Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey
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Trump's Staff
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Is it testable? that is the main question. Science is just knowledge and predictions acquired using the scientific method. A key component of the method is the testability.
Void
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I'm not trying to defend religion here, but that's a fairly flawed statement there. At the time he was wondering about alchemy, how the hell did he know it was false? Everyone "knew" all sorts of shit back then that someone questioned, and found out we didn't really know at all. That's the basis of science, in my opinion, the asking of questions. Hell, if someone want's to "prove" crazy shit exists that we "know" is false, why not? Maybe they'll turn out to be right and we'll have had another monumental breakthrough like gravity, light, etc.
Has nothing to do with religion at that point, in my opinion.
khalid
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How exactly is it flawed to say that believing in pseudoscience, that is things that have no scientific background, forces you to go into any test with flawed premises? Another issue with trying to "prove" crazy shit is that not all claims have the same probability of being true. Would you be fine if the government started funding ghosthunters on the premise that hey, maybe it is true?
Let us pick a particular belief. What if a lab was convinced that if they could find the exact right mixture of chemicals they could make a potion that converted a dog to a cat? Hey, maybe it exists right? It is still science, they generate a hypothesis, test it, it doesn't work, repeat. That isn't all that goes into science though. Such a field of study would contradict everything we know about chemistry, biology and physics. You know, like religion, or alchemy.
Now I grant you that Newton had MUCH less reason to doubt the validity of alchemy at the time, yet certainly his spending time on it was a waste. Same with religion. Today though, there is no excuse for people to continue believing jesus was the son of god, Mary was a virgin, there exists a philosophers stone orMohammad flew up on a winged horse or the world is 6000 years old.
BoldW
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To be fair, you're making a testable hypothesis, which is the start of good science. I would much rather this than blind faith = the end. Alchemy was the father of chemistry. Without the observations made in alchemy, modern chemistry wouldn't exist. It was Newton's contemporary Boyle who pretty much invented the whole testing part of the scientific method, to be sure that people weren't wasting their time. They understood that, even though they couldn't see it, everything consisted of atoms, and were exploring that - I see no problem there. Unfortunately, dementia was pretty common to alchemists back then. Who would have thunk lead and mercury could have detrimental effects?
Void
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You're picking some fairly obvious and extreme examples to prove your point, but you knew what I was getting at. We probably both agree in general that some things should be obvious as "a waste of time" to most people, but a lot of it is a matter of perspective. You're making wide generalizations when it isn't always so clear cut. Alchemy in his time is a good example, whereas something today might not be obvious until hundreds of years from now that it was a waste of time.
That's not even counting the part where you said him spending time on alchemy was certainly a waste. How can you know? What if the methods and procedures and thought processes that he used in failing to prove alchemy helped him later in his other discoveries? What if he never would have made the breakthroughs he did if he hadn't spent years analyzing the bible for hidden messages?
We can't know the answer to any what ifs, and I'm clearly just picking semantics and nitpicks to argue with you, because like I said we both agree in general that a ton of shit is a waste of time. But it bugs me when someone makes blanket statements like that when there is clearly no way to know either.
That's not even counting the part where you said him spending time on alchemy was certainly a waste. How can you know? What if the methods and procedures and thought processes that he used in failing to prove alchemy helped him later in his other discoveries? What if he never would have made the breakthroughs he did if he hadn't spent years analyzing the bible for hidden messages?
We can't know the answer to any what ifs, and I'm clearly just picking semantics and nitpicks to argue with you, because like I said we both agree in general that a ton of shit is a waste of time. But it bugs me when someone makes blanket statements like that when there is clearly no way to know either.
Even if we allow for whatever this statement means, remember that I'm talking about the part where he impliedourUniverse was in a black hole.
BoldW
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From this coming Sunday's Cosmos.
I have to say I really love the history bits. It's nice to have that context.
The history of science is the history of erroneous statements. Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't understand what science is.
Rengak
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Trump's Staff
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There is no way of knowing. So we are left with the facts. Newton was a religious zealot and a brilliant scientist. If he and others could do it, I'm sure it can be done again. Don't get me wrong, I'm as atheist as they come, but historical evidence shows that religion, at the individual level does not hamper science. Think of it as this. Great minds and curious minds are driven to find out how how things work, regardless of the religion they practice.
khalid
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That is of course the strength of science, that it is constantly correcting itself when new evidence is discovered and contradictions to current understandings are found.
Unless you mean something silly like science is always being proved wrong. Certainly science is constantly correcting itself, but at the time that knowledge was still far better than anything else. Newton's laws of motion were "erroneous" in some sense, but correct for the knowledge of the time and far more accurate than any other attempt to figure out how the physical world worked at the time.
Ambiturner
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Which means we would only know what physical laws exist within a black hole and would have no concept of physical laws outside of one
moonarchia
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Religious indoctrination is antithetical to scientific thought. It's a handicap some can get over and some can't. Playing the what if game is pointless. Newton gave us a lot of good stuff to work with. Others since then have done the same. Science is a collective and collaborative process. Be thankful for what people give. Don't whine about what more they could have given. Scientists are people who have lives and interests outside science too.
No one is saying that. They're saying that even though Newton was brilliant, religion held him back. He could have done even more. Religion is the reason that some things he thought of didn't become pursuits because he thought "yea it's god. Problem solved."
Religion necessarily handicaps a mind because making scientific discoveries is about being able to see what has never been seen. They have to think novelly which is by definition the opposite of thinking religiously. People are really good at compartmentalizing rationality, but not perfectly.
Tuco
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Science exists on the frontier of knowledge and ignorance. The history of this frontier being pushed out is fascinating, especially for those currently on this frontier. Science history isn't about making erroneous statements, it's about making true statements that correct erroneous thinking.
Speaking of which, I hope they don't talk about the inside of black holes and multiverses much in the show. Based on my layman's look at our knowledge of both of these ideas I feel like any confident statements on any of these phenomena are probably bullshit. I feel that very smart men spent a lot of time using the tools they have to come up with scenarios that fit some very loosely formed mathematical equations. When I see dumbed down graphic representations of them, it makes me feel like DaVinci is explaining how helicopter flight works based on this graphic:
