Modern Science is quackery; here is why

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Pattern-chaser
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Re: Modern Science is quackery; here is why

Post by Pattern-chaser »

Palumboism wrote: July 23rd, 2020, 6:05 pm
Faustus5 wrote: July 21st, 2020, 8:02 am

I wonder why this person thinks the distinction is so important. I mean, all energy is still mediated by some sort of particle, correct? At least, that is what I've always been lead to believe. That means it doesn't magically exist "on its own".
That's not true at all. Electromagnetic radiation doesn't have a particle. Matter can be converted to energy by the formula E=MC^2.
What are photons, then? Of course we don't know what they are, and we are confused by wave-particle duality too, but unfounded (and incorrect) assertions don't help.
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Re: Modern Science is quackery; here is why

Post by Palumboism »

Faustus5 wrote: July 24th, 2020, 7:20 am
Palumboism wrote: July 23rd, 2020, 6:05 pm That's not true at all. Electromagnetic radiation doesn't have a particle.
That is an absolutely false statement, sorry. Have you never heard of electrons or photons?
The article in question is talking about particles with mass. Photons don't have mass and would not be considered matter.

ThoughtCo
Why Are Light and Heat Not Matter?
"One easy way to tell matter and energy apart is to ask yourself whether what you observe has mass. If it doesn't, it's energy! Examples of energy include any part of the electromagnetic spectrum, which includes visible light, infrared, and ultraviolet,
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Re: Modern Science is quackery; here is why

Post by Palumboism »

Pattern-chaser wrote: July 24th, 2020, 9:25 am
What are photons, then? Of course we don't know what they are, and we are confused by wave-particle duality too, but unfounded (and incorrect) assertions don't help.
Matter includes anything that has mass. A photon has zero mass and is not considered matter, but energy.
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Re: Modern Science is quackery; here is why

Post by Palumboism »

Steve3007 wrote: July 24th, 2020, 7:32 am
Palumboism wrote:James Clerk Maxwell won the Adams Prize in 1859 for his essay "On the

The maths doesn't prove anything about the real world. It helps us to elucidate patterns in what is observed and allows us to ask what we'd expect to observe if those patterns continued. In that case, the patterns were Newton's laws of motion and gravitation. The things that Maxwell concluded about the nature of Saturn's rings were based on the notion that Newton's laws apply to Saturn's rings as they do to other things. The mathematics was the language in which he elucidated the consequences of that notion.
Albert Einstein once said, 'I stand not on the shoulders of Newton, but on the shoulders of James Clerk Maxwell.

Math is a very important part of any scientific proof. Math tells us that if the big bang is true there would be a background radiation that's observable today, and there is.
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Pattern-chaser
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Re: Modern Science is quackery; here is why

Post by Pattern-chaser »

Palumboism wrote: July 24th, 2020, 2:01 pm
Pattern-chaser wrote: July 24th, 2020, 9:25 am
What are photons, then? Of course we don't know what they are, and we are confused by wave-particle duality too, but unfounded (and incorrect) assertions don't help.
Matter includes anything that has mass. A photon has zero mass and is not considered matter, but energy.
OK, sorry. It's just that you referred to "particles", not "mass", at first. Now you've switched to "mass". 🤔🤔🤔
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Re: Modern Science is quackery; here is why

Post by Palumboism »

Pattern-chaser wrote: July 25th, 2020, 9:02 am
Palumboism wrote: July 24th, 2020, 2:01 pm

Matter includes anything that has mass. A photon has zero mass and is not considered matter, but energy.
OK, sorry. It's just that you referred to "particles", not "mass", at first. Now you've switched to "mass". 🤔🤔🤔
I was responding to the article titled "Why Are Light and Heat Not Matter?"

https://www.thoughtco.com/light-and-hea ... ter-608352

I should have used the term matter instead of particle. I believe that's where the confusion is coming in. Because a photon is considered an elementary particle, people consider light matter, when it is really pure energy. The article gives a concise description of the difference.
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Re: Modern Science is quackery; here is why

Post by Hans-Werner Hammen »

The Photon does not belong to the material.
IOW: the Photon is not a carrier of energy and not either of a prioori corresponded, correlated, aequivalent mass, respectively.
The Photon is merely proclaimed = rei-FIED on the patient paper.
The Photon does not belong to the properties OF the material either.
IOW: The Photon is not energy.

We can rather proclaim a third category, other than the material, and other than the properties OF the material.
It is very simple, and it is hinted, suggested, indicated in the symbol irradiat-ION

Hint: Many people might think that it be categorically correct to say "light (irradiation) can be seen (=perceived!), heat (irradiation, again) can be felt (=perceived!) but I assert, that this is not categorically correct: I "boldly" proclaim that all that we DO perceive, it belongs to "the material" = the detect-able, the perceiv-able.

The assertion of which category are we missing here, when we are referring to electromagnetic irradiation and the respective Quanta (smallest units thereof, also called = defined as "Photons") ?!?
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Re: Modern Science is quackery; here is why

Post by Sculptor1 »

brunocampello wrote: July 15th, 2020, 6:12 am The modern science observes certain things in some respect; therefore, it only observes aspects, and aspects cut out according to the hypotheses and constants that itself intends to observe. There is a highly subjectivist and abstractist element about it, which makes the whole philosophy developed from this tradition of modern science extremely subjective in nature.
I do not think that, even Foucault would denigrate all of modern science as quackery.
The description of method can lead to poor results if handled and used badly. And can lead to reductionism.
I have to counter your objections to say that there are cases when it is exacly reductionism that is needed. And that scientific method when used well can lead to very good and useful results; nothing at all like quakery.

I think, if you want this thread to succeed you might want to give some examples where the method has been used to offer quack results.
Because there are plenty of examples that make your proposal absurd.
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Re: Modern Science is quackery; here is why

Post by LuckyR »

Sculptor1 wrote: January 2nd, 2021, 6:15 am
brunocampello wrote: July 15th, 2020, 6:12 am The modern science observes certain things in some respect; therefore, it only observes aspects, and aspects cut out according to the hypotheses and constants that itself intends to observe. There is a highly subjectivist and abstractist element about it, which makes the whole philosophy developed from this tradition of modern science extremely subjective in nature.
I do not think that, even Foucault would denigrate all of modern science as quackery.
The description of method can lead to poor results if handled and used badly. And can lead to reductionism.
I have to counter your objections to say that there are cases when it is exacly reductionism that is needed. And that scientific method when used well can lead to very good and useful results; nothing at all like quakery.

I think, if you want this thread to succeed you might want to give some examples where the method has been used to offer quack results.
Because there are plenty of examples that make your proposal absurd.
Ya gotta love opinions denigrating science posted on the Interweb.
"As usual... it depends."
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Re: Modern Science is quackery; here is why

Post by Sculptor1 »

LuckyR wrote: January 3rd, 2021, 3:23 am
Sculptor1 wrote: January 2nd, 2021, 6:15 am

I do not think that, even Foucault would denigrate all of modern science as quackery.
The description of method can lead to poor results if handled and used badly. And can lead to reductionism.
I have to counter your objections to say that there are cases when it is exacly reductionism that is needed. And that scientific method when used well can lead to very good and useful results; nothing at all like quakery.

I think, if you want this thread to succeed you might want to give some examples where the method has been used to offer quack results.
Because there are plenty of examples that make your proposal absurd.
Ya gotta love opinions denigrating science posted on the Interweb.
It's a great shame, because the vast majority of critique is stupid, being so generalised and misguided. Its mainly a shame because there is IN FACT quite a bit of very poor science masquerading as science. The fact of the blanket tin-hat wearing antivax legions make it harder to criticise really bad science.
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=101 ... 6436989882
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Re: Modern Science is quackery; here is why

Post by LuckyR »

Sculptor1 wrote: January 3rd, 2021, 7:49 am
LuckyR wrote: January 3rd, 2021, 3:23 am

Ya gotta love opinions denigrating science posted on the Interweb.
It's a great shame, because the vast majority of critique is stupid, being so generalised and misguided. Its mainly a shame because there is IN FACT quite a bit of very poor science masquerading as science. The fact of the blanket tin-hat wearing antivax legions make it harder to criticise really bad science.
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=101 ... 6436989882
The advent of "yeah, but"-ism is the attempt to expand an actual inaccuracy or imperfection into a condemnation of entire fields. Sad, really.
"As usual... it depends."
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Re: Modern Science is quackery; here is why

Post by NickGaspar »

brunocampello wrote: July 15th, 2020, 6:12 am The modern science observes certain things in some respect; therefore, it only observes aspects, and aspects cut out according to the hypotheses and constants that itself intends to observe. There is a highly subjectivist and abstractist element about it, which makes the whole philosophy developed from this tradition of modern science extremely subjective in nature.......
Those who feel the need to criticize Science, must first understand what Science is, its principles and high standards and what exaclty enabled the size of its epistemic success.
Fist of all we should ignore qualifiers like "Modern"if our goal is to criticize, not "Chronicling."(who said what half a century ago.Imagine if we did that in science instead of accepting the latest verified position!!!).
So there is only one Science as we speak.
What is Science.

Science is a systematic and methodological Philosophical tool with a build in Empirical set of Methodologies capable to provide epistemic foundations to our theories.
It is based on the Philosophical principles of Methodological Naturalism(MN). MN is the acknowledgment that our observations and methodologies are limited by Nature(ours and the observable environment).
Science also bases its high standards on Basic Logic. Objectivity is a criterion essential to our scientific standards of evaluation and this is what limits our methods and explanations withing the naturalistic realm, since a realm that can be investigated and evaluated can also be objectively described.
So Science job is to provide Objective Descriptive Frameworks through the methodical and systematic testing of hypotheses.
Subjectivity has no place in science.

All these claims about science offering "constants or possibilities" instead of an accurate picture of Ultimate reality is a classic and well known "strawman" criticism in the history of Philosophy of Science. Its known as Normative Science and has failed to explain the epistemic success of science (Descriptive Science).
IN science we never claim to "deal" with absolute or ultimate knowledge, or truthor reality.
Science CAN only produce descriptive frameworks based on our current Objective, Verified FACTS that are available to us.
Whether our current scientific framework describes accurately the ultimate nature of reality...that's irrelevant to science and a red herring since we can never know whether we have reached the limits of our capabilities in observation or if this the ultimate stage of reality we see.
Our current facts can only justify a specific position and we will have to keep it until we have enough evidence to justify its rejection and institution with a new one.

Science's methods are really good in producing new facts and that renders the nature of Scientific knowledge Tentative by default.
Scientific frameworks are the only theories that are on a falsification period for life. The possibility of new facts and the risk of proposing predictions that can be proven wrong are what put science's theories to the test ...every single day!

Now most of your OP is based on chronicling and references to a "concrete reality"! Chronicling is irrelevant when it comes to evaluate the epistemic success of science. Science works and our modern world and knowledge is the proof independent of the Normative critique of past century idealists.
They don't understand that Knowledge based belief is defined and affected by the changes in our database of facts.That has nothing to do with subjective preferences, but with the objective nature of our evaluation methods. What "philosophers" of the past found "subjective and problematic" is the Self correcting mechanism of science disposing wrong frameworks based on objective facts.

Now I don't know how one can say anything about science NOT offering a picture of a concrete reality...when we don't have a method capable to produce samples of this "reality!". We need a reference to compare our scientific views before any accusation is made.

To those who are interested in Philosophy of Science, I will suggest to avoid chronicling and clinching to the failed approach of "Normative Science" (how science should work) and study the Descriptive side of Science (Why science keeps producing knowledge when Academic Philosophy struggles to make any contributions in our understanding of the world).
A great philosopher of science is Paul Hoyningen and his book and academic courses give a Descriptive view on what science is and why it is objectively so successful in the production of knowledge.
Philosophy of science didn't stop with Kuhn or others. Till this day we have great minds that can explain much better why Science works and where exactly old philosophers went wrong.
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Re: Modern Science is quackery; here is why

Post by Buzzard3 »

I would agree that there is great deal of quackery going on when it comes to explaining what was responsible for the history of life on this planet. A great deal of what is passed off as evolutionary "science" isn't science at all - it's just a whole bunch of theories that can't ever be tested. That's mere story-telling, not science.
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