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Pemwrez2009's picture

End of the world or is it?

Uncertainty is sort of a big no-no in science--experiementing, researching, anything really to find or collect data/ evidence to come to some certainty! After reading Kosso's section It's Not the End of the World I thought it would be interesting to analyze quantum physics more closely.

For so many people, and in so many important places in this world, science is the one sure solution. All of our "what ifs" and "whys" can be understood with a scientific explanation for the most part. Quantum physics is the scientific exception to the rule. It almost takes a leap of faith to believe that something acts differently to how it normally acts when it is observed.

I think what Kosso meant by saying "it's not the end of the world" relates to the idea of scientific uncertainty and that if we look at science as the culmination of many observations, and our conclusions or scientific laws are built on the majority of the results gathered by many experiments, we can understand that many of our scientific laws may have been quantum physics problems at one point. Rather than looking at quantum physics as the demise of our scientific credibility--"it's not the end of the world"

Lukacs on the other hand, as an extremely religious man, seems to be emphasizing the more philosophical views on scientific deductions. He claims that "there is no scientific certitude" and he really structure his entire essay about this notion. He talks about the limitations of measurement and how there is no way to ever be sure of any scientific truth because there is no way to ever fully measure something. Some other claims of his are:

- the act of observing alters nature of the object

- we are limited because there really is no way to express nature in any scientific way

- the modern mind which tends to substitute vocabulary for thought believing that once we define or name something we've 'got it'

Lukacs seems to be expressing that the world of science is not necessarilly the world that we should all be fully measuring our lives by. In a sense, it seems as though he is offering a more spiritually full idea of how to look at proof and what proof really is.

Between the two authors, it is more than evident that they are acknowleging the uncertainties of science, though, while Lukacs expresses that as a major problem in how we interpret the world, Kosso seems to emphasize that whether or not the idea of quantum physics is a current problem in the scientific world, he would argue that whatever the problems of our measurements and observations are, they sort of work as a control, at least we are using the same measuring units to determine sizes, and at least we are constantly testing our theories.

 

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