How science works (or so I think)

[Rudolph Mondal]

I think metaphors are the key to science.

Allow me to explain why.

Let me use an example, for instance why light is a wave.

We start with common sense definitions of light and waves through our interaction with the outside world.

Next we develop two metaphors for light and waves respectively. These metaphors can be mathematical models of light or waves or patterns in experiments or in their natural setting.

So what we're doing is setting up a correspondence between light and a certain metaphor and waves and a certain metaphor.

If the metaphor in place of light and the metaphor in place of waves correspond to each other meaning that we can have a one-to-one or injective relation between the two metaphors, then light is a wave.

What do you guys think? I very much appreciate your comments. Thank you.

 

[Cognisant]

That's not so much the key to science specifically as it is the way we think, a neural net learns by association and thus concepts are comprised of multiple associations and we associate concepts to construct/test more abstract concepts.

When we use metaphors we associate two concepts (the property and the thing that property is being applied to) and when we want to communicate this understanding to others we do so by giving them verbal metaphors which guide the formation of associations in their minds.

 

[Rudolph Mondal]

That's not so much the key to science specifically as it is the way we think, a neural net learns by association and thus concepts are comprised of multiple associations and we associate concepts to construct/test more abstract concepts.

When we use metaphors we associate two concepts (the property and the thing that property is being applied to) and when we want to communicate this understanding to others we do so by giving them verbal metaphors which guide the formation of associations in their minds.

Hmm. That makes sense. I'm not sure if you'd agree with me but perhaps the reason why science has developed the way it has is due to the association making mechanism that we possess?

Which makes me wonder: could an intelligent alien life form develop any form of making sense of the world other than by association?

I feel that associations or metaphors explain so much about the way we understand the universe. For example, there's a position in the philosophy of science known as structural realism which says that the mathematical structure of theories stay consistent even if the "stuff" changes.

I think that would make sense because in the same way that a metaphor has to be in one-to-one or injective correspondence with the thing it's being compared to, mathematical constructs also have to be isomorphic to each other in order for a new theory to replace a previous one. The new theory certainly has new isomorphisms with other mathematical constructs, but the old relationships must be preserved.

Going further, we could maybe even make the process of science an automatic one if we could express all mathematical constructs in terms of fundamental relations and then try to find new relations between the mathematical constructs currently in place and then update and iterate. So scientists would only need to test the various relations to see which relations are present in reality and which aren't.

Do you think that could be possible? Imagine the rate of progress if that were possible or feasible.

 

[Architect]

The mathematics aren't metaphors, they're precise expressions of expected physical observations. In interpreting them we use metaphors to try and understand what is going on, and we view them metaphorically, but that's not what they are.

Simple example: General Relativity. The Field equation describes the physical gravitational field. You can be sitting on a mountain and use the equations to predict the local field (e.g., drop a rock), and on measuring it you'll see that it agrees. However we interpret that field equation as being a 'manifold' - the 'Space Time Continuum'. Is Space-time a continuum? What is a space-time continuum? Does it really matter?

It's entirely possible that, for example, the wave-particle duality is just our inability, or mis-attempts to understand the math. Perhaps it just means that the metaphors break down. This is my opinion on the matter.

 

[Rudolph Mondal]

The mathematics aren't metaphors, they're precise expressions of expected physical observations. In interpreting them we use metaphors to try and understand what is going on, and we view them metaphorically, but that's not what they are.

Simple example: General Relativity. The Field equation describes the physical gravitational field. You can be sitting on a mountain and use the equations to predict the local field (e.g., drop a rock), and on measuring it you'll see that it agrees. However we interpret that field equation as being a 'manifold' - the 'Space Time Continuum'. Is Space-time a continuum? What is a space-time continuum? Does it really matter?

It's entirely possible that, for example, the wave-particle duality is just our inability, or mis-attempts to understand the math. Perhaps it just means that the metaphors break down. This is my opinion on the matter.

I apologize for my lack of mathematical understanding. I wish I knew more to properly convey what I'm trying to express.

My understanding is that metaphors came first. Mathematics is a way of expressing relations between two sets of things from my understanding. But the relation is a metaphor because all metaphors are a one-to-one or injective mapping between two sets. Maybe metaphor isn't the right word to use. I don't want to confuse anyone. When I used the term metaphor, I meant one-to-one or injective relation between two sets. I'm sorry if that wasn't made clear.

 

[Cognisant]

Mathematics and metaphors are both association derived concepts although mathematics is kind of special in how completely abstract it is and some mathematical insights are impossible through mere observation, an intuitive leap must be made by way of conceptual metaphor.

For example flipping a coin, no matter how many times you flip a coin the probability distribution of the results may become closer to 50/50 over time but it will never become exactly 50/50 and stay there thus the idea that flipping a coin has an exactly 50% chance of giving one of two results (which isn't absolutely true but that's not relevant to the point I'm making) is a concept we derived through deduction rather than observation and that process of deduction is kind of like a metaphor in that it's a process that we've observed elsewhere which is now being applied to a new scenario.

It's not that we think with metaphors, we think with concepts, but the way we think with concepts is very naturally applied to making metaphors which themselves are just one form of concept manipulation that our brains perform.

 

[Cognisant]

What really fascinates me is how we unlearn things when we discover information that invalidates our previously held assumptions, in a neural net associations go through a process not entirely unlike natural selection so that more valid ones strengthen and less valid associations atrophy but the speed at which this happens is astonishing.

False associations don't just passively atrophy they're just gone, almost like how a computer overwrites its RAM but we're not computers, we don't work that way, so there must be some other fitness testing mechanism in there that accelerates the process but for the life of me I can't figure out what it is.

Or maybe I'm just underestimating the speed at which synaptic connections form & decay?
I'm no neuroscientist after all

 

[J-man]

It's entirely possible that, for example, the wave-particle duality is just our inability, or mis-attempts to understand the math. Perhaps it just means that the metaphors break down.

Or maybe the universe is fundamentally a feeler and not a thinker, and math doesn't even apply.

 

[addictedartist]

Science is religiously sectioned into various practical and conceptual realms, metaphorically speaking the rate at which we process information as a whole is based solely on the quality and quantity of the input; Meaning the right stuff will sell itself, to do a 'good' job necessarily requires a functional conceptualization and a practical application in order to achieve any desired results, mathematics is an expression of chaos reduced to its most basic principals. In reality, the rose does not know it is a rose and by dissecting it it becomes several new things which contribute to the constitution of the whole. Alignment of pixels communicating ideas like seeds; their growth dependent on the fertility of the soil of the mind. Science is a tool being toyed with by those who understand it

 

[RandomGeneratedName]

I think science is overthought and under what I consider a satisfactory experiment quota.

We want cloning, damn it!

Richard Feynman Physicist: (to group of specialists) "Tell me everything in laymans terms and allow me to ask questions, and i'll understand in minutes what took you years".
... Well duh... any one could do that.

This is the place where I think metaphors should be used more.
To teach others who are less detail inclined and may find the subject (of science) intimidating.