Neglect. And TRU FAX.

[luna_manar]

I have neglected this journal. Maybe I should post here more.

So here's an x-post from a different journal.
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So, I'm posting this for people I know have at least a somewhat scientific/mathematics background, because I myself am not formally educated (although I don't think my self-education is all that shabby, riddled with holes as it is) because I found this conversation with Random McGee interesting, but throughout the exchange I was having a very difficult time wording my responses. The English language (and any other language, really) is full of nuance, and hitting just the right balance to describe something mathematical or scientific is sometimes very hard.

I got the feeling throughout the entire conversation that we were not actually in (much) disagreement, so much as we used different words to represent the same things, and McGee is letting "common sense" dictate the hierarchy of facts, theories, laws and hypotheses (he states flatly that he "disagrees" with the actual hierarchy...to which I can't say much, other than, "oh, well").

What I'm wondering here is whether my idea of the hierarchy is correct. I know the order, and I think I know the reasons for it, but I'm not sure. I'm perfectly aware that contradictory evidence falsifies a theory, so from the standpoint of "my facts can beat up your theory," I concede it's more likely than not, given the facts actually have anything to do with said theory and contradict existing evidence, that facts can be "stronger" than theories. But facts (observations) don't do anything, in and of themselves, so they have no real power. And it's hard to come up with a metaphor, or even an example, outside of...something mathematical I don't know how to write, that explains this. I understand, but I can't explain, which makes me wonder how well I actually do understand. I feel like I do comprehend the idea, I just have managed to do so without words or numbers. Yes, theory holds far more power than facts (observations, evidence) alone, due to its potential for practical application as well as its potential to reveal things that are unobservable. But what is an appropriate analogy so I can explain this to someone who hasn't yet wrapped their head around it?

Where are the numbers behind the hierarchy? I understand it logically; but maybe I don't understand it intimately.

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/2178250/#cid:17709537

(Please do not go to this page to argue with McGee. I'm not calling on anyone to dogpile him. If anything, I'm asking for someone to correct my wording, because I feel that I'm mis-communicating. I suspect that even if I was not, McGee would dig in his heels, but that's not the point.)

Comments

[lhexa]

The journal is gone or inaccessible... but is the general notion that facts are more important than theory? If that's the idea, then the main problem I see is that the two are dissimilar enough beasties that a ranking isn't called for.

Edit after reading more carefully: Okay, I've come across the hierarchy you mention before. but it isn't worth taking seriously. Facts and theories are again too unlike to compare, and as for theories, laws and hypotheses, their relative position is just a function of their meanings.

[luna_manar]

Hmm! Could you please explain why it is not worth taking seriously?

The reason I ask is that "facts" are often used to discredit theories in disingenuous ways, f.e.:

"It's a fact you can't disprove God created the world; therefore, evolution is _just_ a theory and might be completely wrong!"

Facts (when used to mean observations and/or evidence) are supplemental to theory, yes? However, not all facts are relevant. If it is a fact that one cannot disprove something (you can't argue a negative), that fact is irrelevant to the theory of evolution. At least, that's how I understand it.

[lhexa]

Oops, I was never notified of this response, sorry!

After the interim I may have lost track of the topic, but I was talking about some such statement as "Facts are more important than theories", and argued that such a comparison between unlike things should not be made.

Insofar as that statement can be recast into another form (say "Facts can disprove theories, but theories can't disprove facts", which is true), it's a statement of the meanings of the terms, of what counts as a fact and what as a theory. Since the meanings of the terms are available to anyone who knows how to use them, adding a hierarchy of concepts on top of them is just imposing order for order's sake, and not worth taking seriously for that reason. I don't think any scientist has ever been led astray because she forgot the distinction between fact and theory. Complacency is not a flaw that stricter definitions will correct.

Anyway, it doesn't look like the above paragraph has anything to do with what you are arguing against, which is a predictable effect of jumping into a debate halfway through. :P

[luna_manar]

No worries about not responding; I only just recently started checking this journal again, so the timing is fine!

I honestly am having trouble remembering the conversation I had with the guy; I thought the hierarchy mattered in the context of science is because if we accept at face value that facts "trump" theory, "you can't prove there is no God" can be used to cast doubt on evolution, a theory with mountains of evidence backing it. While it is true that a contradictory fact can falsify a theory ("all that is necessary to disprove the theory that all swans are white is a single black swan"), a lack of facts to support a negative is not a falsifying fact in and of itself. It's difficult to illustrate this, I think, without establishing a hierarchy, or at least establishing the process by which facts support a theory, leading to more testable hypotheses to be tested to discover more facts, resulting in more/better theories. It seems like a chicken/egg paradox, but it's not: I'm reminded of Paul Lutus's excellent article titled The Levels of Human Experience which does an excellent job of explaining the role of theories vs facts in science. He sums it up better than I could:

"Science is an open, basically anarchistic, system. Ideas have the highest priority, and those with supporting evidence become the new science. Authority means precisely nothing. "

If all you have are a collection of facts, that's great, but without an idea to make sense of them, or for them to support or falsify, you're limited to a very reactionary way of thinking: without the ability to think past the observable raw facts, the theory of evolution would never have been imagined in the first place. Charles Darwin didn't simply notice that you can mate pigeons of certain types to come up with new breeds, he realized the very process by which it actually works. Before anyone knew what DNA was, before there was a field of genetics, Darwin was theorizing and testing his ideas about the nature of heredity and random mutation. That's why theories, at least to my admittedly amateur understanding, hold the higher ground as far as science is concerned. Simply put, theories backed by evidence have exponentially more potential for understanding of our world than the facts alone. To say something is "just a theory," implies that facts are the pinnacle of human understanding, demoting theory from its true place as the defining capability of humanity over other animals to place it somewhere between speculation and guess. I don't think that's where it belongs, and while you make a good point that facts and theories are different beasts altogether, I think it's worth noting that facts alone won't allow you to build an artificial heart or devise a machine that allows us wingless humans to fly. /ramble

[lhexa]

It sounds to me like you've given good reasons not to have a hierarchy that goes either way. Theory should not be placed above fact because facts trump theories, and fact should not be placed above theory because theory makes facts coherent.

It's difficult to illustrate this, I think, without establishing a hierarchy, or at least establishing the process by which facts support a theory, leading to more testable hypotheses to be tested to discover more facts, resulting in more/better theories.

I much prefer the latter, and I think you've given good illustrations in this thread that do not require a ranking of fact versus theory.

Anyway, the parts of your replies I thought about the most while away from the computer were those addressing a hypothetical anti-evolution point. The two clashing meanings of the word "theory" are a lasting trial for science -- my biology textbook, in its first few pages, tries to clear that up. But, despite this problem, both meanings of the word are common parlance, neither is outright technical: if I say to my mother that I've been working on a theory of relativistic dipoles, she'll understand that doesn't mean I've merely been speculating about relativistic dipoles. I have no reason to believe that the archetypal anti-evolution guy, saying "it's just a theory", is unaware of the stronger meaning: rather, he opts to only use the weaker meaning, while refusing to acknowledge the stronger one, precisely because this option makes his position stronger.

You're thinking about tactics to use against somebody who would distort language itself in order to achieve victories. The problem is not that this person is confused, so that providing clear definitions, explanations and elaborations will solve the difficulty. The problem is that person has an ideological interest in misunderstanding your terminology. The earlier example comes in here, too: when a person uses a completely irrelevant fact to counter a point, can it really be that he doesn't know this? I'm not drawing a portrait of someone malign here, but rather that of an extreme case of someone who has subverted his own reason for the sake of a cherished thesis.

Since you've put the matter into the context of a struggle against a certain religious irrationality, I'll take back my claim that the hierarchy is not worth taking seriously. I previously thought it was idle ordering, a hierarchy for the sake of hierarchy. If your enemy is worth taking seriously, so are your defenses against him.

[luna_manar]

It sounds to me like you've given good reasons not to have a hierarchy that goes either way. Theory should not be placed above fact because facts trump theories, and fact should not be placed above theory because theory makes facts coherent.

I think you are right about this; I think maybe I'm changing my mind about the idea of a hierarchy being the best model, even in the context of arguing with someone who either does not understand or is choosing not to acknowledge the "scientific" usage of the terms theory and fact; for one, defining such a hierarchy will not serve any purpose when debating with someone who will deliberately ignore it. Secondly, the more I think about it, the more I am starting to agree that facts and theory have a relationship that is too reciprocal to be hierarchal at any given point.

I think my feeling of "of course theory > fact" comes from having to endure frequent, excessively frustrating arguments with religious types, both on the Internet and off, where the word "fact" is used as a bludgeon to dismiss the weight of the term theory. In defending theory's importance, I may have put it on something of a pedestal.

[lhexa]

Generally speaking, I don't think it's a good thing to have an idea of science designed specifically to combat its detractors. The value of science isn't that it's not religion. Anyhow, may your ideas continue to develop, and may you have good luck in your future frustrating arguments. ;)

[luna_manar]

And thank you for an enlightening discussion!