A blind spot of science?

[enchanted]

Is a blind spot of science is that it doesn't have any major blind spots? 

It does admit to some big blind spots like not knowing what happened before the big bang, doesn't know if the universe is infinite or not, and doesn't know what consciousness is. 

So is science (academics, institutions, average scientists) pretty good admitting it's blind spots? 

[Carl-Richard]

It admits its blindspots and proceeds like they don't matter, until it's painfully obvious that what they are doing is suboptimal by literally everybody but a few old guys in wheelchairs.

[Leo Gura]

@Carl-Richard Get off my lawn, you hippies!

[Osaid]

It's based on observation, which is true. There's still confusion because it isn't aware that it is observing itself. Quantum mechanics works to dispel this.

Proof of this is its repetitive inability to answer the koans it creates for itself through observing thought. Like "what created the universe" and the "hard problem of consciousness", which is actually "the hard problem of science". 

[Osaid]

Oops, apparently this section isn't supposed to be spiritual.

Yeah I'm sure science will find what created the universe some day, it just has to look harder. Now give me my lab coat.

[Carl-Richard]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@Carl-Richard Get off my lawn, you hippies!

Yeah ok, there are many epistemically retarded physicists (and perhaps other fields as well *erm* exercise science *erm*). But if you look at especially psychology where the scientists have always been insecure about and questioning the status of their field ("is it a science or is it pseudoscience?"), they are actually very aware of what it does and doesn't do. There are countless of times I've heard "psychology moved away from introspection as a method" in various methodology classes, and especially learning about qualitative methods, the insecurity and self-criticism comes up ("what is qualitative vs quantitative research, what are the assumptions, limitations, pros and cons?", "what are the assumptions and limitations of grounded theory vs thematic analysis?").

Edited March 30 by Carl-Richard

[Leo Gura]

18 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

There are countless of times I've heard "psychology moved away from introspection as a method" in various methodology classes.

Then how it is different than physics?

[Carl-Richard]

40 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Then how it is different than physics?

Studying the mind from a 3rd person perspective (which might involve looking at physical quantities as a proxy) vs studying physical quantities in and of themselves 

Edited March 30 by Carl-Richard

[Leo Gura]

Physics is just the psychology of atoms.

[Carl-Richard]

1 minute ago, Leo Gura said:

Physics is just the psychology of atoms.

By "mind" we of course generally mean human minds (unless we're talking about transpersonal psychology, i.e. God's mind, or animal psychology, i.e. non-human animal minds ☺️).

[Jacob Morres]

I actually generally think it has few blindspots outside of consciousness work. At least the professors i speak to are decently aware of the limitations of their work

Edited March 31 by Jacob Morres

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Jacob Morres said:

I actually generally think it has few blindspots outside of consciousness work. At least the professors i speak to are decently aware of the limitations of their work

What field?

[Jacob Morres]

@Carl-Richard economics. parts of the courseload was going over the limitations of their work. Like problems with data sets, alternate theories, limitations of the scientific method. I had 2 months in two of courses where we just talked abt flaws in the research and research in general 

 

Edited March 31 by Jacob Morres

[Carl-Richard]

On 31.3.2026 at 5:52 PM, Jacob Morres said:

@Carl-Richard economics. parts of the courseload was going over the limitations of their work. Like problems with data sets, alternate theories, limitations of the scientific method. I had 2 months in two of courses where we just talked abt flaws in the research and research in general 

So yes, another social science. Economics is also barely considered a science. Like it's basically impossible to predict things in economics. If that wasn't the case, everybody would be rich (and nobody would be).

It seems like the more purely mechanistic and "basic" the field becomes (i.e. physics, chemistry, biology), the more epistemically naive it becomes. The thing about those fields is they can point to very tangible ways which their contributions work (technology, accuracy of measurements and experiments down to 9th or so decimal point, etc.) and they think of themselves as getting at the very fundamentals of those things. So they have a lot of feelings of self-efficacy, self-importance and self-confidence and thus hubris and become epistemically naive.

Coupled with the fact that they align very squarely with just one epistemic mode (objective, external), they don't have to question their underlying assumptions much (unlike psychology or social science in general: "which model or research paradigm do we want to approach this question with?"). And when these assumptions also underlie the cultural metaphysical status quo (mechanistic, materialist, ironically Newtonian), that's even less of a reason to question them.

Edited 1 hour ago by Carl-Richard