What Is Bad Science?

[eye exaggerate]

I always get a bit upset when I hear the word "energy" applied to spirit-action. Imo it is nothing less/better than an effort to legitimize a belief in magic by appropriating the language of science. Thing about energy is ... it is definible, measurable, entirely describable in mundane/material terms. Jmo. cn

...but what if the energy is that aspect it is motivating? It can't be separated from action for description. Hoping that made a bit of sense!

Origins of energy? Any thoughts?

 

[researchkitty]

...but what if the energy is that aspect it is motivating? It can't be separated from action for description. Hoping that made a bit of sense!

Origins of energy? Any thoughts?

Origins of Energy............ This could be a fun one for a few pages..........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_energy

There's a quick brush-up for all the folks wanting to join in!

Oh, and if Finshaggy is reading, here's the History of Energy, but for Children:

http://www.eia.gov/kids/energy.cfm?page=timelines

 

[eye exaggerate]

Origins of Energy............ This could be a fun one for a few pages..........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_energy

There's a quick brush-up for all the folks wanting to join in!

Oh, and if Finshaggy is reading, here's the History of Energy, but for Children:

http://www.eia.gov/kids/energy.cfm?page=timelines

There is a fact, or if you wish, a law, governing natural phenomena that are known to date. There is no known exception to this law—it is exact so far we know. The law is called conservation of energy; it states that there is a certain quantity, which we call energy that does not change in manifold changes which nature undergoes. That is a most abstract idea, because it is a mathematical principle; it says that there is a numerical quantity, which does not change when something happens. It is not a description of a mechanism, or anything concrete; it is just a strange fact that we can calculate some number, and when we finish watching nature go through her tricks and calculate the number again, it is the same.

—​

...and speaking of pseudo, I just had an instant association to the Georgia Guidestones. *shrugs*

 

[cannabineer]

...but what if the energy is that aspect it is motivating? It can't be separated from action for description. Hoping that made a bit of sense!

Origins of energy? Any thoughts?

Oh dear, eye, my head; it spins! I feel the siren song of recursive logic! Y'know what a sucker for such I am!!

My inner purist would like to reserve the term "energy" for the quantities described by physicists and other natural philosophers. For the other sort that speaks of spirit andor consciousness andor ai yee yee ... I would dearly like to see another term introduced that can exist rather chastely alongside the strictly material[istic] term. Just my thoughts. cn

 

[eye exaggerate]

Oh dear, eye, my head; it spins! I feel the siren song of recursive logic! Y'know what a sucker for such I am!!

My inner purist would like to reserve the term "energy" for the quantities described by physicists and other natural philosophers. For the other sort that speaks of spirit andor consciousness andor ai yee yee ... I would dearly like to see another term introduced that can exist rather chastely alongside the strictly material[istic] term. Just my thoughts. cn

...sweet, let's see if someone in here can coin the term

 

[mindphuk]

Let's call it metergy, metaphysical energy.

 

[cannabineer]

I would use the Maori term appropriated by Larry Niven: "mana". cn

 

[eye exaggerate]

Let's call it metergy, metaphysical energy.

...though the Bear (of all polarity ) got it right, I do like metergy. It has nice expanding rings to it In metaphysics, and perhaps elsewhere, there's a known term for this energy in it's 'grounded' state - enpolar, I believe. (will check for my own curiosity)

 

[eye exaggerate]

There is a lot of bad science floating around this website, seriously I can't believe some of the crap people think is fact. To me the rise of pseudoscience is cause by a lack of critical thinking by the masses. I just want to punch people in the teeth when they "well evolution is just a theory" what next "gravity is just a theory".

Is there a name for what I call the the "faith fallacy". When creationist say "I have faith, but you can't see it or test it, and I can't tell you why I have it" maybe it's special pleading but I want to give it a new name, Being an Idiot. I have a lot of faith, faith the sun will rise, faith my car will run on gas, faith that I will shit on a regular basis. These faiths are based on observation. Idiot faith is when you have never observed it but expect it. Example faith that I will win the lotto without buying a ticket, it's prob never happened.

...what's that website again?...hmm, I think it's nasa.gov ...that's the one with all the good science. In here, it's more like "haute science".

Calling a creationist an idiot could get you some lost chiclets of your own, eh? You'd be lucky (a branch of) science came up with dental veneers and implants.

"Lucky"...oh dear, I crack me up!

 

[Doer]

I get a kick out of this line of reasoning. Gee, every time I hear about the theory of gravity or the theory of flight it is referenced more as accepted fact than theory.

The Big Bang in a fact, is it? And I'm quite sure we have no idea of what gravity is. The LHC found no evidence of a Higgs bosun. We don't know what causes matter to attract itself. We don't know what is responsible for Mass. We don't have a workable Theory of Gravity.

The discovery of the accelerating expansion of spacetime means we have no way to say what we are looking at. We don't know if the rate of expansion has changed or even been negative in the past. So no, Big Bang is not a fact.

And flight is a technology, not a theory.

 

[cannabineer]

Doer, you highlight an interesting point in re the semantics of "theory". We do have a working theory of gravity ... have had since Newton published, but is it a practical theory, not one describing the physical basis of gravity. In the 20th century and the bit of time since, an implication has crept in that "theory" need describe the (usually microscopic/atomistic) physical basis of the phenomenon under examination. However I would like to draw attention to Darwinian ebvolution, a theory that has steadily advanced to the point of universal acceptance (if you forgive those opposed for counterscientific reasons) for many decades before even an inkling of its physical basis (genes, DNA, mutations, ) became known.
As for flight, there too we can properly use the term descriptively: the technology is necessarily underlain by great reams of math and physics describing the behavior envelopes of airfoils, propellers, jet engines of various types etc. Calling this "theory" is eminently valid imo. Consider that a college course divided into "lecture" and "lab" components in the USA would be "theory" and "practicum" in some European equivalents. The word stands herd over a fairly rich flock of closely-grouped meanings. cn

 

[Doer]

There is a fact, or if you wish, a law, governing natural phenomena that are known to date. There is no known exception to this law—it is exact so far we know. The law is called conservation of energy; it states that there is a certain quantity, which we call energy that does not change in manifold changes which nature undergoes. That is a most abstract idea, because it is a mathematical principle; it says that there is a numerical quantity, which does not change when something happens. It is not a description of a mechanism, or anything concrete; it is just a strange fact that we can calculate some number, and when we finish watching nature go through her tricks and calculate the number again, it is the same.

—
​

...and speaking of pseudo, I just had an instant association to the Georgia Guidestones. *shrugs*

Right you are. We name a "thing" (is it a thing?) Energy. In it's most basic form it can be a quantum of information. Cosmological bets have been won and lost recently regarding the conservation of information, re: Black Holes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_information_paradox

Right now, there seems to be a suprisingly small, (it's a vast universe) amount of energy being inserted somehow into our timespace. Dark Energy.
Where is the conservation of energy there? In other words, when I was young, things seemed well understood. Now it seems none of those
scientific assumptions are holding up. What is Energy? Quantum math can describe only one electon force. You don't need individual "particle."
With non-locality, it could just be one thing operating through some un-known vector.

 

[Doer]

Doer, you highlight an interesting point in re the semantics of "theory". We do have a working theory of gravity ... have had since Newton published, but is it a practical theory, not one describing the physical basis of gravity. In the 20th century and the bit of time since, an implication has crept in that "theory" need describe the (usually microscopic/atomistic) physical basis of the phenomenon under examination. However I would like to draw attention to Darwinian ebvolution, a theory that has steadily advanced to the point of universal acceptance (if you forgive those opposed for counterscientific reasons) for many decades before even an inkling of its physical basis (genes, DNA, mutations, ) became known.
As for flight, there too we can properly use the term descriptively: the technology is necessarily underlain by great reams of math and physics describing the behavior envelopes of airfoils, propellers, jet engines of various types etc. Calling this "theory" is eminently valid imo. Consider that a college course divided into "lecture" and "lab" components in the USA would be "theory" and "practicum" in some European equivalents. The word stands herd over a fairly rich flock of closely-grouped meanings. cn

OK, I'll grant that. We have a lot of tech around the use of Gravity. But, Newtonian calculus allows us only to describe how gravity works, not what it is. So we know the operating priciples of tech that uses gravity. I can't call that a Theory any more. Too much is unknown.

I think we had a theory of flight in my lifetime. I remember much todo about Bumblebees. Shouldn't be able to fly, etc. Hummingbirds were a mystery, as well. Now, with high speed photography we know how a bee and a hummingbird can fly. We can make robot drones to copy the tech in nature.

To me a Theory is the height of science. We don't really know yet, but this is where we are with painstaking method. All else has fallen from Occam's Razor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor

Evolution is a perfect example. Big Bang was, but is no longer. Flight however, IMO, is no longer Theory, since the Operating Principles are well described mathmatically, it's a done deal. The math works in all fluids, you have to have a fluid to fly. It's all understood. No more bees and hummingbird confusion.

A solid technology. Of course, everyone studies the math, even myself as a pilot, and call it Theory, but filght is beyond theory, I'd say. Not so, Evolution. If we had time travel tech, I imagine, Evolution would no longer be a Theory, one way or another. That's all I mean.

 

[canndo]

The Big Bang in a fact, is it? And I'm quite sure we have no idea of what gravity is. The LHC found no evidence of a Higgs bosun. We don't know what causes matter to attract itself. We don't know what is responsible for Mass. We don't have a workable Theory of Gravity.

The discovery of the accelerating expansion of spacetime means we have no way to say what we are looking at. We don't know if the rate of expansion has changed or even been negative in the past. So no, Big Bang is not a fact.

And flight is a technology, not a theory.

flight is a theory, basd on weight drag thrust and lift, the technology is how the theory is used to accomplish actual flight. I am not claiming that the big bang is a fact, it is a theory. The point is that theories are not just idle suppostitions and there is plenty of evidence for the big bang and very little in the way of alternative theories.

 

[Doer]

But, Big Bang evidence is largely based on the Hubble Constant. Dark Energy means that we now have, instead, a big Variable. Namely, the Rate of Expansion's accleration.

Everything to my knowledge, that has been postulated mathmatically depends on the Constant. That is back until Inflationary period,
another piece of math-magic. But, even that has a big unknown unrelated to Dark Energy and Matter. Why did the Inflationary Period end?
That is a blank, right now.

So, dare I say, with the discovery of measurable acceleration in the expansion of spacetime, and no idea of what caused the forces of Inflation
and the cessation of Inflation, there is no evidence, at all, of the Big Bang.

 

[cannabineer]

But, Big Bang evidence is largely based on the Hubble Constant. Dark Energy means that we now have, instead, a big Variable. Namely, the Rate of Expansion's accleration.

Everything to my knowledge, that has been postulated mathmatically depends on the Constant. That is back until Inflationary period,
another piece of math-magic. But, even that has a big unknown unrelated to Dark Energy and Matter. Why did the Inflationary Period end?
That is a blank, right now.

So, dare I say, with the discovery of measurable acceleration in the expansion of spacetime, and no idea of what caused the forces of Inflation
and the cessation of Inflation, there is no evidence, at all, of the Big Bang.

Afaik, Doer, there are independent corroborations (not conclusive, but highly supportive) of/for the Bang.
1) the microwave background radiation.
2) The very-large-scale galactic distribution ... the "cobwebby" unevenness that shows up when the scale approaches a gigaparsec. My 2¢ ... cn

 

[researchkitty]

Newton thought that being able to describe what something did was good enough and simply did not really care why it was. If his description works, who cares why it works, it does, right?


Theory vs Law...... This one has bothered me on RIU for a while, and I wanted to make a thread about it one day...... Laws and Theories are the same thing. Example, Newton's "Laws". Oops, they are revised, now called "Einstein's Theory". The only reason the word Law and Theory got changed is because of the simplicity of sciences origins. Newtons laws we're pretty easy to understand and understood as common sense. A theory, however, goes beyond our "senses" and has to have a mathematical background to be a theory. A theory is NOT someone who says "I think this works this way", it is someone who says "I think this works this way, and here's the math to prove it..."


So remember next time you here the Laws of blah blah and the Theory of blah blah, that the Laws are generally "common sense understandings of natural phenomenon" and Theories are "mathematical understandings of the complexities our senses cant naturally sense".

 

[Heisenberg]

Newton thought that being able to describe what something did was good enough and simply did not really care why it was. If his description works, who cares why it works, it does, right?


Theory vs Law...... This one has bothered me on RIU for a while, and I wanted to make a thread about it one day...... Laws and Theories are the same thing. Example, Newton's "Laws". Oops, they are revised, now called "Einstein's Theory". The only reason the word Law and Theory got changed is because of the simplicity of sciences origins. Newtons laws we're pretty easy to understand and understood as common sense. A theory, however, goes beyond our "senses" and has to have a mathematical background to be a theory. A theory is NOT someone who says "I think this works this way", it is someone who says "I think this works this way, and here's the math to prove it..."


So remember next time you here the Laws of blah blah and the Theory of blah blah, that the Laws are generally "common sense understandings of natural phenomenon" and Theories are "mathematical understandings of the complexities our senses cant naturally sense".

As I understand it, a law describes an observation that always occurs under certain conditions, while a theory attempts to explain the why and how.

 

[researchkitty]

And an observation is one of our senses abilities, and a theory goes to the dynamics involved. Yup!

 

[eye exaggerate]

And an observation is one of our senses abilities, and a theory goes to the dynamics involved. Yup!

...whenever I hear 'dynamics involved', my theist self stands up and says "small scale model". So is this sense ability inherent in us? I hope y'all don't mind that I chirp in with the other factor of this discussion