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The end of the world as we know it?
The Kosso readings end with a section entitled, "it's not the end of the world." The Lukacs reading opens with the subtitle, "The end of the scientific world view." What do you think the authors meant by these claims? Can you give an example of where they might intersect?
Anne and Liz
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other means of common ground
I agree with what atisman. Both authors used philosophy and science in their arguments, but whereas Kosso seemed to be trying to demonstrate not only their differences but also their common grounds, Lukacs seemed to be leaning more favorably towards a philosophical stance. One of their common motifs is that there is no certainty in science. There is no definite truth. The human factor, in many ways, is the limiting factor from a higher understanding.
Although only a brief interlude in this passage, one of the best parts of the Kosso reading was the part pertaining to the 'effects of the observer' on page 22. The analogy with the thermometer is particularly critical, because people would often just take a temperature and not realize the impact that even the equipment they are using has on a particular situation. It is like society and science. Although scientists themselves understand the limitations of their experiments, the error in their equipment and their methodologies, society seems to often forget that scientists are involved in the experiment. Hard sciences are held up to this standard where their experiments are nearly robotic, the human factor is removed. This is why they tend to be "favored" by society, that their results tend to be taken as Fact. On the other hand, social sciences like anthropology or psychology, are held under a harder critic. The presence of the anthropologist or the psychologist is too evident, the human factor is too tangible and thus the possible flaws in the experiment too real. Then again, maybe it is because there isn't the presence of a neutral thermometer between two humans, the researcher and the subject being studied, or simply because we study humans instead of atoms, nevertheless the "soft" sciences seem to be farther from Fact than the "hard" sciences.
But perhaps this is just the inferiority complex I have as an anthropology student.
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...
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...
the end of the world as we know it?
This statement, “it’s the end of the world as we know it”, touches upon the core of issue regarding realism. This issue being the lack of knowledge surrounding the question, how do things appear when we are not looking at or thinking about them? Do these things have a purpose without people, human beings, projecting their lives, thoughts and observations onto them? Kosso and Lukacs intersect on this point in that they both emphasize the distraction of realist scientists who, by labeling, defining, calculating and comparing, lose sight of how this so called “reality” can really be understood. Kosso explains at the beginning of the chapter, “The things we know are apparently as much our own doing as the world’s and we seem to be stuck describing how nature appears to us rather than how nature is in itself” (p.3). Lukacs explains as well, in a few of his “illustrations”, that in fact we are impeding our knowledge of the world by, for example, developing a nomenclature for it, applying numbers and equations to it and by deeming our knowledge “factual”, as he puts it. Nature and knowledge are ever changing. Now, especially, these theorists are pushing past what they know and see, hence the title, “it’s the end of the world as we knew it”.
oh, physics. some thoughts...
you know, it's interesting going through this again - i took peter beckmann's quantum mechanics class last year, so i've had a lot of time to think about things like uncertainty and heisenberg and the nature of reality. i have to admit, i'm posting a little late and i'm not quite done with the kosso reading, but i'm enjoying it (sort of). i've been trying to tell people for years that physics and philosophy are only a short step away. i've also spent years wrapping my brain around the philosophies of different types of physics, and every time i encounter a new kind of theory, it is a little like the end of the world as we knew it.
the authors' claims are really simple for me, then - quantum mechanics, with its new concepts and vocabulary and mathematics, meant changing the scientific world-view, meant having another language with which to tell the story of the universe. heisenberg knew that. lukacs is exploiting heisenberg's statements to point out that this new language could include an opening for things like free will and God. kosso means that while the scientific world-view that alex was writing about, this notion that science ahs the answers and they're concrete and real, was over - but that's not the end of the world. the world keeps ticking along however it wants, regardless of what we say about it.
ok, you say, so what about when we collapse a wave function? aren't we then telling the particle to do what we want it to do? no, no, not at all. we're just asking it to show up in a particular form.
it's like asking someone a complicated question and only allowing them to answer yes or no. you're going to get a vague idea of what the truth is, because you get some kind of answer, but you can't get the whole story if all you can detect is yes vs. no.
what bohr and heisenberg and all those guys (and poor planck) were trying to say was, we don't know how to observe everything... yet. and a lot of laymen ran off with that statement and said, we can't know anything because us observing it changes it. well, sure, tree falling alone in the forrest and all that - not a new idea. but quantum mechanics understands that it in itself is not a complete view of the universe - it's just a new one.
it's not the end of the world. it's just the end of a world-view that was hampered by the idea that science has absolute answers.
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.
not an end
I thought that what Kosso meant by saying "it's not the end of the world," was simply that viewing the world through the lens of a different model was not the same thing as reinventing it completely. But Lukacs' use of "the end" confused me more. He didn't seem to be explaining the end of a scientific world view, he was embracing a new kind of world view using evidence from the sciences. I know that his use of it was a direct quote from Heisenberg, but it seemed like less of a cultural shift away from science and more a redefinition of what science, and thus the worldview, was. In that way, their interpretations of quantum and relativity seemed to be parallel and produce similar results.
Flora