Re: Explaining explain

["Donald E. Simanek" <dsimanek@eagle.lhup.edu>]

On Fri, 30 Jan 1998, JACK L. URETSKY (C) 1996; HEP DIV., ARGONNE NATIONAL LAB, ARGONNE, IL 60439 wrote:

> Hi John-
> 	You write:
> You seem to understand that usefulness is enough.  Why muddy the water
> with inappropriate and emotion laden words like "truth"?  Of course, in
> order to be useful our theories must make accurate (enough) quantitative
> predictions, but that doesn't make them "true." 

Some philosophers of science like to say that science seeks "proximate
truths" or "approximate truths": reliable models "good enough" to meet our
purposes and to satisfy experimental tests with our present instruments
and methodology. But, I agree with you, "truth" is a troublesome word we
can quite well do without when we talk about science. We should ban it
from any statements about science.

>  
> To "do" science, we must, I think, believe in the *existence* of an
> objective reality, but there is no reason to think that we can ever know
> its "true nature" and no difficulty that arises as a result as long as we
> do not confuse ourselves and our students by using inappropriate words
> like "truth" and "proof" in connection with our models.  My students
> quickly learn that writing such things in their lab report summaries tends
> to produce lots of green ink (my substitute for red) on their papers. 

And here I take a different tack. I would also ban the word "believe" from
scientific discourse. The word has too many shades and strenghts of
meaning, and one is very likely to be misunderstood when using it. The
scientist doesn't "believe" in the sense of the absolute, unshakable
belief of the religious person. Scientists have only a "provisional
belief", subject to minor or even major revision as new facts or insights
come in.

As to "objective reality", we can't know whether it "is there". We have
consistent shared sense impressions which we interpret as due to an
objective reality. But we could do science, and physics, even if these
sense impressions were a shared illusion. I.e., it doesn't help us in any
way to talk about "objective reality". It is a model, like everything
else.

> *******************************
> 	Ahhh, there you have it.  I thought that the business of physics
> is prediction, using the smallest number of free parameters.
> 	Because it is logically impossible to prove that any particular
> theory is "true", physicS cannot be a "search for truth".
> 					Regards,
> 						Jack

Agreed! Sometimes physicists, teachers, and textbooks are guilty of "high
sounding language" aimed at glorifying what we do to outsiders. That is
easier than getting down to sweat the details of explaining what we do,
how we do it, and why we do it. 

	-- Donald Simanek