Over 90 articles and more than 30 other pages link here. That is one pretty important article. It is my opinion (and therefore it is philosophically defensible) that this constitutes the most important article in the entire wikipedia:
I would like this article to become authoritative, so that it would give aid and guidance to us wikipedians, concentrate the kooks for easier management, and become an inspiration for all cooperative endevour. Two16
I would like to remove, or at leats rewrite, the following paragraph:
As written, this is incorrect! No scientist I have ever met has failed to acknowledge the incalculable impact that mathematics has had! The above text sounds more like a disagreement with the way that science textbooks explain the scientific method, which may be a very valid criticism. However, working scientists (at least, in the hard sciences) are themselves aware of the value of math. RK 14:06 7 Jun 2003 (UTC)
RK, when you say this text reads more like..., I think that's what it was supposed to be. It is not a criticism of the scientific method as practiced, but a criticism of the scientific method as here presented. That is to say, it is warning that the list of steps given is overly simplistic and does not reflect the beliefs of actual scientists.
Incidentally, many of the comments about politics and religions are somewhat misleading, and the explanation of how the stand-off between America and Russia gives evidence that science is a social construct is just plain backwards. I'd like to remove that one, and suggest that the others be looked at.
On another point, the extra verbiage that was added to the article by the anonymous contributor about six revisions ago is poorly written and makes the article worse. Can we just remove it? --Robert Merkel 05:06 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)
That's the part about America and Russia I was referring to. It's gone.
"Scientists respond by saying that Feyerabend has constructed a series of straw-man arguments that show little comprehension of what science is and how it works."
Not even the philosophers Feyerabend attacked directly accused him of showing "little comprehension of what science is"! Certainly Popper would not have said such a thing since Feyerabend had studied quantum theory under him. Earlier in his carrier Feyerabend was considered first a "raving positivist" and later a popparian (although he denied this to the last!). In short, Feyerabend had about as much science know-how as you could reasonably stuff into one person.
I'm interested in what the straw-man arguments could have been. Do you have references to someone who said this? Then maybe we could flesh out this "scientists say" generalization with something more substantial.
Also removed commentry on Lakatos bit:
"However, only a portion of this is related to the modern scientific method, as the scientific method (as we knwo it today) did not exist until the late 1700s."
No. Lakatos was talking about modern scientific method and nothing else! --Chris
Reverted following changed to Feyerabend's criticism:
"[Feyerabend] claims that they fail as a descriptive account of the historical record; scientists respond by pointing out that the scientific method never even existed until recently, and that this method is prescriptive, not descriptive. Feyeraben also objects to any single prescriptive scientific method on the grounds that science has no single aim."
Feyerabend addresses both points (prescriptive and descriptive) and this is clear from the very next sentence after the inserted text (in bold). I don't quite follow the bit that goes, "the scientific method never even existed until recently". If it is the mention of the "historical record" that was found confusing then perhaps the words "recent history" would help. Even without this clarification I'm not sure I understand what these unnamed "scientists" were "pointing out". --Chris
You may still have him confused. Feyerabend popped his clogs in 1995. His last (unfinished) book Conquest of Abundance did not show any remarkable shift from the Feyerabend of 1975. The view that "science has no special claim to proving truth, and no more utility than any other way of thinking about the world" pretty much characterizes even the late Feyerabend and is certainly not a misunderstanding.
The only substantial change Feyerabend made to his views in Against Method is in the matter of cultural relativism. Cultural relativists treat cultures as closed systems. But as humans we have the skills to communicate across cultural boundaries. Culture and tradition is created and destroyed all the time. And those cultures in existence have fuzzy and overlapping boundaries. In other words we can defend and assimilate aspects of a culture. Ironically, cultural relativists mutilate the traditions they are trying to defend by denying their members these skills of change and interaction. So Feyerabend abandoned his relativism admitting it had as many problems as some forms of absolutism. But it would be a mistake to say that he abandoned it if favour of some other or better philosophy. If anything this deeped his commitment to epistemological anarchy.
Take another look at the Feyerabend article you quote from. Does this really mark a change in F's position or is it you who would like to see one? --Chris
I think the style at the start is poor; it needs a good, punchy opening paragraph that summarizes: This is what the scientific method is meant to be. The idea has a history. Lots of people think that it's good, but lots of people have problems with the idea, for different reasons. The fundamental problem for supporters is accounting for the lack of a unifying method per se, and the fundamental problem of the critics is accounting for the success of science itself.
Moreover I strongly disagree that proper scientific reasoning will free us to do anything; I firmly think that the scientific method is something that defies good definition. This should get some more emphasis
I've hoisted up the brief description of the scientific method to be the "punchy opening paragraph". On re-reading, I think the article flows better this way. The Anome 09:07 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)
I feel that the statement of the commonly agreed model of the scientific method should precede the discussion of whether this model is valid, actually occurs in reality, etc. The thing being criticised should be described before the critique. The Anome 10:33 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Yes, but there should be an introduction, for the reader who wants a flavor of the article without the whole thing. The first paragraph was a summary; you have a broad defintion, and then a broad statement of controversy. The defintion alone looks naked. Iwnbap
I took out the crude comparison with religion, but someone has insisted it belongs. I still don't think that it belongs here at all. There is very little that's rational about most religion, so enterring into that subject here is a needless diversion. ☮ Eclecticology 23:33 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Ec, I don't know what you intended to write, but what you actually wrote is totally incorrect. You wrote that "Theoretically one of the key differences between religion and science is that scientists are willing (and sometimes, enthusiastic) to change their beliefs when new facts and compelling logic are presented. In contrast, for the religious believer (as Gallileo found out), the tools of the scientific method must be applied to the rationalization of belief." That's a classicaly non-religious point of view! I don't have a problem with you believing this, but most classical religious believers do not hold such beliefs! Please rewrite this, as I don't understand at all the point you are trying to make. Are you saying that scientists believe that certain religious beliefs might have to be altered by new evidence? That's precisely what I have been saying all along. In contrast, the vast majority of religious believers reject this point of view outright, and hold that science will not change any of their beliefs one whit. Please rewrite to make your point clearer. RK 00:04 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)
Removed the following text:
"The scientific method is the only method proven to gain or improve knowledge about the physical world in which we live."
Proven? Not only does this side-step the whole inquiry into what scientific method is, it also makes a claim that almost no one can relate to. If you tell me that any success I have navigating and understanding the "physical world in which we live" is due to my application of the scientific method then you have a lot of explaining to do.
"No other claimed system of knowledge (such as religious revelations, mysticism, deconstructionism) has ever succeeded in obtaining useful knowledge about the physical world, nor have such proposed alternatives ever actually produced any technology based on their beliefs."
This is pure rhetoric. Philosophies of science don't produce technology. People produce technology. How otherwise could technological advances be made prior to the scientific revolution? --Chris
Scientific method is very imperialistic. It flows from a Greco-Roman, Egyptian and Judaeo-Christian-Islamic tradition that dismisses anything from outside that tradition as pagan or primitive. Anything from outside that tradition must be subjected to the evaluative rules of the tradition. The philosophical forerunners in the west and in the far east were blissfully unaware of each other when they were developing the most fundamental of their ideas. Left to their natural devices the two traditions would likely have reached many overlapping results, but there would have been, and there are differences. Insisting that the other is wrong solely based on criteria from one's own tradition amounts to cultural imperialism. ☮ Eclecticology 20:27 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)
If I can interject into the Ec/RK debate; you're both stating your points far too strongly.
RK - consider, were the Maya/Indian/Chinese astronomers, or ancient hunters, or Roman architects, etc, following the scientific method? - sure there were elements of empiricism about what they were doing, but it's tenuous to argue that they had any formal conception of the modern scientific method. Broad empiricism should not be enough to build an aquaduct by your argument, or chart and predict the movement of the stars, you need a more constrained scientific method. Further there's good argument to say that much of modern physics isn't scientific if you want to pursue the scientific method, consider gedanken experiments etc.
Starting with the first sentence I removed:
"The scientific method is the only method proven to gain or improve knowledge about the physical world in which we live."
To make my original objections clearer, here is an argument against this statement which, although equally crude and simplistic, will hopefully highlight any misunderstanding. Take any activity where you would have to "gain or improve knowledge about the physical world". Let's say rock climbing. During this activity I will explore the cliff face (physical world), hopefully make progress and achieve a concrete result (reaching the top). This leads me to say, either that I am applying the scientific method without being aware of it. Or that the removed statement is wrong.
Now this is obviously not what RK had in mind when he speaks of "knowledge" and "results" above. Could this sentence be replaced by a more sophisticated argument which adds the formalisms to escape such absurdity? Maybe. RK's examples show what "results" he would like to include, namely those where science surely played an essential role. But the examples offered (computers, rockets, spaceships...) don't tell us anything about scientific method. We don't get to learn which version of the scientific method is under discussion. Saying the words "scientific method" while pointing at scientific breakthroughs doesn't get us any further either.
because it is a misleading oversimplification of the debate. I know of no place in which Derrida or Evelyn Fox Keller makes these wholesale criticisms against science and logic; indeed they often rely on logic and the work of scientists -- and make no bones about it. If this paragraph is not referring to Derrida or Keller, then who is it referring to? There is indeed a complex argument about popular conceptions of science, self-conceptions of scientists, and, most importantly, the use to which science has been put. There are also complex critiques of positivist and empiricist epistemologies. But none of these critiques even hint an implication (let alone explicitly argue) that engineers should not rely on the laws of thermodynamics, or that we shouldn't teach the theory of evolution at school -- or that we should abandon logic and empirical evidence altogether. To suggest so is simply to construct a strawman argument in place of an accurate article. Slrubenstein
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