
Is Scientific Truth Always Beautiful? - gruseom
http://chronicle.com/article/When-Beauty-Is-Not-Truth/136803/
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CurtMonash
A focus on "beauty" or "elegance" is, for starters, just an updating of
Occam's Razor. The simplest theory that fits the facts is assumed best, and
people pick different ways of expressing the notion of "simple".

There's nothing wrong with that as a starting point. Problems can arise,
however, when you take that further and make simplifying assumptions.
Economics has been particularly prone to that problem; I believe the famous
can opener joke dates to the 1960s.

(<http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/JokEc.html> gives the simplest :) form of the can-
opener joke I know: A physicist, a chemist and an economist are stranded on an
island, with nothing to eat. A can of soup washes ashore. The physicist says,
"Lets smash the can open with a rock." The chemist says, "Lets build a fire
and heat the can first." The economist says, "Lets assume that we have a can-
opener...")

By way of contrast, simplifying assumptions in physics have usually gone
better. In particular, relaxing them has gone fairly smoothly ("Assume all the
mass is concentrated at a point of zero diameter ... oops, I mean in a small
sphere of finite diameter ...") On the other hand, one of the core critiques
of string theory is based on the suspicion that a key simplifying assumption
(only the early terms of certain Taylor series matter) is badly mistaken.

And in climate science, predictions are necessarily based on simplified
models; debate can then ensue as to whether or not the models are misleading.

~~~
Osmium
> On the other hand, one of the core critiques of string theory is based on
> the suspicion that a key simplifying assumption (only the early terms of
> certain Taylor series matter) is badly mistaken.

Do you have more info on this please? It sounds interesting.

~~~
CurtMonash
I got it from Lee Smolin's book, The Trouble With Physics.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trouble_with_Physics>

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lutusp
Interesting article, very bad title. Science is not a search for truth, it's a
search for testable, falsifiable theories that (a) resist falsification, but
(b) are perpetually open to falsification by new evidence.

Those who want truth should join a religion -- science is content to
successfully test theories against reality.

~~~
gruseom
I don't see how you can dismiss the notion of truth and then invoke
falsification. What does "false" mean but "not true"?

~~~
lutusp
> I don't see how you can dismiss the notion of truth and then invoke
> falsification. What does "false" mean but "not true"?

I will let philosopher David Hume explain it: "No amount of observations of
white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the
observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion."

To summarize, we can never say that all swans are white (a truth) but we might
be able to prove that claim false.

> What does "false" mean but "not true"?

The statement that an assertion is false follows different rules than the
statement that an assertion is true. And a theory that's supported by evidence
can always be proven false by new evidence -- the point being that no theory
ever becomes true in perpetuity (except in mathematics). More detail here:

<http://arachnoid.com/doubt>

~~~
mjn
Nothing in that explanation is incompatible with the view that science is a
"search for truth", at least taken in a suitably weak sense that does not
claim to have "found" it. Falsificationism is simply a methodology, not any
kind of end goal. The whole point of following such a methodology is to come
up with theories that are in some way "better"; the thing we actually want is
the positive content of the theories, which can be used as models, make
predictions, etc. If we weren't interested in the positive content of theories
at all, there would be no point in trying to falsify them.

That said, I think Popperian falsificationism is rather questionable as a
philosophy of science, once you prod at it more than a little.

~~~
lutusp
> Nothing in that explanation is incompatible with the view that science is a
> "search for truth".

Of course it's incompatible. If there is no such thing as truth in science,
that eliminates truth as a goal. And there is no such thing as truth in
science.

> Falsificationism is simply a methodology for finding where theories are non-
> truthy and amending them accordingly.

No, this is not so. Falsification doesn't cut away those parts of theories
that aren't representative of absolute truth, it cuts away the theories in
their entirety.

Astrology wasn't modified to become astronomy, instead astrology was
demonstrated to be false and abandoned.

The ether theory wasn't "amended" to become relativity, it was falsified in
its entirety and abandoned.

Falsifiability is not an editor's red pencil, it is a test against reality,
and if the test fails, the idea is abandoned.

> ... the whole point of falsifying theories is that we don't want false
> theories, but theories that are... less false.

No. This isn't what falsifiability means. Falsifiability means that our ideas
must be testable against reality, and only those ideas that survive the test
remain standing ... to be tested again, later on, with new evidence. But we
never declare a theory proven, beyond doubt (which would support your apparent
notion about science).

~~~
nessus42
_> If there is no such thing as truth in science, that eliminates truth as a
goal. And there is no such thing as truth in science._

This is nonsense. I graduated from MIT and I and all my classmates would be
shocked to learn that science is not about truth. And furthermore, stating
such nonsense is just fodder for critics of science. After all, why worry
about climate change if climate change theories don't represent the truth? If
it's not true that climate change will likely cause the deaths of many
millions of people, then we need not worry.

Your notion of truth is too highly constrained. Science makes models, which
are approximations of reality, but accurate approximations are a form of
truth. Using models, we build such things as TVs and airplanes and vaccines
that work. Things that work are a form of truth.

~~~
defrost
Climb down from your rocking pony of mock outrage MIT boy.

He's talking Truth with a Kappa T, as in Newtons Laws were true but not True
and as in Einstein's modifications were truer but we still don't Know if they
are True.

You seem easily shocked.

~~~
nessus42
That notion of truth is a straw man.

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charonn0
"Beauty", in science and mathematics, is not a quality of the object regarded
so much as it is a pattern-recognition response in the one regarding it.
Patterns which are predictable are naturally pleasing to us because our
pattern-recognition abilities evolved to harness the patterns of nature for
prediction of outcomes. Predicting and harnessing outcomes based on patterns
may be the power that humans posses in strength over the other animals.

It should not be the case that exploration of an outcome is excluded on the
basis that it is not perceived as beautiful. However, that there are patterns
among the laws of nature was one of the fundamental discoveries of our species
and a guiding principle of modern science.

Richard Feynman said[1]: "Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her
patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of
the entire tapestry."

[1]:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=j3mhkYbznBk#t=3233s)

~~~
CurtMonash
Well, that gets us near aesthetic philosophy -- something is beautiful if most
relevant people will or should find it beautiful. The distinction between
"will" and "should" can of course cause issues, and in this case "relevant
people" can be troublesome as well.

But as a shorthand, "This is a beautiful theory" is a lot like "This is a
theory that seems like it SHOULD -- or at least COULD -- be right".

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biggfoot
I have one (insignificant?) beef with the article, in that it positions
critics of a scientific discipline as those who decide the validity of the
'status quo' - this is right, that is wrong - which is a rather bleak picture
of what their role is for. Criticism is as intrinsic to the development of a
theory/experiment as is the effort of the scientist.

In short, science critic != movie critic.

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dromidas
Its definitely more often beautiful than historical truth or personal truth.
Either way, you deserve to wear the uniform.

