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Perhaps, but solid points are made; points that really can't be overlooked and shouldn't be ignored.
You can find many statements of it, some suitable for grade school children, others for professionals. They all include the same salient points that you must first observe something and ask a question from which you formulate a hypothesis that you *test by experiment and then publish your findings, (if only for yourself), i.e., record the process so that it can be tested again.
That is the essential method of objective living.
Objectivism (capital-O) is exactly that: observing the world around you, explaining it (if only to yourself), and testing your conclusions with further observations. It is the fully focussed life. It is not gut feelings or preferences. Objectivism is rational-empiricism, the unity of the logical and the experiential, the reasoned and the perceived, the ideal and the real. Fallacious philosophies typically attempted to make wholes of the halves, strong idealism (Ludwig von Mises) or strong empiricism (John Maynard Keynes).
"The scientific method, the process of using repeated experiments in an attempt to validate or falsify the conclusions of previous experiments, is but one way humans attempt to discover truth.
That is not the scientific method. It is the error of strong induction. For an explanation of correct induction see The Logical Leap by David Harriman. (Other Objectivists have not been happy with Harriman's use of "induction" and suggested other words without baggage. But Harriman's main point on that is factual: you do not gain more knowledge by piling on repetitions of a known fact. So-called "scientific induction" is the fallacy of strong realism, that you cannot know that the Sun will rise tomorrow until you have witnessed some N+1 sunrises... but watch out! tomorrow might be different!! ...
Jonathan Newman continues:
It’s hard to recommend a different method than experimentation and observation to answer questions about chemical reactions, astrophysics, quantum mechanics, and biology."
In fact, we do not perform experiments in astro-physics. Instead, we make new observations to test theories derived from previous observations -- which is pretty much what life is all about (for someone living objectively).
Newman continues:
"The scientific method is unnecessary or even ill-suited in other areas, however. Consider these questions, and what sort of approach is appropriate to answer them: What is 17 divided by 3? All else held equal, what are the effects of an increase in demand for blue jeans? Who should I invite to my party? What are the effects of expansionary monetary policy on employment, prices, incomes, production, consumption, and borrowing? How should I treat people?"
[...]
Of course, Neil deGrasse Tyson wouldn’t recommend using the scientific method to answer all of these questions (hopefully), but the point is that empiricism and experimentation are limited in their appropriate applications. The scientific method does not have a monopoly on truth."
In fact, the scientific method as the objective pursuit of knowledge is exactly how you answer those questions, and answer them at root, in the context of the application of the principles that explain them.
Take 17 sticks and divide them in to three stacks: 5 each with 2 left over, 5r2. Or break the remainders into 3rds to place 2/3 stick on each: 5 and 2/3 = 17 divided by 3. And so on. As for the others, I will skip to the end. How you should treat other people is exactly the kind of moral question that the scientific method of rational-empiricism is most capable of answering, whereas the other philosophies all have failed. They failed empirically, and their failures are logically explicable.
In his original monograph, The Fatal Conceit, Friedrich Hayek addressed basic flaws in the socialist ideal of a planned economy. Mises and his followers joined in that, properly. The essay by Jonathan Newman touches on the same truths by pointing to improper application of the scientific method. Richard Feynman called it "Cargo Cult Science." False science comes from rigorously applying the methods of science to an erroneous, unchecked premise. Most of modern economic teaching - and too much modern scientific exploration - falls into that trap. But that is always true. It is famous that Albert Einstein retracted his own retractions.
However, like left wing post-modernism, the article from the Mises Institute claims that such corrections and retractions and paradigm shifts invalidate the results of empirical research.
On that point, the article totally misunderstand the scientific method. The scientific method is not just the collection of experimental results into an inductive generalization. The scientific method is objectivism. (Note the lower-case o, but see below on Objectivism.) General objectivism is rational-empiricism, the logical explanation of observed facts. Ayn Rand's Objectivism is an improvement on that, clarifying many ideas left undeveloped from the Enlightenment. Capital-O Objectivism begins with the identities that reality is real and existence exists. So, scientific objectivism accepts the existence of anomalies i.e., that which we perceive as real, but for which we have no consistent explanation. Quarks and quasars were in that category when they were discovered. That does not invalidate science itself.
(More later... A good explanation of the cultural context for Jonathan Newman's "right wing" essay and "left wing" post-modernism was offered back in 1963 by Richard Hofstadter in Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. )
The erroneous dichotomy says that empirical facts cannot be logically established and that purely logical truths say nothing about reality. I happen to be about 172 cm tall (5'7-1/2"). There is no logical reason why I must be that and not some other height. On the other hand, mathematicians have proved many theorems about imaginary numbers, but you never will have a "square root of minus one gallons of milk." Moreover, truths such as "all bachelors are unmarried men" are mere tautologies that say nothing more, nothing that we do not know from the statement itself.
The essay by Jonathan Newman is replete with such errors, but start here:
"The scientific method is not universally appropriate. Consider an extreme case: if you measured a few right triangles and observed that the sides did not correspond to what the Pythagorean theorem says, would you toss the Pythagorean theorem, or would you reexamine your measurement method? Would you dismiss the logical geometric relation in favor of the scientific method?"
The fact is that if you have a right triangle it will indeed correspond to the claims of the Pythagorean Theorem within the limits of measurement. Regardless of the tools you use, within the range of measurement permitted by them, the theorem will hold. Moreover, Jonathan Newman's claim is the fallacy of a "call for perfection." In addition, there are very many proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem, some of them involve forms of measurement that are qualitative, such as drawing squares on the sides and counting up the little squares inside them. The point, though, is that Newman is not interested in exploring the Pythagorean Theorem, but in invalidating empirical science.
(more)
Ayn Rand Lexicon here:
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/ana...
but it is really necessary to read the Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology and Leonard Peikoff's essay on the Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy.
If you want to know more about the A-S D from the viewpoint of mainstream philosophy which accepts it, see here:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/an...
The examples he gives of supposed over-reliance on the scientific method are just mistakes. Understanding the world by experimentation and observation is right. The alternative is making stuff up. I read this same stuff from post-modernist in college. They show you an example of a flawed experiment that led to some racist conclusion, and then say we can't really know anything through science. Just start with the desired non-racist answer and build your view of reality around that desired answer. It's completely wrong.
So the rival scientist is allowed to question the conclusions of other scientists because the conclusions might not be true, but nobody else is. We may not all be equipped with a laboratory, but we are all equipped with reason, experience, preferences, common sense (some more than others), gut instincts, some ideas about what is morally right and what is morally wrong, and our own areas of expertise. Surely these are not meaningless when it comes to judging the claims of a politically-connected technocratic elite and their policy recommendations."
"Most of what Tyson perceives as anti-intellectualism may not be a problem with people's ability to think, but an inability to trust a politically-connected scientific community that has led them astray in the past. Besides, if he really thinks too many Americans are too stupid, then he ought to look no further than the public education system that produced this alleged mass of illiterate science-deniers."
"The scientific method has another large limitation: conclusions derived solely by experimentation are always susceptible to falsification by just one aberrant observation. For this reason and others, even wide consensus among scientists should be met with at least some skepticism before the heavy hand of the government gets involved."
These valid points and truths, CG.
Empirical evidence doesn't require falsified data to reach predetermined conclusions formed by a political & scientific group.
If there is a falsehood or flaw in your argument...check your premise, yes?
Sorry, nothing government or endowment scientists have presented thus far convinces me to believe them.
Carbon credits will fix the environment? Why do these champions of eco-warfare all fly jets and live in houses which consume 10x electric and put more CO2 into the atmosphere than just about everyone else?
Hypocrisy does not instill trust, and lies are not the foundation of a sincere argument (particularly when those making the argument on those lies grow incredibly rich).
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ma...
"Sorry, nothing government or endowment scientists have presented thus far convinces me to believe them."
I also find it curious that they change the name from global warming to global cooling to the vague catchall climate change.
They, the government and the science they pay for, have damaged their foundation on the subject. While it may be true, it is definitely true that this is a huge power grab by powers outside and within this government. Trust is earned, the government and many scientists rabidly pitching this, don't have mine.
"The scientific method has another large limitation: conclusions derived solely by experimentation are always susceptible to falsification by just one aberrant observation."
That is not true. The matter is complicated and dependent on context. It is true that "black swans" exist. However, we call them what they are, "black swans" because they are swans. In other words, new data may contradict an accepted premise. The new fact may also thereby open a wider perspective, a more correct abstraction under which to subsume the examples.
Statistics knows "outliers." Just because an observation contradicts expectations does not mean that the original premise is false.
Your gut feelings, preferences, and common sense reason are not superior to a logical explanation of an observed fact. You even dismiss those facts when you say "We may not all be equipped with a laboratory, but..." But what? The laboratory is where the observations are made, even if it is the "laboratory" of a seashore.
I grant that reason matters, and you do mention reason. But reason tells us that A is A, facts are facts, and empirical findings are real. The analytic-synthetic dichotomy is a fallacy. Reason is real, and reality is reasonable.
"We may not all be equipped with a laboratory, but we are all equipped with reason, experience, preferences, common sense (some more than others), gut instincts, some ideas about what is morally right and what is morally wrong, and our own areas of expertise. Surely these are not meaningless when it comes to judging the claims of a politically-connected technocratic elite and their policy recommendations."
No. Political connections don’t matter. It’s the knowledge of the field and ability to run/interpret experiments that matters. If you’re famous in the industry, it’s easier to get published in an esteemed journal because human creations are flawed. Tyson isn’t talking about that. Tyson is saying argument from personal incredulity is not valid.
“if he really thinks too many Americans are too stupid, then he ought to look no further than the public education system that produced this alleged mass of illiterate science-deniers."
It appears that way. I can’t be sure of causality, but it’s true that there’s widespread use of public education and widespread scientific illiteracy.
“The scientific method has another large limitation: conclusions derived solely by experimentation are always susceptible to falsification by just one aberrant observation”
This isn’t a flaw. It’s a feature.
“even wide consensus among scientists should be met with at least some skepticism before the heavy hand of the government gets involved."
These are separate things in my mind. Skepticism is important to get to the truth, even if the government were not involved.
The gov’t getting involved is another issue. Consider the case of vaccines. The scientific evidence is a huge benefit to everyone getting them. So some people want to force parents to vaccinate their kids. I don’t say I want to be really, really sure of the scientific evidence before mandating vaccinations. Instead I accept the scientific evidence we have today, knowing new evidence might change our understanding. My reason for not wanting to use gov’t force does not rest on the nature of science.
“Empirical evidence doesn't require falsified data to reach predetermined conclusions formed by a political & scientific group. “
I do not understand this.
“If there is a falsehood or flaw in your argument...check your premise, yes?”
If an argument is unsound, it could be because of fallacious reasoning or a premise being wrong. I don’t follow how this fits into this issue of supposed flaws of science.
I actually don’t understand what Newman is saying, but it sounds like a variation on the claim that because you can find cases where science was influenced by the biases of its practitioners, e.g. craniometry finding racial differences that didn’t exist, we should dismiss all science as a reflection of politics. This leads to the notion that we cannot know anything, so we might as well just start with what we wish were true and find evidence to support that.
“Carbon credits will fix the environment?”
Are you asking? I reject the premise there’s a fixed/broken state to the environment. All we can do is quantify its value to humans. For example, you could look at how much more people pay for similar residential space in polluted and non-polluted areas. You can look at how much more valuable land in Greenland becomes if global warming makes it arable. You can look at the cost of protecting/moving coastal regions. There’s only a “fix” in the loosest sense of the word.
“Why do these champions of eco-warfare all fly jets and live in houses which consume 10x electric and put more CO2 into the atmosphere than just about everyone else? “
This sounds like the beginning of the tu quoque fallacy directed toward “eco-wariors”. The ad hominem in the same sentence as tu quoque makes this confusing.
.
“(particularly when those making the argument on those lies grow incredibly rich).”
This is one thing I strongly agree on. When something involves trillions of dollars of economic activity, I’m on alert for politics getting involved. I don’t speculate about specific scenarios without evidence, but I know the political motivation to lie is there.
"A slightly higher proportion of American adults qualify as scientifically literate than European or Japanese adults, but the truth is that no major industrial nation in the world today has a sufficient number of scientifically literate adults,” he said. “We should take no pride in a finding that 70 percent of Americans cannot read and understand the science section of the New York Times.”
Approximately 28 percent of American adults currently qualify as scientifically literate, an increase from around 10 percent in the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to Miller's research. "
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...
I found many more problems in the article. The author conflates empirical evidence, classical induction, and the scientific method. Those are three different things.
The left/right thing seems to have changed in my lifetime. I think I'm reasonably smart, yet I'm baffled why it's something people get worked up about or what it even means.