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Author Topic:   Helping a Friend about the Nature of Science
Yrreg
Member (Idle past 4955 days)
Posts: 64
Joined: 11-21-2006


Message 27 of 41 (581895)
09-17-2010 11:51 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Tram law
08-15-2010 12:53 PM


What is the role if any of chance in science?
Science is built on the idea that there is order in the physical universe.
What is the role of chance in science?
Yrreg

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Tram law, posted 08-15-2010 12:53 PM Tram law has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 28 by Rrhain, posted 09-18-2010 2:18 AM Yrreg has replied
 Message 35 by Taq, posted 09-20-2010 6:12 PM Yrreg has not replied
 Message 41 by Damouse, posted 10-19-2010 2:15 AM Yrreg has not replied

  
Yrreg
Member (Idle past 4955 days)
Posts: 64
Joined: 11-21-2006


Message 29 of 41 (582070)
09-19-2010 4:38 PM
Reply to: Message 28 by Rrhain
09-18-2010 2:18 AM


Something exists on the quantum level and in chaos.
Rrhain writes:
Yrreg asks:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What is the role of chance in science?
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Um, I'm not sure what you're getting. I can only provide a couple of directions to go looking. Check into quantum mechanics and chaos theory.
From quantum mechanics, we come to the conclusion that at the smallest levels, existence is really more of a probability curve rather than an exact thing. Something exists at a certain place not because it really does but simply because it is highly probable that it is.
From chaos theory, we recognize that complex systems can be incredibly sensitive to initial conditions. For example, weather systems become more and more difficult to forecast into the future due to the random interactions of the various parts of the system (air masses, water masses, land masses, energy output, etc.) Because of that, slightly different starting positions can lead to vastly different outcomes.
I guess what would help is if you could define what you mean by "chance" and why you think science doesn't include it as a factor.
There is something that exists even on the quantum level, that is admitted by scientists, no?
There is something that exists even in chaos as postulated by scientists.
What is chance in science?
Answers - The Most Trusted Place for Answering Life's Questions
Chance is frequently regarded as unreal, a mere reflection of human ignorance, due to be eroded by the onset of deterministic science. In ancient and medieval philosophy chance could be contrasted with divine purpose, and until the 18th century the concept was of little application, since nothing is strictly due to chance when God's purpose is shown in all creation. The equally ancient opposition between chance and science was eroded after the rise of statistics and probability theory in the 17th century. Probability became the ‘guide of life’ providing the tools with which to assess chances in insurance and gambling, discovering causal connections, finding rates of mortality, crime, and marriage, even before the onset of probabilistic theories in physics, such as statistical mechanics and then quantum mechanics. The problem of interpretation is that of deciding whether probabilities measure something ‘real’ or whether they merely reflect the beliefs of reasonable persons faced with various quantities of data (see personalism). The widespread view that quantum mechanics is irreducibly probabilistic, so that quantum events do not merely manifest superficial randomness overlaying a deterministic basis, is the main stimulus to attempts to give theories of what chance ‘really is’, or of how fundamental laws of nature can have a probabilistic form. One difficulty lies in seeing how two universes that are the same in respect of the events that occur, might yet differ in the chance with which those events came about.
If no one believes that chance is any cause of anything at all, that is fine by me.
You bring in chaos, I would like to ask you what you mean by chaos in science.
Yrreg

This message is a reply to:
 Message 28 by Rrhain, posted 09-18-2010 2:18 AM Rrhain has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 30 by frako, posted 09-19-2010 5:28 PM Yrreg has replied
 Message 31 by nwr, posted 09-19-2010 5:55 PM Yrreg has not replied
 Message 32 by Rrhain, posted 09-19-2010 6:40 PM Yrreg has not replied

  
Yrreg
Member (Idle past 4955 days)
Posts: 64
Joined: 11-21-2006


Message 33 of 41 (582290)
09-20-2010 5:41 PM
Reply to: Message 30 by frako
09-19-2010 5:28 PM


Life and the universe is not to be known just on the tossing a coin.
Life and the universe is not to be known just on the tossing of a coin.
So, you all of us have got to go beyond and outside that mentality of understanding life and the universe on the basis of tossing a coin.
You say that chance is probability.
That is very good, because then it is not something that is absolute chance but relative only, relative to our capacity to see how a thing will undergo an event where it is the subject or the object, and what the situation of the thing will turn out after one occurrence of the event, then after n number occurrences of the event.
Suppose now you want to find out how a thing that is without life develops into a thing that is living.
Take for example you pick a grain of sand from a swamp and throw it up, a grain of sand from the primeval soup according to some atheist scientists from where life originated, by what they describe as the process of life coming from non-life -- abiogenesis (insofar as they can see from their eyes, that is).
Acting in accordance with your mentality of tossing a coin, how many tossing do you have to do with that grain of sand before it develops into something else or its situation changes, for example, instead of being tossed by you up in the air, it simply gets blown away beyond your reach and sight by a strong wind.
How will it ever get to become a first living cell at all?
So, you have to be intelligent to know more about life and the universe than just saying that it is probability that explains everything.
Of course you will say that it is probability working in the billions and billions of years.
In which case you should be saying it is the billions and billions of years.
That billions and billions of years of course will be your explanation for anything and everything, and it is not using your intelligence.
Yrreg

This message is a reply to:
 Message 30 by frako, posted 09-19-2010 5:28 PM frako has replied

Replies to this message:
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Yrreg
Member (Idle past 4955 days)
Posts: 64
Joined: 11-21-2006


Message 36 of 41 (582510)
09-21-2010 6:07 PM


Okay, explain how a nose come about to exist in your face...
Okay, explain how a nose came about to exist in your face and to operate for you to live healthily, with chance, or probability, or chaos (i.e., as exemplified by something, for example the flap of a butterfly's wing, happens in the initial conditions that can bring about a storm somewhere else...).
Yrreg

Replies to this message:
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 Message 39 by Omnivorous, posted 09-21-2010 8:28 PM Yrreg has not replied
 Message 40 by Dr Adequate, posted 09-21-2010 8:57 PM Yrreg has not replied

  
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