It's actually quite comical seeing all of you holding on to your realities for dear life. Perhaps you should just let go and consider all things as they are [and not how you wish them to be].
If you're in a building, driving, a car, flying in an airplane, sailing on a ship, or doing pretty much anything else in this world, you'd better hope like hell that science isn't impermanent.
But you are still literally using human intellect (of sorts) to support that idea. Anyway, my initial instinct in response to your OP was that it was rubbish, so I guess I should stop trying to discuss it intellectually with you and just dismiss it out of hand.
All things are in flux. You might not be able to sense it, and it might not affect its function, but, just the same, all things change constantly.
If I could communicate with you otherwise, I would. Instead of getting so frustrated, why not enjoy the conversation? You might even learn something!
In science, a fact is a well documented observation. For example, it could be a temperature taken by a particular device at a particular time and location. That and other documented observations won't change.
A person's perception changes with time. Throughout history, although people might have "seen" the same [more or less] stimuli, their description of it would be quite different. An example might be a person from our own time looking out into space on a really clear night and somebody from the year 3122 doing the same. The knowledge accumulated in that time span will take the same image and make something completely different out of it. This does not happen all of a sudden, instead, moment by moment.
Yes. That's one of a number of reasons that we have to be a LOT better than trusting perceptions when studying serious issues. For example, facts don't change. They are well documented observations as mentioned above. For example, there are serous testing standards that must be applied. The objctive is a process of continually improving understanding. As you point out, there really isn't a place for "perception" in that.
Let me ask you a question. I would appreciate a response. It seems like many people here are only concerned with "winning," that is, they don't seem to enjoy the conversation itself. Would you say this is the case?
I think so too. But there is no such thing as winning here. I don't come here to win. I come here for entertainment. I don't like to engage in conversations that aren't entertaining. How about you?
I've been a participant on many discussion groups over many years and have found this to be the case. I know I have a different way seeing things which I believe many might be interested in, but I seem to receive a lot of negative energy because it does not jive with others' reality. The last thing I want to do is chat with somebody who might agree with me. What fun is that? It would be nice if folks would relax a little bit and just try to enjoy the conversation. After all, what does being "right" actually mean?
SOME things change constantly. But, on closer inspection one finds that there are foundations upon which that change you observe depends.
There are physical laws that we do not see changing. Thermodynamics, laws of motion, etc. There are fundamentals of physics that also do not change. For example, Newton's physics was improved by Einstein. But, that did not invalidate the principles Newton identified. It was an improvement. In the future, if Einstein is improved upon, it will have to be supportive of what we know from Einstein. Reality doesn't change simply because we know reality better than we once did. With life forms, we have evolution, a foundation of all biology. Surprising life forms or physical structures have been found and have become extinct, but that foundation of biology remains. Change is not willy nilly.
Well, no. Scientific regress: When science goes backward https://blogs.scientificamerican.com › cross-check › scie... Nov 16, 2010 — This famous experiment raised the hopes of many scientists that one of nature's deepest mysteries—genesis, the origin of life on Earth—would ...
That does not counter ANYTHING I've said. There certainly are hopes that turn out not to meet somebody's schedule, especially when it comes to engineering and technology, like gene therapy, fusion power, supersonic transport, etc. or that we may learn something by some specific schedule, like abiogenesis or string theory. So, humans didn't attain various goals. That does NOT mean that we somehow became less informed or less smart, or whatever. None of that can possibly suggest that understanding is moving backwards.
Neither science nor any other human activity has a necessary forward direction. All are contingent and fragile. After the collapse of Rome much of the classical world's science was lost and was only recovered in Europe centuries later, with a large assist from Arab scholars who had preserved some classical work. And now there's this. Woke Science: a Toxic Marriage of Activism and Science? - https://authortomharper.com › 2021/11/06 › woke-scie... Nov 6, 2021 — Leftist critical theory has wormed its way into the hard sciences. Is there anything redeeming about this toxic marriage of activism and ...
No, you are trying to claim that there is retrograde motion in normally stable times. Plus that cite of yours is beyond ridiculous.
As usual, you miss the point. There are no "normally stable times." Science is always contingent, and can go forward or backward.
Your example was the fall of Rome!! The chance of science going backwards is hugely limited by the fact that it is world wide, carried forward by numerous nations. No single nation is the measure of science.
Science has no backward or forward. That's the point. The emergence of political activism among scientists suggests a disturbing situation. When scientists become activists, activism is presented as science.
You're the one pushing for more activism in science. And, the result is a demonstration of how science is not susceptible to that.
