Steven Hawking vs. Ludwig Wittgenstein

Into the Night said:
Science isn't a 'practice', 'method' or 'procedure'. There are no voting blocs in science. There is no one to dictate what is an 'accepted practice'.
Science isn't experts.
Science isn't a debate.
Science isn't a degree, license, certification, PhD, or award.
Science isn't an encyclopedia, book, Holy Link, pamphlet, or paper.
Science isn't a physicist. Science isn't a university.

Science is a set of falsifiable theories. That's it. That's all.
Quantum mechanics is a branch of science that uses mathematical models and probability math. The theories still must be falsifiable.

Science isn't even people at all.

It is just a set of falsifiable theories. That's it. That's all. No more. No less.
Click to expand...

I am not going to indulge your mental illness further.

This started as I recall by you complaining that I mentioned Hawking's opinion that quantum fluctuations explain the origin of the universe.

I feel no obligation to indulge your word smithing and parsing
 
Wittgenstein:


6.341 Newtonian mechanics, for example, brings the description of the
universe to a unified form. Let us imagine a white surface with
irregular black spots. We now say: Whatever kind of picture
these make I can always get as near as I like to its description,
if I cover the surface with a sufficiently fine square network and
now say of every square that it is white or black. In this way
I shall have brought the description of the surface to a unified
form. This form is arbitrary, because I could have applied with
equal success a net with a triangular or hexagonal mesh. It can
happen that the description would have been simpler with the
aid of a triangular mesh; that is to say we might have described
the surface more accurately with a triangular, and coarser, than
with the finer square mesh, or vice versa, and so on. To the
different networks correspond different systems of describing the
world. Mechanics determine a form of description by saying: All
propositions in the description of the world must be obtained in a
given way from a number of given propositions—the mechanical
axioms. It thus provides the bricks for building the edifice of
science, and says: Whatever building thou wouldst erect, thou
shalt construct it in some manner with these bricks and these
alone.
(As with the system of numbers one must be able to write
down any arbitrary number, so with the system of mechanics one
must be able to write down any arbitrary physical proposition.)

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5740/5740-pdf.pdf


Science is a formal system. It does not describe the world but codes it a certain way.
 
A pretty good summary of Wittgenstein's reaction to the modern attempt to answer every question with a scientific approach - aka, what are we really going to learn about ourselves if we try to turn every question into a form of scientism.
Wittgenstein’s forgotten lesson

Wittgenstein's philosophy is at odds with the scientism which dominates our times. Ray Monk explains why his thought is still relevant.

Ludwig Wittgenstein is regarded by many, including myself, as the greatest philosopher of this century. His two great works, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) and Philosophical Investigations (published posthumously in 1953) have done much to shape subsequent developments in philosophy, especially in the analytic tradition. His charismatic personality has fascinated artists, playwrights, poets, novelists, musicians and even movie-makers, so that his fame has spread far beyond the confines of academic life.

And yet in a sense Wittgenstein’s thought has made very little impression on the intellectual life of this century. As he himself realised, his style of thinking is at odds with the style that dominates our present era. His work is opposed, as he once put it, to “the spirit which informs the vast stream of European and American civilisation in which all of us stand.” Nearly 50 years after his death, we can see, more clearly than ever, that the feeling that he was swimming against the tide was justified. If we wanted a label to describe this tide, we might call it “scientism,” the view that every intelligible question has either a scientific solution or no solution at all. It is against this view that Wittgenstein set his face.

Scientism takes many forms. In the humanities, it takes the form of pretending that philosophy, literature, history, music and art can be studied as if they were sciences, with “researchers” compelled to spell out their “methodologies”—a pretence which has led to huge quantities of bad academic writing, characterised by bogus theorising, spurious specialisation and the development of pseudo-technical vocabularies. Wittgenstein would have looked upon these developments and wept.

There are many questions to which we do not have scientific answers, not because they are deep, impenetrable mysteries, but simply because they are not scientific questions. These include questions about love, art, history, culture, music-all questions, in fact, that relate to the attempt to understand ourselves better.

People nowadays,” Wittgenstein writes in Culture and Value, “think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians, etc. to give them pleasure. The idea that these have something to teach them-that does not occur to them.”

At a time like this, when the humanities are institutionally obliged to pretend to be sciences, we need more than ever the lessons about understanding that Wittgenstein—and the arts—have to teach us.

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/ray-monk-wittgenstein
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One of my favorite thinkers, Ludwig. Personally I think matter always was and humans are just a piece of the totality.


"Wittgenstein was hostile to modern philosophy as he found it. He thought it the product of a culture that had come to model everything that matters about our lives on scientific explanation. In its ever-extending observance of the idea that knowledge, not wisdom, is our goal, that what matters is information rather than insight, and that we best address the problems that beset us, not with changes in our heart and spirit but with more data and better theories, our culture is pretty much exactly as Wittgenstein feared it would become."

'The relentless honesty of Ludwig Wittgenstein'

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/ludwig-wittgenstein-honesty-ground/

"It will be easy to read what I will write. What will be hard to understand is the point of what I say." Wittgenstein
 
midcan5;4559044 "Wittgenstein was hostile to modern philosophy as he found it. He thought it the product of a culture that had come to model everything that matters about our lives on scientific explanation. In its ever-extending observance of the idea that knowledge said:
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/ludwig-wittgenstein-honesty-ground/[/url]

"It will be easy to read what I will write. What will be hard to understand is the point of what I say." Wittgenstein
Click to expand...

I did not know much about him until recently, but his unique insight on the nature of knowlege, wisdom, and scientism is very appealing.
 
Cypress said:
I am not going to indulge your mental illness further.
Click to expand...
Psychoquackery.
Cypress said:
This started as I recall by you complaining that I mentioned Hawking's opinion that quantum fluctuations explain the origin of the universe.

I feel no obligation to indulge your word smithing and parsing
Click to expand...
No, it started by YOU stating that matter and energy come out of nowhere. It is YOU playing semantics games.
 
BidenPresident said:
Wittgenstein:


6.341 Newtonian mechanics, for example, brings the description of the
universe to a unified form. Let us imagine a white surface with
irregular black spots. We now say: Whatever kind of picture
these make I can always get as near as I like to its description,
if I cover the surface with a sufficiently fine square network and
now say of every square that it is white or black. In this way
I shall have brought the description of the surface to a unified
form. This form is arbitrary, because I could have applied with
equal success a net with a triangular or hexagonal mesh. It can
happen that the description would have been simpler with the
aid of a triangular mesh; that is to say we might have described
the surface more accurately with a triangular, and coarser, than
with the finer square mesh, or vice versa, and so on. To the
different networks correspond different systems of describing the
world. Mechanics determine a form of description by saying: All
propositions in the description of the world must be obtained in a
given way from a number of given propositions—the mechanical
axioms. It thus provides the bricks for building the edifice of
science, and says: Whatever building thou wouldst erect, thou
shalt construct it in some manner with these bricks and these
alone.
(As with the system of numbers one must be able to write
down any arbitrary number, so with the system of mechanics one
must be able to write down any arbitrary physical proposition.)

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5740/5740-pdf.pdf


Science is a formal system. It does not describe the world but codes it a certain way.
Click to expand...

Science is not a system at all. It is not code. It is just a set of falsifiable theories.
 
midcan5 said:
One of my favorite thinkers, Ludwig. Personally I think matter always was and humans are just a piece of the totality.


"Wittgenstein was hostile to modern philosophy as he found it. He thought it the product of a culture that had come to model everything that matters about our lives on scientific explanation. In its ever-extending observance of the idea that knowledge, not wisdom, is our goal, that what matters is information rather than insight, and that we best address the problems that beset us, not with changes in our heart and spirit but with more data and better theories, our culture is pretty much exactly as Wittgenstein feared it would become."

'The relentless honesty of Ludwig Wittgenstein'

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/ludwig-wittgenstein-honesty-ground/

"It will be easy to read what I will write. What will be hard to understand is the point of what I say." Wittgenstein
Click to expand...


Wittgenstein was not hostile to modern philosophy. That statement does not even make sense.
 
Cypress said:
A pretty good summary of Wittgenstein's reaction to the modern attempt to answer every question with a scientific approach - aka, what are we really going to learn about ourselves if we try to turn every question into a form of scientism.
Click to expand...

There is no such thing as 'scientism'. You are trying to describe science as a religion or political movement. Science is just a set of falsifiable theories. It is not a religion. It is not a political movement. It is not any scientist or group of scientists. It is not even people at all.

It is just the theories themselves. No more. No less. That's it. That's all.
 
Cypress said:
A pretty good summary of Wittgenstein's reaction to the modern attempt to answer every question with a scientific approach - aka, what are we really going to learn about ourselves if we try to turn every question into a form of scientism.
Click to expand...

There is no such thing as 'scientism'. You are trying to describe science as a religion or political movement. Science is just a set of falsifiable theories. It is not a religion. It is not a political movement. It is not any scientist or group of scientists. It is not even people at all.

It is just the theories themselves. No more. No less. That's it. That's all.
 
midcan5 said:
One of my favorite thinkers, Ludwig. Personally I think matter always was and humans are just a piece of the totality.
Click to expand...

This is known as the Theory of the Continuum. It is not compatible with the Theory of the Big Bang. Most theories are not theories of science.
I also personally agree with the Theory of the Continuum. Matter and the Universe has always existed and always will. It has no beginning, no end, no boundaries.

Under this scenario, God would not have created the Universe, since it always has been. He did, however, create Earth (along with the rest of the solar system). This would of course presuppose the Theory of Creation, another nonscientific theory. Life arrived on Earth through the action of some kind of intelligence (in this case, a God).

Therefore, under this scenario, everything described in the Bible works. There is no paradox requiring any God to exist 'outside' of the Universe (not logically possible).
 
Cypress said:
A pretty good summary of Wittgenstein's reaction to the modern attempt to answer every question with a scientific approach - aka, what are we really going to learn about ourselves if we try to turn every question into a form of scientism.
Click to expand...

Into the Night said:
There is no such thing as 'scientism'!
Click to expand...

Oxford English Dictionary:

"Scientism" - The belief that scientific methods can be applied to all problems, with the consequent application of inappropriate scientific methods in unsuitable circumstances.

https://www.oxfordreference.com/vie...cientific methods in unsuitable circumstances.
 
Cypress said:
Oxford English Dictionary:

"Scientism" - The belief that scientific methods can be applied to all problems, with the consequent application of inappropriate scientific methods in unsuitable circumstances.

https://www.oxfordreference.com/vie...cientific methods in unsuitable circumstances.
Click to expand...

There is no such thing as a 'scientific method' either. You can't define a word with an undefined word. Science isn't applied to problems. Science is just a set of falsifiable theories.

No dictionary defines any word. False authority fallacy.
 
Whatever its origin,
we're doing our very best to prove
that the existence of the universe
may have been a very bad idea.
 
Into the Night said:
Why? YOU are hostile to ANY philosophy.
Click to expand...

what are philosophies designed to do actually? make ancestors think beyond what their brain navigates between so far. In series of replacements added living parallel to ancestral displacements mutually evolving in exact lifetimes occupying space here now.

No exceptions plant, animal, predator, prey, male, female, asexual body type added last generation so far.

Philosophies suggest what time isn't and life could be when everyone disregards the kinetics that come with mutually evolving in plain sight and biology keeps replacements eternally separated now.
 
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