances and facts, however are related, cognitively, by similitude, as in such and such always occcires whenever such and such. The distinctions in an old and a newer mea ing do signifiy personal shifts , and of. Ourse one is free choose meaning according to personal preference. Any one can unearth meaning as an intentional product, regardless of the difference, and this choice skips mean ing chain gaps, because there are no derivitive that can simulate a perfect continuum of change.
Induction is such that a complete reduction can not by reveal an ideal likeness.
That is why positivism cam only entail change of proximate change , as mirrored .

That Nietzsche quote can stand by modern standards , by a future perfect that Nietzsche could not possibly have surmised even if the moral implications are completely intended to such .

Facts are definitions of
shared attributes:

I am such and such a person, because so many people have set opinion about me, irrespective of what I think of myself. How do I know? Because people have said the same thing to my face. Sure, I can deny it, but the FACT is, it wouldn’t make sense for me to think that.

The fact is, I would like to think otherwise, and so, I’d rather find a mirror which would be more conducive to produce a more suitable image more apt to represent my own desired self image than the one gathered by the consensus. The meaning of this difference is such that:

It is my opinion that I appear more like I would like to, rather then how others describe how I appear to them. (not personally, but par example)

Description is logically more tied to consensus. of set notions then the construction of the self through recomposition of abstracted elements.

Why? Because our self image usually selects desirable parts, and not ones which recompose from decomposed parts.

Opinion and facts are most striking in and through this difference between new and set usage of perceived and / or known parts, where usage, perception, and consensus are all related and formulated. They never were intended to be differentiated in sets of reified content, the whole object of Nietzsche’s studies into unearthing meaning had that attribute in mind.

Though what You are suggesting may implicate a subtlety, which consists oi the effect of seeing images in mirrors which are again are reflective in other images . This may implicate a reduction of phenomena limited only to a perceptual limit.
Set theory can understand this abysmal possibility , but perception can not, so that the next logical link will be based on the idea of l determinancy based on expectation.

I chose the self, as the best example to this query, because it is the paradigm search for a general search to the question of the difference between opinion and fact. The basic mechanism is one of representing the most common attributes which construct it, and such construction. furthers applicability of inferring other objects of perception. All objects will transform into perceptions of fact once its repeated into some formal arrangement.

Generally, though, the proposition stands without a need for a deconstruction because the reconsruction does not entail a need for it.

Other practical derivatives, such as certain mathematical formulas , have been thought with the idea, that for practical purposes it is enough to learn once how to derive them, usage need not require a constant need for it.

Nowadays, computer function makes this clear, where use and derivation of process totally negates the possibility of deriving language from function. It would be a total countereffective waste of time.

But less generally, accountability between the facts and opinions gears down to the question of when the opinions set in as facts?

In larger sets, at what point do determining the exact number of parts within that set become determined more accurately as the set becomes smaller?

It is easier to account for 12 members in a set then in a set of 1000. At what point does determinancy become less certain in any set?

Or in other words, in a roomful of people , how can one participant try to determine the outcome of dissension or cohesion within the group , given the knowledge of their behavior? The task becomes more need of consensual interaction as the numbers go up, and t he task becomes more undetermined. Reliance on other perceptions becomes more necessary, and here is where the contradiction. starts to appear, between the necessity of determination and the reliance for other’s view of facts surfaces.

The very.contradiction. between necessity of inducing more Preception. Into perception and vica versa. The induction of higher symbolic rhetoric into description.

At what t point does opinion turn indeterminate using old symbolic representation? When there is a breakdown in the overall opinion toward the considered objects and objectives . at the point where the objectives can not be approximated as intended. Where self determination may overcome set limits of possible effects of foreseeable determinants in causation.

In other words, based on an eidectoc reduction, phenomenal reality reduced to its factual essences per intuitive processes.