Science and Maths

[ross_curfew]

Is there anything which science and mathmatics cannot solve/prove/discover to be true?

[Another brick in the wall]

Science deals only with testable propositions. If it can't be tested, science can't demonstrate its truth one way or another.

[ross_curfew]

Ok, I agree. So how do you discover the truth behind things without testable propositions?

[Another brick in the wall]

If you can't test a proposition, it has no value.

[ross_curfew]

Surely there are things of value that are untestable. There is obvioulsy no scientific evidence to support spirituality, but if so many people believe it to have a significant role in their lives, then surely it has value. Its just science is restricted in that it cannot test or prove spirituality...

[Another brick in the wall]

Surely there are things of value that are untestable.
Such as?

There is obvioulsy no scientific evidence to support spirituality, but if so many people believe it to have a significant role in their lives, then surely it has value.
No, 50 million people can be wrong.

Its just science is restricted in that it cannot test or prove spirituality...
Wrong. James Randi has made a career out of testing and debunking mysticism. See www.randi.org

[Sternwallow]

It is not science that is restricted from testing spirituality, it is that the supernatural can't have a physical effect thus restricting the spiritual from having a provable existence. Science is not limited, it can address anything that is real, that is natural, that exists.

Mathematics can deal with things that are not part of the natural world and can even prove the truth or falsity of logical expressions using them. In math we can say "given proposition A is true then proposition B must be true because, by equation 14-j, we proved that A implies B". However A and B may very well not exist in any physical or natural sense so nothing about their truth would have any real effect.

Substitute “angels can fly” for proposition A and “angels are either massless or they can exert a force opposed to gravity” for proposition B. The combined statement above is logically true, but it does not establish or prove or support or provide evidence for the existence of angels.

[WITHTEETH]

Science is statistics, thats it.

[Sternwallow]

Science is statistics, thats it.
Oh, sure, WITHTEETH, reduce my thirty paragraphs of highly tuned, thoughtfully reasoned, unassailable logic to a single statement. Thanks a lot.

[Choobus]

Ross meister,

why do you ask a question like that and then, when you get a perfectly reasonable answer from another brick you write

"Surely there are things of value that are untestable. There is obvioulsy no scientific evidence to support spirituality, but if so many people believe it to have a significant role in their lives, then surely it has value. Its just science is restricted in that it cannot test or prove spirituality..."


If you think Science is restricted in this way your question is meaningless, and no answer could possibly satisfy you unless you were to learn of the calculus of spirituality or some such foolishness. Science does not adress spirituality. This is quite correct. Why? You say because it is restricted, I say because it is an enterprise designed to learn about the world around us and since there has been ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE for anything pertaining to "spirituality" or other similarly vague concepts science has no need or desire to address them. It's like asking why there is no unicorn cage at the zoo. Sure, they could build one and hope that some day they will find a unicorn to pput in it, or they could get on with the business of raising actual animals that exist.

You are starting to come across as a shit stirrer ross. Are you a microtroll?

[TheSnake]

Is chocolate flavoured ice cream better than vanilla?
Or to rephrase that into a statement which is either true or false:
Chocolate flavoured ice cream is strictly better (ie. they are not equally good) than vanilla flavoured.
That's obviously something that science can't answer. Science can be used to find out what people think about this question, but it can't find a definite answer, as there is no objective answer. Still it can be a very important question, important enough to ask anyway.

[Sternwallow]

Still it can be a very important question, important enough to ask anyway.
Not to put too fine a point on your excellent arguments above, I disagree that the question is important without an objective answer. See my interpretation, published elsewhere, of "Howard Johnson's Official Guide to Fine Dining" [1974]. Extensive research shows that chocolate is, by far, the better flavor objectively.

[TheSnake]

Not to put too fine a point on your excellent arguments above, I disagree that the question is important without an objective answer. See my interpretation, published elsewhere, of "Howard Johnson's Official Guide to Fine Dining" [1974]. Extensive research shows that chocolate is, by far, the better flavor objectively.
I'm curious to know how they determined that. I'm guessing that they came to the conclusion that most people like chocolate more. However, I'm pretty sure there are people who definitely like vanilla more. In fact I prefer vanilla over some chocolate flavours. The importance of the question becomes apparent from the fact that the two flavours are available. If one of them was definitely objectively better, there would be no need for the other. And if it wasn't important, it wouldn't matter which one is chosen.

The whole point is to show that reason, which is what science is based on, cannot answer certain questions. That doesn't mean that those questions aren't important. However, the kind of questions that reason can answer are of the form, 'is it true that [some statement]'. For example, the ice cream question: "Is it true that chocolate flavoured ice cream is strictly better than vanilla flavoured."
The answer is no, as chocolate flavour is not objectively better that vanilla. In fact any question that compares the two in this way must be answered with 'no'. To put it in mathematical terms, there isn't an ordering in the set of ice cream flavours.

In other words, the contradiction of "chocolate flavoured ice cream is strictly better than vanilla flavoured" is not "vanilla flavoured ice cream is better than chocolate" (both are false), but just "chocolate flavoured ice cream is not strictly better than vanilla flavoured".

That is, reason can answer questions regarding truth, but nothing else. Matters of personal preference clearly cannot be determined with reason, but are still important.

[TheSnake]

As to spirituality, science can and has studied it. The first thing to do, when scientifically studying spirituality is to figure out what it is. That involves social sciences. Ie. finding out what people think that spirituality is. Then some aspect of spirituality can be further investigated by some other field of science. Like physics could say that humans with wings can't fly. Then psychology and neurology could figure out the reasons and mechanisms that make some people say that they see angels. The methods of science are pretty much limited only by human imagination.

[kmisho]

It would be hard to say if any REAL things lie outside the purview of science. By what method would determine the unknowablility?

[Sternwallow]

The answer is no, as chocolate flavour is not objectively better that vanilla. In fact any question that compares the two in this way must be answered with 'no'. To put it in mathematical terms, there isn't an ordering in the set of ice cream flavours.
It is not the "Guide" that determined the supremacy of chocolate, it is my conclusion based on the undeniable facts as presented therein by Howard himself. Besides, it is good to have a choice even though chocolate far supersedes all other pretended flavors.
Your heretical notions regarding vanilla notwithstanding, the rest of your comments are bang-on.

[Paradox]

There is obvioulsy no scientific evidence to support spirituality, but if so many people believe it to have a significant role in their lives, then surely it has value.
that would be a bandwagon fallacy.