What is Science?
What is science? I do not mean just the dictionary definition, though perhaps we need to start with something commonly accepted like that in order to understand more fully what science is.
(This came up in the discussion of "Ego Depletion." My comments here were too long and involved for that. So, I offer this as a new topic.)
A few years ago, before going under the knife at a university research and teaching hospital, I signed an agreement that I understood that medicine is an art, not a science, and that outcomes are not predictable. Maybe that is why the German word for medical doctor is "der Arzt." But medical practice certainly depends on science, does it not? And they do have medical research, which we hope is practiced as a science, rather than an art like ballet or ceramics.
(Granted that art has a lot of science in it: chemistry of pigments, physics of firing, anatomy, botany... it is all there if you care to know. Does "the science of painting" make sense?)
In this discussion, blarman, WilliamShipley, and lucky differentiated engineering from science. We commonly accept the generalization that scientists discover basic laws; and engineers apply those to the creation of new products; and technicians maintain those creations. That is how things are today. History provides a different model.
The steam engine came before thermodynamics. The telegraph and telephone antedated Maxwell's Equations. Luther Burbank died 20 years before DNA was announced. Similarly, William Smith, who predicted and found the presence of coal by the fossil record of England, died 20 years before The Origin of Species (-- http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20....
Inventions are largely the improvements of technicians, not the direct applications of theories to new practices.
Computer science may not yet be a science, but the summary work we are doing now will be generalized into new theoretical models.
In William Gibson's "Bridge Trilogy" set in the immediate future, some of the viewpoint characters are artists in a beach house, majoring in Media Science at UC Berkeley. It is not a science yet...
But, what, then is a science?
I look at the practice. If a pursuit consciously chooses the scientific method, then it is a science.
We all know the basic Scientific Method:
1. Observe some aspect of the universe.
2. Invent a tentative description, called a hypothesis, that is consistent with what you have observed.
3. Use the hypothesis to make predictions.
4. Test those predictions by experiments or further observations and modify the hypothesis in the light of your results.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until there are no discrepancies between theory and experiment and/or observation.
http://physics.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics...
Norman Edmund (1916-2012), founder of Edmund Scientific - and who has not been a customer? - taught a 14-step process.
http://www.scientificmethod.com/index...
Steps or Stages of the Scientific Method
1. Curious Observation
2. Is There a Problem?
3. Goals & Planning
4. Search, Explore, & Gather the Evidence
5. Generate Creative & Logical Alternative Solutions
6. Evaluate the Evidence
7. Make the Educated Guess (Hypothesis)
8. Challenge the Hypothesis
9. Reach a Conclusion
10. Suspend Judgment
11.Take Action
Supporting Ingredients
12. Creative, Non-Logical, Logical & Technical Methods
13. Procedural Principals & Theories
14. Attributes & Thinking Skills
http://www.scientificmethod.com/index...
The way I learned it - five steps, seven, or more - publishing your findings is always the last step. That can mean just recording this in your notebook, if the results are intermediary. But in any case, you must finalize the process by making it possible for others to replicate the work.
That was perhaps the essential truth that separated chemistry from alchemy in Robert Boyle's Sceptical Chymist (1661). Boyle argued for open disclosure of means and methods. That openness - your own open mind open to the minds of others - may be the sine qua non of science. It also speaks to the tension of science in the context of national security. That is nothing new. Projective geometry was held as a French military secret. Can anything secret be a science?
(This came up in the discussion of "Ego Depletion." My comments here were too long and involved for that. So, I offer this as a new topic.)
A few years ago, before going under the knife at a university research and teaching hospital, I signed an agreement that I understood that medicine is an art, not a science, and that outcomes are not predictable. Maybe that is why the German word for medical doctor is "der Arzt." But medical practice certainly depends on science, does it not? And they do have medical research, which we hope is practiced as a science, rather than an art like ballet or ceramics.
(Granted that art has a lot of science in it: chemistry of pigments, physics of firing, anatomy, botany... it is all there if you care to know. Does "the science of painting" make sense?)
In this discussion, blarman, WilliamShipley, and lucky differentiated engineering from science. We commonly accept the generalization that scientists discover basic laws; and engineers apply those to the creation of new products; and technicians maintain those creations. That is how things are today. History provides a different model.
The steam engine came before thermodynamics. The telegraph and telephone antedated Maxwell's Equations. Luther Burbank died 20 years before DNA was announced. Similarly, William Smith, who predicted and found the presence of coal by the fossil record of England, died 20 years before The Origin of Species (-- http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20....
Inventions are largely the improvements of technicians, not the direct applications of theories to new practices.
Computer science may not yet be a science, but the summary work we are doing now will be generalized into new theoretical models.
In William Gibson's "Bridge Trilogy" set in the immediate future, some of the viewpoint characters are artists in a beach house, majoring in Media Science at UC Berkeley. It is not a science yet...
But, what, then is a science?
I look at the practice. If a pursuit consciously chooses the scientific method, then it is a science.
We all know the basic Scientific Method:
1. Observe some aspect of the universe.
2. Invent a tentative description, called a hypothesis, that is consistent with what you have observed.
3. Use the hypothesis to make predictions.
4. Test those predictions by experiments or further observations and modify the hypothesis in the light of your results.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until there are no discrepancies between theory and experiment and/or observation.
http://physics.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics...
Norman Edmund (1916-2012), founder of Edmund Scientific - and who has not been a customer? - taught a 14-step process.
http://www.scientificmethod.com/index...
Steps or Stages of the Scientific Method
1. Curious Observation
2. Is There a Problem?
3. Goals & Planning
4. Search, Explore, & Gather the Evidence
5. Generate Creative & Logical Alternative Solutions
6. Evaluate the Evidence
7. Make the Educated Guess (Hypothesis)
8. Challenge the Hypothesis
9. Reach a Conclusion
10. Suspend Judgment
11.Take Action
Supporting Ingredients
12. Creative, Non-Logical, Logical & Technical Methods
13. Procedural Principals & Theories
14. Attributes & Thinking Skills
http://www.scientificmethod.com/index...
The way I learned it - five steps, seven, or more - publishing your findings is always the last step. That can mean just recording this in your notebook, if the results are intermediary. But in any case, you must finalize the process by making it possible for others to replicate the work.
That was perhaps the essential truth that separated chemistry from alchemy in Robert Boyle's Sceptical Chymist (1661). Boyle argued for open disclosure of means and methods. That openness - your own open mind open to the minds of others - may be the sine qua non of science. It also speaks to the tension of science in the context of national security. That is nothing new. Projective geometry was held as a French military secret. Can anything secret be a science?
of-view, or more than one perspective, to clarify meaning. -- j
.
Mathematics by itself doesn't describe reality. It is the means by which you relate in terms of concepts what can be measured. Mathematics is a science of method, not about things like physics does.
Formulation of new concepts in science goes hand in hand with the theory development, which like any problem with creativity can take a very long time through many attempted iterations, head scratching, and subconscious processing until the right thing occurs to you after many trips back to the drawing board and new empirical investigations. Proper concept formation is crucial, but one can't say that a new causal principle and its validation means 'just make a concept, problem solved'.
Rand sought to develop an integrated philosophical system. And she explained much in addition through essays, lectures, and Q&As. For her, the only basis for capitalism was the right of the individual to live their own life by their own standards. But those standards could not be arbitrary. You do have the political right to be an idiot. Objectivism is more than that. The question of standards is highly important. It was addressed in "The Objectivist Ethics" as well as in essays such as "Isn't Everyone Selfish?" and "How do you live a Rational Life in an Irrational Society?" and "Counterfeit Individualism."
Pragmatism has no place in Objectivism, either as epistemology or politics. It is demanded by logic and known to history that if you begin with epistemological pragmatism - range of the moment, context-free thinking - then you end up with political pragmatism - people in concentration camps. I am not kidding or exaggerating. Ask any American who is ethnically Japanese about the "pragmatic" solution to the "problem" of immigrants here from a country with which the USA is suddenly at war. Then, think about Donald Trump and Muslims.
This has a direct bearing on science and how it is practiced. To ewv and other Objectivists, a pragmatic approach to science leads directly to pseudo-science, research fraud, and scientific misconduct because they perform "experiments" and gather "data" that have no conceptual basis in reality.
I am sure that you are a nice guy and all, and you seem to have enjoyed a long and productive career in science. But in this case, you are kind of like those people who do not know the difference between speed and velocity.
And, largely, allowing for technical errors like that, I am pretty much in accord with what you have written. Just saying'…
I understand and accept her explanation.
That said, we have many examples of scientists working with entities and their processes long before anyone knew what they "were." Luther Burbank died 20 years before Crick and Watson published. I mentioned William Smith who read the fossil record of England before 1800. While more always remains to be discovered, relative to them, we know what inheritance "is" and we know what evolution "is". I grant that reputable physicists such as Richard P. Feynman suggested that we do not know what an electron "is" yet.
I do not know what the essential demarcation is, where the bright line is drawn, but as we gather more information, test more hypotheses, invent more objects and processes, we gain a fundamental understanding of what we are studying. We know what the Moon "is"; cancer, not so much…
in college, one of my German professors was a philologist. He ran down the list of theories for the origin of language, from onomatopoeia to "baby talk."
I also give great weight to analogy.
And then there is allusion. "Darmok at Tanagra, His arms open wide." I remember a political commentary titled, "Nixon Agonistes." Hollywood reporters called Hepburn "Katherine of Arrogant."
and even math is subject to conventional interpretation.
words are imprecise, and that's why I speak of
triangulation. -- j
.
However, there are areas where her views and mine diverge. As I understand the interpretation of her philosophy an objectivist society will be dominated by "heroes". Typically, heroes are type A personalities and it is not clear that such a society can be dynamically stable. A successful society will include people from all walks of life and with a broad range of capabilities and talents. We need trash collectors at least as much as we need scientists. If you consider the spectrum of individual types in Huxley's "Brave New World" we see everything from Alpha double pluses to the Epsilon minus. Each with a vital roll in society. In BNW this structure was created and enforced by the state but in the real world this structure exists naturally and again each strata forms an important and essential part of the social body. We probably need plumbers and machinists at least as much as we need politicians and philosophers.
I have probably missed it but I fail to see how Objectivism as a political philosophy accommodates this reality.
However, my greatest concern is that Objectivism could easily become a kind of secular religion. A religion complete with sinners and saints, heretics and blasphemers, true believers and skeptics. All led by the prophet Ayn Rand. A position that Rand would probably find disgusting.
Like any religion there are those that "believe" in Objectivism. However, belief flies in the face of objectivity. When you believe something you have shut the door to further enlightenment. "Belief" in Objectivism is a contradiction.
I would like your thoughts on that.
I also believe that you will get farther if you separate ethics from morality. Morality is fundamental to ethics. Robinson Crusoe needed morality. He did not need ethics until Friday came along. Ethics cannot contradict morality, but ethics is only social. Different rational species may have different ethics fully consistent with the same (objectively required) morality as ours.
I many not understand the "implicit" but if the law of gravity is implicit to reality, then, so, too, does morality implicitly apply to every rational creature, each volitional entity, regardless of its physical construction, no less than an electron has charge.
The implicit philosophy of the Enlightenment was objectivism (small-o). Based on Newtonian philosophy, the Enlightenment was possible when people realized, however implicitly, that the evidentiary world is logically consistent, i.e., mathematically predictable; and conversely, that reason can provide answers not only about how to construct a steam engine, but also a government. The Constitution of the United States is a primary document in political science.
Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism (capital-o) is a 20th century formalization of much that was implicit in the Enlightenment. In addition, Rand considered and solved problems not perceived by the earlier philosophers. Most important were her theories of epistemology and ethics.
Rand's philosophy of Objectivism is in direct opposition to most previous schools of thought, at least in academic philosophy, as since the 17th century, most philosophers argued from a false dichotomy of rationalism versus empiricism. As rational-empiricism small-o objectivism denies the dichotomy. Capital-O Objectivism specifically does so in a famous essay by Dr. Leonard Peikoff, included in later editions of Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.
What we can, and cannot "reify" is an interesting question. I believe that mathematics describes physical reality because the analytic and synthetic are unified as the objective. Beyond that, I have no consistent answer. I would need a week to write anything equivalent to yours.
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