On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 11:29 PM, John Berry <berry.joh...@gmail.com> wrote:
But it might be scientific, if scientific does not mean logical and > truthful. > > But when I say scientific, I mean logical and truthful. > What science is is something that smart people have spent their entire careers trying to characterize. They all disagree with one another and with practicing scientists. But if I had to take a stab at it, I'd guess that science is a system we've come up with to systematize certain types of knowledge about the world. It assumes an objective reality. And it only deals with those things that can be empirically established, or that can be systematically elaborated from an empirical basis. Phenomena that go beyond these two things may be proper subjects of knowledge, but not scientific knowledge -- they belong to the realms of art or religion, for example. You raise an interesting philosophical question -- why would an experience that is widely shared not provide scientific evidence for either? If you can establish that the experience is widely shared, then think we can say that it provides evidence for something. Then question, then, is whether that something is properly "scientific." I think it's in this particular detail that all the difficulties lie. Eric
