That’s great! So next time you post one of your laws-of-physics/engineering-type posts, and Dan inevitably starts arguing with you using Star Trek based reasoning (transporters, FTL travel, etc.), I can jump in with ‘but Adrian, remember, you can’t prove anything absolutely, which means everything’s all bollocks, doesn’t it?’. I mean, you can’t prove absolutely that the laws of physics even exist, by that line of reasoning, can you?

This is what I have said many times when Adrian has been saying things have been proven.

Science as we know it depends on Occam’s razor, which is an heuristic tool rather than a provable axiom. However it does have an uncanny ability to work a lot better than most of the alternatives.

Hmmm I think you’ll find the statement “you can’t prove anything absolutely, which means everything’s all bollocks” isn’t correct.

Lack of absolute proof does not mean that something is completely false.

Anyway, I like this explanation too, it nicely falls into my favourite way of describing these things (the realities of life and whatnot) as being “grey”.

Or is that “gray”…

My favorite hate is people who say, “well, you can never prove a negative.” Which is of course total bollocks. I can prove I am not an eight foot tall Womble.

What people mean to say is, “that is a non-falsifiable truth.” The statement, “there is no life on mars,” can only be proved if we take the planet apart molecule by molecule until we’ve sifted all of it, but I feel fairly confident in the statement, “there are no McDonald franchises on Venus”.

I love how you take a quotation which has a primary theme of ‘no fact is an absolute’ and interpret it to suit your worldview of ‘all facts are absolute’.

It’s ‘grey’.

But can you prove that everything isn’t all bollocks?

Personally I like the explanation ‘humanity is but the merest blip in the history of the universe, and it’s understanding of the nature of the universe and it’s place in it is insignificant’ (I think it’s Lovecraft, not quoted verbatim). Which basically means ‘it’s all bollocks’, ‘what’s the point’, ‘why bother’, etc.

“Lack of absolute proof does not mean that something is completely false” True, but having proof doesn’t make something completely true, either, by that line of reasoning.

There may be no McDonalds franchises on Venus, but what about the possibility of a Burger King in Uranus?

Not a bad quote. In a similar vein I think that the next time I am banging my head against a brick wall when having the “correlation doesn’t prove causality but you can be pretty sure that if you can’t establish correlation then the causal link is pretty much inexistant” discussion I’ll ask you and Razorhead to come to my rescue.

SJG must have just let that word ‘provisional’ slip into his sentence. He’s sloppy like that.

“some facts are pretty much good enough to accept as such without dancing around the pointless argument bush naked”

Your scientific rigour is astounding. May all scientists of the future use such a ludicrous template for their predictions. I’m sure they’ll go far.

So why do you keep doing it then? ;-)

Seriously though, he’s being harsh on Adrian (as usual) but Dan has a point; the quote cuts both ways. It says that it isn’t worth arguing with the ‘what if’ people because they don’t propose any useful discussion, but on the other hand it reminds us that we can’t prove they’re wrong, and there should always be a slither doubt as to whether we’re right. After all, you can’t innovate if you believe you already know it all.

My only complaint against Adrian in these kind of discussions (like the FTL one) is that I can’t hear that doubt. I sort of get the impression that it’s Dan’s issue as well, most of the time.

OK, doubt was the wrong word: you must accept that you are not arguing to prove things to people, rather to convince them that your position is the most likely. Sometimes you sound like you think you know it, even though such knowledge relies on connections that most philosophy will not let you make. And then Dan goes straight for the throat, like the vorpal bunny.

Although to be fair, there will be people who will argue with everything I’ve said. But it seems highly unlikely that they’ll be right ;-)

Hey! Did you see that black swan over there? No? You missed it then.

We’ve been over this before - either that or I’ve just woken up from a pretty strange and peculiar dream that may or may not have been a drug induced nightmare.

I’m also getting the impression that Dan and Adrian are the George Berkeley and Samuel Johnson of this ongoing debate - I’m just not entirely sure which one’s which.

All I’m saying is: If everything that was once regarded as a fact was accepted as intriniscally, inarguably true THROUGHOUT HISTORY…science never would have gone anywhere at all. Every single paradigm shift in science was strongly opposed by “slave-to-the-facts” mindsets. Every single paradigm shift in science overturned a previously well regarded fact. So for Adrian to take a statement that is OPEN to the possibility that facts are often disproved and then interpret it as but in all honesty, man won’t really is offensive to the spirit of the original comment, and to the history of science as a whole.

You don’t have to convince me - you’re preaching to the choir on this one, Dan. I think Adrian misinterpreted/misunderstood the quote.

“If everything that was once regarded as a fact was accepted as intriniscally, inarguably true THROUGHOUT HISTORY…science never…”

Those accepting it as fact weren’t thinking scientifically.

Good philosophy of science wouldn’t accept anything as intrinsically true other than a tautology, and nothing as inarguably true. The ‘thought experiment’ is a valid scientific tool, and any and all assumptions can be set aside in it. And the purest scientific philosophy would consider anything ‘true’ as simply current state of the art theory, and subject to later potential improvement.

Something being not open to question is dogma, and that’s the language of religion. Science talks a different language - you may have fundamental assumptions, but you never assume your understanding is perfect about anything . Only the insane, religious or monstrously arrogant (or a combination thereof) claim a perfect, total understanding of any non-tautological idea. I doubt the ‘provisional’ was accidental for that reason.

It says nothing of the kind. The quote acknowledges that science is based on inductive reasoning and goes on to say that despite that, what should be taught in the classrooms is the facts as we know them. It is stating simply that teaching about the possiblities that might occur in the future “does not merit equal time”. This a) does not dismiss any argument about “absolute proof” and b) does not say it merits “no time at all”.

Your original intepretation was fine up until the point you said “…but man won’t really…” which is making an absolute statement.

Tom, my reading of the phrase “the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms” is that Gould is making an ironic understatement, i.e. he does mean that it merits no time at all.

Scientists in general accept that there is no such thing as absolute proof in science, then forget about it and get on with their jobs. The point is there’s no point (other than philosophical interest) discussing it further.

Of course there might be a more full theory of gravity on the lines that (I’m obviously simplifying) “massive objects have a mutual force of attraction at all times in the universe up until 11 February 2006 but then they will suddenly stop attracting one another”. This is exactly as valid as the current theory, based on what we can observe.

But for a scientist it’d be a massive waste of time to consider such theories (and the infinite variations thereon). That’s why we have Occam’s razor to say (in effect) “in choosing amongst the possible theories which explain the observed phenomena, choose the simplest”.

Discuss the nature of scientific proof if you wish. But don’t criticise scientists because their results aren’t “proven” - it’s hypocritical to do so because every time you get into a car or a plane (or do anything else for that matter) you are betting your life on those “unproven” results.

When Adrian says “man won’t really” he is not making an absolute statement. He is giving an opinion that it isn’t worth wasting time on trying to do this when the fact is (in the scientific sense Gould outlines) it won’t happen. It’s a judgement that with limited resources those resources are better spent elsewhere.

If you want to do science (or teach science to school pupils), know (mention) the limitations of the scientific method, but don’t waste time on it.

Oh, my, who to defend…

The problem with this discussion each time we have it is the range of things people want to get out of it. Fer’s scientist sounds like a self-description: accepts the nature of scientific discovery and gets on with things because frankly, if the current model fits all observables who cares if it’s wrong? Adrian is probably the same, but the terminology gets sloppy, and after a misplaced ‘proof’ here and ‘fact’ there he’s sounding less credible and leaving openings for Dan to dive in with his Huge Pointy Teeth. Tom and Dan are on the other side. They’re here for that philosophical interest, and when scientists start loosening their terminology it’s normally the philosophers of science who get stepped on first.

Me, I’m just addicted to playing Devil’s Advocate. A filthy habit, I know.

My apologies if I’ve misread or misrepresented anyone; I haven’t known any of you as long as most of you have known each other, by the sounds.

Oh, and surely while proof is absolute, the vodka is absolut?

But Absolut is only 70° proof.

I’m on the side of science. Science is not served by people who say: maybe someday X will actually occur, but in all honesty, it won’t really. That is a self-contradictory, deeply unscientific argument. Unlike the unassailable defence: “Yadda, yadda, yadda.”

You may be right Adrian. I don’t know what %ABV Absolut is, I guessed 40%. The British definition of proof is approximately 7/4ths of %ABV. In the US it’s double %ABV I believe. But alcoholic proof is correctly written with a ° not a %.

Dan, you’re wrong. Your quote from Adrian captures an essential part of what science is - an heuristic process.

There is no contradiction in saying something “may happen, but in all honesty won’t”.

It is possible that you will grow wings in your sleep tonight, but in all honesty you won’t. (If the universe were infinite temporally or spatially then almost surely (in the mathematical sense, i.e. with probability 1) there would be a[n infinite number of] Destructor doppelganger[s] somewhere/somewhen in the universe who wakes up with wings. So it is true to say that it may happen, even if the probability of it actually occuring in the universe we can detect is so near zero as to be treatable as zero for all practical purposes).

QE - you’re pretty close with your summing up except that

(1) I’m not a scientist (2) it’s not a case of “who cares if it’s wrong” - a scientific theory is not considered to be worth much if it doesn’t, in addition to including everything we have observed, also provide further predictions in terms of things we haven’t looked at yet (preferably predictions which will serve to differentiate that theory from alternative models fitting the existing data). And scientists should keep testing even the most well-established theories to the limit.

My point is that we will never know that a theory is correct, but that doesn’t stop us using the words “proof” and “fact” as long as they are preceded by the (possibly unvoiced/unwritten, but understood) word “scientific” so that all reading/listening understand the parameters involved in the use of the words (and, hopefully, the difference between these words used correctly and their misuse in the mainstream media).

If in ‘all honesty’ you are convinced that it won’t happen, then you can’t honestly say that it may do. While it’s arguably not a contradiction, it’s not in the same spirit as the original quote, which I think was Dan’s problem.

Fer - I don’t know your training/trade, but if you aren’t a scientist you may as well be, in the same way that Adrian is an engineer and I’m a mathematician. I’m leaving myself open to misinterpretation again, by the look; by ‘who cares if it’s wrong’ I meant more specifically ‘who cares if it may eventually be proved to have been wrong.’ Remember that the current observables are everything to a physical scientist, and that his ‘right’ corresponds exactly to what he can’t currently contradict. I think we’re all agreed that the idea that someone may later contradict it in no way lessens the importance of the models that fit all the cases we can find now.

And a quick bit of research shows that you’re spot on with three other facts: Absolut is ABV40%, British proof corresponds to to ABV in the ratio 7:4 and US proof corresponds to ABV in 2:1. So while there is no absolute proof in science, in vodka the Absolut proof is 70° (UK) or 80° (US) ;-)

QE - ok, now you’ve clarified I see we are probably on the same wavelength. BTW I’m a mathmo too.