+or-1

I'm reminded of a quote regarding quantum theory, Feynman if memory serves. Something like, "If you think you understand quantum theory then you haven't understood quantum theory." College was a very long time ago. Re string theory, I think it's a hypothesis at best if it can't be meaningfully tested. When we start talking about extra dimensions part of me always thinks "Buckaroo Banzai." :Cheeky:

Antiplastic

But dear sir, as you are perfectly well aware, I have already addressed this specific example, more than once, at great length and in considerable detail.

Here it is again.

Words get their meaning through use, because the meaning of words just is their use. If you watch enough people pointing at rabbits and forcing air across their teeth and saying "rabbit", eventually you can (gavagai worries aside) be reasonably confident concluding that the meaning of "rabbit" is rabbit.

Most of the time this happens organically, distributively, democratically, with no one in charge. This is why most words that lexicographers put in dictionaries have 2 or 3 or 10 or even 20 meanings: competent language-users use them for 2 or 3 or 10 or 20 different functions. Every so often, someone coins a new word for a new use, or uses an old word in a novel way, and if it catches on, the lexicographers will report this next year.

Everything clear so far?

Now, one thing that we have in our post-industrial society is what Putnam called a "linguistic division of labor". There are simply too many expert cultures of specialists in too many fields for the population at large to keep up with the meaning of every word, or with the modifications in use that come with new discoveries (say, the discovery of rabbits' place in the ToL). So people take their general meanings of words with them when they immigrate to their specialist cultures, and change the use in new and fascinating ways that can be radically counterintuitive to nonspecialists.

Doing OK?

Often, these expert subcultures will have governing bodies with the authority to stipulate meanings -- to legislate uses on the members of the subculture. For example, the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union can get together, vote, and simply command that members of the specialist culture use the word 'planet' in such a way as to exclude Pluto, or the American Psychiatric Association can get together and command that members of the subculture accept their definition of clinical depression.

But this doesn't always happen. More often, subcultures are just sub-democracies, and while they develop their own specialist definitions they do it just like the general population does, by organically and implicitly agreeing on use. And, just like in the general population, since this happens without explicit oversight, very often there are multiple related yet distinct definitions that develop in parallel. And specialist lexicographers go and try to capture these in specialist dictionaries, like, say, Black's Law Dictionary.

No problems yet, I trust?

While of course it's very interesting and makes all the papers when there is a new legislation event (like the demotion of Pluto), 99% of scientists 99% of the time give fuck all about "arguing over the definitions of words" (like James T invited us to do in this thread). This is a good thing, because scientists are in the business of building increasingly generalized descriptions of the empirical world, and what works, works. But because scientists are (shock! horror!) also human beings, there is nothing stopping them from making divergent and conceptually messy alternate versions of concepts.

Some good examples of this in biology are the multiple inconsistent definitions of 'gene' that sprang up, or the multiple inconsistent uses of the word 'species' used by scientists (I have heard one account that claimed to have found twenty six different definitions in use by actual scientists doing actual science), or the multiple definitions of 'function' in evolutionary terms.

And so the question finally arises: what is "the" (sic) definition of such terms? And the answer is something you can only get by rolling up your sleeves and doing the conceptual analysis: how are such terms actually used? To what are taxonomists committed when they insist that two fossils are the same species on morphological grounds, and is this the same thing that population geneticists are committed to when they say that two morphologically identical groups are different species due to geographical breeding isolation?

These are not questions whose answers are handed down on stone tablets from on high, and they are not questions whose answers can be decided by just asking a single scientist to give his personal definition of 'gene'.

This is not an attack on the authority of science.

This is not a declaration that scientists don't know more about genes than philosophers.

This is not a declaration that philosophy can decide, a priori, what definitions ought to be.

This is not an invitation for philosophy to "meddle on science's turf".

It is the simple and obvious idea that conceptual analysis is what philosophy does, and not what (say) physics does. And this is a good thing, because physicists have better things to do than sit in armchairs and muse on "the definition of space". And I have seen and heard (with my own eyes and ears) scientists expressing gratitude to philosophers of science for bringing conceptual clarity to their work.

So what, if any thing, is "the" definition of theory?

There is no body of gnomes in Zurich or 13 Jews dwelling in the center of the earth or whatever capable of issuing binding proclamations on all sociologists, geologists, physicists, zoologists, applied mathematicians, neurologists etc. that has ever declared that "theory" (not "scientific theory" or "good scientific theory", I mean "theory") means such-and-such; if there were, you would have cited it by now.

There is no consistent use of words like "hypothesis" and "theory" among scientists, as the examples I supplied (and which you snipped away without acknowledging or addressing, tisk tisk) showed. And as theyeti tried to point out, it doesn't matter in actual scientific practice because there is no difference in actual scientific practice if they call their ideas RNA world hypotheses or RNA world theories or String Theory or String Pecan Pie or String Hay Guyz Check Out My Kewl Idea. There are ideas in science (just as there are ideas in everyday automobile repair or cooking or tying your shoes) that try to describe and explain the contents of empirical experience, and "theory" is a perfectly good word for them.

The Dagda

Yeah it was crap the first time you said it, but never mind eh.

What is a theory?

Is string theory a theory?

You are trying to convince me that the scientific community should just revise its methodology based on informal usage of the term and you will fail. At the end of the day when a professor writes hypothesis or theory at the top of his paper he does so under the proviso that it meets a certain benchmark, a standard which the community accepts. That is reality. String theory is not accepted broadly as a theory because of that, and in fact its only those in the ST camp who would even try and suggest it is one. That's it, there is nothing more. There will never be a time when science accepts theories on the basis of no evidence, so why are you wasting your time trying to convince me that it should? Like I say its not going to happen, you can't make it so by wishing. A theory is a theory is a theory. At the end of the day its up to the scientists to say what is and isn't a theory, just as its up to the theologians to say what is or isn't cannonical. Not some anonymous forum goer who seems to think he knows better.

If this is an example of what philosophy does, then its a field that needs to die quite frankly because its worthless. I think though this is an example of being way out of your depth and having no authority on the community that is science, and so this is an example more of poor and sloppy semantics than actual philosophy, God I hope so. You can go on discussing whatever you like, and saying whatever you like. I'm sure you could spend endless days maintaining that either theory needs evidence or that it is not a defined term or that it doesn't. Trouble is once you've finished talking crap the reality remains, in the scientific community for a theory to be accepted it must have evidence. I'm not asking what is an abstract theory, what is a laymens theory, I'm asking what is a scientific theory and the only people who can determine that are those in the fields of science and its relatives and they have. Sorry but just as the Gospel of St Thomas doesn't get into The Bible, string theory doesn't pass muster. That's what this thread is about, I'm not sure your views are important outside of your head, there just opinions based on nothing real. You certainly have no right to say a theory does not need evidence, and you have no right to say that string theory is a theory. All you have a right to say is that outside of science in the sphere of philosophy which has no bearing on science in this example I differ on what I think a theory should be. I have strong opinions that don't bear a resemblance to reality. Hey you have a right to say things like that, you have right to argue the toss, you have a right to think and believe whatever you want, trouble is if no one thinks it reflects anything in the real world it's just arm waving. I mean its not as if your trying to highlight a problem with science or that it would be improved if it decided to get lazy and imprecise about its terms, because it wouldn't it'd be a crime to see it stagger back into the pre-rennaisance or to see views like your singular opinion actually take hold in people.

Oh and by the way, of course I can't cite a binding body of gnomes this is not an illuminati conspiracy theory, what are you expecting here? I can't prove that dog means a animal of the species-genus canus familiaris either or that a star is a light in the sky according to gnome council a, but it doesn't change the fact that I'm pretty sure what is or isn't a theory and what is or isn't a dog or a star. But then most people are willing to accept the dictionary or the science community in general at its word, you however do not and think you are the only person who has a right to decide what is what, or should I say your field. What I can do though is something remarkable I can accept that works of science such as Popper and various other dictionaries and general educational tools actually reflect the opinion of scientists, because they are cited and reproduced and used by educational institutions all over the world to point out good practice in theory and science, I can accept they are not just making stuff up or that this hasn't been centuries in the making, and involved some of the most brilliant minds to reach the pinnacle of science and theory. In fact that's pretty much what everyone else accepts too. If people like you have decided you are a church unto yourself or that now you have the only right to discuss this issue then God help us.

Since you've done some conceptual analysis now and redefined reality can you do me a favour and get all the text books rewritten so they agree with you? Otherwise they are likely to be a bit misleading and people might get the impression that theories in science need evidence.

Antiplastic

Are you sure? Because you do a good impression...

Now, you know I've given an answer to this; it's no good pretending.

See, you know that this is the precise opposite of my view. What is the word for when someone says something they know to be false?

I do not propose that science revise any of its methodologies. This thread hasn't even been about methodology.

I do not propose that science revise any of its definitions.

I only propose that there is no formally recognized distinction in science under which string theory is "not a theory in any sense of the word". And this proposal happens to be born out by the facts on the ground.

Once again, you equivocate between "accepting a theory", "accepting that a theory is a scientific theory", and "accepting that a theory even is a theory at all." If you would simply answer my simple question, you would make things easier on everyone involved.

The Dagda

Yeah pity your answer is completely unacceptable to scientists otherwise you might have something.

Unless the facts on the ground happen to be the literature. This happens to be a deeply devisive issue in science, between String "Theorists" and scientists. If it wasn't I might take your reasoning a little more seriously, but as it is this thread only exists because of the differences between scientific theory and theory as it applies less formally outside of the field. Actually I think this is only really an issue to those outside of the field because internally the propaganda campaign obviously has failed.

What question? I've answered it, scientific theory is distinct from theory all the literature says so and so do people in science. That is the answer. What is it you are looking for exactly a way out of this nonsensical reasoning? A way to say there is nothing in the world that is a scientific theory only a theory because you say so?

I unlike you can tell the difference between string theory and a scientific theory.

Antiplastic

One thing I know scientists do not find acceptable is simply asserting things as though assertion were itself evidence. And my answer is perfectly acceptable to scientists, as evidenced by the fact that it is a very good description of what scientists actually do. And thank you for admitting that you indeed knew full well I had given an answer when you posted as though I hadn't.

But I cited the literature. You even saw me do it.

Now, don't go changing what I'll charitably call your argument again. Is this settled, or is it "deeply divisive"?

You have never answered my request for clarification. I've lost track of the number of times I've asked. Here it is, again:

You have to get clear on what you're claiming -- whether "the consensus" (a plurality of physicists? 51%? a supermajority?) thinks it's 1) not a widely accepted scientific theory 2) not a good scientific theory, because it's so hard in practice to test, 3) not even a scientific theory, but rather a mathematical or even philosophical one, or 4) not even a theory in any sense of the word.

Your "responses" really do whipsaw back and forth, sometimes within a single post. Sometimes you agitate for 3, or 2, and then sometimes you seem to claim that this vindicates 4, and then sometimes (like in this post) seem to concede that 4 is false.

But I have never asserted that string theory is a scientific theory. In fact, I have explicitly said there are quite plausible arguments that it is not. I have called into question here and elsewhere whether there can be a bright-line or algorithmic distinction between science and nonscience, and I have denied categorically that Popperian falsificationism is such a criterion. I have been most confused by the bizarre insistence by several self-appointed defenders of Teh Good Science that ST is not even a theory, in any sense of the word, when the literature (and common sense and plain English) quite clearly shows it to be, however flawed or (perhaps) nonscientific. With defenders like these...well, you get the idea.

Lavis Knight

Second Warning:

Thread closed