Omniscience?

[The Stranger]

statement:

Science will prove everything, it is only a matter of time.

[Strike For The South]

You never "prove" anything in science

Thread and philosophy fail

[Sasaki Kojiro]

You never "prove" anything in science

You do prove things in science. And obviously you "prove" things too.

[Strike For The South]

You do prove things in science. And obviously you "prove" things too.

Nothing in Science is ever proven

Theories are supported with empirical evidence

They are NOT proven

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Nothing in Science is ever proven

Theories are supported with empirical evidence

They are NOT proven

You mean to say theories are never proven, not "nothing is ever proven".

[a completely inoffensive name]

Theoretically: Nothing is really known. Science has its models which are supported by mounds of empirical evidence and can accurately predict natural phenomena.

Practically: We know a lot of things that are for all intents and purposes are proven.

EDIT: Except that we exist. That I guess, would be an axiom.

[The Stranger]

You never "prove" anything in science

Thread and philosophy fail

as eloquent as ever XD

its why it is called a debate... some arguments please.

[Reenk Roink]

How ironic, I'm doing some freakin' science right now and I just want to sleep.

Science will prove everything, it is only a matter of time.

You never "prove" anything in science

Some (a few) would still argue you do. It is quite unfashionable now, Popperian thought has dominated for a while, but you can still find those people who look at science as proving things, and not only in a colloquial sense of proof.

You do prove things in science. And obviously you "prove" things too.

What do you prove in science?

EDIT: Except that we exist. That I guess, would be an axiom.

More than that though. You could probably get rid of that one if you wanted by the way.

[The Stranger]

oi. i am just getting a debate going. the statement in no way reflects what i think about the subject. you reenk should know that :P

[Reenk Roink]

oi. i am just getting a debate going. the statement in no way reflects what i think about the subject. you reenk should know that :P

Of course I do my man, but you honestly need to change your major unless you like working in bookstores for the rest of your life...

[Sasaki Kojiro]

What do you prove in science?

Gasoline is flammable, water becomes ice when it gets cold enough, corn needs water and sunlight to grow, there is a placebo effect, etc.

There's an absurd amount of silly things said about science and proof for some reason.

[The Stranger]

Of course I do my man, but you honestly need to change your major unless you like working in bookstores for the rest of your life...

why? :P i will be a succesful author within a few years trust me on that. ive got it all planned out.

first i will use my poetry skills to get some poetry published then i will use that as a leverage for them to check out my novel. it will be utterly crap but will be marketed better than the millenium trilogy. 10 times better and it will be only 5 times worse (if that is possible) then i will make millions of euros and i will buy that friggin bookstore... owyea.

btw. NO MORE SIDETRACKING THE DEBATE!

[Reenk Roink]

Gasoline is flammable, water becomes ice when it gets cold enough, corn needs water and sunlight to grow, there is a placebo effect, etc.

None of these things are proven/provable.

There's an absurd amount of silly things said about science and proof for some reason.

Tell me about it...

[The Stranger]

None of these things are proven/provable.

hmm. you will have to elaborate on that.

i would think that it is reasonably proven (not taking any hardcore sceptiscism in account atm) that it is flammable, or that water becomes ice etc the HOW it happens though, that will be the hard thing to prove (in/on philosophical terms)
science does have pragmatic value.

[Fisherking]

I would say that with scientific experiment we demonstrate the repeatability of a particular phenomenon.

The sticky point comes when scientists reach conclusions based on the experiments.

They are often wrong and have to be revised.

What does this prove?

Read my sig!

[The Stranger]

your sig is facebook worthy XD

now continue with the debate and i warn you!!! no more sidetracking.

[Reenk Roink]

hmm. you will have to elaborate on that.

i would think that it is reasonably proven (not taking any hardcore sceptiscism in account atm) that it is flammable, or that water becomes ice etc the HOW it happens though, that will be the hard thing to prove (in/on philosophical terms)

Yeah, we aren't doing any kind of hardcore skepticism yet, as there is no need to recourse to it, because these examples are too easy.

All of these statements follow the general pattern of prediction and explanation in an inductivist account. Immediately speaking, they are likely deductive, but premise 1 (laws and theories) is itself based on an induction. Induction is demonstratively an invalid proof.

P > Q
Q
so P

...or the similar denying the antecedent...

Obviously, as I alluded to in my reply to STFS, some people would try and cling to this (naive - there are better versions) inductivist view and say things in science can be proven. However, they are like the California Golden Seals, going against arguments against it which are like the 70's Canadiens. Not a fair fight at all.

Was it instead said, "gasoline has been flammable once before, water became ice when it got cold enough once before, corn needed water and sunlight to grow once before, there was a placebo effect once before, etc," then it would be harder to argue against and require a stricter standard of skepticism going beyond something baseline like we've done here (though in cases 1, 3, and especially 4, someone could make the argument based on unobserved influences due to the way the statements are worded and avoid any more skepticism).

science does have pragmatic value.

Absolutely.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Gasoline is flammable, water becomes ice when it gets cold enough, corn needs water and sunlight to grow, there is a placebo effect, etc.

There's an absurd amount of silly things said about science and proof for some reason.

We don't "prove" observable things, if you want to be really technical about it. Over time we have seen these observable phenomena and have constructed around them explanations which satisfy the ability to be proven wrong and that adequately predict such events and future events.

[Fisherking]

@ The Stranger

So if we make that statement a premise, which side do you fall into?

Many “well educated people” often fall into a trap of thing they already know everything worthwhile and need learn no more.

Do you think all things are provable and that conclusions are generally accurate?

[Reenk Roink]

now continue with the debate and i warn you!!! no more sidetracking.

Ok, ok, back to the original topic at hand let me elaborate on my negative answer.

Obviously, I have the same view as STFS on science and proof in any kind of meaningful sense, so a flat out no.

Let's be a bit flexible here and go to colloquial and weaker versions of proof to extend this discussion though. So here are just some of the issues I have.

Science won't even prove everything within its own (current or future) paradigm because 'the facts' are infinite. However, I do expect that advances (again speaking strictly within the paradigm itself, not any kind of ontological advancement in knowledge) will happen obviously. There are some trouble zones remaining though (GR vis a vis QM), it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

EDIT: Actually reading your initial statement one more time TS, in a way, I think the answer could be 'yes' say if a theory of everything was formulated. Again it would be within the confines of the current/future paradigm and not (necessarily) have anything to do with ontological reality, but yeah... Now I don't know enough to say confidently or even feel confidently if that will ever happen.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

We don't "prove" observable things, if you want to be really technical about it. Over time we have seen these observable phenomena and have constructed around them explanations which satisfy the ability to be proven wrong and that adequately predict such events and future events.

We do prove them, technically. If you doubted that gasoline was flammable I could prove it to you.

Yeah, we aren't doing any kind of hardcore skepticism yet, as there is no need to recourse to it, because these examples are too easy.

All of these statements follow the general pattern of prediction and explanation in an inductivist account. Immediately speaking, they are likely deductive, but premise 1 (laws and theories) is itself based on an induction. Induction is demonstratively an invalid proof.

P > Q
Q
so P

...or the similar denying the antecedent...

Obviously, as I alluded to in my reply to STFS, some people would try and cling to this (naive - there are better versions) inductivist view and say things in science can be proven. However, they are like the California Golden Seals, going against arguments against it which are like the 70's Canadiens. Not a fair fight at all.

Was it instead said, "gasoline has been flammable once before, water became ice when it got cold enough once before, corn needed water and sunlight to grow once before, there was a placebo effect once before, etc," then it would be harder to argue against and require a stricter standard of skepticism going beyond something baseline like we've done here (though in cases 1, 3, and especially 4, someone could make the argument based on unobserved influences due to the way the statements are worded and avoid any more skepticism).

No, people just bastardize language when they are motivated to. It's a sick side of philosophy and reason in general.

[Reenk Roink]

We do prove them, technically. If you doubted that gasoline was flammable I could prove it to you.

No, people just bastardize language when they are motivated to. It's a sick side of philosophy and reason in general.

[The Stranger]

@ The Stranger

So if we make that statement a premise, which side do you fall into?

Many “well educated people” often fall into a trap of thing they already know everything worthwhile and need learn no more.

Do you think all things are provable and that conclusions are generally accurate?

if i understand this correctly you refer to the OP statement and not that of mark twain? in the first case i would stand side by side with reenk. maybe a little behind him, he is more radical in this case than i am i think. in the latter case of mark twain i would definitly fall in the category of stupid

i definitly dont think that science can prove all outside the paradigm of science. within it though perhaps it can, when as reenk has said, a theory of all can be formulated, this would take alot of time but that was part of the OP statement.

i have been thinking about it lately and somehow i have this intuition of domains in which certain methods have more validity than others, but i dont yet know how to make this a coherent thought.

i think i will have to suffice with the following: any attempt to understand and know the world in a coherent way (or kosmos in the sense of everything) following the rules of a certain method or paradigm will neccesarily fail to do so completely and truthful because there will always be elements of this world which will not fit in and will therefore be denied the right of existence or existence in total.

i will settle for the paradox.

ps

another thing that struck me as odd is this: Facts. They are quite troublesome. Because what are they exactly? If i would sit in a classroom full of people, am i then surrounded by facts or by people and things or images/impressions of those things? According to the analytic traditions facts are neither true nor false, only the claims made about facts are true of false. Which means that the facts are not the claims made about things and persons in the world, which would be the next logical step. Neither are they the statistic representation of events in the world as struck me a while ago when people kept talking about the evident or obvious nature of facts (the facts speak for themself is an expression in dutch, and this was at the centre of that debate). But when we look at a statistic we are not actually looking at the facts, we are looking at the representation of the facts, which means that there is a moment of interpretation that preceeds it. This leads me to believe that they cant be the facts because the facts are supposed to be undisputed. Can we actually know facts and what exactly are they or what do they consist of?

[Reenk Roink]

I think I come off as a little more 'radical' than I really am on this issue, because I tend to really take the argument to its extreme, especially at the beginning. Especially with all the 'pro-science' claims you find flying around that are just too juicy to pass up a good trolling. I find it is an effective dialectical method, and I let the wishy washy compromised view that I hold leak out further in the discussion if it is a good one. So while I may look like a hardcore promoter of the total incommensurablity of paradigms, I'm really on the side of Lakatos more than Feyerabend and I too share your intuition of certain methods having more validity than others, though it's nigh impossible to pin down.

[Fisherking]

Well simple answers are sometimes the best.

I disagree with the Original Post as well.

What I wanted to know was this:

i would definitly fall in the category of stupid

So you are on the side of our limitless abundance of knowledge at the present time?

I am only trying to judge whether this is a thread for the open-minded or for those who already know everything...

[The Stranger]

Well simple answers are sometimes the best.

I disagree with the Original Post as well.

What I wanted to know was this:

So you are on the side of our limitless abundance of knowledge at the present time?

I am only trying to judge whether this is a thread for the open-minded or for those who already know everything...

well only the first part was a direct reply to you. i think it was pretty simple :P it is a trick question tho imo. if i were to say that i am wise it would immediatly put me in the stupid section. so ill just jump that part and start of in the stupid section. on a more serious note, i dont think that our knowledge is limitless nor as abundant as some people might want you to believe. Theoretically we might know nothing at all, pragmatically our knowledge of many things have increased and many things we have forgotten or just denounced as rubbish.

in any case, this is a debate so it is open for anyone with an oppinion backed up by decent arguments. to be openminded would make the debate fruitfull but if its between biggots its definitly more fun... XD

feel free to participate. you can start by elaborating why you dont agree with the OP.

[Fisherking]

It wasn't ment as a trap but I guess it could be.

... you can start by elaborating why you dont agree with the OP.

anyway

Where begins a circle?

A. Proof requires truth, truth requires, belief, belief requires faith, faith can exist without all of the above, therefore it is not provable.
B. Infinite knowledge requires infinite time. Since demonstrates that time has a beginning and implies an end. That means that time is too short for the stated goal.
C. what ever is, is and what ever is not also is.

D. Take it away Jack!

[Husar]

Well, for starters a lot of science works with models and models only represent certain aspects of reality that are useful for a given purpose.
Without being false or wrong, a model does not show you the full extent of "the truth" if there is such a thing.

For example we can describe all sorts of attributes of electromagnetic waves, but we cannot see the waves themselves, you cannot go and watch a magnetic field, you cannot touch and feel it, you cannot hear it etc., you can only study what it does to other things and how other things react to it etc. and then build a model around this.
And then even if you could sense it somehow, everything we sense is just an interpretation of our brain, certain stimuli that our brain receives and interpretes in a certain way, a bat for example "sees"/senses the world in a different way and has no problems with orientation in pitch black darkness where we are completely lost because our most important senses are "knocked out".
So everything science "proves" is only "proven" in relation to our perception of the world, it's possible that there are waves or whatever flying around the air and space that we will never discover and as such it's doubtful that science will ever "prove" everything.
And that's apart from what others said about science not proving anything in the first place.
I think science is more a way of us exploring our surroundings with the goal of manipulating them for our purposes and for that it is rather effective, so the goal is not to find some universal truth and prove it but to gain sufficient knowledge to attain certain goals that we have for ourselves, be it the survival of our race or just earning more money.

Just my thoughts for now.

[a completely inoffensive name]

We do prove them, technically. If you doubted that gasoline was flammable I could prove it to you.

Please do.

[The Stranger]

Well, for starters a lot of science works with models and models only represent certain aspects of reality that are useful for a given purpose.
Without being false or wrong, a model does not show you the full extent of "the truth" if there is such a thing.

For example we can describe all sorts of attributes of electromagnetic waves, but we cannot see the waves themselves, you cannot go and watch a magnetic field, you cannot touch and feel it, you cannot hear it etc., you can only study what it does to other things and how other things react to it etc. and then build a model around this.
And then even if you could sense it somehow, everything we sense is just an interpretation of our brain, certain stimuli that our brain receives and interpretes in a certain way, a bat for example "sees"/senses the world in a different way and has no problems with orientation in pitch black darkness where we are completely lost because our most important senses are "knocked out".
So everything science "proves" is only "proven" in relation to our perception of the world, it's possible that there are waves or whatever flying around the air and space that we will never discover and as such it's doubtful that science will ever "prove" everything.
And that's apart from what others said about science not proving anything in the first place.
I think science is more a way of us exploring our surroundings with the goal of manipulating them for our purposes and for that it is rather effective, so the goal is not to find some universal truth and prove it but to gain sufficient knowledge to attain certain goals that we have for ourselves, be it the survival of our race or just earning more money.

Just my thoughts for now.

some good thoughts i would say.

anyway

Where begins a circle?

A. Proof requires truth, truth requires, belief, belief requires faith, faith can exist without all of the above, therefore it is not provable.
B. Infinite knowledge requires infinite time. Since demonstrates that time has a beginning and implies an end. That means that time is too short for the stated goal.
C. what ever is, is and what ever is not also is.

D. Take it away Jack!

A) i agree.
B) Who is talking about infinite knowlegde? Whether knowledge is finite or infinite, this point is irrelevant to the OP.
C) this is also debatable. The logicians of atomism per example would not agree and argue that what is not is a grammatical effect.
D) i cant help but feel that you fall in the 2nd category of your sig as well ;) but then again dont we all?