Science Poll!

[polymath257]

The human mind is inherently limited, with built-in biases. Many of these are not like homophobia, which can be educated away. This is more like the inability of rats to comprehend prime numbers. Their minds just don't go that far. 

We are animals who evolved a certain way, and we see the world in that way.

I thought a bit more about this and it is not limited to our understanding of the universe. it is an issue in mathematics as well.

For example, due to the limitations of the observable universe, we will simply never know the complete factorization into primes of every positive integer less than Graham's number. We can prove that such factorizations exist, but we will never know them. There is simply not enough information capacity in the observable universe to hold that information. Furthermore, no other beings in the observable universe will be able to have that knowledge either.

Such mathematical knowledge is *permanently* beyond anything we can ever know.

But that lack of capacity doesn't negate those things we *can* know.

[HappySkeptic]

Such mathematical knowledge is *permanently* beyond anything we can ever know.

On a side note - would an alien species with different senses and ways of thinking coming up with mathematics which is analogous (mappable) to ours? 

Is mathematics truly universal, or are some of the assumptions built into it human-centric?

[polymath257]

Such mathematical knowledge is *permanently* beyond anything we can ever know.

On a side note - would an alien species with different senses and ways of thinking coming up with mathematics which is analogous (mappable) to ours? 

Is mathematics truly universal, or are some of the assumptions built into it human-centric?

There's an old line that says 'the positive integers are given by God. All the rest is the work of man'.

In other words, the positive integers are universal, but calculus (for example) may not be.

I'm not sure how much I agree with that sentiment, but there is an argument for it.

That said, modern mathematics is ultimately the study of formal axiom systems. If aliens use anything close to that, there would be 'mappable' pieces in each direction. But I would be very surprised if the specifics of, say, bounded operators on Hilbert space, were independently discovered by aliens.

[The Grand Nudger]

I don't see why it would play out any differently than it did in our own past, where different people from different cultures at different stages of their respective development introduced and reintroduced concepts and axioms and results to each other until something like a global formalization emerged.

We probably don't have identical interests, so, assuming it's not an entirely one sided exchange where the other species is massively advanced in comparison to ours, we'd probably have spent alot of our time on different things and have things to tell each other about them that increased our overall understanding.

[Jehanne]

Definition #1 says: 1) Science is a self-correcting construct through which we discover truths about the universe. Scientific inquiry is rigorously unbiased and self-critical, and is applicable to any area of human endeavor. Our knowledge corresponds to how objective reality is, independent of human existence.

[emphasis added]

So if you're saying that we'll never understand the true nature of reality, and that all our knowledge is in a human framework, it sounds as if you're much closer to #2: "2) Science is a human construct with all the biases and cultural influences that entails, and is inextricably linked to war, politics and business. The knowledge it produces merely imposes order on the chaos of phenomena to make it comprehensible to humans."

Although, as I said earlier, #2 has its benefits. 

Both his definitions are crap.  They provide a false dichotomy.  Science is a pragmatic endeavor.  While science does postulate an "actual reality" that is being discovered, it never claims that theories are anything more than useful constructs.  To claim anything more would be metaphysics. Yes, some scientists do have their own metaphysical views, but the endeavor of science is agnostic to it.

The OP makes #1 into a religion of scientism, and #2 into "there is no reality but what I experience, and science is corrupt".

We'll have to agree to disagree. Darwinian evolution is a fact; ditto for the expansion of the Universe. These are facets of Reality; they are facts, not theories. In principle, they could be falsified, but, they never will be.

I see nothing wrong with scientism.