[Prashant Kumar]

Fair enough. In less douchey terms: we have to care about the fact that
different kinds of science are introduced, amended, and extended according
to the dictates of a specific discipline. It doesn't make sense to base the
kind of cultural analysis I mean on, say, the sequence quantum mechanical
discoveries which led to The Bomb, for e.g., because such an analysis is
post hoc. Discoveries which supposedly constitute a science look different
on a smaller time scale. Physics in the service of "techno-science"
understands its conceptual basis and proper mechanism of operation
differently to "normal" physics. In the former a lot of things are
phenomenological, ad hoc, guess-timates etc.

P.




On 17 April 2013 19:27, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:

> Wha?
> Respect the conceptual divides which obtain in science?
>
>
> In any event, science, big science and big math are subjected to P's
> satire.
>
>
> On Wednesday, April 17, 2013, Prashant Kumar wrote:
>
>> I of course agree that science needs critics, critics who look at its
>> cultural *as well as* conceptual dimensions. My point is just that in
>> doing so, we have to respect the conceptual divides which obtain in
>> science.
>>
>> As to comments above on mathematics, mathematics is *not* independent of
>> science. Physical theory relies on mathematics, and if we accept results
>> following from physics, then we need to admit that mathematical
>> structures have some empirical basis<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/structural-realism/>.
>> Let's take this argument further still, and say that mathematics which
>> isn't invoked in physics constitutes a giant archive of (unrealised)
>> possibilities. In other words, one can argue that *quantitative* *
>> representation* is contingent, and divides into the realised and the
>> counterfactual. In such a picture, mathematics is a formalised way of
>> making counterfactual statements about physical reality. This a variant of
>> Constructivism, and is counter to the mathematical Platonism you seem to
>> assume, bandwraith. Now, the truth statements made in mathematics are of a
>> different class than those made by science: mathematical truths which do
>> not have empirical basis are riffs on reality. And, all of mathematics is
>> just possible (counterfactually speaking) physics. The concept of rigor
>> goes out the window, since it is easy to make rigorous statements if they
>> are epistemic, rather than ontic. The truth criteria of science and maths
>> are, in the account just given, incommensurable.
>>
>> This opens up an interesting possibility. Consider quantitative truths
>> which *do* have some basis in reality; that is, they describe some
>> physical phenomenon. Well, why can't we test a theorem by doing an
>> experiment? If theorem T_1 is true, then phenomenon P_1 will occur, else
>> P_2. In quantum physics, it is now possible to conceive of a kind of
>> quantum computer which could prove theorems through experiment, in just
>> this fashion. The subtle cheat is that we are not proceeding inductively,
>> but deductively. Indeed, parts of string theory (the sci am article I
>> linked in the gravity thread; "the thing" is called AdS/CFT) have been
>> tested in a similar fashion.
>>
>> Prashant
>>
>>
>> On 17 April 2013 11:36, <bandwraith at aol.com> wrote:
>>
>> Interesting you should mention that. Arguing against "science" is like
>> arguing that there's no such thing as gravity. Which is fine to do, but
>> what is the counter-explanation for all the phenomenon that General
>> Relativity explains? Until one comes up with a better explanation, GR
>> stands. That's the beauty of science. Unlike religion, it's open to
>> challenge. There is a backdoor way to attack the scientific process,
>> however, that is less boneheaded, and that's to attack the language, after
>> Gallileo, in which it finds expression- mathematics, which is often taken
>> for granted. Statistics is the obvious but not the most fundamental
>> example. Many scientific hypothesis are accepted or rejected on the
>> strength of a statistical analysis of measurements of some kind. The
>> assumptions behind statistical validity can be faulty, but science protects
>> itself from this by admitting that possibility and allowing for
>> reinterpretation and possible rejection of previously accepted results. The
>> final description however will still generally be in mathematical terms.
>> Biology, which has resisted this trend for a long time, in favor of a
>> purely descriptive approach, is also becoming more and more computational.
>> And even if biological meaning demands a qualitative framework, many of the
>> techniques involved in biological science are heavily dependent on
>> mathematical inferences.
>>
>> But Mathematics is completely un-empirical and completely independent of
>> science! Truth, as it is understood mathematically, does not require a
>> single empirical observation. It is a purely logical exercise, and much
>> more rigorous in its proofs than science. Mathematics would never settle
>> for an empirical proof. It may be that reality, in a scientific sense,
>> happens to be perfectly congruent and consistent with a mathematical
>> description, but that possibility is not a given, otherwise String Theory,
>> for example, would be true on the basis of mathematics alone.
>>
>> Furthermore, mathematics itself, as Pynchon has humorously indicated, is
>> by no means a closed case- with all its questions locked up. Science, by
>> keeping close to the empirical, avoids these problems. It is a question
>> that is suggested by the current cover of The Bleeding Edge- the vanishing
>> point- where all dichotomy comes to a final resolution, in this case, the
>> divide between description and the described, or, epistemology and
>> ontology. Choose your complementary terms.
>>
>> In the end it is a question of how we know. Mathematics, the chosen
>> language of science, is as close to art and music and poetry, as it is
>> to dirt and air and stardust- and just as prone to flights of fantasy.
>> Algebra is perfectly logical. No such proof exists for reality.
>>
>> p.s. Anybody made it to The Museum of Mathematics yet? Worth the trip?
>>
>>      http://momath.org/
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: malignd <malignd at aol.com>
>> To: pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Sent: Tue, Apr 16, 2013 5:59 pm
>> Subject: Re:
>>
>> This is a smart post with which I agree.  I would add that science is a
>> method -- of investigation and discovery.  To rail against science is like
>> railing against algebra.
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Prashant Kumar <siva.prashant.kumar at gmail.com>
>> Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Sent: Mon, Apr 15, 2013 7:36 pm
>> Subject: Re:
>>
>>  So, a couple of things; a two-step if you like: reification and
>> generalisation.
>>
>>  First: science is not a contiguous set of practices. It is not
>> monolithic, and therefore its meat and method is not isolable in the way
>> our dear interlocutors have presumed. So, whatever you say about the
>> ethical colour of man or machine depends peculiarly on man, machine, and
>> the way the former uses and is changed by, the latter. *See also*:
>> technologies of the self. Variegated of course by a soupcon of historicism.
>>
>>  What I'm saying maybe does seem irrelevant, but consider that the kind
>> of science we get -- fr
>>
>>
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