It is happening, and it is happening now. A group of Hungarian researchers showed evidences of a possible-fifth force in the universe! If their results can be reproduced by the others, we know exactly who will get the next Nobel prize!
This is the website I first read all the details: Physicists Claim They’ve Found Even More Evidence of a New Force of Nature
This is a fancy look: A ‘no-brainer Nobel Prize’: Hungarian scientists may have found a fifth force of nature
“The function of scientific generalizations is to provide expectations of the occurrence of events and patterns of properties. (…) To know when to rely on a generalization to know when it will apply, and this can be decided only under what specific conditions it has applied before.” pg.477.
“Scientists may prefer theories with particular pragmatic virtues because they possess the skills to construct models for explaining phenomena on the basis of these theories. In other words, they have pragmatic understanding UT of such theories. I suggest to rephrase this with the help of the notion of intelligibility. If scientists understand a theory, the theory is intelligible to them.” pg.593.
When I first think of the pragmatic virtues, I thought those are related to the application of theories such that these virtues are the distinction point of being a scientist vs. being an engineer. However, as I read through, I realized the author is actually mentioning a way of theory choice based upon the pragmatic understanding of theories.
“The fact that deductive reasoning—and accordingly deductive-nomological explanation—involves skill and judgment has two important implications. First, skills cannot be acquired from textbooks but only in practice, because they cannot be translated in explicit sets of rules. Accordingly, to possess a skill is to have ‘tacit knowledge’.” pg.589.
I somewhat agree with this statement, but the following explanations are not really supporting this idea. There are examples for implicit learning, unconscious and unintentional learning, internalizing rules and developing cognitive skills as a physical skill. However, the author then wrote the existence of such a mind is also problematic. So, I’m not clear on how skills can be developed excluding explicit sets of rules.
“Understanding is at once a cognitive state and an epistemic achievement. Because understanding is a cognitive state, it depends in part on the psychological characteristics of those who seek to understand.” pg.94.
The important distinction here is the statement of ‘who seek to understand’, which emphasize a certain level of human cognition. This is also what makes a person a scientist.
“But these idealizations are specific to their purposes. This requires focus on one particular scientific aim (at a time), and one particular deployment of that aim, to the exclusion of others.” pg.108.
I believe idealizations can be made to reach a general rule or law, excluding any specific cases. For example, ideal gas law we learned in high school is general enough to be applied in both near vacuum and high pressures. If we want to be specific, we may use a modified version of the equation by including relative humidity etc. Therefore, idealizations can aim a broader view of the topic instead of being so specific.
“Yet, unlike accidental generalities and like causal relations, functional dependencies are in a sense physically necessary: an organism that has the dependent trait cannot be alive (or will be less viable) if it has the alternative trait instead of the needed one. In other words, a functional dependency is a constraint on what can be alive.” pg.75.
I think it is important for the philosophers’ perspective that there are boundary conditions and initial conditions for every physical system depending on their scale in space (dimensions in nm, um etc.) and their presence in time (e.g. how much time a spaceship needs to decelerate). Here, the author is making an important attempt to state a constraint to be alive by elucidating functional dependencies.
“They (functional dependence relations) are synchronic in the sense that the need must be satisfied at the time that the demand arises.” pg.75.
I understood this statement as the demand (more oxygen in blood system) and supply (lungs) should be available at the same time. However, evolution is nothing like a lightening. It is more like a process and it cannot be understood if we don’t consider the changes happening in the environmental system. For example, fish used gill in water and took the solvated oxygen in water. But, before then, there were not enough oxygen in the atmosphere for a very long time. First, oxygen had been released from the oxidized rocks, then oxygen species had resolved in oceans. During this time, there were only little planktons and bacteria. As the level of oxygen increased in oceans, evolution made a progress emerging fish with gills. My point is that the author never mentioned the effects of environment itself directing evolution and causing natural selection. The demand arises not only due to the creator’s needs, but also due to the changes in surrounding and this happens in a long time period.
“Developments in twentieth‐century science should prepare us for the eventuality that some of our scientific explanations will have to be statistical—not merely because our knowledge is incomplete (as Laplace would have maintained), but rather because nature itself is inherently statistical.” pg.6.
I just wanted to say, ‘thank you!’ for this beautiful sentence. Actually, this sentence is also beating the deterministic view of Laplace and others. For example, statistical thermodynamics, which is the first step before diving into the particle’s world and quantum mechanics, has been empowered by Boltzmann, and he was so alone to defend his ideas and eventually he committed suicide. I’m still having trouble to understand why the acceptation of a statistical world required too much effort in human’s mind.
“The transmission of light from one place to another, and the motion of a material particle, are obvious examples of causal processes. The collision of two billiard balls, and the emission or absorption of a photon, are standard examples of causal interactions.” pg.8.
Transmission, emission and absorption are three modes of radiation acting on a surface, so those are basically light-electron interactions, although some say transmission is just a passing wave. I think, the separation of transmission to state it as a causal process is wrong in the sense of radiation. I wouldn’t distinguish causal process and causal interaction, as Hume suggested but I agree with the idea that cause and effect are more analogous to continuous processes which brings interactions into play.
“The requirement of empirical adequacy is thus the requirement that interpretation is the inverse of denotation.” pg. 333.
Overall, I’m impressed by this simple sentence because I can correlate this with the constructive empiricism of Van Fraassen, asserting the acceptance of a theory with the belief that it is empirically adequate. In my view, interpretation (in the sense of this reading) is mapping of a broader theory, which is postulated in the earlier stages of research by denotations. Demonstration step is related to the mathematical or material model, providing empirical adequacy as a bridge between denotation and interpretation.
“Galileo’s strategy is to take a problem in physics and represent it geometrically. The solution to the problem is then read off from the geometrical representation. In brief, he reaches his answer by changing the question; a problem in kinematics becomes a problem in geometry. This simple example suggests a very general account of theoretical representation. I call it the DDI account.” pg. 327.
I don’t think this example is a good start point to introduce a new account because it’s focusing on representation/denotation step mostly. For demonstration, he would mention the mathematical expression of this motion (x=1/2*a*t^2) or would show a result of an experiment (e.g. a car is moving from the city A to the city B).
“What is missing in the structuralist conception is an analysis of the physical character of model systems. (…) If the Newtonian model system of sun and earth were real, it would consist of two spherical bodies with mass and other concrete properties such as hardness and color, properties that structures do not have; (…) “ pg.253.
I appreciate his distinction for the model systems to be real or hypothetical entities. It sounds a bit cheesy that the Newtonian model system should consist of real spherical bodies with hardness and color (?!). If the model system is designed to show the gravitational force between two celestial objects, then why do we care about their hardness or color? The model describes the force, not the solid objects.
“Hence, the essential difference between a fictional and non-fictional text lies in what we are supposed to do with it: a text of fiction invites us to imagine certain things while a report of fact leads us to believe what it says.” pg. 260.
So, what if we read a text from an unknown author on the weather predictions for the next 20 years? Let’s say he/she writes about the expected climate changes in South Bend area, and saying, ‘the Lake Michigan will evaporate quickly and will trigger tornados almost every week during spring and summer.’ How can you decide if this is a part of a horror novel or scientific fact? I think there should be more distinctive features in scientific texts, such as reliability, testability, fallibility, the power of its predictions, applicability etc. (Thanks Sir Karl, again!)
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