is science "socially neutral"?

I am not making an objection to the big bang, I began by saying that the salvageable part of fabian's argument is the notion that there is a paradox in the notion that time has a beginning. I suspect the only way to 'resolve' it is to accept two different notions of time, one as an abstract measure in terms of which we understand 'beginning,' the other as part of the concrete becoming of the universe.

Otherwise we may have to accept the beginning of time as something like an irrational number, something a certain system needs in order to cohere, and accept that it is paradoxical.

Sure, the thing is that informal discussion - talking - often involves two or more senses of many terms. It seems like a big deal if you focus on it but it's not really a big deal. Humans rearrange their thinking constantly around this stuff. How many ways do people use the term "home" in a given day, for example. How many ways have people used the term "neutral" in this thread?

And just FYI, neither irrational numbers nor imaginary numbers are considered problems as such by mathematicians. "Irrational" and "imaginary" are purely historical labels. These numbers are as well defined - even as real - as "real number" and "rational numbers".

Yeah, maybe irrational number was a bad example because that really is something we can't grasp intuitively but that makes sense. I think the paradox is inherent in the notion of time 'beginning,' though--coded in, so to speak.

Reasoning isn't intuition. Here: curvature implies corporeal structure (being that it's "curvature" is said to affect corporeal structures moving trough space), and space cannot have any corporeal structure, because it is not a corporeal entity, but simply- empty space, emptiness. No structure of space can be proposed, where any structure exists, it exists by taking some empty space.

Who needs science text books when you can make do with a dictionary?

Who needs a mind when you can be fed arbitrary theories with redefined scientific disciplines, their basic concepts and first principles by the establishment.

double post, sorry

That doesn't address the point I'm making, and doesn't follow from the my statements above.

Because you say so. Because "that's just what time is". Because time "by definition" can't do anything without your permission, including start or end.

Right, so you agree with me, you can measure things that aren't real but the measurements do not describe reality. Hence the fact that you can hypothetically measure time back beyond the big bang, just as you can hypothetically measure hobbits or the dimensions of heaven, tells us nothing about whether time has a beginning, whether heaven exists, or if hobbits are real.

Unless it has a beginning after all, in which case it is only real up until that point, and measuring it any further is just as real as measuring hobbits.

So at the end of the day you've made an extremely weak and contradictory metaphysical argument about time, that doesn't stand up to the most basic scrutiny. On this basis you seek to discredit the entire edifice of scientific thought: all the theoretical arguments and empirical evidence developed over centuries which point inevitably to the conclusion that time does indeed begin somewhere. This is hardly a convincing attack on science.

~J.

Time exists. It is an observable fact. "Beginning of time" isn't, just as the hobbits. When measuring time indefinetly into past, something real -time- is measured, when "measuring" how long ago was the "beginning of time" that's hypothetical, because beginning of time is hypothetical, wheras time itself isn't.

-Time has a beginning.
-It doesn't, because it's measurable indefinetly into past.
-But it isn't measurable indefinelty into past.
-Why?
-Because it has a beginning.

Yeah, and people here mock my views.

Time is real, the beginning of time is what can compared to hobbits as something imaginary.

So, when physicists talk about space being curved, they aren't talking about "outer space" (which isn't actually empty anyway) but space in general, that is, the space between your house and the nearest post office as much as the space between Uranus and Neptune.

Anyway, curvature isn't just a property of corporeal structures. The trajectory of a thrown tennis ball is curved but an object's trajectory is not a corporeal structure. You can bend light with a prism and light is not a corporeal structure. (Admittedly, this is easier to grasp than the idea of 3-dimensional space itself being curved. However it does illustrate that curvature isn't just a property of material things.)

You're so right - why bother trying to understand "arbitrary" theories that have been passed down and worked on by generations of researchers, when you could just use your own mind i.e. make up your own theory based on whatever you can cobble together from reading wikipedia articles about people with a much better grasp of science and its social and philosophical foundation than yourself?

Seriously, go away and ask yourself what is more likely: 1) that every researcher working the field of astrophysics for the last few decades has been wrong, and yet you (and only you) have realised this or 2) that you haven't fully understood the theories that you are pouring scorn on (on the basis of some very flaky homemade metaphysics and "common sense" dressed up as logic).

~J.

Time now is observable, we have empirical evidence for time existing now; we have no evidence of time before the big bang because no one was around to observe it.

The phrase I used was "unless" it has a beginning, not "because" it has one. My point is your argument for time not having a beginning is based on the presumption that time does not have a beginning.

In the whole discussion so far, I have never offered any argument whatever that time has a beginning. All I have done, is asked you to provide a satisfactory argument against this thesis. The only argument you have managed to offer for this is that time is measurable indefinitely into the past, and as I have shown with numerous examples this does not prove it exists indefinitely into the past (and, in the post I quote above, you actually agreed with me on this point). This leaves you with no argument whatever on which to base your claims. As such you are just asserting your own theories, unsupported by any empirical evidence or solid philosophical justifications, against the very well supported (theoretically and empirically) body of evidence about the nature of the universe that many scientists have built up over hundreds of years.

Just because you keep saying this doesn't make it so. You need at least one coherent argument in support of your position. So far you have provided none.

~J.

Trajectory has a structure- it consists of series of positions of an object, just a line consists of a series of points.

And, btw, as far as I know, according space curvature theory, it is not the trajectory (of the trown tennis ball) that is curved, but space itself, because the gravity doesn't affect the object (and it's movement) itself, but it "curves space" so the object is always moving forward and it's not the movement, put the forward direction itself that is curved.

Ask yourself what is more likely 1) Trajectory (which has a structure) curving, or 2) Space itself (same as "emptiness", which has no structure) curving.

No, it is based on the fact that time beginning is a presumption.

Truth is truth even no one accepts it, and falsehood is falsehood even if everyone accepts it. Authority and majority are irrelevant, what is relevant is a hypothesys' consistency within itself, with empiricism, and first principles.

Well, it seems someone was around to observe the beginning of time.

Just because anyone keeps saying that time has a beginning doesn't make it so.

Is it only me that thinks this thread has been de railed by this discussion of time and is now going over most of peoples heads? I don't think the thread should be binned, maybe a split perhaps for discussing the time things?

Actually the point I was making was that non-corporeal things can have structure. As "a series of positions of an object" is clearly a non-corporeal thing, it's clear we are in agreement on this subject. Of course, this again leaves you with no argument in support of your assertion that space can't be curved.

As I've explained already, space is not the same as "emptiness".

So give one reason why this "presumption" should be rejected. One argument against it, that's all I've been asking for since we started this ridiculous discussion.

So why is it that this "truth" has manifested itself only to you personally, and that no one else has ever raised this objection to contemporary physical cosmologies before now? Are you just that much smarter than everyone else, or is it just that you've somehow cleansed your mind from the lies and distortions of "modern official science" to a greater degree than any before you?

None of which you have successfully challenged, for any of the theories you previously cited as "illogical" products of "modern official science".

Is this all you have left? "No one saw it happen, so I don't believe it"?

You still have to provide a single coherent argument in support of your attack on "modern official science". Your argument about the beginning of time is simply nonsensical, and your argument about the curvature of space is clearly based on a total misunderstanding of what space is.

Even if these arguments stood up to scrutiny, which they don't, you would still have a long way to go to prove that "modern official science" is wrong - after all, scientific knowledge isn't built up from a few grand theories, but from many interpenetrating theories that give us a rough picture of the world around us, its history and its future trajectory.

All in all this is just about the weakest criticism of science I've ever heard.

~J.

THe problem here is "before the big bang." To say "there was no time before the big bang" is to say that there was a time that there was no time.

It's debatable whether 'time is observable' also but why get into that.

Why reject the presuptions that Jesus was born of a virgin, walked on water, resurrected other people, himself rose from death, that he's son of God, etc etc?

No, you haven't. Space = emptyness, in that with corporeal existence occupies a place.

You have just based your "there was no time before big bang" on that.
"we have no evidence of time before the big bang because no one was around to observe it."

Well, you know, generally people aren't born of virgins, don't walk on water, can't resurrect other people, etc etc, so those are pretty extraordinary claims, and there's not good evidence for them.

On the other hand, as has been pointed out, General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics (and let us be honest, here, if you tossed out the results you wanted tossed out, we'd need new theoretical structures) both do a really spot-on job of describing the universe as well as providing us with really good theoretical tools to make further predictions (which we then test) and to also develop new technologies...which, as indicated by the fact we're having this conversation, seem to work pretty well. No physicist will ever tell you they are "final" theories. Physics is not about finding Truth in the capital T sense, but (at least ideally) about finding better models to describe more and more of the universe - and we can of course look at how society shapes those models, how they're developed, and who develops them...

Science is not pure logic, because depending on how you choose your initial axioms, you can prove anything you like through pure logic. Science is empirical and materialist - and certainly these are influenced by our biases rather than being neutral and apart from society -so even if you tightened up your logic a great deal, you're not going to convince me, as someone who was educated as a physicist, that over a century of physics is just wrong because it doesn't match your common sense. It doesn't need to, and I feel that when common sense conflicts with rigorous observations and experiments, it is our common sense that needs adjusting. Ocelot's argument that we're evolutionarily adapted to handle things at a scope that were necessary to our survival is a pretty sound one.

In other words, you can provide me with a completely flawless logical argument that I will not fall if I jump out of a ten story high window, but, I'm not going to jump out because I have continually observed that things fall when dropped.

We're not talking about any of those things, we're talking about the beginning of time. I'm not getting drawn into theological debate, with you: I'm just trying to get you to tell me why you think time can't have a beginning.

That's just not what space means in the context of relativity. In order to criticise scientific theories, you need to have a basic understanding of them.

Yes, but as I have now made clear multiple times, that I am not making an argument for there being no time before the big bang. I am trying to point out the inconsistencies in your own argument by showing you that your argument makes no sense unless you assume that you are right from the outset.

Since this particular assumption is one you do not seem capable of questioning, I think I will leave it there, as I believe I've said all that needs to be said and more in response to your absurd assertions about the nature of "modern official science", the theories, culture and underlying social relations of which you clearly have a very poor grasp indeed.

~J.

I'd warn you, if you haven't seen the earlier posts in this thread, that fabian's understanding of logic is every bit as idiosyncratic as his understanding of contemporary astrophysics.

~J.

The Croydonian wrote: Is it only me that thinks this thread has been de railed by this discussion of time and is now going over most of peoples heads? I don't think the thread should be binned, maybe a split perhaps for discussing the time things?

I agree. The discussion on time should be separated, and continued in the future (whatever that is). I have been trying to follow this thread but haven't got much further than jura's early posts about whether science can be bourgeois' or 'proletarian'. I think i agree with him that this is not a useful way to understand the role of science in history. It's true that the fully fledged project of experimental science emerges with bourgeois society, but its roots lie much further back in history. There would certainly be no 'modern' science without the prior work of the Greeks, and that would probably have been lost had it not been for the work of salvage (but also development) carried out by mediaeval Islamic civilisation. So science can't be reduced to capitalism, even though it is profoundly influenced and distorted by the prevailing material and ideological pressures of capitalism.

At the same time, I think that there's no 'proletarian science' for the same reasons as there's no 'proletarian culture' (I think someone referred to Trotsky earlier, and I think his writings about this -in opposition to the Proletkult movement in Russia - are probably the clearest). The proletariat, as an exploited class, does not have its own economy and it cannot therefore construct its own culture or its own 'science'. It can however use the scientific method to understand its own social and historical situation. Does that distinction make any sense to anyone?

Science will continue and radically evolve under communism, which further implies that there cannot be a specifically proletarian science - since the proletariat will no longer exist in communism - and that science does in some sense go beyond the class categories of capitalist society. Again, this is not the same as saying it is socially neutral.

There has been a discussion in the ICC about these questions for a while now. We have published some of the contributions to this debate, most recently this text which I think addresses similar issues to those in this thread. http://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201203/4739/reading-notes-science-and-marxism

Someone mentioned Chris Knight earlier on. We invited Chris Knight to our last international congress, where he spoke about his anthropological theories in the context of our discussion about science. Shortly after the congress he sent us these texts, dealing with the more general question of the place of science in this society, which again I think are relevant to this debate. http://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2011/07/marxism-and-science-chris-knight

nor does fabian..

Ocelot has pretty much called it.

My guess is that Fabian has no actual knowledge of serious science but hey, I could be wrong. Can I call you out Fabian? What do you actually know about modern physics?

Anyway, the key thing about science is that it isn't arbitrary but has involved, over many years, a long chain of observation, experimentation and confirmation so as to arrive at less-wrong approaches rather than being satisfied with arbitrary opinion.

On the one hand, science has been part of the progress of bourgeois society and ushered-in all the horrors that we see there but on the other hand, science allowed some portion of the population, even some portion of the working class population, make critical, informed analyses of what was true and what wasn't. It has been, at least in ways, the opposite of "arbitrary theories". Of course, modern ignorance has made as much if not more progress as science and many modern citizens indeed couldn't tell science from religion from self-help infomercials.

But a different but important point here is that science in generally tends to produce category systems that are distinct from the category systems that our everyday language naturally constructs. The "reasoning" of a Fabian is the making systematic of simplistic and faulty common sense. This is pretty much similar to classical "philosophers of science". (I would be say Thomas Kuhn actually went further than this and looked more specifically at the processes within science and equating Kuhn with Feyerabend a mistake btw).

This does raise a more "foundational" point. I notice that the commentators here often roundly dismiss "dialectics". The reason for such dismissal seems to me to turn on the assumption that it is easy to come up with a category system which encompasses the processes involved in the advancing scientific and technical knowledge as well as the transforming social processes of this society.

I think that contrary to this, I think the phrase "dialectics" and "dialectical" at least an effort to deal with these problems, however much, ah, baloney, winds-up being pulled-in along with the term.

Sure, the problems with "time begins at the big bang" are overblown but the more you try to a-priori codify "time" or other very basic categories, the more you can be bitten by said codifications the process of social transformation continues a-pace. In an even more pressing example, what labor and the proletariat means in practice now is different than a hundred years but the social categories remain.

Stuff to consider...

So in context of relativity, were not talking about space itself but about some frame of refence inside space that has a structure, but we nevertheless still call it just "space"?

This is perfectly true the other way around- when applied to "time beginning".

And as I have said multiple times- time is fact that can be measured into past or future indefinetly, and when measuring time 14, 15 or 16 or 1235346 bilion years ago is the same as measuring time in this day, I start from today and go backward 16 billion years- same thing- measuring time.

Whereas a "beginning of time" is the same as saying that there is an "end of time", and the differce between the two is only which establishment is feeding it to the masses, the church in middle ages talking about the "truth" about the "end of time", and the official science in modern age talking about the "truth" of the "beginning of time".

Exactly because of this brainwashed statements I first said that people need to read Fayerdabend and Kuhn. Modern official science has absolutely nothing to do with it's own definition that it imposes on unquestioning masses, it has nothing to do with reality, observation, confirmation or truth, a bulk of modern theories are plain arbitrary and subjective.

Whats it like being the smartest person that ever lived?

"Fayerdabend"

If you're going to name-drop philosophers in lieu of argument, at least get their names right eh?

Please, lets not let this just be a "look how many books Ive read, Im right" thing.

I'm not a relativist.

We can, we take first principles as foundations.