Does /lit/ like Stephen Hawking's books?
>>7881022
>Sweephen Hawkings.mov
>>7881022
>Does /lit/ like Stephen Hawking's books?
he is too much of a pleb
He did a couple semi-important things. However he is not nearly as important as the media makes him out to be.
I wonder how much philosophy, including philosophy of science, Hawking has actually read. Or Richard "Region specific" Dawkins for that matter. I do agree, and so do quite a few contemporary philosophers, that philosophy uses its own mechanisms (what's left of cartesianism, phenomenological reduction, orientation towards art and politics, focus on language and/or logic, etc.) to avoid the difficult task of studying science (which became effectively far too complex for the philosopher polymath of times long gone). Still, interdisciplinarity is the way of the future so I see no reason why philosophers couldn't contribute by specializing themselves (into epistemologists, ontologists of various kinds, etc.) and leave behind the broad, all-encompasing views that link fundamental elements to political movements and the like. Or, perhaps, this may in fact allow the creation of new views that go beyond individual synthesizers, so that we would talk about arepublican view of Being rather than a hegeian one, as silly as thats might sound. instance.
This is what hawking believes in 2010, after his career in physics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-dependent_realism
Model-dependent realism is a view of scientific inquiry that focuses on the role of scientific models of phenomena.[1] It claims reality should be interpreted based upon these models, and where several models overlap in describing a particular subject, multiple, equally valid, realities exist. It claims that it is meaningless to talk about the "true reality" of a model as we can never be absolutely certain of anything. The only meaningful thing is the usefulness of the model.[2] The term "model-dependent realism" was coined by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow in their 2010 book, The Grand Design.[3]
Model-dependent realism asserts that all we can know about "reality" consists of networks of world pictures that explain observations by connecting them by rules to concepts defined in models. Will an ultimate theory of everything be found? Hawking/Mlodinow suggest it is unclear:
In the history of science we have discovered a sequence of better and better theories or models, from Plato to the classical theory of Newton to modern quantum theories. It is natural to ask: Will this sequence eventually reach an end point, an ultimate theory of the universe, that will include all forces and predict every observation we can make, or will we continue forever finding better theories, but never one that cannot be improved upon? We do not yet have a definitive answer to this question...[4]
—Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design, p.8
A world picture consists of the combination of a set of observations accompanied by a conceptual model and by rules connecting the model concepts to the observations. Different world pictures that describe particular data equally well all have equal claims to be valid. There is no requirement that a world picture be unique, or even that the data selected include all available observations. The universe of all observations at present is covered by a network of overlapping world pictures and, where overlap occurs; multiple, equally valid, world pictures exist. At present, science requires multiple models to encompass existing observations:
Like the overlapping maps in a Mercator projection, where the ranges of different versions overlap, they predict the same phenomena. But just as there is no flat map that is a good representation of the earth's entire surface, there is no single theory that is a good representation of observations in all situations[5]
—Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design, p.9
Where several models are found for the same phenomena, no single model is preferable to the others within that domain of overlap.
While not rejecting the idea of "reality-as-it-is-in-itself", model-dependent realism suggests that we cannot know "reality-as-it-is-in-itself", but only an approximation of it provided by the intermediary of models. The view of models in model-dependent realism also is related to the instrumentalist approach to modern science, that a concept or theory should be evaluated by how effectively it explains and predicts phenomena, as opposed to how accurately it describes objective reality (a matter possibly impossible to establish). A model is a good model if it:[6]
Is elegant
Contains few arbitrary or adjustable elements
Agrees with and explains all existing observations
Makes detailed predictions about future observations that can disprove or falsify the model if they are not borne out.
"If the modifications needed to accommodate new observations become too baroque, it signals the need for a new model." [7] Of course, an assessment like that is subjective, as are the other criteria.[8] According to Hawking and Mlodinow, even very successful models in use today do not satisfy all these criteria, which are aspirational in nature.[9]
So yeah, it took a while for the scientists to understand that science is not about truth, connection to reality and what not, but to predict with the least deductions possible. And why do we want to predict ? Why do we pay people to produce models after models? No scientist answers this.
>>7881145
jesus christ
literally everything wrong with modern science in one theory
>>7881145
>>7881147
>>7881149
>>7881160
>literally everything wrong with modern science in one theory
are you literally retarded? model-dependent realism is probably what's most right with modern science. It acknowledges that human experience is subjective and we can never be certain of "reality" since it is filtered through our perception. therefore we can only build models to explain observations/observed phenomena. it's quite simple really and you might understand that if your arts degree had not scared you so much about science.
>And why do we want to predict ? Why do we pay people to produce models after models? No scientist answers this.
jesus fucking christ. the level of autism in this thread is way too fucking high. you're asking why we seek scientific progress? to solve practical problems? so that liberal-arts-passouts can come home after a day of burger tossing and use a computer to visit an imageboard and bemoan why people spend time trying to understand the world instead of writing about feelings and stuff.
