wnker85

I'm in college, and I was thinking all they teach are theories. Well what if they are wrong, and I don't mean on the newest one, I mean on the basics. If every theory is based off the one before, if someone messed up along the way who knows where we are now. Most people take the knowledge for granted. Do we really know anything for certian. We don't even KNOW how our bodies work, its all a theory. Everything is a theory. Do we know anything that is certain at all.


and no i dont do massive amounts of drugs. I'm just out there

Ustwo

Of course we are wrong, but we are less wrong now then we were 100 years ago.

Wrong is not black and white, its relative. Its wrong to say the planets orbit the sun in a circle, but its less wrong then saying they orbit the earth, and thats less wrong then saying they are chariots of the gods.

It was wrong to think we had cured all infectious diseases with anti-biotics, but that was less wrong then thinking disease was caused by bad air and could be cured with good air, which is less wrong then thinking disease was caused by demons and they needed to be scared from the body.

We may never get it right, but we can always be less wrong.

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bonehed1

I think most theories are bunk anyways but I would have to agree with Ustwo about the less wrong thing. I doubt we will ever get it right.

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stonegrody

I don't see a problem with being wrong if you are searching for what's right. The search for truth and understanding is what drives the human race to progression. Will we ever be completely right? Probably not. But that's no reason not to try.

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zen_tom

I'd say no, and congratulations! - there are people walking about out there who will never realise this fact.

roachboy

"What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions- they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins."

f. nietzsche, "truth and lies in the nonmoral sense"

full text here:
http://users.compaqnet.be/cn111132/n...h_and_lies.htm

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

CSflim

*applause*

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g.f.p.

I drove myself nuts with this when I was a freshman engineeer student. Next thing I knew, I was a sophmore in liberal arts.

I don't really have anything substantial to add here; I've just got a high-speed connection after a looong period without internet access at all, and this caught my eye.

Anyway, wnkr85, try to learn to trust in your own frame of reference, that may help you.

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adysav

If a theory is correct for every situation you've ever come across and seems to be right for any in the near future, that's good enough. If in future it needs to be extended or refined then it will be.
We know that any particular description of the world is not going to be exact, but does that really matter? If it works, it works.

goodhabits

very true.

Who cares if gravity is infact a propulsion upwards rather than a pulling downwards, the point is we can still build bridges and fly planes.

d*d

there is only one thing you know for certain "you think therefore you are" - hey that sounds good I'm gonna write that down

goodhabits

Not to sound like the Star Wars fan that got away, but my G4 Apple thinks, does that mean it is a being? And also, how can u be "certain" that we arent all creations of a crazy The Sims 3000 game (a la matrix) as someone suggested in another thread..??

zen_tom

What difference would it make?

d*d

Your Apple g4 does not "think", it processes instructions. as for the matrix analogy this may be true but we would still exist, what I am essentially referring to is that since I am aware of my existence I must in some form exist.

tecoyah

Extremely well put.

Theoretical science is the basis for ALL advances in our civilization. Scientific theory is in fact, supposed to be wrong, and begs those who follow to find the errors. The human mind seems to be designed to question percieved fact, and at times can be truly brilliant as an editor. At other times a truly inspired author. It is through this theoretic gameplay that we begin to define reality, or at least the one we see.

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Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

sailor98

All that we think we know about anything is made up. Sometimes what we make up is helpful in how we manage in the physical world. Theories are really hypotheses that we haven't proven wrong. That does not make them right, but still they are useful. It is the utility of theory that gives it credance and makes it worth learning. My theory is that theory is essential!

tecoyah

I would imagine your G4 actually computes within a defined parameter, which was created by a thinking mind. Which seems to differ from the actual "thought" proccess due to the later inviolving creative insight.
As for the certainty of my existance outside a video game.....I cannot claim certainty of anything, as I can only use perception to quantify my world. Never the less, my perception does make this reality far less likely than many alternatives.

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Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

d*d

yeah - what he said

asaris

One point I wanted to make about the original post: At least in science, we don't have theories based on the one before. What we have is a period of time where one theory holds sway, a sudden revolution, and then a new theory holding sway, and these theories speak very different languages (perhaps even radically different languages.) Copericanism isn't really based on Aristotelianism; Relativity Physics isn't really based on Newtonian physics. Kuhn gives a great account of this in his book.

And, of course, the same is true to a much greater extent in philosophy.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

:::OshnSoul:::

First of all, how do we know we're all wrong if we don't know what's right?
And who's to say there is a right or a wrong? All we seem to (claim) to know is what's wrong, but we have no idea what's right or what THE truth is. We all seem to have our own different ideas, theories, views, etc.- shouldn't that be good enough?

Kalibah

Just because this sorta fits the topic of we know nothing about where we came from etc...


There is a really cool book about evolution- Darwins Black Box
I forget the author but its worth reading.
Its anti-evolution in a sense, it agrees that evolution occured up until a point- like our eyes, it goes into great detail to explain how certain parts of the human body are next to impossible to "get right" via evolution.

Im not doing a good job of explaining how it argues- but it really comes across as well thought out and well structured

ARTelevision

I like Ustwo's and roachboy's answers so much that I don't feel a need to add anything much.

IMO, skepticism is the way to move from the past through the present into the future.

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create evolution

hoodedrobin

Man - I was actually arguing this today. Most people just take whatever they hear and accept it as the truth. I have a Educational Psych class and we were discussing Piaget's stages - in particular the last (Formal Operational) which involves actually THINKING for yourself about things. This sorta blew my mind that most people don't think. And then I got started thinking (heh) about all the stuff I just took for granted and believed - and bam. Anyway. Off the topic. Back on.

How can we possibly know anything at all? Look at the LAW of probability. Anything CAN and WILL happen eventually - no matter how irrational or slim the odds. And what we know we take as a common belief (i.e. that there is a God, that we all "die", that we stay on the ground because of gravity), but we really don't know much.

Damn. First real post in a long time on ANY board. Sorry about the rambling.

mo42

My Microcellular Biology teacher is well aware of the stuff we don't know. Half the time when someone asks a question in lecture, his answer is "We don't know." There's a whole lot of stuff in the Biology/Biochemistry field that we're just beginning to understand, and half of the stuff that's in the books is really just our current "best model" for a system. Like replicating DNA. We know it happens, but we're still not positive what the mechanism is that does it. We know many of the enzymes, and we're pretty sure how they work together, but we're not positive how they work in action. It's part of the reason why I'm so interested in it.

I would surmise it's the same with most developing sciences, like Quantum Physics (which I only have one semester's background in). Other, more fundamental forces, like gravity, I still don't feel we really understand how it works. And NO ONE has ever given me a straight answer as to how an atom "absorbs" a photon and it causes the electron to "jump up an energy level". I should post that in Tilted Knowledge sometime and see what people's theories are.

There's a crapload of stuff we don't know.

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CSflim

"Anyone who thinks they understand quantum mechanics doesn't understand quantum mechanics" - Richard Feynman.

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tiberry

Seems to me that: What we "know" is always based on our perception of factors that we attempt to prove true by using some form of measurement that we ourselves conceived of.

"That water is 'hot', because it isn't 'cold'." Big vs. small, white vs. black, now vs. then, left, right - whatever.

Without an ultimate frame of reference or a single "never wrong" observer to judge our perceptions against - the relevance (or 'rightness') of any single perception is rather meaningless in terms of right and wrong. Thus, as has been stated earlier; the best we can do is go with what seems to work at any given moment.

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My life's work is to bridge the gap between that which is perceived by the mind and that which is quantifiable by words and numbers.

mo42

I would disagree with some of that. For example, gravity causes acceleration relative to the center of mass of some object. While the units of speed and acceleration of an object are arbitrary, the gravitational center of each object can be tracked and the object can be seen to be moving (eg Jupiter around the Sun).

Temperature can be defined as the average kinetic energy of the particles in a given medium; it can be described beyone 'hot' and 'cold'.

While one could argue that we don't know for sure where Jupiter and the sun are, and that we only think we see the light coming from them, I'm pretty sure both of them are there, and that the theory of gravity is pretty much correct.

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It's not getting what you want, it's wanting what you've got.

CoachAlan

It's really not about being "right." Not in science anyway. It's more about predictabilty. I may not know how the forces work that keep atoms away from each other, but I can reliably predict that if I knock my knuckles on this desk, it's going to make a knocking sound rather than passing right through. [Sure enough, I just tried it and my prediction was right.]

I'm of the Socratic school of thought; I believe that we can't "know" anything. But we don't have to know. Predictability is just as useful most of the time.

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tecoyah

Interesting, as very few scientists in the field feel as confident as yourself concerning the theory of gravity. Many scientific journals over the last three months have discussed this topic and quite a few papers have been released.
The general concensus: we dont really understand gravity on very large, or very small scales.

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Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

Ustwo

I've always said the two magic things in science are gravity and memory.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

quicksteal

We develop theories about how something works based on what we already know about it, so that we can describe it to other people (the atom is a good time-course model of this). When we perform experiments and find out something new, we usually have to edit the theory or model to fit what we hadn't expected.
So making theories that are wrong is ok, as long as we're willing to realize that they're wrong when we learn new stuff. If we didn't come up with the original theories and share them with our peers, then we wouldn't be where we are today.