How Irrationality Created Modern Science - with Michael Strevens
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 มิ.ย. 2024
- Michael Strevens argues that science came about only once thinkers stumbled upon the idea that scientific breakthroughs could be accomplished by breaking the rules of logical argument.
Get Michael's book: geni.us/knolmach
Watch the Q&A: • Q&A: How Irrationality...
Modern science has done amazing things: creating covid vaccines, sending humans to the moon, finding the ultimate nature of gravity. What makes it so powerful-and so different from the attempts to understand nature made by the philosophers and monks of old?
Leaping from Aristotle to Descartes to quarks and gravitational waves, Michael Strevens will show that much of science’s power derives from an epistemic limitation that can only be understood as irrational. The paradigmatic scientist is a paradigmatic reasoner in many ways, but in at least one way, their perfection as a scientist lies in the deliberate cultivation of a gaping intellectual blind spot.
Michael Strevens was born and raised in New Zealand. He moved to the US in 1991 to undertake a PhD at Rutgers University; currently, he teaches philosophy of science at New York University. His academic work is principally concerned with the nature of science, covering topics such as scientific explanation, understanding, complex systems, probability of various sorts, causation, and the social structure of science; he also applies contemporary research in cognitive psychology to explain aspects of both philosophical and scientific thinking.
This talk was recorded on 1st April 2021.
---
A very special thank you to our Patreon supporters who help make these videos happen, especially:
Hamza, Paulina Barren, Metzger, Kevin Winoto, Jonathan Killin, János Fekete, Mehdi Razavi, Mark Barden, Taylor Hornby, Rasiel Suarez, Stephan Giersche, William 'Billy' Robillard, Scott Edwardsen, Jeffrey Schweitzer, Gou Ranon, Christina Baum, Frances Dunne, jonas.app, Tim Karr, Adam Leos, Michelle J. Zamarron, Andrew Downing, Fairleigh McGill, Alan Latteri, David Crowner, Matt Townsend, Anonymous, Roger Shaw, Robert Reinecke, Paul Brown, Lasse T. Stendan, David Schick, Joe Godenzi, Dave Ostler, Osian Gwyn Williams, David Lindo, Roger Baker, Greg Nagel, and Rebecca Pan.
---
Subscribe for regular science videos: bit.ly/RiSubscRibe
The Ri is on Patreon: / theroyalinstitution
and Twitter: / ri_science
and Facebook: / royalinstitution
and Tumblr: / ri-science
Our editorial policy: www.rigb.org/home/editorial-po...
Subscribe for the latest science videos: bit.ly/RiNewsletter
Product links on this page may be affiliate links which means it won't cost you any extra but we may earn a small commission if you decide to purchase through the link. - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Thank you for bringing attention to this important aspect of the scientific enterprise. I would like to add a point for consideration. When speaking of "beauty" in equations (or hypotheses in general) we are generally talking about symmetry, which really amounts to a "simplicity". For example, even before we were able to take a look at the "dark" side of the moon, we pretty much assumed it would not show the moon to be a disk or a cone - but the simpler (more symmetric) sphere. This can be understood as form of Occam's razor, which has long been the accepted guide when more than one model fits the data. From this perspective, I would say that there is absolutely nothing irrational about using "beauty" (symmetry, simplicity...) as a reliable guidepost toward better explanations. Clearly, we must always follow up with empirical testing to increase our level of confidence: as occasionally Nature demands a broken (reduced) symmetry to deliver the goods (as per the Higgs field, without which certain fundamental particles would have zero rest mass.)
hey vsauce, mrichael here
or is it?
"...scientists find it in their hearts somehow to take these risks, to devote in many cases decades of their life to simple projects that could simply go wrong, and that even when they go right require massive amounts of time and energy, and as I put it here, 'life-force' to engage in." Michael Strevens
I clicked on this thinking Michael Strevens would be Michael Stevens from VSauce
Vsaurce
Ah yes, a misread word coupled with the equivalent of the birthday paradox.
Thank you both Prof. Strevens and the RI for this. I interpret the reference to beauty by the scientists you mention as them seeking the simplest explanation possible based on the fact that time and again simple explanations have been shown experimentally true compared to more complex theories which is the beauty of it and so seeking the simplest theory seems rational and not irrational despite the apparent contradiction in motivation and criteria
The irrationally held belief behind all of this is that reality operates according to a small set of definable mathematical rules, which are homogeneous throughout reality, eternal and immutable. This is the assumption which leads theoreticians to seek out simple and elegant mathematical models. This has led to some predictive success over a tiny amount of time and within a miniscule space, but it has to be acknowledged that we may be within a small island of stability and the laws may be different in other times and places and in ways we can't currently measure. We see some regularities in the 'particle zoo' which have led to the discovery of previously unknown particles, but some of the properties of particles don't seem to have a simple mathematical model that fits. Therefore we have superstring theories etc. which are mathematically elegant but require more dimensions for the mathematics to work, dimensions which we have no evidence for the existence of, and are explained away as being somehow 'curled up' so that we're not aware of them at a macroscopic scale. As far as I know no-one has come up with a way to empirically test these theories yet, but they're still the focus of much effort - a lovely example of putting the mathematically elegant cart before the empirical horse.
As it happens, I do believe that reality operates (here and now) according to a fixed set of laws, but I have no idea why those laws should be expressible using the mathematics we've invented (or discovered), or why those expressions should turn out to have a high degree of symmetry or 'beauty'. Outside of certain examples, like the motion of a projectile, the movement of nearby celestial bodies, the behaviour of simple gases, the universe seems like a pretty chaotic place, and we've only had the chance to really run tests on one tiny speck of the vastness we know of, a speck which is unique (in our experience) in that the conditions here permitted the evolution of intelligent life, which seems to be absent (or silent) elsewhere.
Our earliest thoughts about the structure of the universe assumed that there would be perfect structure to the 'heavenly spheres', because they were created by god, and god would never create anything imperfect or chaotic - all must be harmony, symmetry, perfection, eternal and immutable. We are still essentially proceding from that irrational and unfounded idea, that when we find the rules which perfectly explain and predict everything, they will be beautiful and simple, ideally printable on a t-shirt for physics post-grads and workers at CERN to wear. Kinda like assuming that you fully understand an elephant because you have a beautiful description of the tip of one of its tusks - which is supported by tests on the tusk tip, which is all you have access to, and therefore completely describes the whole thing.
Only after we build a knowledge machine that can rival the biological to compete and outwit might we know what is reality, rational or simple. The physics of natural language might need exploring.
Nancy Cartwright in "The Dappled World" expresses an outlook similar to yours. You are correct, I think. Science is no longer metaphysical. The laws of science no longer come from God!
So scary!! 😰😥
I misread "Michael Strevens" as "Michael Stevens" and thought this was going to be a Vsauce video
LOL! Same, I was like "What, Vsauce in the Royal Institution?" xD
Same here, But it was a happy accident. This was way more informative.
"If the other team gets there first then you lose out completely. Science cares only about the discovery, and the discovery is always the initial announcement. No one wants to hear what the structure of TRH is again. The first time is enough." Michael Stevens, 'How Irrationality Created Modern Science'.
beauty should be examined for discovery, but not used as an argument for existence
He is such a nice Professor too love going to his lectures even tho it is so early in the Morning
Hey, WSause, Michael Strevens here!
Every baby is beautiful to its mother!
meh not every one. I wasn't. And i know quite a few women that had a kid and their words right after were "get that thing away from me". I guess that was back when abortions were either illegal or they couldn't afford one.
Aristotle seems like a terrible exemplar of empiricism. I recall one of my science teachers said Aristotle's theories held science back for a thousand years.
It wasn’t Aristotle or his theories that held things back, rather the religious dogma that incorporated the ancients as an authority that it was heretical to question.
Science was held back only in Europe. People elsewhere wasn't sleeping at the European dark ages. The fact is that, the maturation of Empiricism happened outside of Europe and this video completely ignores that important period. Which makes it a pseudo-history.
@@aniksamiurrahman6365 Not really, because if that were the case modernity would have happened sooner somewhere else. There were a few murmurs for sure, such as Avicenna, but nothing that lead to a coordinated move forward in science until about the time of Galileo.
@@roqsteady5290 Oh yah? Then who discovered and established the very experimental methods science is based on? From Geometric Optics (Al-Hazen ibn Al-Hytham) to discovery of astrolabe (Al-Farabi and Al-Battani) and measurement of accurate astronomical angles (Al-Farabi). None of these was done by the Europeans. Read Francis Bacon and you'll see he's attributing his "scientific method" to Al-Hytham. But there's more. Its Arabs who first firmly established that a scientific model must be both mathematically rigorous and consistent with experiment and observation (Al-Tusi). In other words the tradition of building mathematical models in physics was first firmly established by Arabs, not Galilee and Newton. They just continued what was already going on. Heck even Kepler's famous book copies directly from Al-Tusi's book and has the same labeling scheme through over the book.
BBC made a very good documentary on it called "Science and Islam". The full documentary is available on TH-cam (I can't give u link, TH-cam will delete it, so just search).
@@roqsteady5290 Its also the Arabs who invented various experimental ways of chemical extraction and separation and established the fact that all the chemical processes follow quantitative relationship. After all all those name from Al-cohol to Al-Kali came from somewhere. Europe on the other hand was stuck in spiritual discussion on prime mover and whether universe is made of Aristotelian 4 elements!
Not to mention the Hindu-Arabic number system. Without Al-kwarizmi's and his book Al-Zibr wal Mukabila you guys in Europe will be still counting with Roman numerals. Where even Kwarizmi's book name alone suggests group theory (Yes, solvability by completion and balancing - that's head on to modern Group theory).
Neither modern science nor modern mathematics come from Europe and lies like directly from a respected institution show that Royal institution too is a propaganda institution like Smithsonian.
I found the talk to be excessively focused on a few celebrities like Einstein rather than the thousands of real scientists working in research labs and universities. At 6:45 I'm glad you didn't try to explain General Relativity or gravity. Einstein is treated as a kind of religious figure, but you have to take into account that one of his main assumptions wasn't true. See Chae et al, Testing the Strong Equivalence Principle published last year in the Astrophysical Journal.
It is not irrationality, but a paradox caused by lack of good paradigm for beauty and truth. If we provide such a paradigm, then it will resolve itself naturally.
I doubt it. Beauty, by definition, is subjective, while science searches for the objective truth. You can't reconcile the two.
@@nHans Beauty is objective by the same margin to which truth and science can be objective. What can be demonstrated as true is not objectively true, it is subjectively true to said observer, and if any objective truth was to exist, then it's irrelevant of what is demonstrably true. Beauty can easily be tested, taking into account our understanding of human psychology, neurology and cognition, to the same extent anything else can be. Objective/subjective truth is not a scientific term, it's a philosophical term.
@@SimonWoodburyForget 🤣
Clearly, you and I use very different dictionaries, not to mention epistemology textbooks.
Anyway, can you provide a good paradigm for beauty and truth-one that the original poster is looking for-which will allow the paradox to resolve itself naturally?
@@nHans Beauty is a classification of visual, auditory, and more generally sensory inputs, which the brain (presumably) classifies as interesting, so let's work down from here:
Do you use beauty when picking the color of the bars on a graph, or the type of graph you're about to use? Do you use beauty when trying to visualize your datasets in a way that appeals to your brain? Do you use beauty when encoding a 3 dimentional models into a 2 dimenitonal image rasterized by a graphical application interface? Do you use beauty when picking words that you'll be using to descirbe a cause and effect?
You're doing those things effortlessly, because you're a human... but how could you actually make a computer do-science? How about a chimp, could you make a chimp do science, by training him to match a scientific protocol? Dolphins? Ravens? Crows? Blue Jays? Parrots? Octopus?... What are all these animals lacking, that is preventing them from doing science? I mean yes, presumably their brains are too small... but how do you describe your brain's ability to process information? _What makes an image visible? What makes text readable?_
The ability to process the information, encode it into a feeling or emotion, is what makes it visible, readable, identifiable.... clearly you would describe it as your brain's ability to identify and classify patterns, which is to put it short: beauty.
@@SimonWoodburyForget Yup, you and I are definitely working off of very different vocabularies.
For each of your questions, I have a different answer. In fact, as a software engineer, I have very specific and detailed criteria for the questions in your second para. Sadly, none of them is _'beauty.'_
Then again, as an engineer, I stop when the result is _'good enough.'_ I don't refine it beyond that to the _'elegant,' 'beautiful,'_ or _'perfect'_ stages. This has worked out pretty well for me.
Your last point-I'd call it *_apophenia._* (By an amazing coincidence, Sabine's most recent upload is all about it.)
Does anyone know what the key frame for this video is a photo or montage of? Some sort of particle detector(s) / calorimeter?
Science in general demonstrates exponential growth. It faltered and sputtered and made mistakes trying to get going, coming up with religion for explanations, etc. But as it grows, it grows faster and faster, building on past learning and on scientific principles. This is the prediction for Artificial Intelligence. It is sputtering and making mistakes, but eventually, it will rocket off exponentially. .
Since what is considered beautiful is so varied, even within a single culture, let alone across many cultures, it is too subjective to be be considered as a reason to accept or reject a theory. Therefore, I see no irrationality.
Everyone: science requires evidence
String theorists: lol
To bad. Couldn’t listen to it anymore. Once you hear the uuuuhhh you can not unhear it. Goodluck to you all!
Excellent
It was a great presentation, thanks Michael and the Ri👍
Quite an excellent talk, however the speaker could improve (restrict) the interruptions in his speech (uhs and ums) so that the lecture flows smoothly. Otherwise quite informative, logical and deep.
definitely not, i stopped after a few minutes. Feels like this guy doesnt really know what hes talking of. When u havent calculated and went through at least some examples of special and general relativity u shouldnt talk about it. Same with Kopernik. I have read whole books about this revolution and he doesnt get that this revolution is embedded deep in the history of science and physics, a history that goes back to the ancient greeks, and has been already conjectured there, and then proven by Kepler and Galileo shortly after Kopernikus' work based on a gigantic amount of observation data and (at this time) cutting edge new technology. It laid the groundwork for universal laws of mechanics and had also huge implications about how european society viewed science from then on and it relativized the status of religion as authority over the teachings of what they saw as creation (which is now shifted completely into the mythical realm)
This guy is talking about it as if he read about it in a childrens book, where no deep understanding, no linking and no background history is given. Additionally his take on gravity in general relativity is disturbingly wrong. The connection between space-time and energy/mass is at the center of the theory together with the reason why this is the case for our universe, the very most important thing and he talks as if the movement equations that result from it are so special, ignoring that the movement is roughly known since Newton and Euler+Lagrange.
I cant take philosophy of science seriously, cuz they are refusing to dig deeper than their superficial explanations. I bet they gave a physicist 5 minutes to talk about the history of physics as a whole, while they tried to scribble notes and pretended to understand what he was talking about, and are still wondering why they dont understand modern science as a whole. Its incredible frustrating that those people are doing the public relation part of science and insulting the intelligence of their audience with this level shallow thought
@@shadesmarerik4112 copy pasting your comments?
An AI ought to do that (edit out the interruptions in his speech (uhs and ums)) as the video gets uploaded.
@@ratlinggull2223 replied different people.. so what?
@@shadesmarerik4112 because an AI ought to do that as the video gets uploaded...
I am from Brazil and I have already been to Sobral
The concept of beauty underlies the rejection of ad hoc explanations of observations and instead favoring simpler explanations. That's expressed as "Occam's Razor" which says that the simpler explanation is often the correct one. Examples would be the Ptolemic solar system model with circles revolving on other circles versus the more beautiful, simpler model of Kepler's elliptical orbits.
You described parsimony; Occam's razor deals with simplicity, which often intersects with parsimony. "Beauty", in theoretical physics, is mostly invoked to refer to unification/symmetry - which often involves both of the latter
Where is this part "by breaking the rules of logical argument"? I haven't seen it.
Irrationality helped in the development of physics and physics now is the king of all science and knowledge!
King?
*Math entered the chat
@@wdujsub7902 maths ≠ science
(I think that's how mathematicians write)
@@iseriver3982 that May be true depending on how you define math ( invention / Discovery ) but mainly you cannot have any knowledge really without math. Of course maybe you Can communicate the conclusions for example that matter-energy bends space tíme, but to get to that conclusion would be impossible without math. But when you dont consider math as a science then yeah i fully agree that physics in the best!
@@wdujsub7902 you can't know knowledge without language, that doesn't make English or Latin science.
10:46 - Surely, the "very white object" in the negative is actually the *Moon* (which is in front of the Sun during an eclipse), no?
Being in front of the sun, between the earth and the sun, the backside of the moon to us would be dark, black. It is white because the picture is a negative. You might have to be pretty old to understand what that is, as they are no longer necessary with digital photograph. Have you never seen even a partial eclipse?
@@awakening7251 - What in my post makes you think I don't understand the concept of a negative? Did you bother watching / listening to the video, at the time code I indicated? He says the "very white object" is the *_Sun._*
@RFC3514 - Yup, it bugged me too.
@@RFC-3514 No. Absolutely no. The very white object is the black (darkside) moon in negative. If this is a pic of an eclipse, then the sun is blocked out by the moon -- that is the very essence of an eclipse. In photographic negatives, all objects are their exact opposites in color. Thus, the sun -- if it were visible -- would be black. And listen again to the video: he says the white object is the moon. (I was a photographer back in the days when film reigned and developed many a roll of negatives in darkrooms.)
@@miguelpsycan4321 - Why do you start with "no, absolutely no", and then *repeat **_exactly what I wrote?_*
I even included the exact timecode where he says _"the _*_Sun_*_ is, in the negative, the very white object in the sky - at the time a very dark object, the eclipsed _*_Sun"._* [sic]
Guess what, I've developed many rolls of film in dark rooms as well. And the concept of _negative_ is independent of medium, anyway.
Maybe try _reading_ what people actually wrote (and watching the video) before "mansplaining" it back at them?
I find it completely rational to exclude beauty as scientific evidence. Beauty is purely in the eyes of the beholder; ie: it is always subjective and varies according to the observer. One of the great feats of science has always been to exclude all personal opinions, beliefs, myths, and superstitions, in order to find the best truth which can only be determined by objective measurements on which all observers must agree (or be themselves irrational). Science must eschew all subjective to find the objective.
And I say the above acknowledging that I have sometimes been astounded by the beauty and simplicity in my own discoveries ( I am a research scientist.)
There is a much more interesting observation about science: it is ultimately trans-rational, intuitional. The entry question is: Where do hypotheses come from? Scientist always come up with them sooner or later, and often too many of them. They obviously do not come from the mind, ie from past experience or knowledge: that knowledge is what we are trying to discover. Hypotheses just appear into the seeker's mind from an outside source beyond his ken. ( Actually, this source is known, identified in quantum ontology. )
I just got clickbaited thinking it was vsauce's Michael Stevens
Nope, it wasn't clickbait. There was no misrepresentation. You misread the last name and forgot that other people could have the same first name. Don't blame RI for this!
It would have been important to clarify what is meant by "irrational".
It was described; not empirically & not operationalized & not rationally: just a proposition. The description was "to not take in all reachable cheap info": being "cheap" undefined, and "reachable" undefined... It's a poorly thought proposition. It's cheap, but not frugal.
Maybe using similar terms for "science machine" and "rational machine" would've been clearer. But the enterprise here is publicitary.
It's about promises enlongated gradually, 'till boredom strikes. Less industrious; more speculative. A gamble, in search for whatnot.
Guillermo, Ration is the predictable order which integrates and stabilizes existence over relatively long periods of time. Irration is the unpredictable disorder which destabilizes and disintegrates existence over relatively brief periods of time. Science rejected the ration and meaning of emotions centuries ago. They represent principles of ration essential to our existence and, they are the means, the only means, from which we have the capacity to derive meaning. The foundation upon which all emotions rest is the first bifurcation of our thought process: From ration we derive a general emotional response and positive meaning and from irration , we feel a general emotional response and negative meaning. Stress is our response to all forms of irration, beauty, happiness joy ect. are some of the words we use to describe our emotional response to ration. I hope you and others might also see the ration and meaning of Life’s emotions to be exquisitely beautiful. This cannot be seen with a thought process dominated by the selfish emotions of our ego. The key to free your thought process is to think about the ration and meaning of empathy. I hope this helps you, with empathy, Pete.
What I take from his lecture, is how much effort, patience and dedication it takes to prove something empirically. In some cases it took billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands hours of hard, arduous and very precise work to find a minute piece of evidence to prove a specific part of a theory. In economic theory that would be described as irrational behavior, since the yields do not immediately correspond with the amount of effort required. And that is - he says - what modern (natural) science is. One has to be 'mad' to engage in it and wait for God knows how long to see if your effort produces the result (positive or negative) you wanted to prove.
Has to do with the eventual inevitable use of inductive reasoning in progressing science through paradigms
@@arinalikes5911 that may be a case. There may be many other examples of "irrationality". Hence the importance of clarifying the meaning given to the word in question.
Yes, what we perceive to be proved, at least for our satisfaction.
“Irrationality created modern science.” Rationality is what makes me able to read that statement and listen to the lecture. My head hurts.
The lecturer is fundamentally wrong that rigorous empiricism is irrational, so your head need hurt no more.
Neuroscience figured out that you litterally don't have enough blood to run all parts of your brain at once. The reason your head hurts is that you're using a part of your brain you don't normally use, and your brain is automatically tensing your head muscles in response.
If you trust the above statement you are irrational.
@@JamesPetts i found Kant to have very good arguments against rigorous empiricism. idk i couldnt continue watching this lecture cuz he failed hard in the first few minutes
@@shadesmarerik4112 Why do you think that Kant's arguments against rigorous empiricism are valid?
And precisely what do you mean by "rigorous empiricism" here? Empiricism is only valid for empirical propositions (i.e., not for pure mathematics or logic), so if the arguments are against empiricism in contexts in which empiricism is not valid, it would not be capable of amounting to a valid argument against rigour in contexts where empiricism is valid.
@@shadesmarerik4112 I watched the lecture and listened to the Q&A as well (link in the description). In the lecture, he seemed to be describing actual historical instances where the scientists' eye for beauty did lead them to objective scientific truths. He did not give me the impression that that's the _only_ way for science to progress.
In the Q&A, he was questioned about this. He even gives an example where a certain group of scientists were actually lead astray by their insistence on beauty.
They could have just asked my wife. She knows everything....
Simplicity is not irrational .. going on and on before coming to the point, then fudging it (simplicity / elegance / beauty), without even mentioning Ockham, is ..
1. While there may be significant overlap between beauty and simplicity in the minds of many people, beauty does not necessarily equate to simplicity and you shouldn't equivocate these two concepts.
2. His point was not that beauty or simplicity is irrational. The irrationality came from the contradiction between the 'iron rule' and the 'principle of total evidence'.
@@teenagesatanworship More than that: he says that the iron rule is itself irrational (52:24), so what it excludes is rational (otherwise, it would not be irrational to exclude it) .. so, if anything, the implication is the opposite: simplicity / elegance / beauty might well be rational
But you already pointed out that beauty isn't "ignored" by scientists, it's simply used as a guide, not as evidence. That doesn't seem irrational.
I thought science had more to do [or at least as much to do] with Descartes, whose bailiwick was
idealism. Geometrical algebraic logic played a large part in theorizing, or so I think. Until quantum
theory and Bertrand Russell and Whitehead's Principia disproved the formal logic of mathematics,
which launched probability theory, the uncertainty principle, the fallacy of the excluded middle etc.
This explains the gap between rich and poor countries when it comes to their share of scientific discoveries.
Gravity bending light? Is it not just relative? We live on a sphere which appears to be flat, so what is to say that when we see light bend it is not just another illusion?
no he explained it wrong. Light doesnt get bent. It follows a straight path and that is WHY we can detect curved space time with this. Its a gravitational lens effect: space-time is bent around massive objects, and light follows the "straightest" path through that. Its not the light that bends, but space-time
Go have a bath
Michel: please see my unquantum experiments.
Royal Institute with the misleading title.
Is the NECSI really still studying every finch on Daphne Major?
I think they are. They want to know if the new overruns the old ...
"It's told us about the origin -- the evolution of life." (0:50) Oopsie! Not the origin. Not just yet!
I uh, uh, was interested until uh, uh, I couldn't take uh, uh, it anymore. 😕
TRH stands for thyrotropin releasing Hormone I think
This would have been one of the best presentations if it was given in Faraday's Hall, could have been the most-watched video as well. Nonetheless, it was a fantastic presentation.
👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Beauty as simplicity is a relevant way to estimate the scientific value of a theory : the more degrees of freedom your theory has, the more incompatible datasets your theory can fit, hence lowering its actual descriptive power.
If you want to have a perfectly accurate "theory" of everything known, you just need to update a record of every empirical data that is collected, but that by itself is of very little value : it does not suggest anything about the unknown.
However when a theory does suggest something about the unknown, it has to be explored empirically, because there is a trade off between simplicity and accuracy, and the true complexity of this world is unknown to us, and thus so is the accuracy of any untested prediction of a theory.
Science does not exclude beauty as a relevant criterion of validity, it iterates between beauty and empirical accuracy to refine our understanding of how truly complex this world is.
beauty is definitely not validity and its also not a criterion. Looks like u never did a mathematical proof or calculated anything in physics.
U get beauty when u explained something incredible complicated in an unbelievably elegant and enlightening way, and that is because intelligence is sexy in a quite literal sense. Its one of the mating preferences for humans.
If u can formulate something so that u explain a complicated and relevant system in a new perspective, it shows that u understood what u were talking about, and that u have the potential to create new knowledge. But it definitely doesnt omit the need for a rigorous proof.
@@shadesmarerik4112 beauty in physics mean that the kind of structure or symmetries you have in your formalism constrain the ways in which you can describe reality : beauty is minimalism.
Incredibly complex theories that require tons of had hoc hypothesis (and thus free parameters) to match already existing data points are of no more interest than a high degree polynomial fit.
To put it in a simple way : beauty in physics is pretty much the same thing as the application of Occam's Razor.
And by the way, no experiment can prove a theory right, it can fail at proving it wrong.
" the more degrees of freedom your theory has, the more incompatible datasets your theory can fit, hence lowering its actual descriptive power" The opposite, actually: if you have a lot of parameters, that _increases_ your descriptive power; this shouldn't really be a problem, since actual reality is always fit to a smaller region of that parameter space with careful measurement. The natural sciences are all about describing the physical world; that's the secret of their success. But if you insist in making predictions, in the end of the day, you can always go to your local gypsy, and be merry.
@@jeanf6295 beauty is minimalism... beauty is application of Ockhams razor....
This is ur subjective interpretation and (imo irrelevant) re-labelling of something that already has a label. Symmetries in physics have a specific meaning (for example the U(1) symmetry of the field that generates the photon through gauging) and imagining the "structure" of physics as something that possesses some kind of symmetry in a way that a mathematical object is symmetric is a horrible and inaccurate simplification
@@jeanf6295 ur last sentence addresses Hume's empiricist problem of induction. U should read Kant who basically refuted this point with his transcendental Idealism, which reconciles Rationalism and Empricism. Read his "Critique of pure Reason" for this
Excellent talk 👍
Perhaps in future talks edit out the" ahhhs " please
You probably are not aware but I went back and ahh
counted 10 ahhs in the just the first 43 seconds of your otherwise very instructive talk.
The content is superb,
....but either properly edit your talk (Software?)
... or possibly please read an actual transcript ahh of ahh your ahhh talk
Our current Prime Minister in Canada gives speeches where every second word is "Ahhh"
He is getting better... now only every 3rd word is "Ahhh"
I apologize for my criticism (I am CANADIAN after all )
I am a Scientist (geologist) who has been sidelined for finding exploration projects that didn't meet the " Flavour of the month"
One project I initiated in 1998 is now being pursued avidly by a variety of commercial interests as extremely profitable - it didn't help me back then, but it is nice to be vindicated.
I used evidence based Science, with a capital S, and it got me fired, as the financial types were convinced "nobody else was doing it"
They're doing it now.
I throughly enjoyed this lecture..Michael is intelligent and learned. He seems to know a respectable amount about physics, and there's little here to disagree with when it comes to the factoids. STILL, the assumptions about the capabilities of modern science to MAKE these ultra precise measurements and that they are unreliable DUE to the precision required is unfounded.. This reflects a lack of specific knowledge or a filter on the facts involved, no offense..Since Michael's underlying assumptions are flawed, so are any conclusions..The more time that passes the more tolerance one has for philosophical considerations, and Michael's positions are engaging..Thanks for this offering, and peace to all..
You upvoted your own comment!...
...Narcissist much? 🤣
@@fredbloggs5902 Yes, especially when I like it myself..Another helpful hint for you my vague friend, the more words and LIKES that appear in the comment section of a content creator the more favored they are by TH-cam Analytics for FUTURE visibility..I enjoy this channel except for the occasional troll..
Orb technology is a synthetic atom that is powered by a laser before being handed off to the panoramic network. It’s used for encapsulation of consciousness, weather control, everything. I had access to the physical orb and the projector that powers it. Find me on Facebook. I know.
Get this man a glass of water. Lip smacking. Great talk tho
10:03 - It's in Africa, not Italy, so it's "prin-si-pe", not "prin-chi-peh". ;-)
Are there any (famous?) examples of scientists working for decades, at great expense, at great risk... to confirm a theory that was widely thought to be correct, but they eventually proved was NOT correct?
(And that ‘normal’ people are capable of understanding 🤣).
Alexander Bogdanov wanted to gain youth through blood transfusion and ended up dying from malaria.
@Boodysaspie Yes! That’s exactly what I was looking for.
Miasma theory, Copernican heliocentrism, Phrenology, Lamarckism - I'm sure there are loads more. Newtonian Physics to some extent also falls into this category!
yes kopernikus revolution
before kopernikus they had nearly 1500 years of Ptolemaic astronomy and with HUUGE effort (they wrote libraries full of books ) they tried to make this scientific theory work
@@SeandonMooy copernican heliocentrism is actually correct... within its confinements. It set out to prove that the math is better (more predictive) when u put the sun in the center of planetary movement and it turned out to be correct and it is still correct.
Yes it got amended by newtonian physics (which is based on axioms that turned out to be not correct at all, but at least it described that there is an interaction between sun and earth and its not really the center) and then Einsteins relativity theory, but my point still stands
I thought you are michael from Vsauce
modern science tests against reality and throws out that which does not match reality.
or does it throw out the reality that doesn't match the template theory?
@@rockyfjord3753 Nope, if that was the case we won't have improvements in technology. Sure we have errors and incompletness but science does not claim to be perfect.
@@rhythmandacoustics Science constantly overturns its errors which are caused by
templates that discard realities that don't fit theories. You can read the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset for greater
explication. He was known post WWII as
having the finest mind in Europe, so
said Albert Camus.
@@rockyfjord3753 camus is a joke
@@rhythmandacoustics He was well liked by
the Americans, more so than Sartre and
de Beauvoir. New ideas have explored
beyond existentialism. Ortega y Gasset
was well respected as late as 1995 in
a tome by Jacques Barzun.
It is not real sience history it is -official history 😎😎😎
So you didn't answer your first question. Why did "nothing" happen between Aristotle and the enlightenment? Monotheism.
Also you talk about Aristotle but not about Aristarchos (earth turns around the sun vs. Aristotle), Eratosthenes (circumference of the earth e.g.) and the other old greeks who can be considered as the first scientists who didn't throw their incomprehension in the lap of god, like Aristotle did.
Circle squared.
Always god that stops or hides the discoveries.
"Why did "nothing" happen between Aristotle and the enlightenment? Monotheism" Cute. Source, please. Preferrably from a _credible_ historian.
"Always god that stops or hides the discoveries" And here you just flash your ignorance of theology; for starters, you could begin by defining to us what "God" means.
@@thstroyur I can recommend an interesting book from Tim Whitmarsh : "Battling the gods, Atheism in the ancient world."
Just as with Aristotle, religious scientists or pre-scientists, defer to God when they hit a wall. Ohhh so unexplainable, so it must be God(s). Nihil novi sub sole, right?
(this is my beef with this video and the lecturer)
As I am convinced religion is a force that hinders/hindered scientific progress, there are nonetheless exceptions. I'll cite 2:
1. Islam (8th -13th century) or the Islamic golden age, until arguably the spread of Al-Ghazali's (circa 1100) ideas became mainstream, from the 13th century till today.
2. Societas Iesu : Interestingly founded during the enlightenment (1540), Jesuits are humanists contrary to other religious orders/currents were the almighty god is central.
(basically out of scope, since it happens during enlightenment)
About the significance or definition of the word god, it was debated during all this time, between Aristotle and the enlightenment.
Regardless of the quality of the actual speech i've not yet listened, the headline is such that the immediate feeling i got was that it's a clickbait and lending credence to the Brexiteers and conspiracy nutters.
Checking in the comments before listening to this talk, I'm guessing this is an example of philosophy praising classical mechanics and assuming microfractures in engine parts do not feature here.
General Relativity is the flat universe theory.
I love animal brains.
This is to the royal institute and all who lecture....the yenth time i hear umm or uhh....im an ase certified college drop out...my speech101 teacher would snore
Yeah t?aT was done in purpose...
.hm.
I will come back to video game
LOL has "Stakhanovite" made its way into the english language now?
No. Rationality emancipated itself from irrationality. Irrationality can't "create" rationality.
Math begs to differ
@@AnastasiaR :D
And the fact that Empiricism isn't irrationality. Representing empirical science as such makes this video a pure pseudo-history.
Incredibly disappointing and shallow talk... :(
yes i stopped after a few minutes. Feels like this guy doesnt really know what hes talking of. When u havent calculated and went through at least some examples of special and general relativity u shouldnt talk about it. Same with Kopernik. I have read whole books about this revolution and he doesnt get that this revolution is embedded deep in the history of science and physics, a history that goes back to the ancient greeks, and has been already conjectured there, and then proven by Kepler and Galileo shortly after Kopernikus' work. It laid the groundwork for universal laws of mechanics and had also huge implications about how european society viewed science from then on and it relativized the status of religion as authority over the teachings of what they saw as creation (which is now shifted completely into the mythical realm)
This guy is talking about it as if he read about it in a childrens book, where no deep understanding, no linking and no backround history is given. Additionally his take on gravity in general relativity is disturbingly wrong. The connection between space-time and energy/mass is at the center of the theory together with the reason why this is the case for our universe, the very most important thing and he talks as if the movement equations that result from it are so special, ignoring that the movement is roughly known since Newton and Euler+Lagrange.
I cant take philosophy of science seriously, cuz they are refusing to dig deeper than their superficial explanations. I bet they gave a physicist 5 minutes to talk about the history of physics as a whole, while they tried to scribble notes and pretended to understand what he was talking about, and are still wondering why they dont understand modern science as a whole. Its incredible frustrating that those people are doing the public relation part of science and insulting the intelligence of their audience with this level shallow thought
Royal Institution has long ago lost all credibility.
Agree; it ought to be subtitled: “How to set up a strawman for the science deniers coming after me.”
Yeaaah, could just say that rationality in an unscientific world created science but whatever
Um ah erm eh uh....
Woohoo! 🤯🤘💣😭☠️
It's a Idea! Can any of you limies speak Latin?
Every experiment starts with some irrationality, but never in history has the sample size been as large as in 5g's mm waves and micro antennas
Click Bait!! This Michael Stevens isn't the real Michael Stevens. It's a fake Michael Stevens. This guy should know better than to use his own name to identify himself.
Dude, you need to get your eyes checked and/or learn to read English alphabets properly. Your comment might have been funny if the names of these two people were spelled identically, but they aren't. This is no clickbait. You misread the name. You confused yourself. Don't blame the RI; blame yourself.
@@nHans
It's a light hearted joke Neranjjan Henazoge!
Long may continue. If you have power resources and support you can prove anything including walking on the water. Specially if it has apparent Jewish connection. Take bending of light by sun. billions of matter is ejected by sun continuously. The bending is due to refraction/reflection of light not gravity if you knew photon structure and real gravity.. this was not addressed in the test. This also apply to circular lensing in space. No space dust. No lensing effect. Then there is fixed speed of light. Tell the viewers where they can find one way speed of light in space? Man use two way speed of light tested horizontally on earth divided by half, not vertically one way in both direction. DLR, ESA, NASA refused to test it, because our test showed the speed is not fixed and depend on locality and direction. Trojan project aim was to undermine allied science signed Einstein & others due to Jewish background when he was at patent office. He was helped by sympathizers of Germans and Jewish. The last thing America interested to confirm they have been coned by an agent. Specially knowing all the technological progress has been by trial and errors, not by theoretical astrophysicist. They will provide any amount of money to prove all Einstein idea is correct. Rather than entertain they were coned. Specially knowing no one will challenge result far in space unless other nation chose to do it for science sake. Ferydoon Shirazi. MG1
🐋
Dull as
Er, er, er, ... a lecture without, er, er, stuttering would be much less, er, er, irritating.
The fact that Darwin's theory took off is a complete repudiation of this theory. He argued on the basis of theory, wrong observations, and poor analogies. It took off because it caught the anti-religion cultural zeitgeist.
It mostly took off because it turned out to be correct.
this is the worse case of er'ing and ah'ing iv ever seen from a public speaker.he has very intresting things to say but maybe should uh, er, ah, stick to writing
Uh, Uh, Uh. I'm sure you are a very well educated man, but saying 'Uh' all the time cuts your perceived education. All I hear listening to you is 'Uh'. If you need to pause say nothing instead of throwing in an 'Uh"
Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,.. Impossible to listen to this narrator.