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Re: Addendum to "Is" - Science, Empirical Investigation, and Prediction
by Mike Alexander
30 December 2001 01:27 UTC
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[Luke:] Yet, prediction is a broad term and I think there’s a slippery slope to avoid here.  By prediction, we don’t want to imply the scientist is some sort of magical prophet foretelling the future exactly as it’s going to be (mainly because I’m not so sure one can).  With the (semi-)free agency of both individual things and systemic realities as a whole, we aren’t always going to be able to make predictions that are 100% accurate.  Much of prediction still comes down to probabilities, likely scenarios, Chaos Theory, and Complexity.  It has far less to do, I believe, with materialist mechanism in the Newtonian sense as it does with the trend of fluid dynamics in both the physical world (matter and energy) and the world of organisms (biology/biochem./organic chemistry). At least that’s my take on the matter.  What’s yours?

[Mike:] Accurate predictions carry with them the certainities assigned by the predictor.  A scientist who uses celestial mechanics can predict the exact day of the next eclipse of the sun.  On the other hand, tomorrow's weather can only be expressed in terms of probabilities.  Yet our understanding of both phenomena is exact.  Science knows the precise laws (all of them) that govern weather.  Employing these laws to make predictions is limited both by practical matters and by the fundamental mathematical properties of the equations that govern weather.

Thus, even things (like weather) that are 100% understood (at the fundamental level) might only be predictable in terms of probabilities.  Then there are a whole host of phenomenon that are not completely understood (like weather 150 years ago).  Nevertheless, it was not true that people back then could say nothing about the weather.  Historical records and the obvious cyclical structure to weather (the seasonal cycle) permitted broad probabilistic predictions to be made (e.g. the Farmers Almanac).  This is the level at which my stock market predictions lie. 

[Luke:] Finally, the term “empirical” can be problematic as well.  Empirical investigation can be characterized by both “use tests” as you put it and by actual experimentation. 

[Mike:]  Use tests are a type of experimentation.

[Luke:]  And, yet, when we’re speaking about the orientation of our scientific investigation - when we speak about ‘science being empirical’ for instance - I think we’re also focusing on the scope and level of what it is we are studying as our object – (i.e. the specific fluctuations of the Dow & the Nasdaq from day to day, the specific activities of a Bill going through Congress, and so on).  In other words, we’re focusing (to some extent) on the formal distinctions & discrete matter of specific processes/phenomena of those objects or systems we choose to study.

[Mike:]  I'm not sure what you are getting at here.

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