Induction and Science

Once you account for those things, you no longer have true solar time. Instead, you have mean solar time.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

Do pay attention.As I said, the swan example is artificial, so I will feel free to use it artificially to illustrate the point.If you don't want to use it artificially, then you are stuck with the fact that there has been no evidence given that scientists are inclined to make any such induction as "all swans are white." I'm calling "bullshit" on that.

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Although crows can be extremely resourceful and appear to behave as optimal foragers when eating walnuts and other hard shelled food, their putative exploitation of moving cars is not adequately documented and should not be cited as an example of avian intelligence or adaptability.

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There's no assertion there about "all crows". There's no induction. The only conclusion made is that the original research was of poor quality and should not be cited.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

No. Mean solar time averages out cyclical fluctuations to provide a more constant standard. Using true solar time and accounting for the elliptical orbit of Earth, etc., does not ignore the fluctuations, it explains them.But I think your statement above reveals a lot about your view of science. You think it's all about definitions, standards, deduction, appearances, opinions, and guesses. You apparently don't appreciate how science can explain and predict.Edited by Stephen Push, : No reason given.

You can call the swan exmaple artifical all you want, that doesn't make it so. You might want to read about the Black Swan Theory.As a matter of fact, Europeans did use inductive reasoning to conclude that all swans are white, until Dutch explorers discovered black swans in Australia in 1697. The original reports were published in the 1970's. The study that refuted those reports was conducted in the 1990's. Crows have an average life span in the wild of 7-8 years. Thus it is highly unlikely that the crows observed in the 1997 study were the same individuals observed in the original reports. Without inductive reasoning, the authors of the 1997 study could not have made a valid claim of having refuted the studies conducted two decades earlier on different crows.More generally, almost all biological studies use inductive reasoning. When researchers study the genetics of fruit flies, for example, they are not interested only in the individual fruit flies in their lab. In fact, they are not interested only in fruit flies generally. They are trying to understand genetic principles that can be applied to other sexually reproducing species, including humans.Edited by Stephen Push, : No reason given.Edited by Stephen Push, : No reason given.

If we wanted to send a rocket to Mars (or wherever else) we could make the necessary calculations on Earth today.The idea that we need to wait and see if nature will still be behaving in accordance with Newton's laws on the day of the launch isn't even an issue.The idea that we need to factor in the possibility that Newton's laws won't apply on Mars in the same way that they do on Earth won't even be an issue.Why? Because inductively we (albeit tentatively) know that Newton's laws will apply equally whenever it is that we launch our rocket and wherever it is that our rocket lands. It cannot be considered universal unless you inductively conclude that it applies in all cases. So, practically by definition, it's status as a universal principle has been arrived at inductively. If you are saying that F=ma by definition regardless of what we observe in nature then by the terms of your argument Newton's laws are unfalsifiable.That just isn't how science works CS.

Is there no end to your bewilderment?If we wanted to send a rocket to Mars (or wherever else) we could make the necessary calculations on Earth today.
The idea that we need to wait and see if nature will still be behaving in accordance with Newton's laws on the day of the launch isn't even an issue.The idea that we need to factor in the possibility that Newton's laws won't apply on Mars in the same way that they do on Earth won't even be an issue.Why? Because inductively we (albeit tentatively) know that Newton's laws will apply equally whenever it is that we launch our rocket and wherever it is that our rocket lands.Of course by the terms of your "axioms dervied from nothing" argument any successful rocket launch or landing is just the result of deductions made from spectacularly fortuitous baseless guesses.

No. I understand your arguments perfectly. You are just wrong. If that is youir view then it is no wonder that your description of non-inductive science is so at odds with the way science actually does operate. Then I guess we can just change our "standards" build a series of perpetual motion machines and solve the world's energy crisis before breakfast.I mean that pesky second law of thermodynamics doesn't actually tell us anything fundamental about the world does it? It would be.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Inductive reasoning?Or was this assumption yet another of your "derived from nothing" spectacularly fortuitous guesses?

Question: Is it the conclusion of science that the second law of thermodynamics applies only to those instances so far observed? Or is the second law of thermodynamics a statement of something far more wide ranging and fundamental about the way nature has been scientifically concluded to universally behave?This is not a rhetorical question. Newton’s universal law of gravitation has already been discussed (the name is the clue here). Conservation of energy. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. The second law of thermodynamics. All are examples of scientific principles which are considered by science to accurately describe the behaviour of nature universally. Not just here and now. Not just that which has been observed. But (tentatively) that which will be observed and even those things unobserved. So, like NWr, you think we are guessing or expressing opinions when we predict things like eclipses? The non-inductive view of science you and Nwr are advocating makes it impossible for science to conclude anything about the future behaviour of nature. All you can do is cite a standard and then see whether or not nature will or will not continue to operate in accordance with this standard. Without induction there is absolutely no reason at all to expect that it will. Yet science has concluded that we can expect (albeit tentatively) nature to continue to operate in accordance with our universal principles. Science keeps making very practical and very accurate conclusions about the behaviour of the real world on the basis of these inductively derived universal principles. Why would we expect our GPS system to work in an hours time unless the principles of relativity can be considered to apply then? The particle accelerator at CERN was designed ages ago so why would we possibly expect the principles applied to that design to facilitate any experiments we attempt today or tomorrow? No luminiferous aether was found in Einstein’s day but maybe we need to retest for it’s existence at least once a month just in case it makes an appearance? Has anybody checked whether or not nature is still operating in accordance with Boyle’s law today?I mean who knows? Right?It is the very fact that the non-inductive science you and Nwr are advocating denies the ability of science to conclude that nature will (tentatively) behave in certain ways that makes this description of science so at odds with real world science. Actually yes I have. See message 396. Although why you and Nwr are obsessing over this is a mystery.

Your non-inductive description of science spectacularly fails to deal with the indisputable fact that science as practised by real scientists makes inductive conclusions about the way nature will behave in as yet unobserved circumstances.Until you can describe science in a way that does not necessitate such genuibely scientific conclusions as being "guesses" or "opinions" you remain entirely refuted on this very crucial point regarding the inductive nature of science.Case closed as far as your main argument is concerned. But I see you now want to change the subject. I don't see how you can seperate the two in the way that you are suggesting. Our interpretations are worthless unless they say something about the actual world. OK. But idealisations of what? If you are saying that scientific theories are imperfect models nobody here will disagree with you. But what are our scientific theories modelling?The difference between imperfect models and the assertion that "scientific theories have nothing to say about how nature behaves" is enormous. We can all agree on the former. But no scientist and few philosophers of science would agree with your assertion that "scientific theories have nothing to say about how nature behaves". Can you tell us what it is you think scientific theories are doing and why they allow us to manipulate and control aspects of nature so successfully then?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

I feel a "derived from nothing" axiom coming.Urrrrgggghhhh.(**Clench and squeeze**)Axiom: Jon is an idiot.Look Jon!! By some bewilderingly improbable coincidence my "derived from nothing" axiom just so happens to coincide with all of my real world expereince. Just like yours do. I see we have reached that inevitable stage where you have effectively lost the argument so rather than actually engage in any further discussion you simply start asserting that you have made lots and lots of unanswered points.Rather than go through the usual routine of me asking you what these points are and you repeatedly refusing to cite any of them whilst continuing to insist that there are lots and lots of them why don't we do something different this time?Why don't you pick out that one most pertinent and argument clinching point that you think remains unanswered and put it to me?In return perhaps you can answer this?Jon — How is an assumption derived from nothing different to a blind random guess?

Nwr's view of non-inductive science is completely unable to account for the fact that science is able to successfully make very specific (albeit tentative) conclusions about as yet unobserved events.His "non-inductive" science provides no reason to think that any scientific prediction will tell us anything more about how nature will or won't behave than a blind random guess.

CS do you have any idea just how fundamentally wrong you are about this?Newtons third law tells us that a force is not merely something defined as being that which causes a change of velocity. It is a statement of the much more fundamental idea of force as an interaction between bodies. This underpins the logic of Newton's other two laws.Forces always arrive from interactions. That is what Newton's third law tells us.If we were to ever observe an isolated body undergoing an acceleration Newtons laws would have been violated in a fundamental way. They would have been falsified.Newton's third law also leads directly to the universal principle that is the conservation of momentum. If, as you are suggesting, Newton's third law only applied in some situations we would see the the principle of conservation of momentum being violated all over the place.Strangely we have never observed this.

LOL? Your point is confused.
Did people correctly think that all swans were white (because there are no black swans)?
Or did people incorrectly think that all swans were white (because there are black swans)?
Either way, they used inductive reasoning to conclude that all swans were white. Well, unless you are going to inductively conclude that all people call them 'black swans' (based on your limited set of 'we') I see no arguement to support your claim. Your conclusion is a re-statement of your premise.
"A swan (by definition) is white" is identical to "All swans are white".
What is the information "not previously noticed" - be specific. To state that all non-white birds are not swans requires inductive reasoning.
(Or you need to examine all non-white birds and verify that they are not swans.)
Why do you keep giving clear examples of inductive reasoning and then claiming that inductive reasoning is not required?
It looks as strange as claiming: "There is no such thing as a noun". By definition: you cannot make general/universal rules/laws using deductive reasoning.
To rephrase:
The definition of what 'deductive reasoning' is prohibits using deductive reasoning to expand from a limited (smaller) set of information to a universal (larger) set of information.
You will have to completely redefine what deductive reasoning is if you wish to argue from the specific to the general.

I think you are wrong about nwr's position. If you craft the standard properly, the results of your observations and experiments will, by definition, always appear to be in accordance with the standard. But I'm not sure what, if any, role nature has in the process.Didn't they teach you anything at Imperial College?