Will science have to move to interdisciplinary modes to grasp reality?

General Philosophy
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This felt more like a philosophy topic more than science but I’ll give this a shot here.

This was sparked to me by the above article by the president of the Santa Fe Institute which is some apparently top rated think tank in New Mexico that focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to problems.

One quote (there are many in there) gets me:

What is reality? And is there just one reality or many, perhaps infinitely many? And how should we describe these realities, with mathematics, natural language, music, or visual art? The answer might be all of the above, but if so, can we justify these decisions based on a larger conception of reality?

The article (which I recommend reading) is about how individual fields eventually fall short due to things within them that they cannot explain or that introduce holes in their foundations. He mentions Godel and mathematics which demonstrates that you cannot reduce everything to math or an equation, or how philosophy questions the reliability of logic and reason, among others. He then makes an argument for complexity science which is about taking reality as a whole and having each field work with the others to create a more complete view of what’s going on rather than have each one segregated as they currently are.

It’s an argument against reductionism, which I kind like and makes me wonder if maybe the future of science would eventually move beyond disciplines and just be some new method with mixes to approaches. At the very least it’s food for thought. I cannot deny the merit to some of what he is saying, maybe fusion is the solution.

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Read the article and find much within it to agree with. It might be worth mentioning that the author is located at the Santa Fe Institute which is 'a think tank dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, including physical, computational, biological, and social systems. ’ So their approach overall is the opposite of reductionism, indeed the article he mentions from Anderson is often quoted in that context. He then acknowledges that ‘most of us were trained as materialists’ — but he’s gently calling that into question offering the ‘Uroboros’ approach as a kind of multi-faceted alternative.

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The article mentions the “it from bit” scenario without crediting its creator John Archibald Wheeler. The ‘ouroboros’ connection is also reminiscent of Wheeler’s “self-excited circuit.” Wheeler and other theoretical physicists (C.Rovelli, R.Griffiths, etc) are finally making it respectable to doubt metaphysical realism.

The article refers to ‘mind’ as though it is still entrenched in Cartesian Dualism. Substance ontology has become increasingly indefensible over recent decades, if not centuries. William James was disturbed by the the way that science in his time was moving towards mechanism (reductionism, determinism, materialism) and he made great headway in dissolving the mind-body problem.

Michel Bitbol emphasizes the overlap between quantum mechanics and Buddhist doctrines that reject substance ontology, and explains how this rejection can be seen to alleviate many of the enigmas that arise in quantum mechanics (because of our inadvertent adoption of metaphysical realism).

Attitudes are changing.

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What does that mean to doubt metaphysical realism.

I get that he says that but when I read the articles on their main cite a lot of the citations or methods they use involve computation and math and it makes me wonder if they aren’t accidently trending towards a different sort of reductionism.

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I don’t think so. I think the Santa Fe group are genuinely anti-reductionist, but trying to maintain credibility in an environment where reductionism and materialism are the assumed dogmas.

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The essay raises faults where there is none. For example:

This is a pedestrian observation regarding the social studies and its discipline. In any theory or narrative where the intellectuals or researchers make observations of the human population and society, the model is compared with the information gathered through the natural observation (where actions are allowed to happen without artificial intervention).

Sorry, but I find the essay ignorant of the process of peer review and scrutiny of other experts.

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I get that, it’s just that the quoted area here:

What is reality? And is there just one reality or many, perhaps infinitely many? And how should we describe these realities, with mathematics, natural language, music, or visual art? The answer might be all of the above, but if so, can we justify these decisions based on a larger conception of reality?

Gives me pause, like if art and music would fail then what does that say about our current culture and life? What about our values? Would that mean human life as we know it would erode away? If we learn more about reality would that erode any meaning along with it?

Here’s some articles from their main site to sorta illustrate my point:

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I posted a couple links but I think the main point is that every field in isolation runs into a dead end eventually. Their goal is to sorta meld fields, or tear down the boundaries between disciplines:

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Yes, I get you.

But my objection is about : there’s not a time when fields of study are managed in isolation, nor has the ideal or the model been mistaken intentionally or accidentally to conflate our understanding.

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This post was removed. I have reviewed guidelines, particularly those relevant and made minor edits. It doesn’t meet the criteria for removal in any way. If you don’t like my views, keep it to yourself.

I have feelings like Wayfarer’s. I think its almost required that science crosses disciplines to get complex answers to complex problems. As much seems to me to be how science is actually done in practice.
But I think the fundamental question is honestly a bit wide of the mark :

quote="DarkNeos, post:1, topic:1224"

What is reality? And is there just one reality or many, perhaps infinitely many? And how should we describe these realities, with mathematics, natural language, music, or visual art? The answer might be all of the above, but if so, can we justify these decisions based on a larger conception of reality?

/quote

Th concept Reality seems to capture is “all that is existent”. If there are "things’ which don’t exist, that would certainly be a surprise to even a God. In this way, the question itself seems to rush, headlong, past the words it’s using to ask itself. I think a better conception is “universes”. We can at least intelligently discuss multiples of this. The idea that there are “realities” with non-existence between them seems totally misguided to me.

If reality is to be understood, at all, it seems it is to be understood as a boundary marker of a Kantian kind. What’s beyond it cannot be spoken about in a way that science matters to. Or, this is my view anyway and so informs this reply. What’s within it, can. We do not need some extra metatheory. Science already deals to the issue by restricting itself to what it can glean from the totality of our access to the world/universe. There may be other things to speak about but conceptually I don’t think we can reasonable presume they are “realities” in this way.

We’re mere atoms in a universe of objects. We can’t really be expected to understand reality from without (whcih, is seems is wanted by the article).

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I find this a deepity: it appears to be a profound idea, but only at superficial level, if you actually think about it there’s nothing interesting about it.

The notion of “reality” is not as deep as the article paints it to be. There can only be one objective reality. Period.

Consider the counterfactual. If there wasn’t one objective reality, then anyone can argue anything. A person might argue the sky is green, 2+2=5, a triangle can have four sides, etc. It might not be true in my reality, but it’s true in their reality. Even if that was the case, there would be no point in arguing otherwise. So any rational agent hoping to have meaningful conversations with other rational agents has to assume one objective reality.

We can have multiple models of reality at different levels, but they shouldn’t contradict the base level of objective reality.

Mathematics is one of the lowest levels, and it might help understand reality, but it’s not reality itself.

If science finds out that our universe is superdeterministic, then there’s no model in the other fields of science that could contradict this.

Reality is what it is.

The author mentions “complexity science”, but it’s the other way around. The actual field is called complexity theory, and at its core is a mathematical model. I believe there are many scientific disciplines that will have to reevaluate their core assumptions because they didn’t consider the implications of complexity. We already know this is the case in physics, I believe economics is soon going to go through a similar process.

But that doesn’t change reality itself, which is always going to be the grounding for all the disciplines.

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I think you’ve boiled my post down. Well done.

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Quantum experiment suggests there is no such thing as objective reality.

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Developments in physics are indicating that this is a fallacious unexamined axiom, to the point of being dogma, that is at the heart of much of the enigma associated with quantum mechanics. @Wayfarer has provided a link to a description of the Wigner’s Friend paradox which is indicative of this problem.

It is beginning to look like what we need is a change of paradigm in the Western mode of thinking, a mode that has its origins in Aristotle’s notion of substance 23 centuries ago. Bohr recognized this a century ago, though he failed to convince Einstein – Einstein clung to his metaphysical realism all his life, despite the increasing evidence in favor of Bohr’s contention.

The delayed choice quantum eraser experiment hammers this issue home. Just as Einstein showed that there is no objective “simultaneous now,” so quantum mechanics is slapping us in the face and telling us that there is no metaphysically ‘real’ world “out there” at all. We are each participators in the construction or our own world, and it is only when one subjective world enters into relation with another that those two worlds synchronize.

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Did you actually read the article?

In other words, the experiment suggests that one or more of the assumptions—the idea that there is a reality we can agree on, the idea that we have freedom of choice, or the idea of locality—must be wrong.

It’s never a good idea to just read the title. But even the title clearly says “suggests”.

It is not unexamined. I just examined it. Did you even read what I said?

That is not true. You do not understand the experiments.

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It’s simply that objectivity has limits, because there is no ultimate object. That, and the overlooked fact that reality includes us.

Surely did. In detail. So it ‘suggests’. You’re able to comfortably maintain your belief.

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I doubt that. I’m not talking about the title, I’m talking about the article.

The quote I pasted — which you completely ignored — clearly says the only way the experiments suggests there’s no reality we can agree on is if we assume freedom of choice or locality.

Those are pretty big assumptions.

I deny freedom of choice, and the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics denies locality.

So basically the experiment tells us nothing.

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What it tells me is that you have a fixed assumption, which I already knew from the Determinism thread.

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No, it’s precisely the other way around.

In physics freedom of choice is an assumption, I don’t accept it. If you do, then you are the one making an assumption.

So which of these assumptions do you accept?

  • Freedom of choice
  • Locality
21

Yes, and a cynic might joke that the point of this “objective reality” is keep the essence or residue of our monotheistic heritage. The comportment toward knowledge as the accurate picturing — within a plurality of picturestuff consciousnesses — is enacted “blindly.” It’s “obvious” ( cue a professor’s furious handwaving.)

Beneath the humility that emphasizes the gap between a plurality of pictures and the one true world on the other side of such pictures is an unwitting ontological arrogance. “A picture held them captive,” and it was the picture of picturing itself. The presupposition of a picturing consciousness is a ghost story.