Sep 15, 2026 05:03 PM
Science is (partially) socially constructed
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/scie...nstructed/
EXCERPT: People decide which questions to ask, how to ask them, how to define terms, how to categorize nature, where to set thresholds of confirmation, which outcomes are meaningful, how to determine which studies get published and disseminated, and which scientists get promoted, get funded, and win awards. Science is also a community effort, and it works best when groups of scientists collaborate and provide a check on each other.
At the same time, the very nature of science means that the findings of science are constrained by reality. There is a “mind independent reality” and that reality pushes back. Some philosophers of the mid 20th century forgot that part, which is what lead to post-modernism notions that the findings of science are all socially constructed. They aren’t... (MORE - details)
New Carlo Rovelli book challenges science's understanding of reality and the universe
https://www.npr.org/2026/09/14/nx-s1-596...lo-rovelli
EXCERPTS: This "God's-eye view" is also what's claimed as the purpose and promise of physics in many popular books on the subject. But, now, comes a new book by physicist Carlo Rovelli that explicitly rejects any path to an ultimate reality.
[...] As Rovelli puts it in his latest book, "Physics is often credited with a power it does not have: that of exhausting what can be known about the world. This is nonsense. Knowing the physical laws of the world does not amount to knowing the world."
This is a radical claim about physics, particularly for one of the world's most well-regarded physicists. Not only does it directly contradict the scientific triumphalism that one finds in many popular books about science, it's also a view that crashes against the perspectives of many contemporary philosophers of science. But as Rovelli writes, "we never leave the circle of perspectives." For him, this irreducibility of relationship is the central lesson of relativity and quantum mechanics.
One of the most original aspects of Rovelli's argument is to draw on philosophical sources beyond the usual suspects in the Greek or European tradition. He relies heavily on the classical philosophies of India and Asia... (MORE - details)
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/scie...nstructed/
EXCERPT: People decide which questions to ask, how to ask them, how to define terms, how to categorize nature, where to set thresholds of confirmation, which outcomes are meaningful, how to determine which studies get published and disseminated, and which scientists get promoted, get funded, and win awards. Science is also a community effort, and it works best when groups of scientists collaborate and provide a check on each other.
At the same time, the very nature of science means that the findings of science are constrained by reality. There is a “mind independent reality” and that reality pushes back. Some philosophers of the mid 20th century forgot that part, which is what lead to post-modernism notions that the findings of science are all socially constructed. They aren’t... (MORE - details)
New Carlo Rovelli book challenges science's understanding of reality and the universe
https://www.npr.org/2026/09/14/nx-s1-596...lo-rovelli
EXCERPTS: This "God's-eye view" is also what's claimed as the purpose and promise of physics in many popular books on the subject. But, now, comes a new book by physicist Carlo Rovelli that explicitly rejects any path to an ultimate reality.
[...] As Rovelli puts it in his latest book, "Physics is often credited with a power it does not have: that of exhausting what can be known about the world. This is nonsense. Knowing the physical laws of the world does not amount to knowing the world."
This is a radical claim about physics, particularly for one of the world's most well-regarded physicists. Not only does it directly contradict the scientific triumphalism that one finds in many popular books about science, it's also a view that crashes against the perspectives of many contemporary philosophers of science. But as Rovelli writes, "we never leave the circle of perspectives." For him, this irreducibility of relationship is the central lesson of relativity and quantum mechanics.
One of the most original aspects of Rovelli's argument is to draw on philosophical sources beyond the usual suspects in the Greek or European tradition. He relies heavily on the classical philosophies of India and Asia... (MORE - details)
