Progress in the humanities

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chessmaster13: Jan 10, 2015

Ghost of Reagan Past posted:

For example, I'd say there is progress in the study of Plato when we come up with new and clever ways to understand his views that haven't been done before, either because nobody saw it, or because the tools to understand it that way didn't exist back in Plato's day. You might think it's disturbing to care about the history, but a lot of philosophical questions are really general, so it's worth at least looking at the old dead guys to see what they thought. He has some cool ideas that even if not true (hint: they're not) can teach us a lot about the questions he's asking. There might be progress in, say, literary theory, when they make a new theory that gives us insight into both the text and, probably, ourselves and our time. Or in ethics, when people come up with clever new arguments for positions, or show how an old position entails something good/bad/???.

This is valuable in itself. People learn thinking the same way they learn survival in the wilderness.
At first you learn the techniques of philosophical thinking in charted territory (re-think what other before you thought).
You ask questions, come up with answers and read what answers other people have written to the same questions.
It's also crucial to note, that the low hanging fruit of philosophy have been harvested a long long time ago, which in terms means that progress gets harder.

An example to this might be the analogy of tinkering with gears and wheels:

People where tinkering with gears and wheels for a long long time. To truly invent something new with gears and wheels would be way harder today then it would be 300 years ago.
This is because progress seems to get harder on an exponential scale.
To learn tinkering with gears and wheels, you would start off building simple mechanisms people have build before.

Do we know everything you could possibly do with simple mechanical parts?
I highly doubt that.
Does humanity as a whole have a great understanding of mechanics, including mathematical models which let us describe and predict how those objects behave?
I'm reasonably sure we do, otherwise many common things wouldn't be possible.

We didn't become worse thinkers over the last 2000 years. Philosophy just got way harder over time.

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chessmaster13: Jan 10, 2015

Effectronica posted:

Phonons, as an object, do not exist. There are no particles that serve as quantized vibrators. As a mathematical abstraction used to model vibration at small scales, they're real, strong, my friend, etc.

As far as i know the nature of those quasi particles is best described as an 'interference' between two (or possibly more particles).
Particles are (to my knowledge) just areas/volumes/points in a field which are 'exited', and if the come to close to each other the space in between them starts to display particle like behavior.

Is this assumption true, or can somebody with a deeper understanding offer a better explanation?

# ¿ Sep 9, 2015 13:36

chessmaster13: Jan 10, 2015

Discendo Vox posted:

The theory-ladenness part is the least controversial element of post-positivist science- it's pretty much how we get away from the bad 'ol days of direct correspondence positivism. This idea of "theory-ladenness" is basically an extension of linguistic theory and/or the problem of induction. You're not going to be able to describe a thing without having some conceptual toolbox to describe it with.

What does all this poo poo I've been ing about mean in terms of progress in the humanities? Mostly that the idea of "progress" isn't very useful in the sciences, so it's not a great standard to compare the humanities against, either. Both enterprises "progress", or otherwise satisfy their goals, to the extent that they inform and provide some sort of solution or insight into contemporary problems. That's continuing to happen- but, humanities or sciences, more funding and better publication practices would be nice.

Progress is not moving forward in a specific direction. That means we have to add at least another dimension to the model.

I like to use this analogy to explain this:

Let' say you have a giant pitcher of water and a barren, dry piece of earth.

The barren, dry earth is the field you like to explore (for example maths). Let's assume our piece of barren dry earth is infinite in all directions for simplicity.
The pitcher of water is also infinite, all we can do is adjust the amount of water that comes out and wiggle it around a little to try to moisten specific areas.

We know nothing about the areas where the earth is dry.
We have knowledge of the areas that are wet.
We are actively exploiting the areas where stuff grows (building machines with out knowledge, getting solutions to problems etc.)

Now the first human to do simple maths starts spilling the water. He tilts the pitcher a little and water flows out.
He learned something! I tiny little seedling popped out of the earth when this guy used his newfound knowledge to calculate how many saber toothed tigers he needs to hunt so his wife can make cool looking jackets for the ungrateful kids.

But oh wait, snap, he didn't write it down! And worse, he never told anybody about his groundbreaking solution!
So the water evaporated and the floor became dry again.
The poor seedling dried out, it's leafs an stem was taken away by the wind

You get the picture and with three firing neurons, you can expand it and use it as you see fit.

This is OC btw. or at least I don't remember stealing this somewhere

# ¿ Sep 10, 2015 10:24

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Progress in the humanities