So it's just "preachy, intolerant and mean-spirited in my opinion"?
Still seems to sting a bit.

Grant Hutchison

Aca Pacis not not construct that list. I did.

Your assertion that none of those statements have been proved is quite simply wrong. The mathematical assertions are well-known theorems that have been proved quite rigorously. For instance the unsolvability by radicals of the general quintic polynomial is a standard result proved using Galois theory.

The remainder would stand the test of "truth" in virtually any scientific discourse or in a court of law.

It is quite possible in mathematics to prove assertions. That is what mathematicians do.

Scientists do not prove assertions in the same sense as do mathematicians. Scientific principles are not absolute (for instance Newtonian mechanics was shown to be "wrong" and replaced by relativity, which is likely to also be shown wrong by future refinements of physical theory). But they are most certainly shown to be true, within known domeains of validity, for all practical purposes and "beyond reasonable doubt" for most applications.

Your "unreasonable doubt" is something else. Since one might construe "unreasonable doubt" to include insanity, it is not quite clear what the applicability of proof beyond "unreasonable doubt" is.

The thing is that none of those statements are "a negative" in the sense of the saying.

A much better example, also taken from mathematics of a negative in the sense of the saying would be the statement "There exists no proofs for the Riemann hypothesis" (taking "exists" to mean "can be constructed" rather that "is known"), that's going to be very difficult, if not impossible to prove (it would only be impossible if it's shown to be false), but can be disproved by actually proving the hypothesis.

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

For the case of the Riemann hypothesis the situation is not known.

But it is absolutely true that "there exist no proofs of the Continuum hypothesis" in the sense that it is independent of the Zermelo Frankel axioms of set theory. This was in fact proved by Paul Cohen.

Thanks for prodding me to think of that example.

And yet, the discussion is about science, not mathematics. If mathematics is science, then someone please give me the physical properties of, oh I dunno, let's pick a number: 375.1.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

Personally, I think the problematic issues around Dawkins center on whether or not what he is doing is actually science, or just scientific sounding rhetoric. Is there any scientific research going on there, or just a framing of opinion in language that is easily mistaken for science? How much is science actually capable of saying about itself, or is all talk about science always going to be rhetoric? But this isn't a thread about Dawkins, it is about unicorns, and it does actually sound like that might be a useful exercise. Is it mostly an exercise in critical thinking, or an exercise in proselytizing youngsters into the frustrations of being rational in a climate of pervading irrationality? I have seen "rationalism" become its own form of cult, but I suppose the devil is in the details of how the exercise actually plays out, as to whether it is a genuine tool for promoting constructive thinking, or just a cult indoctrination exercise.

Narwhal "horns" (they are actually a tooth) were sold for many years as Unicorn horns.

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smile, and the Universe smiles with you

1) The issue is logic. The statement (an unscientific statement) was made that it is impossible to prove a negative.

2) If the issue were science the initial premise would be something other than unicorns.

3) It is quite true that mathematics is not science. However, science without mathematics is not really science either. The logic of mathematics is central to much of science. And the issue is logic, not science per se.

4) Why not pick 1/137 , a pure number, which describes the strength of electromagnetic interaction ?

You've been finding waaay to many unicorns. No pound notes for you.

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Let's not even discuss the rhinoceros.

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smile, and the Universe smiles with you

You see this is what I get for reading the thread title.

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smile, and the Universe smiles with you

1 - The statement is shorthand for a more rigorous set of postulates.

2 - Not sure I follow you here. Are you saying that by invoking unicorns, the exercise must be futile and cannot be science? That may be one interpretation, but perhaps not the only one, as others have mentioned with regard to other animals being possible sources of the myth. Some researchers believe that some of the greek myths were based on real physical sources, such as fossils. There are claims that dwarf elephant skeletons were the source of the myth of the giant cyclops, and that the griffin was based on fossils of protoceratops.

3 - So, you agree with me on math not being a science. However, I don't see math as necessary to science. It's highly useful, but the scientific method could be done without it. Causality can be observed and predicted accurately, even without mathematics. But I agree the issue he is trying to teach is logic.

4 - I picked a number at random. No matter what number it is, it is just a symbol used to describe or represent something in relation to something else. The fraction 1/137 can apply to many other items. Even you state what you are referring to with regards to it, since that numerical value has not that meaning on its own. And that assumes we're using base-10.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

Trust me, you'll waylay the thread with this line of reasoning! (We've had a few long threads about the differences and similarities of math and science, and we can all agree that science without math would not be blind but it would certainly be lame. And it also depends on how one defines mathematics-- in a broad sense, even noticing causality is actually a mathematical relation, because mathematics is just definitions, axioms, and logic, and not necessarily numbers.)

I think the real question here is, is science enough different from math that math can prove a negative and science cannot? DrRocket is arguing for the similarity, you for the difference, and I doubt the two of you are really that far apart. Formally speaking, the very word "proof" is entirely reserved for mathematics, it is the very stuff of mathematics. So you can't really "prove" anything in science, whether positive or negative. But if one speaks less formally, then science has its own version of what it considers a "proof", like the proof that the Sun is hot, or has nuclear fusion in its core. It just means "prove according to the standards of science," which, by the way, does not necessarily imply truth by any more absolute standard. But "proof" doesn't imply absolute truth in mathematics either, the point is, every discipline has its own concept of what proving something actually means (a criminal prosecutor also has a concept of what proof means, for example).

Thus, I think the point DrRocket is making is more of an analogy between math and science. It is clearly true in math that you can prove a negative, so if you use the alternate meaning of prove in science, it is an analogous process to prove a negative in science. I agree with him that the issue is not so much whether we frame something as a negative or a positive, but rather, what constitutes a proof in science, and when should someone who is not a scientist be asked to defer to what scientists call a proof. The latter is actually quite a difficult question, and that's where people like Dawkins and Weinberg fall the farthest short in their arguments, if you ask me.

mathematical proofs exist in people's minds, and on paper etc, which are all set in the physical world, so really, can even logical arguments in maths be completely said to be proofs?

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Weinberg ?

My personal opinion is that Dawkins is nearly as nutty as the creationists. I hate to see Weinberg lumped in with Dawkins.

What arguments of Weinberg are in contention ? I familiar with his work in physics but not much outside of that.

Weinberg wrote a fairly accessible popularization of Cosmology in the late 1970's : The First Three Minutes. Although, he may be a theoretician--he, in my book, has earned his status as a good scientist--who is "very" adept with the tools and language of math.

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"The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir."
---Carl Sagan

Dawkins refers to himself as primarily a "teacher" (rather than researcher) which is in line with his recent role as professor of the public understanding... Perhaps he has become something of a self-publicist a la Hawking. Perhaps he gets popular kudos off the back of the careers of Haldane, Maynard Smith etc.

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Yonder is Dubhe seen on Earth tonight as it was in the days of Grover Cleveland's presidency whereas this way is Deneb seen as it was in the lifetime of Muhammed . If one somehow travelled to Deneb at very close to c then whenever you looked back you'd measure Earth as closer to you than the distance you would simultaneously measure between Earth and Dubhe.

I've read that book and a few other things by Weinberg, both popularizations and the real thing. I also hold him in high regard. Anyone who can unify the electromagnetic and weak interactions is no dummy.

What has he done to be lumped in with the likes of Dawkins ? Does it have something to do with the "anthropic principle" ?

It seems the simplest answer to this is to genetically manipulate a unicorn. :P

In a tangential issue - the first draft of my thesis is almost done. (Continued Hydrogeological Observations in the Davis Spring basin, Greenbrier Co. WV) I think the number of times I used universal affirmatives and negatives I can count on one hand... and the number of times I used phrases like "the evidence suggests..." are as numerous as the grains of sand on the beach.

But I think that with rare exceptions, dogmatic statements one way or another should be avoided.

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"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel."

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He's right there with him, though. Weinberg is a great physicist, but his statements about science exemplify a complete disconnect from the people to whom he claims to be talking.
At the risk of being off topic, I'll just give a few Weinberg quotes and I won't go on at length:

"The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy."

I would say that is close to a very insightful and poignant statement, if you simply take the intended stress of the words "very few" (or remove them altogether, as no effort is made to support them with argument), but Weinberg really means them. People outside of science, on the other hand, have no difficulty at all finding a long list of human endeavors that would also fit that sentence, so the statement just serves to drive a wedge between them. Indeed, many would have little trouble arguing, conclusively for themselves, that any effort to understand the universe involves a level of self delusion itself, of the kind that Weinberg would normally reserve for other endeavors that will go unnamed.

Or:

"[fill in] is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes [fill in]."

Weinberg put a certain word where I put [fill in], but that word might offend many. You may guess what it was, but my point is, it doesn't matter-- there is no word that can go in that space which makes the sentences true. Those sentences are pure nonsense no matter what word you insert, nothing is that simple and a brain as subtle as Weinberg's ought to know that.

I have, on occasion, seemingly heard him put forth statements that *any* good skeptic would say...(e.g. there is no scientific basis for blind faith; other statements characterized by his determination to dispel hasty scientific generalizations...this I have seen on Public T.V shows ...NOVA, etc)

My opinion is he should not be grouped with Prof Dawkins in ways other than educator, or excellent science writer. But-I am unfamiliar with all of the true-professional work of Prof. Dawkins (in terms biology (?) or "hard" evolutionary theory. )



The more thought that I give it--I am very certain that we as a species can not be "entitled" to say that we have any more the right to exist tomorrow as we do to have the right to "complete" assertion of knowing we have all of the "answers" to all the physical phenomena.

In terms of the anthropic principle: I have my own views obviously...and the human species most probably is "carbon-nitrogen-water" chauvinistic..and until completely disproved...probably will remain.


***************************

My apologies to Profs. Dawkins and Weinberg---there was no Ad Hominem intended

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"The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir."
---Carl Sagan

One does not judge a "nut" by what they say that sensible people would also say, one judges them by what they say that sensible people would not also say. Now I'm not saying that either Weinberg or Dawkins are nuts, because I don't believe that, but I'm saying that they have purposely placed themselves so far out onto a particular fringe that some of their remarks are demonstrably untrue (as in the example above). The attitude is clearly that their is a need for polemic statements to act as "balancers" against things said on the other side of the aisle, but to me such rhetorical devices are themselves unscientific. I'm saying that both Dawkins and Weinberg often feel it is appropriate to remove their "scientist" hats when they contrast science to other human endeavors. I find that ironic (ergo my allusion to a "cult" of rationality, which seems oxymoronic on the surface, but that's the irony).

It is unfortunate that in this "era" of transparency of word and even --thought that their deeds (as far as I know of them-- ) would be truer arbiters of character than their words. To the best of my so-called knowledge--

Drs. Weinberg and Dawkins probably display a great deal of courage to "tell it like it is"--even at the risk of being dismissed by their colleagues for speaking against the grain.

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"The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir."
---Carl Sagan

Pardon my own tangential post ---Congratulations on your upcoming degree!

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"The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir."
---Carl Sagan

I'm not following that argument-- when one chooses rhetoric as one's tool, then one's words are one's actions.
Their courage is not in dispute. Whether they are telling it "like it is", and from whose perspective, is more the issue. Besides, in some circles (say, a cult meeting of the "free thinkers"), it is those who dispute Weinberg and Dawkins that require far more courage.

I will say that the majority of Dawkins supporters will listen when you explain your problems with him. However, I do have at least one friend who assures me that the problem is with me, not him--and, in many ways, Dawkins and I agree about things! If, therefore, he makes someone mostly on his side mad, how must those he's theoretically trying to convince react to him? No, I think he--I cannot speak to Weinberg, though if the sentences quoted are anything like typical, he would go in the same category--does the cause of science more harm than good by, frankly, just shouting at people instead of talking to them.

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Dear Ken G,

I hope this to be my last post on this subject... but I will try to draw an analogy between the "words" of Drs Weinberg and Dawkins and --those of a few notable others:

A. Einstein became very distraught toward the end of his life and he is noted to have reflected that (loosely quoting...) upon the dire circumstances by which humanity continued to conduct itself (however I cannot remember the exact quote??!!).

Hawking, also, correctly states (IMHO) that he finds that the human species probably have the need to move from the planet--if it will survive...

I, personally, do not find these individuals to be "free-thinking" cultists and neither are those who bend their ears to listen to them.

How often does the world encounter genius of such proportion --where that individual can point to flaws in human behavior that may prove to be vital to its survival--

Galileo stood up to the Inquisition...he had the courage...(maybe) he understood that we as a species possessed more in our minds than to be told to believe ---just because we had to do so...


As a species we are fortunate to have those who are not willing to be swayed by blind faith but are encouraged to use experiment, logic, insight to discern what needs to be said and done.

I do not find myself to be a "cultist" --I do possess a degree of intelligence that tells me that, as a species, we are far from perfect...( e.g. tangential aside: most the Earth's resources are used by a tiny percentage of individuals....).

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"The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir."
---Carl Sagan

Well, as far as I'm concerned, someone who says "we need to leave the planet to survive" has certainly left the building of rational thought. Someday that may be an issue, but for a very very long time we will have much more pressing survival concerns, that involve much more rational solutions. But the issue with Dawkings and Weinberg, relevant to the OP, is their tendency to extrapolate the uses of science into areas where it is far from clear that its value extends, for the average person.

Yes, the problem is one of "preaching to the choir", and the irony is intended.

If there has ever been a thinly veiled Ad hominem--there is definitely one present in your post--if you were to carefully read my post--you would have noticed the "'probably have the need" to vacate the planet rather "'we need to leave...''.

Again, we have a "question of semantics"--of which I sincerely doubt can be solved through these posts...

rather let us agree to disagree--in a civilized manner

Best Wishes

jaksichj

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"The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir."
---Carl Sagan