Inquiry The Scientific Method Ask A Testable Question: Fill & Download for Free

If your philosophy professor really expressed himself exactly as you describe then if he wasn't joking it's a little disturbing that he was teaching you at all. He's just wrong.Let's assume for the moment that the 'definition' of the scientific method is as described by Karl Popper and as emphasized by your professor ie that central to the enterprise is the falsifiability of propositions. Let's just stipulate that that is the case.Your professor is claiming that no such falsifiable proposition can be formulated about the scientific method. Is that the case?Let's see if we can come up with something falsifiable. I propose 2 compound propositions:a) The weak version: "The scientific method is a process of discovery (which includes the notion of falsifiability) whereby scientists uncover truths about the world and this method has proven to be an incredibly powerful tool for uncovering such truths."b) The strong version: "The scientific method is a process of discovery (which includes the notion of falsifiability) whereby scientists uncover truths about the world and this method has proven to be overwhelming the most powerful tool humankind has had in its entire history for uncovering such truths."Are these propositions testable? Are they falsifiable? Yes. Of course they are.You don't have to make any assumptions about the validity of these claims. You can do some research into the history of science and the effectiveness of science and technology (doubtless using your computer which is a tool which is the outcome of science) and hopefully you will quickly come to the conclusion that there is so much evidence that science is indeed an effective tool for discovery that you can relax and start asking questions about the competence or the sense of humor of your professor.(Note that there is nothing in my answer that means that Popper's view of science has to be true. I stipulate it only because the professor did. He claimed that led to a logical contradiction. I'm just showing it doesn't.)

Science is any inquiry that follows the Scientific Method.Make an observation.Ask a question.Form a hypothesis, or testable explanation.Make a prediction based on the hypothesis.Test the prediction.Iterate: use the results to make new hypotheses or predictions.The steps which helps to demarcate Science from Pseudoscience are #4 and #5. For a theory to be considered scientific it must make predictions that are testable (or falsifiable).An example of a falsifiable statement is the following: “All swans are white”. All you need to do to falsify the statement is to find one black swan. But consider a slightly different statement: “Black swans exist”. That is, somewhere in the world there is a black swan. It is obvious that such a statement cannot be falsified. In general, you can’t “prove a negative” and because of this it is trivially easy to make a statement or claim that can never be falsified.You can refer to this video or document on Karl Popper’s Science as Falsification. In it, Popper contrasts three of the great theories of his time (Einstein’s General Relativity, Freud's Psychoanalysis, and Karl Marx’s Dialectical Materialism). He concludes that only General Relativity can be considered a scientific theory because it is able to make “risky predictions”. The other two theories only manage to explain every observation post hoc (or after the fact).Next, pseudoscience usually tends to count anecdote as evidence. Science asserts that causal relationships can be established only statistically i.e. based on large number of observations. Data that is claimed to confirm the theory must come from observations or experiments that can be replicated by others. Self-reported observations or hearsay (e.g. UFO “sightings”) don’t count as evidence. And finally, if A is claimed to cause B then factors other than A that are already known to cause B must be controlled for by design. All of these criteria are reflected in the method of Randomized Control Trials of which clinical trials are an instance.Pseudoscience is usually defended using arguments that contain logical fallacies. Here’s an excerpt from an article of mine where I explain various logical fallacies with an example.Let’s say I make the assertion that “astrology does not work”. You could try and counter with one or more of the following —Ad-hominem Attack: You are a scientist that’s why you don’t have any respect for traditional knowledge-systemsAnecdotal Evidence: My horoscope said I would meet an “interesting new person” this week and I did!Argument from Authority/Antiquity: Astrology is found in the divine scriptures which have survived for thousands of yearsAppeal to Faith: It doesn’t work for you because you don’t have faithAppeal to Popularity: Millions of people believe in astrology and they can’t all be wrongAppeal to Possibility: It may seem unlikely but it could work, who knows?Shifting the burden of proof: You can’t prove that it doesn’t workDeriving an “is” from an “ought”: It would be so nice if we could see into the futureArguments of this kind are commonly termed Logical Fallacies, but I like to call them “context-free arguments” because they can be deployed without any reference to the actual content of the belief being defended. If you are not convinced, just replace the original premise with “homeopathy does not work” and see if the same counter-arguments still seem to work with minor modifications!You might notice that we already covered Anecdotal Evidence and Shifting the burden of proof earlier in the post. Scientific theories don’t need to be justified in fallacious ways because they rely on evidence.To summarize, Science and Pseudoscience can be demarcated based on the following -Science makes testable/falsifiable predictionsScience does not admit anecdotal evidenceScience does not lean on logically fallacious arguments

Don’t bite Sadhguru’s finger; look where he is pointing.Let’s face it, Sadhguru is neither a scientist nor scientifically trained. Heck, he even admitted to running a chicken farm when his enlightenment happened. Imagine a doctor explaining building construction to an experienced structural engineer. As much as the engineer has all rights to criticize the doctor about the scientific accuracy of his answers, no one expects him to match the expertise level of an engineer.Quantum physics is significantly more complex than most scientific fields. For starters it defies common-sense and logic. Have you heard of the famous double-slit experiment?The Logic-Defying Double-Slit Experiment Is Even Weirder Than You ThoughtPer the double-slit experiment, when you shoot a single photon through a double slit, it produces an interference pattern as if the single photon passed through the two slits at the same time.And there is the Schrodinger’s cat which is both dead and alive at the same time?Schrödinger's cat - WikipediaR. Shankar, physics professor in Yale University says (and I paraphrase) “When my professor taught quantum mechanics, he told me that he didn’t understand it at all. So he essentially taught me ignorance, which today I am passing on to you. Later, if you become teachers, please pass on this ignorance to the future generations”. For those who are interested, here is Dr.Shankar’s lecture.Hence Nirmukta expecting Sadhguru to give a scientific explanation for a phenomenon which even physicists do not fully understand?So rather than nit-picking on Sadhguru’s scientific knowledge, let us look at the two important questions asked here,Is science good enough to answer all questions about the nature of reality?What role does meditation play in discovering truth?Let’s get to the first question.Is science good enough to answer all questions about the nature of reality?The power of scientific inquiry lies in the so-called “scientific method” which actually originated not as a part of science but a part of philosophy; specifically philosophy of science.Per the scientific method (as correctly noted by Nirmukta), we come up with hypotheses of observable phenomenon, test these hypotheses using experiments and verifying the results. In general, to comply to the scientific method, it need to be have four components - falsifiability, repeatability, observability and testability.If these elements make a science, how much of our lives can truly be scientific? Answer is, not much. For example, science can’t tell you what love is, though it can tell you what happens in your brain when you are in love with some one. It can’t tell you if a painting is good but can help formulate a better paint. Science can tell you the neurological phenomenon happening in a animal when you hurt him but can’t tell you if it is ethical to kill an animal. This is where science has hit it’s first limit. The moment we take science beyond it’s limitation, we have done what is called Scientism - Wikipedia. In this case you are as gulity as anyone who believes in any thing without proof, in this case it is the blind belief in science itself. How ironic!So how will science even attempt to solve the puzzle of consciousness?Let us now do a thought experiment. Imagine that someone is cracking open your cranium and looking at your brain. What do they see? About three pounds of gray, gooey matter looking all slippery and moist. That’s what they see. But what do you see and feel through the brain of yours? You see the first rays of sun coming through the windows and you can smell fresh coffee. It’s a new day! Your emotions, the feeling you have when you kiss your loved one; it’s all there in that gooey mass.How is it that this three pound of mass is able to create something as complex as consciousness?This is the popular mind-body problem which can be re-stated as follows: “what is the relation between the physical realm of body and the non-physical realm of mind?” A lot of philosophers and scientists, both in the East and in the West, have tried to come up with an explanation to the mind-body problem. The French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes who famously declared “Cogito Ergo Sum” or “I think, therefore I am”. Obviously, Descartes could not resolve the problem and unfortunately we do not have a satisfactory answer to the problem, yet.Remember how science tries to solve an issue: it looks at observable and measurable phenomena, comes up with hypotheses and tests them using experiments. We were using the same scientific method to solve the problem of consciousness until it someone asked a more important question: Can we even solve the nature of mind and consciousness using objective methods. In other words, even if we observe and measure the activity of the entire brain from beginning to end, will it reveal the nature of consciousness?Thomas Nagel was one of the first to raise this question in his paper titled What Is it Like to Be a Bat? - Wikipedia.Nagel was not asking what does it feel like for us to be a bat, but for a bat to feel like a bat. What does it feel like to be able to flap your wings and eco-locate your movement. What does a bat really feel? Nagel claims that we will never know this. Any attempt to understand subjectivity through objective means will result in gross reductionism and hence it will forever remain elusive.Scientists now call this the Hard problem of consciousness - Wikipedia which states that even if we know every thing about the brain down to it’s final elements, we will never understand subjective consciousness itself. This is where modern science is: it has hit a huge wall in understanding the nature of subjective experience using objective methods. Science has shown up with knives for a gun fight.So let’s get to the second question.2. What role does meditation play in discovering truth?Meditation looks at the problem in a totally different premise. If the inner, subjective experience is the only way to understand the outer, objective reality, why do we even look outside to comprehend the inside? if your mind is all you have then why not solve the problem using mind itself. Hence meditation starts by turning your mind inward. Using the power of meditation, we peel the layers of our own mind to come to the core. While a scientist is doing experiment in a lab, a Yogi is doing it in his own mind. Their aims are same, but their paths are different but more importantly, meditation transforms the person completely.Here is a little story,During Buddha’s period in a village in India lived a wise, blind man. He was so smart that he could logically disprove the existence of light. One day Buddha visited this village. Villagers asked him, being an enlightened man, if he could debate the blind man and prove that light does exist. Buddha agreed to the request. When the blind man appeared, instead of debating, Buddha asked his physician to do an eye surgery on the blind man. After the surgery, Buddha removed the pad that was covering his eyes and turned him to light. Tears started flowing through his eyes, there was nothing to debate, nothing to prove.Meditation is a bit like eye surgery. The good news is, using the right technique, you can realize the truth. The bad news is, you gotta make the journey yourself.Mystics and enlightened masters through the centuries have struggled hard to convey this truth. How can they make you experience what they are experiencing? How can they say what can never be said? So Buddha sat in noble silence and Rumi danced in ecstasy and we misunderstood them all.If you want to know the Buddhanature, become a Buddha. If you want to know Christ consciousness, become a Christ. There are no paved roads to enlightenment.Now how do we solve the issue of reductionism?In ancient India we classified everything in to three forms,SatyamShivamSundaramOr it’s equivalent - Sat-Chit-Ananda. We said that the ultimate reality is “Satchitananda” or “truth-consciousness-bliss”.Interestingly, around this time, fairly independent of each other, the Greeks also talked about what is know as Transcendentals - Wikipedia which are,TruthBeautyGoodnessYou see, science looks at the objective truth, art looks at the the beautiful and ethics looks at what is good. You cannot reduce one to the another. Sorry!Have you heard the story of the blind men touching elephant to see what it is? One person touched the ear and thought the elephant is like a fan, one touch the tail and thought it is a broom stick and one touched the trunk and thought it is like a pillar. Figuring out truth is a bit like that. Only a systems approach which takes a high-level view would help. Here is one like that,This is a picture from Ken Wilber’s Integral theory (Ken Wilber) - WikipediaThe upper left quadrant represents the subjective reality; our inner consciousness. The upper right shows the objective reality; the one science is exploring. The lower left shows how we behave in group; or our social and cultural structure and the lower right is how the systems of objects behave. If you look even more closely, you will see that “I” is actually “Sundaram” or “Beauty”. That which is beautiful to you is beautiful to you, it’s your own interiority. The “We” on the other hand is “Shivam” or “Goodness”. The way we treat ourselves and our fellow human beings determine our morality. The “It” is “Satyam” or “Truth” as defined by objective truth which science is trying to figure out. Just like a desk needs four equal length legs to stand up, you cannot define reality by ignoring everything but one part.While this approach looks theoretical and abstract, it has a lot of practical connotations. I will give an example.In the USA, supposedly the richest nation in the world and the only remaining super power people have long targeted their well being. The result has been a nation with a lot of luxuries. Drive through a decent sized city and you will see restaurants serving food from all over the world. Walk in to a liquor store and you will find alcoholic drinks from every conceivable region. Despite the riches, about 20% of US adult population has anxiety and millions of people have major depressive disorder which requires clinical intervention. What exactly happened.Here is another story,It was a Friday night and Bob went out to have drinks with his friends. Let’s just say that Bob drank a little too much than he can handle and was trying to get to his house. In the process, he fell down and hurt himself. Bob went inside and looked at the mirror. His face was bleeding badly. He took out band—aid and dressed himself and went to bed. In the morning he looked at mirror. It was covered with band-aid.Do you see the problem here? We go on plastering mirrors thinking that it will help our faces. No, it won’t. No matter which food you eat, you are limited by your own body to enjoy it. No matter how tasty a drink is, there is only so much you can drink.Nirmukta has done a lot of work in using science to combat social evils and frankly there are a lot of them in the Indian society. The abominable caste system, the utterly despicable way women are treated and on and on. Perhaps they should refrain from writing about science and spirituality, neither of which the author with fake name understand.The greatest aspects of science are it’s ability to self-correct and it’s quest for understanding the unknown. Spirituality is no different. So whoever this Tarkika guy is, they should take up a meditation routine for 10 minutes a day and see what happens. He may or may not come out enlightened after some practice, but will certainly be more calm, blissful and loving than before and that’s great progress to be made in this otherwise crazy world. Like Mahatma Gandhi said “Be the change we want to see in this world”.Peace