I would call parallel universes and extra dimensions speculation not science. There is no experimental evidence that they exist and until there is, there is no reason to think they are reality. It can be interesting to speculate what the math may imply, but a theory that cannot be subjected to experiment isn't in the realm of science. I would say if a scientist is claiming something without any empirical evidence to be true, then that is faith. If a scientist is just claiming that something is implied but not provable, then it's just speculation based on science.
Isn't that what the ID proponents are doing?
Key word there being "currently" -- in many, if not most cases, it's not that such theories are inherently untestable, it's that we don't have the tools yet. (Solution: bigger toys!)
Isn't that what the ID proponents say?
Isn't calling it a theory quotation marks right there?
I think (am not sure) that in scientific usage, the word
theory
has much smaller, lighter quotation marks, and much more weight behind it, doesn't it? I mean, isn't that what people are mocking when they mock the way evolution-deniers emphasize that it's the "Theory" of Evolution?
Don't scientists use the word
hypothesis,
for the quotation mark meaning theory?
(That's an earnest question, ita; I only ever retain half of what I read about those conversations.)
HIMYM:
A year later he is still with Robin?
The problem with ID is that it has been conclusively debunked and yet its proponents still persist in claiming it is a valid scientific theory. At the time it was proposed, it was interesting and took a while to bring down. But now many, many people have shown the flaws in the theory. The people behind ID still don't acknowledge those criticisms. At that point they're no longer doing science.
ETA: here's an overview of some of the scientific stuff in ID: [link]
about your whitefont, sj-- I thought they left it open, or at least plausibly deniable.
they seemed to be there together, but it seemed to me that there was a distance between them, and they both answered for themselves when they were asked if they were leaving
.
Isn't that what the ID proponents are doing?
Yes. It's speculation not science just like parallel universes.
Isn't that what the ID proponents say?
No. ID can never be falsified.
Theory can be pretty ambiguous. The Theory of Evolution has overwhelming evidence while String Theory has nothing but some interesting math.
Lee,
I didn't really notice that; thanks for bringing it up. I just thought it was weird that they would box themselves in like that. At least we know that Lily and Marshall do get married this time. I was hoping that when Lily stood up she would be pregnant.
Isn't that what the ID proponents say?
Yes, but they're lying about it. ID makes no predictions, and there's simply no experiment or observation that can be done to confirm or disprove "...or maybe the Flying Spaghetti Monster did it."
(Unlike quantum physics, where we mostly just have to keep building bigger particle accelerators, and hope that the guys trying to make wormholes don't accidentally destroy the fabric of space-time.)
I heard that NPR story on the other universes last night (vaguely, through cooking and dishes and shrieking children and so forth) and I was just thinking, "Isn't it a BAD idea to try to create a black hole in a lab in Switzerland, no matter how tiny?" Success would be - problematic.
"Isn't it a BAD idea to try to create a black hole in a lab in Switzerland, no matter how tiny?" Success would be - problematic.
I know, right? Did none of these people read Earth?
I'd be going outside my domain to decide if string theory is really a string hypothesis, Cindy. Call it faith (and if you call accepting unproven theories as axioms faith, there certainly is faith in science--but it is faith that's kinda waiting to be verified or falsified, which separates it from religious faith) if you will.
