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Philosophy of Science

r/PhilosophyofScience

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Posted by10 hours ago
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Posted by5 days ago

Scientism is the opinion that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality. It has become increasingly popular today especially amongst scientists who are openly hostile towards philosophy. This modern scientism can be summed up in Stephen Hawking’s claim that “philosophy is dead.”

I was wondering though whether modern scientism can be seen as the heir or modern day version of logical positivism of the early twentieth century. Logical positivism was a movement whose central thesis was the verification principle (also known as the verifiability criterion of meaning). This theory of knowledge asserted that only statements verifiable through direct observation or logical proof are meaningful in terms of conveying truth value, information or factual content. This theory of knowledge was extremely popular in the early twentieth century but by the 60’s had completely collapsed and became universally abandoned. This was because it was seen as too narrow a theory of knowledge and more importantly, it was shown to be self-refuting. This is is because the verification principle could not be verified by its own standards and thus lead to a contradiction.

Even though it is not taken seriously by the vast majority of philosophers today, this attitude, in my opinion, seems to be getting revived by modern day scientism. I was wondering am I correct in assuming this though?

So, what are the similarities/differences between scientism and logical positivism? Are both ideas heavily related? Is there a link between them? Is scientism a modern version of logical positivism? Thanks.

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Posted by5 days ago

I recently stumbled upon the work of Ilya Prigogine, 'The End of Certainty' (1997). In terms of Thomas Kuhn I'd say these ideas form a serious paradigm shift in physics, and science in general. He criticized the deterministic worldview of Newton and argued for a view on the universe as an evolutionary process that is irreversible. He speaks in his book about an 'arrow of time'. Prigogine says that physics needs to switch from focusing solely on isolated phenomena towards a probabilistic / statistical point of view where the theory of bifurcation (by Poincaré) has a central role.

Prirogine received a nobleprice in 1977 and the book I'm talking about is from 1997. We're now basically a fourth of a century further since his work and I wonder what his influence has been since then on physics.

When I think back about my years in secondary school in the 2010s (the only time I had physics and chemistry classes) I remember we mainly focused on Newton's laws and a tiny bit on the basics of quantum physics. (After that, I went studying ethics and philosophy so my knowledge of it is very elementary) But it shows to me that the idea of 'probabilistic (hard)science' is not seen as general accepted knowledge (or is secondary school physics just behind?)

I wish to dive much deeper into this rabbithole about chaos theory, mostly from a philosophical point of view.

So my questions are:

Physics anno 2023.

  • What is the main paradigm in physics?

  • What are the debates mostly about?

  • What are the most prominent opposing views?

  • What is the current status of chaos theory?

  • Are there any recent articles or books you recommend on this topic?

(Feel free to correct my interpretation on Prigogine or modify my questions a bit more specific. Maybe other subreddits could be a help too? I appreciate any serious answer a lot. Thanks)

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Posted by7 days ago
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Posted by11 days ago

The Ship of Theseus paradox is one of the most famous paradoxes in all of philosophy. It is a thought experiment that raises the question of whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object. Recently, I have heard about a potential solution to this paradox and it usually referred to as ‘Worm Theory’ and this is supposedly heavily related to the concept of four-dimensionalism. It seems that from my reading four-dimensionalism is also known as perduantism or worm theory.

Let me try to explain them:

In philosophy, four-dimensionalism (also known as the doctrine of temporal parts) is the ontological position that an object's persistence through time is like its extension through space. Thus, an object that exists in time has temporal parts in the various subregions of the total region of time it occupies, just like an object that exists in a region of space has at least one part in every subregion of that space. According to the worm theory, perduring objects are four–dimensional wholes occupying determinate regions of space–time and having temporal parts, or stages, each of them confined to a particular time. Simply, implicit assumption that worm theory therefore rejects is the notion that physical objects such as ships are merely three dimensional objects (where the three dimensions are spatial dimensions). Objects really do have four dimensions: three spatial and one temporal.

From all this we can see that its two main theses are: 1: Ordinary objects exist at more than one instant of time 2: Ordinary objects have temporal parts

So, is worm theory a good candidate to serve as a reasonable solution to the Ship of Theseus paradox? What are some good arguments in the theories favour? What are its benefits over other potential solutions to the Ship of Theseus also? Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thanks everyone!

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