Why is science just a starting point and not an end point?


Measurements are useful to verify specifications and identify any underlying issues that might be a concern. Test tones are used to show how equipment performs below audible levels but how music performs at listening levels is the deciding criteria. In that regard science fails miserably.

Why is it so?
pedroeb

Everyone with a pet belief he can't justify empirically tries the same mode of defense.

So we wee that tired old refrain from some audiophiles "Science has been wrong before you know!"  and "science doesn't know everything!"

It's the same refrain used by every crackpot theory in the world.
Ask yourself:  When science has been corrected: how was it corrected?
That's right, by more science.  It's a self-correcting method.
You don't get to say "I'm justified in believing something that contradicts or isn't validated by current science...because MAYBE science is wrong and we'll discover I'm right."    Literally any nonsense idea would fly under such conditions.  The rational approach is to realize how science is a way of sifting the wheat from the chaff, the hypotheses that hold up to empirical scrutiny, and those that don't.


@clearthinker,

"Properly derived science contains only provable conclusions that are bedrock.
All the rest is conjecture - interesting but not the basis for anything solid.

The problem is bad science. This is in the ascendency. One reads the most obviously idiotic nonsense every day, often obtained by extrapolation.

Extrapolation is always bad science.

The one I like best was around 15 years ago. ’All the snow and ice on the Himalayas will be gone in 30 years.

Palpable stupidity at the time; we’re about halfway there and there’s plenty left. I said at the time that if the entire Chinese nation went up there with blowlamps working 24/7 it wouldn’t happen."



The problem is bad science and in particular its politically motivated uses - Covid-19, vaccine wars, PCR tests, global warming etc etc.

As far as Hi-Fi goes, it would seem pretty obvious that the use of science and technology has come a very long way from its origins in the 1920s and 30s.

This situation with ever increasing use of software and modelling is only going to become more prevalent.

The subjectivists, with all of their capricious moods, opinions, and pursuit of a personal audio nirvana may not be happy - but this can only be good news for the other consumers.
     "So we wee that tired old refrain from some audiophiles "Science has been wrong before you know!" and "science doesn't know everything!"
     "It's the same refrain used by every crackpot theory in the world.
Ask yourself: When science has been corrected: how was it corrected?"
     "You don't get to say "I'm justified in believing something that contradicts or isn't validated by current science...because MAYBE science is wrong and we'll discover I'm right."   Literally any nonsense idea would fly under such conditions."

     It's the complete (or: perhaps, willful) ignorance of so many, as to what's either been proven and/or obviated, since the dawn of the Scientific Method, that still astounds me.

     It's not so much that Science has been proven, "wrong", but: that it's moved on, in so many areas.

      What those that adamantly want their antiquated, "Science" to make sense (ie: their Math to eloquently balance, or: their universe to yet be based on Newtonian, or strictly Relativity principles) have missed, is that, SO OFTEN: what's been observed and tested/proven makes no sense.

       That's been the argument between some of the greatest minds, especially in the area of Physics an Electrical Theory, since the early 1920s.

        Anyone that's been paying any attention, AT ALL, to what's been happening subsequent to that time period; would be up on all of that!

         For one NOT to be current, on what's been going on; as regards the inventions and scientific proofs, based on such a, "crackpot theory" as either QM or QED and yet refer to themselves as a, "prof", seems to me: the height of hubris.

         UNLESS of course: they were a Professor in a field such as Geology or one of the Liberal Arts (ie: Home Economics).    
                                                  In which case: my apologies!
   Correction, for clarity:  "That's been the argument between some of the greatest minds, especially in the areas of Physics AND Electrical Theory, since the early 1920s."
Science is the starting point and it is the end point in audio reproduction. Science is what gave us the medium and tools to enjoy music from the wax cylinder to digital storage and on to processes unknown. It won't be brain dead audiophiles arguing over $200 fuses and $10,000 cables and the shilers that promote them but the theoretician and engineer that fails and succeeds that moves us forward. Scientists who "argue" over the esoteric boundaries of QM have no interest in the mundane workings of basic sound reproduction. Any new findings from research in areas of nanotechnology, nanoparticles,  quantum interactions etc.. that may trickle down to the audiophile bubble will be the result of dedicated engineering not the smear this goop on your wires crackpots.