My classmate liked it, not so sure what Draper’s reaction was. He would neither confirm nor deny.
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It is both. There are events for which it has been proven there are no hidden variables determining what happens. But if most things were not deterministic for the most part then there would be no physics. Often the deterministic parts are governing or are a consequence of the probability distributions within which the actual events are not determined by any pre-existing conditions.
No. The most I would have said is that there has been some speculation about this as possibility.
Ethics in science is one aspect where there is a justifiable influence from religion in science. There’s what we can do in science, and what we should do (i.e. ethics). Science is a human endeavor, so its output should mirror our ethics and morality.
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I almost bought that. But… the premise is that ethical behavior comes from religion which is highly debatable and the same goes for philosophy. I think there is a better case for the idea that moral behavior precedes and predates both religion and philosophy.
AND… can you really say that religion has had a positive impact on ethics in science??? I think the truth is more that ethical standards are kind of specific to the arena in which they operate. There is, for example, the ethical behavior accepted in warfare which is different than the ethics in other areas of life.
But… maybe your point was that an ethical impact from religion on science is permissible. Or… maybe it is that you were thinking more of the use of science and I was thinking more about the faithful adherence to the scientific methodology.
And nothing to do with God.
You said more than that. It bordered on space is effectively discrete and it is actually discrete
For those happenings scientists determine to be uncaused, at least say that such things are unexplainable and the science has ceased to have any usefulness… ehhh… yeah I’m going to leave that for future reference…
Religion does inform our ethics as a human community, so it does have its place in the overall ethical consideration of how we conduct scientific research. That’s not to say that religion alone informs ethics, but it is an obvious part of ethics as a human collective. This is one of the reasons that the place where I work often has a local pastor on our institutional review board (IRB) which is responsible for ethical oversight. An IRB has to have a non-scientist from the community as a member which I think is a really good rule.
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Do you still contend those events have an explanation?
Just so as to be as clear as possible: my position is NOT that the influence of religion on science comes via ethics. I think divinity beliefs play the same role in ethics as they do in physics: ethical theories differ relative to the divinity belief they presuppose.
This being one way of understanding quantum physics does not equal space is effectively discrete. It means it is a POSSIBLE explanation of some things in quantum physics. AND it is not something I personally ascribe to because it doesn’t explain other things quantum physics at all. I did not say it was a good way of understanding quantum physics.
No. Only one who ascribes to naturalism would come to such a conclusion. And naturalism is not a scientific conclusion. There are lots of things science cannot help you with such as life. Life requires subjective participation while science restricts itself to objective observation.
It is pretty weird logic to say if a Phillips screwdriver cannot help you with all screws then it ceases to have any usefulness.
I think that some may have an explanation and I think many others (if not most) may simply be random.
If an event is uncaused, then it is unexplainable, and science is no longer useful to understand it.
Science can look at what the event might affect, but it cannot understand how the event came to be.
But they are not uncaused. They have all kinds of causes. They just just don’t have causes in the preceding conditions sufficient to determine exactly what happens. And why should that be the goal of science - to find causes sufficient to determine everything that happens? The aim is to explain what we see and this lack of hidden variables does explain what we see. Sounds to me you are forcing determinism on us. Why shouldn’t the explanation be that it is desirable there be no cause in the preceding events.
Science can explain how the event came to be. It just doesn’t explain why those particular events rather than every other way things could have happened. No science does not explain everything. I thought that was obvious. And I see no reason to presume that there must be an explanation/reason for everything.
No, I was taking the scientists I’ve spoken with at their word that these events are not determined.
And now I’m having a hard time understanding what you are saying about these fluctuations that randomly appear out of nowhere. That they are caused, but that they are not caused.
What did I tell you? The relativity of simultaneity runs rampant!
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Oh it’s just so much more convenient if we can have it both ways!
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And no two ways between a world that begins in the present and one that began in the past… Aquinas would take notice of this
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So what is the affect on physics and ethics; nature, by some kind (What kind? Where kind is the operative word in all senses.) of God? How are they different than if they weren’t instantiated by God?
The effect is a two-step affair. The nature of the hypotheses in ethics or physics is controlled by the view one takes of the basic nature of reality. This means that the hypotheses within a certain discipline are conditioned by how one sees that discipline relating to the rest of reality. The view of the basic nature of reality, in turn, is conditioned by some divinity belief or other.
The first step has been argued for by a quite a number of scientists and philosophers. I already cited some of them: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, in the 20th cent. alone. The second step has been noticed at times (Durkheim, Weber) but was given its most extensive defense by Herman Dooyeweerd of the Free U. of Amsterdam also in the 20th cent.
His point was not to prove God’s existence, but to point to a distinctive (systematically non-reductionist) agenda Christians should take in making and evaluating theories.
All that has nothing to do with what a scientist is thinking about when he’s at work, ir what scientists might to might not say about their work. The vast majority of them don’t think about such broader issues and don’t want to. These broader issues have been taken up extensively in the 20th century by philosophy of science and by epistemology.
Some scientists have also puzzled about these issues. A I said, opine of them was Einstein who wrote that whenever he reflected on the nature of reality he felt challenged by the critique of materialism put forward by Berkeley (d 1793). Einstein’s own view was, by contrast, very close to that of Descartes (d 1650).
And just in case it’s not clear, my answer to the question asked near the outset of this exchange about condensation, is that condensation is not a theory at all. We may make a theory about it, but it is an observed fact in the world. It’s when we put forward some hypothesis - either an entity or a relation - that we are engaged in theory-making. And this happens across the board. There are theories not only in physics & biology, but also in math, logic, linguistics, sociology, economics, jurisprudence, & ethics, etc.
As to the question about what kind of God, my answer has to take the view of religious belief I mentioned earlier. Anything regarded as the self-existent origin of all else is thereby regarded as divine. This need not be personal; there may be more than one; it may not be worshipped.
The difference such a belief makes for theories is that one may take some aspect of the cosmos as the basic nature of reality. The Xn view rejects that. The true basic nature of reality is not mathematical or spatial, or physical or logical or any mix-and-match combinations of them. Instead it is simply: to depend on God. In this way all the reductionist views are rejected. On this view there are natures of types of things in the world, but no nature of the entire cosmos other than to depend on God.
I want to add a post script to my last comment: I was using “uncaused” in a much more inclusive sense, a sense equivalent to “unconditionally nondependent.” I did not mean what you meant, namely, “having no immediate cause occasioning it.”