The Sociology of Science:(3 of 3)

[@antonyorme4497]

Thankyou SisyphusRedeemed for an interesting and informative set of presentations.

[@BabelRedeemed]

Thanks for continuing these lectures, I've been enjoying them from the beginning.

[@rmeddy]

I like the example you use because i'm working on fractal dimensioning right now.

[@Flamingbob25]

Also, I'd like to comment on the coast of England problem, this is a somewhat common problem, I've heard it before however, I think the clear problem comes not for the difference in tools but from a lack of a rigorous definition of what the coast is. Look at the '100 km' example' between the north of Wales and Scotland there is a section that goes very far into the ocean without actually defining what the coast is I would suggest this is unambiguously NOT the coast. I think if you get a rigorous definition much of this problem can be eliminated.

[@CousinoMacul]

You "conceded" to the Planck Length argument all too quickly. You see, once your unit of measurement gets small enough, the length of the coast of England varies with the tide. ;-P

[@goodluck5642]

Checkmate atheists

[@KingCrocoduck]

Whoever answered that the coast of England problem is answered by "infinity" if you use small enough increments has obviously never taken calculus lol

[@flippantfishtaco3132]

These three lectures were amazing. With all this knowledge, why then do so many scientists and science educators still operate from this perspective that science is purely rational, unbiased, and empirical? Perhaps because it works for as long as the established model is standing unchallenged? The world of physics is presently in such a state, the discovery of cold fusion was in fact real, and just recently is the world of science beginning to correct itself. I suppose there is no training for science communicators, maybe they just missed the memo.

[@SisyphusRedeemed]

I'm glad you like them, thanks for saying so. As to why scientists/science educators tend to toe the logical positivist line, I think it's inertia more than anything else. Philosophy of science is very complicated: I have more than a dozen hours of lectures here, and there's a whole bunch of stuff I didn't address. Having to learn about all that, analyze it, make sure it holds water, all on top of being an expert in your own specific subject matter... that's asking a lot.

[@8DX]

Bloody philosophers, comin' over here, educating us about the sociology of science, dismissing sociological theories due to insignificant things like internal inconsistencies...Cheers & thanks(Also social constructivism vs constructionism takes a while to mangle one's head around.)=8)-DX

[@Flamingbob25]

The Hobbesian question of how can we ever really know that a vacuum is empty is I think is properly thrown out. I am sure there will be those who disagree with me, but if a question is unanswerable, it can't really tell us anything useful about reality. You could I suppose argue that we should always be striving towards finding the most empty bottle, probing deeper into the vacuum but we do that anyway. It would seem to me that all Hobb's questions leads too is a childish 'are you sure' after every test.

[@Evilanious]

That coast of England thing. I see no reason to believe the coast could be infinitely long. Even if we take the limit of the lenght of the sticks as we take the lengt of the individual sticks to be approach zero, I see no reason to believe that lenght will be infinite, anymore than I have reason to believe that an arbitrary Riemann integral is infinite. More relevant, I have mostly heard a skeptical problem. I have heard no reason to involve sociological factors. The takeaway just seems to be that our measurements are approximations and will not be precisely the lenght of the actual thing we were measuring. Was there more to this than to the insight that we can't actually write down the entire decimal expansion of pi and that in most cases we'll settle for 3.14?

[@HebaruSan]

Apparently the coastline argument relies mathematically on the coast being a "true" or infinite fractal, which it is not in reality. Since the argument was being used to establish "we can't get to the raw facts," it would seem that the real world properties of the coastline actually are relevant, and the conclusion does not hold. Since it is not a true or infinite fractal, then we can actually measure it, and past a certain point adding more precision will not affect the measurement. (Source: the same Wikipedia page where Garrett got those 13-year-old maps of England. :) )

[@Evilanious]

Sheesh. If we are making the rather large assumption that the coastline of England forms an infinite fractal it might be a good idea to actually state that assumption. Anyway, thanks for the explanation.

[@PhrontDoor]

Actually, the coastline would be slightly MORE than infinite, technically. There is no 'bottom-scale' as, even if you assume it's at the value of the 'atoms' then you have the outermost electron positions, which are necessarily indeterminate at rather all times. So the position of the SINGLE electron is merely infinite... The position of a finite number is a tad worse since each also varies with brownian-motion AND since each electron in each atom has a chance to have become excited to the outermost level, or de-excited to fall back from the outermost position.

[@HebaruSan]

The phrase "socially constructed" should be banned. It's worse than useless and just starts pointless fights. Make people spell out what they actually mean. How is, say, the result of the dual slit experiment not "out there to be discovered"? Of course it is. Yes we try to interpret what it _means,_ but the interference pattern itself is not a matter of interpretation.

[@jamescantrell2092]

Mandelbrot, right?

[@annalazar287]

“How long is the cost of England? This depends on the tools you use to measure the cost of England. And what is true for the cost of England is true for basically everything else you choose to measure. “ No, this is true only for *fractal-type* objects (and the cost of England is a textbook example for fractal type objects). Try to measure any non-fractal object (bridge, building, ball, etc.) and you will get a very well-defined result, independent of the tool you use.

[@robertdunton6765]

Not a particularly philosophical consideration of the sociologists' perspectives.

[@lukestaceyuk]

That is not the coast of England, it is the coast of Britain. Please, please, please, don't be ignorant of the countries that make up Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales on your map). I understand it doesn't change your fundamental point but still. I can certainly agree that you are "manufacturing" the political geography of England!