What is the European Science?

[Guide]

The word fact is rather of recent origin, as is the European science. Whatever one says, it does seem the general opinion admits the greatness of the Eruopean, now the planatary science, because everyone tries to argue by backing themselves up with testable regularities, i.e., with so-called facts. The older word was truthing and truths. Truth, of course, has fallen on evil days.

[edited - Carleas]

[MagsJ]

{Low pigs of no sense such as "Meno" and "Mr. Reasonable" need not answer, please.}


The word fact is rather of recent origin, as is the European science. Whatever one says, it does seem the general opinion admits the greatness of the Eruopean, now the planatary science, because everyone tries to argue by backing themselves up with testable regularities, i.e., with so-called facts. The older word was truthing and truths. Truth, of course, has fallen on evil days.

Does changing the label change the meaning? i.e. fact/truth..

[attano]

The word fact is rather of recent origin, as is the European science. Whatever one says, it does seem the general opinion admits the greatness of the Eruopean, now the planatary science, because everyone tries to argue by backing themselves up with testable regularities, i.e., with so-called facts. The older word was truthing and truths. Truth, of course, has fallen on evil days.

Does changing the label change the meaning? i.e. fact/truth..

I am not certain about what the OP actually means, yet I suppose that Guide is implying something different, which is indeed related to meaning.
It could be that truth used to provide a 'meaning', while facts don't, not the same kind of meaning, at least.
Science does not provide 'meaning' either. Yet, as facts are basically fiction and are rooted in interpretations, science provide an interpretation that can be, more or less directly, confuted.

[Jakob]

The word fact is rather of recent origin, as is the European science. Whatever one says, it does seem the general opinion admits the greatness of the Eruopean, now the planatary science, because everyone tries to argue by backing themselves up with testable regularities, i.e., with so-called facts. The older word was truthing and truths. Truth, of course, has fallen on evil days.

Does changing the label change the meaning? i.e. fact/truth..

I am not certain about what the OP actually means, yet I suppose that Guide is implying something different, which is indeed related to meaning.
It could be that truth used to provide a 'meaning', while facts don't, not the same kind of meaning, at least.
Science does not provide 'meaning' either. Yet, as facts are basically fiction and are rooted in interpretations, science provide an interpretation that can be, more or less directly, confuted.

The question is rather which type of reality it is that scientific facts make evident.
There are different approaches to the world that all have their class of facts.
Scientific facts are very tyrannical. But they dont apply everywhere, because they require a great precision.

Note that by "fact" I do not mean "law".
Laws are consistencies in the appearance of certain classes of facts with respect to each other. So not all situations lend themselves for facts to be used to derive laws. Many situations are quite lawless, at least in how one has to approach them.

At CERN one even seeks to create a lawless state to discern isolated properties.

[attano]

Hi, Jakob.

The question is rather which type of reality it is that scientific facts make evident.

You point to a question that it is genuinely philosophical. Frankly, I am not warm about 'evidence' and 'types' of reality, but I am being fastidious and talking semantics.
Btw, while science strives for 'evidence', by which I mean inter-subjectivity, open to testing and falsification, for the very same reason there is no evidence. A collective effort/endeavor builds some overarching theory, but I don't call that evidence. (Besides, this is made possible through a methodological attitude that strips out of the theory aspects that traditionally were essential for 'meaning' in truth).

There are different approaches to the world that all have their class of facts. [...] But they dont apply everywhere, because they require a great precision.

Yes. This is probably what some would call 'regional ontologies'. Still I guess they share that a common methodology, which definitely implies a great precision, but before that it's about discerning what may allow this precision to take place.

Scientific facts are very tyrannical. [...] Note that by "fact" I do not mean "law".
Laws are consistencies in the appearance of certain classes of facts with respect to each other. So not all situations lend themselves for facts to be used to derive laws. Many situations are quite lawless, at least in how one has to approach them.

At CERN one even seeks to create a lawless state to discern isolated properties.

I like this but I don't really understand it.
I don't get in what way they would be tyrannical. 'Facts' are ultimately constructs, hence I don't get where they get their tyranny from. 'Facts' presuppose even some creativity in order to define them.
Surely 'laws' demand consistency. But consistency per se has no heuristic nor prediction in it. And that, in my view, explains why there are lawless situations, Yet as one, as a scientist, approaches them, s-he would not be doing his/her job if can't conjecture some theory to test.

[Jakob]

Hi Attano, you make a remarkable observation.

There are different approaches to the world that all have their class of facts. [...] But they dont apply everywhere, because they require a great precision.

Yes. This is probably what some would call 'regional ontologies'. Still I guess they share that a common methodology, which definitely implies a great precision, but before that it's about discerning what may allow this precision to take place.

Yes. This filters away a tinkerer like Hume from a thinker like Newton, or Nietzsche.
Daring to ask in that direction. As it inevitably leads to value judgments one can not simply ignore.

Precision is something quite concrete, existent.

[Jakob]

I mean that seeking scientific correspondences is a type of culture, and this culture once it takes hold of a world is very hard to ignore. Whereas a world of say poetic correspondences is also a type of culture, but it is much harder for it to exclude other forms, as it is naturally hospitable to open ended ideas.

This relates to the case that poetry tends to convey meaning whereas science does not. Not unless exactitude itself is experienced as meaningful - which is actually very much the case. This, again, is that cultural aspect, of value judgments actually being very pertinent to science.

[Antithesis]

Actually, European science (or the empirical, systematic study of nature) goes all the way back to at least classical antiquity (although its methods underwent some refinement during the renaissance and enlightenment era), so it's rather old, and so is the word fact.

[MagsJ]

The word fact is rather of recent origin, as is the European science. Whatever one says, it does seem the general opinion admits the greatness of the Eruopean, now the planatary science, because everyone tries to argue by backing themselves up with testable regularities, i.e., with so-called facts. The older word was truthing and truths. Truth, of course, has fallen on evil days.

Does changing the label change the meaning? i.e. fact/truth..

I am not certain about what the OP actually means, yet I suppose that Guide is implying something different, which is indeed related to meaning.
It could be that truth used to provide a 'meaning', while facts don't, not the same kind of meaning, at least.
Science does not provide 'meaning' either. Yet, as facts are basically fiction and are rooted in interpretations, science provide an interpretation that can be, more or less directly, confuted.

My enquiry was a simple one, which I await Guide to answer, before I reply more indepthly.

[Jakob]

Actually, European science (or the empirical, systematic study of nature) goes all the way back to at least classical antiquity (although its methods underwent some refinement during the renaissance and enlightenment era), so it's rather old, and so is the word fact.

It starts with Archimedes.

[attano]

I mean that seeking scientific correspondences is a type of culture, and this culture once it takes hold of a world is very hard to ignore. Whereas a world of say poetic correspondences is also a type of culture, but it is much harder for it to exclude other forms, as it is naturally hospitable to open ended ideas.

This relates to the case that poetry tends to convey meaning whereas science does not. Not unless exactitude itself is experienced as meaningful - which is actually very much the case. This, again, is that cultural aspect, of value judgments actually being very pertinent to science.

The point is sensible, but it hinges on some representation of science that is not actual. Science as spiritual totalitarianism seems to me the dreaded vision of a dystopian future that need not to ever be.
Philosophers are pissed off at the idea that science has the monopoly of truth, but the problem is not science, instead it is with truth. This is a notion part of our heritage that is struggling to cope with our time, and if it has to be propped by the traditional semantics, something like the adequacy of words with the world, then it is no longer viable. It posits absolute points of view that are ultimately anti-perspectival (this is some neologism that you can understand given some references we share).

It is, however, true that science, for a long time. has presented itself as the torchbearer of the same search for truth that used to be at the core of Christianity, notably if seen as Platonism for the masses. So there were these first generations of scientists strained by the effort to accommodate science and faith, and found themselves to be heretics (and it ended quite badly for some of them - by the way, this also shows that the world of 'poetic correspondences hospitable to open ended ideas' is not exactly where we come from). Yet, at some point in the XIX century God died, That was, probably, the greatest gift of science to mankind - possibly quite misused to date.
Anyway, in my view, there's not (or no longer) such a thing as a spiritually totalitarian science and I don't share the view that science per se produces value judgements (my take is that value judgements are formed in perspectives, where science may be a possible background, but not the perspective itself). Nor science produces meaning. Instead, it grants (a godly) power.

[Guide]

Does changing the label change the meaning? i.e. fact/truth..

Fact is a very recent concept, a recent way of thinking. Thought and the expression of thought are largely indistinguishable. The new way of thinking, could as easily go by the word "truth", rather than "fact" and conceal the substantive change in human thinking (could and often does). The word used to mean what it still does in a few legal contexts, such as "accessory after the fact", i.e., a conscience act for which one can be held culpable, a deed. A "ignoble fact", to use the old phrase.

The meaning we now take for granted, thoughtlessly, was developed in the debates between the Royal Society (especially with Boyle and his empirical vacuum) and Thomas Hobbes. Fact came to take the primary meaning of reliably repeatable experimental, a kind of act. From there it developed a vulgarization to the present usage, the result of the act as "fact". And then, simply anything in like echo.

The meaning now in power has a second, more recent, origin, in the working out of the results of Nietzsche by Georg Simmel. It spread to the universities most powerfully through Max Weber. There it separated the traditional truth, beauty, and good (tagged "values") from the phenomena or appearances.

These meanings have slipped into vague everyday prattle.

Truthing, telling the truth, was never a scientific statement. One tells the truth, for instance, when one says one's opinion truly. Opinion was not set off against "facts" (which always in former times meant acts or deeds) until quite recently.

[attano]

Truthing, telling the truth, was never a scientific statement. One tells the truth, for instance, when one says one's opinion truly. Opinion was not set off against "facts" (which always in former times meant acts or deeds) until quite recently.

Probably Gorgias would argue that's not so recent, after all - but that's not relevant.
I guess we can agree that it is not because I say that I state the truth that it makes it truthful.
So, what is it, exactly, "when one says one's opinion truly"?

[Guide]

Truthing, telling the truth, was never a scientific statement. One tells the truth, for instance, when one says one's opinion truly. Opinion was not set off against "facts" (which always in former times meant acts or deeds) until quite recently.

Probably Gorgias would argue that's not so recent, after all - but that's not relevant.
I guess we can agree that it is not because I say that I state the truth that it makes it truthful.
So, what is it, exactly, "when one says one's opinion truly"?

"Probably Gorgias would argue that's not so recent, after all - but that's not relevant."

No. There is no theory of facts in antiquity. Or, of "neutral" / "objective" truth. Gorgias understands rhetoric (or what he teaches) to improve human beings. Underlying this is the naive view that truth must be good. Never was the view that truth is good challenged in antiquity or even imagined as a question at least until Lucretius, and there only half consciously. As, much later, Nietsche finally said it, the truth might be deadly (leaving out the "might be", in his statement: truth is deadly).

A specific theory of un-concealment in the Greek aletheia, appears in the Gorgias, aletheia translated: truth. Our word truth is not "un-concealment" (e.g., of the good). For us, truth is tacitly thought as "neutral", e.g., scientific in the modern sense of true or valid outside of (mere human) thought. For the Greeks, truth means the same as "inside" human thought (at least thinking it backwards from ourselves), perfection of the "unconcealed" as human truth. The Greeks assume the world exists for, essentially concerns, humans.

[surreptitious75]

To be absolutely pedantic science does not deal in truth or reality which are philosophical terms
All science deals in is observable phenomena and their properties / capabilities and nothing else

[Meno_]

To be absolutely pedantic science does not deal in truth or reality which are philosophical terms
All science deals in is observable phenomena and their properties / capabilities and nothing else

75, You've been under the spell of the Positivists for too long a time. I can never subtract the meta from the metaphysics. After all it has given birth to the physics, as a subtraction, a differentiation, as if it was so very different.
Repetition came next, and we're all rooting for unfavorable repeatable outcome ! (By some kind re-differentiation) into something elemental corresponding to the coming of the One World Order vis.some unified field. The way are now, languages only compound the problems.

The political charades ongoing, is representative to the orders of difficulty in finding some public support for a veritable Hydra.

[Guide]

"To be absolutely pedantic science does not deal in truth or reality which are philosophical terms
All science deals in is observable phenomena and their properties / capabilities and nothing else"

Yea, authoritative conventions replace genuine search for truth in the current "science" which is only the part of science or philosophy now in power. And then whatever goes outside the conventions of the mathematical physics become the pejorative "philosophy", since one is only interested in the current game rather than thinking through its foundation into the open. This is all obvious and the source of the current plight of the human abandoned to the mere chance occurrences of an abiotic resource (not a properly human activity but mere techne) productive of human ruin as much as relief.

[attano]

No. There is no theory of facts in antiquity.

Is there a “theory of facts”? I did not know that. It should be interesting. Is it something like how a set of loose observations comes to constitute a ‘fact’? Would you expand on this, please? I suspect it must be very recent, as you have insisted on that. How recent? When was it started? Any reference you can point me to?

[...] Gorgias understands rhetoric (or what he teaches) to improve human beings. Underlying this is the naive view that truth must be good. Never was the view that truth is good challenged in antiquity or even imagined as a question at least until Lucretius, and there only half consciously. As, much later, Nietsche finally said it, the truth might be deadly (leaving out the "might be", in his statement: truth is deadly).

You certainly know that Sextus Empiricus reports the core thesis in Gorgias ‘On Nature’ through these propositions:

first, and to begin with, that nothing exists;
second, that even if there is something, man can not know it;
third, that even if it can be known, it can not be formulated or explained to others.

How and/or why that (regardless if one accepts the thesis, or rejects it) would be outside the scope of the “theory of facts”?

A specific theory of un-concealment in the Greek aletheia, appears in the Gorgias, aletheia translated: truth. Our word truth is not "un-concealment" (e.g., of the good). For us, truth is tacitly thought as "neutral", e.g., scientific in the modern sense of true or valid outside of (mere human) thought. For the Greeks, truth means the same as "inside" human thought (at least thinking it backwards from ourselves), perfection of the "unconcealed" as human truth. The Greeks assume the world exists for, essentially concerns, humans.

I don’t know if that is meant to answer my question about “when one says one's opinion truly". Anyways, if truth is «the same as "inside" human thought (at least thinking it backwards from ourselves)», I don’t really get it. I confess I have a problem in literal comprehension, but even after some conjecturing, then I don’t see what would distinguish truth from opinion or belief. Yet, if that is your thesis, viz. that truth and belief are indistinguishable, then it’s said...
I expected something different. Also because I am at odds compounding this with your reference to Plato’s Gorgias.
Here it is Socrates who supports the view that “truth must be good” (or, better, conducive to good), while Gorgias confines himself to rhetoric as the art of discourse and not for the betterment of man, rather for man’s empowerment («That good, Socrates, which is truly the greatest, being that which gives to men freedom in their own persons, and to individuals the power of ruling over others in their several states», which is not at all ‘truth will set you free’). Socrates, instead, states (and Gorgias agrees) that «knowledge and belief differ», and, with a more comprehensive view to the dialogue, if we assume that knowledge means holding something for true or false, then it seems to point to something else than “inside human thought”. In many points (e.g. from 517 to 522) Socrates assesses the use of rhetoric - as Gorgias intends it - in politics, his point being that rhetoric is dangerous if not committed to truth. And, through some kind of metaphor with gymnastic and medicine, it looks like Socrates indeed implies that truth proceeds from knowledge - and might result in bitter prescriptions. So truth would not be deadly, yet occasionally hurtful.
It might be that this still implies “inside human thought”, in the sense that Socrates hints to truth as one's possession, but that’s not so forthcoming to me.

As for the Greeks holding this idea of truth, would that apply apply to Aristotle too?

[Guide]

"Guide wrote:
No. There is no theory of facts in antiquity.

Is there a “theory of facts”? I did not know that. It should be interesting. Is it something like how a set of loose observations comes to constitute a ‘fact’? Would you expand on this, please? I suspect it must be very recent, as you have insisted on that. How recent? When was it started? Any reference you can point me to?"

I'm not your nurse. So, I've already mentioned its sources. It's not something one can debate (since its an empirical issue and that would be a waste of time like arguing with people who deny death camps existed). Your tone is rude, so, I'm not going to point you to the best reference work on the history of this concept unless you ask more polity. I really could care less if you want to remain a naive fool your whole life that's your business.

[promethean75]

Is there a “theory of facts”? I did not know that. It should be interesting. Is it something like how a set of loose observations comes to constitute a ‘fact’? Would you expand on this, please?

don't ask guide... we should no longer want to know what would sir george martin do. there is an easier way to address this question.

first, ask not about what a 'fact' may or may not be, but about how the word 'fact' is used in language. next ask if there are any ways in which it is used that, if it is used in a 'wrong' way, would result in senselessness and/or confusion. finally, ask what this senselessness and confusion would be like; does it derive from an unusual use and relationship to other words in the grammar (e.g., 'that fast blue fact jumped'), or does it derive from uses in which an error with its use would yield tangible consequences... for instance, you were mistaken to believe it wasn't a fact that you could get a speeding ticket if you sped, and got a speeding ticket because of that. here it is clear how the word 'fact' is used and what it means, and being mistaken about what it means, in this instance, can be experienced.

now compare any number of philosophical theories regarding the definition of what a 'fact' may or may not be beyond what signification it grants when it is used in language in an ostensive way. you will find hundreds of philosophers explaining what they believe a 'fact' is or is not, and you'll notice that if any of them were wrong, it wouldn't make any difference in an ostensive way. of course, a specific use of the word 'fact' in a philosophical language is able to result in a confusion and senselessness, but only because there is a conflict of proper meaning in the grammar of the particular language game it is used in, not because of some tangible result in using or understanding what the word means in the wrong way... as in the case of getting the speeding ticket because you failed to recognize that it was a fact that you could get one, if you sped.

a study question: what would happen if you failed to recognize what the word 'fact' means in these statements:

1. there are no facts, only interpretations
2. a 'fact' is 'what is the case', but things, processes and events that constitute 'the case' are always changing, therefore there are no facts.
3. the phenomenological eidetic reduction of the object of experience presents the fact of the thing independently of the nature and properties of the thing experienced.

[Jakob]

A fact is given by consensus.

Science does not produce facts but truths, which are given in (not by) experience.

Something is not a fact if people disagree that it is, even if it is a truth.

Truths must be understood to be apprehended. Facts don't need to be understood to govern an outlook.

[Meno_]

The overgrowth of description by way of meaning is the inescapable result of searching meaning by usage. That currency is responsible for the unawareness of mixed factual truths.
That that subtle sense of the difference can not be properly understood either through direct observation , nore through the epoche of set boundaries in situ thus defined, approximating the boundaries without which any meaning can be sensibly defined, apart from such current usage.

The lack of these different meaning sets may or may not overlap, therefore creating the possibility for misinterpretation through and for common sense.

[Guide]

"1. there are no facts, only interpretations"

Nietzsche didn't say that. He spoke about phenomena, in the old sense of appearances. "...keine moralischen phänomene; sondern nur eine moralische Interpretation gewisser
Phenomena (eine Irrtümliche Interpretation!) " What he says is more like: There are no moral phenomena, only moral interpretations of phenomena (an erring interpretation!).

Phenomena aren't facts. Far from it. The "fact" part came in only as Nietzsche's early readers bought it in to make Nietzsche readable, sanitized, in the academy. One has to think through the change there to see where we live. Fact / Value has its own history which Nietzsche did not live to see. He dealt with phenomena and, on the other hand, the true, the beautiful, and the good. He also, despite what his translators often lead one to believe, knew nothing of values in the sense of this "fact/value" account which controls contemporaneity.

We all receive a vague and decayed account of these ideas as traditional authority represented in the vernacular. Most people don't know it is the authority of the tradition speaking through them.

Note:
One should not confuse Husserl and so-called "modern" Phenomenology with the older determination of phenomena, which was not a "bracketing" based on the "ultimate doubt".

[Guide]

"A fact is given by consensus.

Science does not produce facts but truths, which are given in (not by) experience."

Give a example.

[Guide]

The overgrowth of description by way of meaning is the inescapable result of searching meaning by usage.

Now Meno, you have been forbidden, have you not, to play with dead ideas? Marx, too, never heard tell of facts in the sense of fact/value, though he had the echo of the Hobbes Boyle usage (known also to Locke it should be said), fact as repeated act of experiment. What he thought of, was appearance and truth. Facts are not appearances. An appearance must be the appearance of something. Ergo, of reality. Facts don't correspond to anything beyond themselves, as you mentioned, they are supposed to be "positive". One says here, are these facts values? Or, are the values facts? Scientism wants to say: the "value", a dependent variable of the "fact". Logically this doesn't quite get there does it?