eJournal: uffmm.org
ISSN 2567-6458, 17.August 2022 – 17 August 2022
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de
CONTEXT
This text is part of the subject COMMON SCIENCE as Sustainable Applied Empirical Theory, besides ENGINEERING, in a SOCIETY. It is a preliminary version, which is intended to become part of a book.
EMPIRICAL THEORY
Using the concepts ‘logical inference’ and ‘communicative forecast’ in the sense described before one has to clarify a bit more, how such a ‘communicative forecast’ has to be understood as a real process, enabling the participants (human actors) to ‘create’ ‘forecasts’ which can become ‘true’ or not. In doing this one has to take a ‘point of view’ of looking ‘from above’ on these processes. The question is ‘which view’ and ‘how much from above’?
Because the individual scientific disciplines represent each a kind of ‘scientific niche’ by using their own language, their own methods, their own kinds of models and ‘theories’, these individual disciplines are not well equipped to talk about other disciplines or even about the whole of science. How we can free ourselves of this ‘being trapped in a special view’? [29]
As has been explained in the preceding sections of this text the only meta-language for all languages — even for itself — is the everyday language. And the only ‘common experts’ are rooted in every human, every citizen as such. A ‘specialist’ is always defined ‘relativ to something else’, here to the ‘normal human person’. Thus digging into the specialties of our common world does not eliminate this common world, it only induces a look at some point with a special view into some possible ‘hole’ of reality. But ‘many individual holes’ do not give a ‘complete picture of the common reality’: neither physics, neither biology, neither chemistry, neither whatever individual view one is taking.
Thus the need for a ‘common view’ of all specialties ’embedded’ ‘within the ‘common view’ is always alive and will never end because the whole is a something with no clear boundaries. And every human actor — with the whole biosphere — is part of the whole and in the light of the ‘built in freedom’ is a potential ‘open horizon’. The other ‘open horizon’ seems to be the ‘whole universe’ as far as we can understand it today.
Thus the only chance humanity has to get a grip on some common view is the everyday language spreading through all nations. The only known project today trying such a demanding task is the Wikipedia project. (cf. [21]) One can criticize it from many points of view, but there is nothing better at the moment. We should try to improve this every day. Every individual science as such is no alternative. The solution can only be radical ‘cooperation’ between individual scientific disciplines and the common science of the everyday world. In a ‘war’ between ‘common science’ and individual scientific disciplines we all would be losers. The ‘noise’ caused by ‘information flooding’ will overtake all. Time is running.
Keeping this in mind I will take a short ‘side trip’ to Wikipedia to inspect in a loose way some articles around the concept ’empirical theory’.
— draft version —
COMMENTS
[21] Gerd Doeben-Henisch, In Favour of Wikipedia, https://www.uffmm.org/2022/07/31/in-favour-of-wikipedia/, 31 July 2022
[29] The idea that individual disciplines are not good enough for the ‘whole of knowledge’ is expressed in a clear way in a video of the theoretical physicist and philosopher Carlo Rovell: Carlo Rovelli on physics and philosophy, June 1, 2022, Video from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Theoretical physicist, philosopher, and international bestselling author Carlo Rovelli joins Lauren and Colin for a conversation about the quest for quantum gravity, the importance of unlearning outdated ideas, and a very unique way to get out of a speeding ticket.