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Rosemary's picture

it's the end of the world as we know it

These two authors, in these readings, offer very similar opinions. Kosso says, "It's not the end of the world... [but] the end of the world as we knew it" referring to the new questions posed by quantum mechanics in opposition to "scientific realism" and Lukacs offers a number of points that indicate how the idea of scientific knowledge and the collection and interpretation of scientific data has changed given the inability to deterministically show a property or a principle. Basically, they both claim that we cannot definitively assess how the world works from the observations that we make, even in a scientific setting. There is no objectivity, because we will always see the world through the human frame of reference (as well as the individual frame). We can make inferences about the world, but we cannot ever claim that they are absolutel truths. This is a lot of what I got out of these articles. The scientific community, I feel, is moving away from making statements in accordance with "realism" and taking steps toward "the next phase in the evolution of human conciousness" (Lukacs p. 230) by using language that relays suggestion or interpretation rather than absolute truth. This is a large generalization, but from what I've learned as a science student, you refute null hypotheses. You state your results statistically, and in the discussion you suggest what these results might imply. I feel this is the kind of language and approach that these authors would appreciate and that they touch on in these peices. Perhaps they mean to go even father than this, though... I'm not sure how this could happen, or if I would even want it to...

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