I think speculative science always starts out as philosophy. This is as true now as it was in the 18th century. If you look at any thinker on the edge of human understanding you'll find something similar (e.g. I was reading Michael Levin's stuff on bioelectricity recently and it also has a heavy dose of philosophy).
I don't really have an issue with any of the points you raised - why do they bother you?
The interesting stuff is the discussion about "functional information" later in the paper, which is their proposed quantitative measure for understanding the evolution of complexity (although it seems like early stages for the theory).
It's "just" a slight generalisation of the ideas of evolution but it applies to nonbiological systems and they can make quantitative predictions. If it turns out to be true then (for me) that is a pretty radical discovery.
I'm looking forward to seeing what can be demonstrated experimentally (the quanta article suggests there is some evidence now, but I haven't yet dug into it).
> I think speculative science always starts out as philosophy. This is as true now as it was in the 18th century.
Indeed, and Natural Philosophy was the precursor to what we now call Science.
I still think the old name better fit what we’re doing because it admits that the work is still a philosophical endeavor.
This is not to question the validity of what we now call science, but it’s common these days to believe in the ultimate supremacy of science as the answer to questions that are best explored both philosophically and scientifically, and because pure science still can’t answer important philosophical questions that that the entire scientific discipline rests upon.
Tell me about the supremacy of science after the government restores the NIH, NOAA, etc. In fact most people in the world believe in the supremacy of their religious faiths.
You're describing anti-science sentiment, which is problematic and dangerous. But this is also whataboutism.
I'm describing unfounded beliefs many people hold about science based mostly on a lack of philosophical understanding, which is orthogonal to anti-science sentiment and still important to examine.
I don't see a reason for there to be tension between the two.
I may have overreacted. I'm a scientist, and I'm surrounded by scientists. When I hear about "supremacy of science" it's usually being presented as a straw man. I don't know any scientists who believe it, beyond the temporary phase in everybody's education where they get caught up in the "master of the universe" feeling.
That’s understandable, especially in the current climate. I’ve definitely encountered the straw men from the anti-science types too, and it’s incredibly frustrating.
As a layperson, I often come in contact with people who believe in science but fall into what is essentially scientific absolutism and see philosophy as irrelevant. I was one of those people in my 20s before I went down some rabbit holes that set me straight. Many of the people around me did not.
The scientists I know are not the absolutist types. I sometimes forget there are more scientists here than the average internet community.
My religious faith is science
now what?
I'm open minded about religion. It can be whatever you want.
> I don't really have an issue with any of the points you raised - why do they bother you?
Idk about GP, but bad science writing ("identification of conceptual equivalencies ...") does bother me. It's sloppy, and tends to hide possibly invalid shortcuts taken by the authors by being an impenetrable fog of words. That sort of thing is a very good indicator of bunk, and it tends to peg my BS meter. Which isn't to say that there is no place for that sort of language in a scientific paper, but that one should preface the use of it with an admission of hand-waving for some purpose.
Right, I agree with you in general but in this particular case it seems fine to me. OP refers to the first two paragraphs of the introdution, so the authors clearly aren't hiding anything. It's a very far cry from an actual crank paper like the sort you see on vixra. But yeah, this stuff is subjective, I probably just have a higher tolerance for fluff.
> I think speculative science always starts out as philosophy
or in my words: "the first approximation is poetic. the last one is mathematical"
from philosophy to hard-science and engineered tooling and other products (andor services)
similarly to
from poetry as dubious, cloudy, and vague ideas all the way to crystal clear, fixed and unmoving (dead) formalizations