I wrote:
> Instruments are important to science, but even more important are > observations and common sense knowledge of how things work. The human > senses are reliable and just as good as any instrument . . . > As Francis Bacon put it: ". . . But, as I said at the beginning and am ever urging, the human senses and understanding, weak as they are, are not to be deprived of their authority, but to be supplied with helps." http://www.constitution.org/bacon/nov_org.htm (By "helps" he means both the scientific method and instruments.) When you assert that educated observers are incapable of confirming that the cell was producing massive amounts of heat for hours with no input, you *deprive the human senses and understanding of their authority*. That hits the nail on the head. This unfortunate tendency is widespread in modern science, and medicine. Bacon well understood that the human senses can deceive, and that rigorous analysis and instruments are essential. He invented that idea. He is the father of modern science, even more than Newton was, in my opinion. Much of the book is devoted to the ways the mind and senses cause errors. Bacon also described bad experimental technique, narrow experimental agendas, Rossi's over-hasty methods, and many other common problems with experimental science: "But the best demonstration by far is experience, if it go not beyond the actual experiment. For if it be transferred to other cases which are deemed similar, unless such transfer be made by a just and orderly process, it is a fallacious thing. But the manner of making experiments which men now use is blind and stupid. And therefore, wandering and straying as they do with no settled course, and taking counsel only from things as they fall out, they fetch a wide circuit and meet with many matters, but make little progress; and sometimes are full of hope, sometimes are distracted; and always find that there is something beyond to be sought. For it generally happens that men make their trials carelessly, and as it were in play; slightly varying experiments already known, and, if the thing does not answer, growing weary and abandoning the attempt. And even if they apply themselves to experiments more seriously and earnestly and laboriously, still they spend their labor in working out some one experiment, as Gilbert with the magnet, and the chemists with gold; a course of proceeding not less unskillful in the design than small in the attempt. For no one successfully investigates the nature of a thing in the thing itself; the inquiry must be enlarged so as to become more general. And even when they seek to educe some science or theory from their experiments, they nevertheless almost always turn aside with overhasty and unseasonable eagerness to practice; not only for the sake of the uses and fruits of the practice, but from impatience to obtain in the shape of some new work an assurance for themselves that it is worth their while to go on; and also to show themselves off to the world, and so raise the credit of the business in which they are engaged. . . ." It is astounding that he wrote this when experimental science hardly existed, in 1620. His ability see into the future was as powerful as "Doctor Mirabilis" Roger Bacon's. (Arthur Clarke, who loved coincidences, noted that the two greatest prognosticators of science happened to be named "Bacon.") - Jed
