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To: Stultis
>>>Testing observations (and theories) against an objective reality provides a means of finding out errors and improving knoweldge.

So... by dealing with subjective "observations", as opposed to more concrete "facts", we are actually being more objective? I like that.

But limiting our definition of reality to only what we can observe, measure, and quantify, could in effect cause us to overlook, or even to scoff at the idea of, whole other dimensions. Could it not?
537 posted on 06/23/2003 7:32:38 AM PDT by Steel Eye
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To: Steel Eye
So... by dealing with subjective "observations", as opposed to more concrete "facts", we are actually being more objective?

Yes, we are being as objective as human falability, and the inevitable limitations of our knowledge, allow. We are also pursuing the most effective method we know of discovering and correcting the errors that we make: the method of trial and error, continually testing both facts and theories, and holding them always open for possible abandonment or revision.

It took a long time, for instance, to count the number of human chromosomes. There was a count that was reported (and widely accepted) as "fact" for, I forget, over ten years I think, that was later found to be wrong. Scientists continued observing: looking at different cells types, looking during different points in the cell cycle, using many different techniques to fix the cells, and experimenting with different stains to make the chromosomes visible. In all there were God knows how many thousands or millions of individual observations along the way, each fallible and subjective, but eventually the result was a human chromosome number everyone is pretty sure is now correct. If at any point one of the chromosome counts had been treated as a final and "objective" fact, then an error would have been enshrined and insulated from correction. Even the current number of human chromosomes, as confident as scientists are that they have it right this time, is still ultimately subject to revision if someone call come up with observations that would call it into question.

But limiting our definition of reality to only what we can observe, measure, and quantify, could in effect cause us to overlook, or even to scoff at the idea of, whole other dimensions. Could it not?

If that's what science did. In fact it does just the opposite. The whole scientific approach, especially the tentative and revisable status of scientific knowledge, is predicted on the understanding that we can only observe a small part of reality, and that there are inumerable phenomena and data that are not only outside of our observational grasp at any one time, but that we are totatally unaware of. Scientists know that in the future there will inevitably be obeservations that are totally unexpected.

560 posted on 06/23/2003 10:10:30 AM PDT by Stultis
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