Ravi writes: > to throw in a bit more into this: some of this suspicion arose from
> observing a magician and defender of "western science" (and i agree with
> jim's use of the quoted prefix 'western'), named 'the amazing randi',
> carry out some tricks at bell laboratories. in a self-congratulatory
> tone he described his travels to third-world nations to expose
> superstitions and errors (among the 'experts' and the people there), and
> was met with much adulation and applause from the assembled ph.d's and
> men of science. recently a leading researcher, a rising star in the
> scientific community, at the very same bell labs was found to have been
> doctoring his data and results, for years. what was more interesting was
> to note that the magician's lecture was carried to various other sites
> using old techniques of simulcasting, but also by multicast streaming
> over the internet. and that latter technology, one of the fastest
> growing and far reaching efforts of the last few decades, had derived
> little contribution from the inbred community that was enjoying the
> magician's 'in' jokes. this caricature in many ways seemed to represent
> the way science exists in society.
FWIW, the little I've seen of James Randi's stuff is that he tries to debunk _all_ views, both "Western" and "non-Western" (following the tradition of Houdini). He sheds doubt on the whole phenomenon of hypnotism and altered states of consciousness (for example), which goes too far. The entire "skeptic" community (Martin Gardner, the late Carl Sagan, Michael Shermer, et al) can be self-righteous. Methinks they don't apply enough skepticism to their own enterprise sometimes. (Shermer is a libertarian right-winger, whereas other skeptics, such as the late Stephen Jay Gould, are on the left. They disagree with each other sometimes: for example, as a psychologist, Shermer rejects Randi's rejection of hypnotism.) But these guys at least have fought mysticism, the spoon-bending of Uri Geller, etc., etc. I wish economists would be more skeptical, rejecting mystical notions such as that of the "Invisible Hand" (a.k.a., the Walrasian Auctioneer). (One of the reasons why we see antagonism toward science on pen-l is because most economists mix mysticism with a dollop of science and then call it "science.")
The Bell Labs guy got caught -- by other scientists. That's a victory -- of the bittersweet sort -- for science. Of course, it was a blot on science's escutcheon that such fraud would ever occur and that the guy would be so respected for so long. It suggests the corrupting influence of the "star system" on science.
In a different message, I wrote:
> "Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself." -- Richard Feynman.
>
> That doesn't mean that all self-styled (or society-styled) scientists live
> up to Feynman's definition. No-one's perfect, while some don't understand
> this view.
Ravi answers:>i do not understand this view. leading scientists have consistently
fooled themselves (whether it be eddington about the relativity
experiment, shockley about race, etc etc), non-scientists think in ways
that attempt to not fool themselves but whose thought nonetheless is
often pre-scientific i.e., if its rigour and honesty that we are talking
about then that is hardly unique to science. or if feynman says that
science provides a unique way to avoid fooling oneself (i.e., we are
back to the formalization issue and feynman is left with a very small
subset of what is accepted as science today), i would like to hear more
about that. i am afraid this definition, standing by itself, doesn't
help me.<
Contrary to what I said, Feynman's phrase is not a definition. But the point of is that scientists should take no perspective for granted. Skepticism should be the rule, while there are no final conclusions, only hypotheses to be tested in a logical and/or empirical way. (In addition, I would point out that scientists often fall for a logical/empirical fallacy of supposing that a narrow specialization can be adequate. But this leaves important matters out.) Eddington -- and other scientists -- have been fooled, but that's because scientists are human (and in society, to boot).
It should also be noted that there are some propositions in science which can't be tested in any way. This is the basis for Kuhn, _et al_'s work. (Occam's Razor, for example, is one of these.) But a scientist should be conscious of the role of such propositions, highlighting their role.
> BTW, I still want to know what the alternative is to scientific
> (logical-empirical) thinking.
Ravi:>but people have been thinking logically and empirically before there was
'science', have they not? <
Of course. "Science" is nothing but a distillation of an important component of human thinking.
BTW, the (hopefully) old-fashioned scientific disdain for "folk science" is not inherent in scientific thought. It's part of the arrogance of (European-based) Enlightenment/Modernist thinking, which unfortunately infected -- and still infects -- many scientists.
>and incompleteness means that we have to act
even when logical empirical evidence is non-conclusive, and
(computational theory) complexity tells us that we have to apply
non-optimal rules of thumb to choose such actions. <
Scientists see this. The scientific perspective is an ideal that's often hard to apply in practice.
>worse, penrose [a scientist, no?] argues
that the process of proving (as carried out by humans) contains
non-computational steps. i do not believe the question is one of an
*alternative* to scientific thinking. the question is only what position
does *scientific thinking* (once we have defined what it is) take within
the umbrella of *thinking*.<
I think scientists see this.
BTW, strangely enough, my vision of what "science" is comes partly from my own father's summary (in his undergraduate senior thesis) of Thorstein Veblen's perspective on the issue. It is strange because in recent memory, I never got along with my father. He told often that "economics is nothing but witchcraft." He forgot to add the word "most" before the phrase.
JD
