Once in a lifetime
Have you heard about the 100 year plant? It blossoms once every 100 years. Say you had one of these plants, but you didn't know what it was. 50 years, it just sits there, staring at you, looking like any other non-blossoming plant. Then, one day, it blooms. 50 years, nothing, now this. What would you say? Would you think it would bloom again next year (ie did it take 50 years to mature, now it will bloom every year)? Or some other cycle, or are you in the middle of a 100, or 1,000, or some longer cycle? Maybe too long for any human to have ever seem the first event of this cycle? What would Science say?
That is the problem with Science - it can not say anything. Science is a method - one based on inductive reasoning. So, if something is reproducible or has a long series of occurrences, then you can induct certain things, then you can claim you believe something might happen because of something else, or happen with a certain frequency, etc. But what of things that happen with too long of a cycle for humans to observe? What about things we can not control or reproduce on demand?
Psychic powers. People think science says that they can not exist because we can not recreate them in a lab on demand. Psychics say that they are not really to the "on demand" state yet. So, Science says "Bogus." Can I demonstrate a Big Bang on demand? Can I demonstrate a Supernova on demand? Pulsar? Quantum string?
Science is a method used to determine how likely something is based on past events - not much more than that. There are large groups of things that Science can not speak to. Science is mostly a faith these days. If Science can not prove something, then it probably doesn't exist. Yet Science can not say something about most things in this Universe. Within our limited time-frame, we do not know how stable this universe is, we do not know that water will boil or that protons are stable or ... We just infer based on inductive reasoning, Science. But inductive reasoning doesn't work. We believe in Science as a faith and it has gotten us this far, but will it take us to the next level? No.
The Edward
PS Alien influence. I claim science can say something about this, not based on experimentation, but based on inductive reasoning, which I have explained somewhat in previous blog entries.
2 comments:
To grab terms from another topical debate, it seems like Science is trying to "evolve" to the next stage, whereas you see the need for that next stage to be "created". The next stage might not be directly accessible with current Science, but perhaps there will be a key mutation -- analogous to relativity or quantum theory -- that will open up access.
A key test for this next stage of Science will be how it deals with singularities like black holes or the Big Bang. If there's a way to scientifically bridge these gaps, then it seems like there would also be ways to deal with other singularities, like your "once in a lifetime" events.
That is a very interesting theory -I hadn't considered "once in a lifetime" events on the same level as singularities. Time based singularities vs space based one... I like it. I will have to ponder this some more!
There does seem to be things missing with current ways of gathering information about the Universe with Science being the latest method. I look forward to finding another method, one that will change our world view as past methods have.
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