-Caveat Lector-
In a message dated 99-08-23 00:21:13 EDT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>And your characterizations about scientific paradigms are absurd and
>totally inaccurate. Scientists make their reputations by squashing old
>paradigms,not worshipping them - by establishing new paradigms, not
>abjuring them. You've never read a scientific journal, have you?
Capital B Baloney. You obviously have not studied Thomas Kuhn's "The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions," which describes --and cites numerous
examples of-- the very opposite. As a rule, paradigms in science change only
when the old-fart "authorities" who stubbornly, in defiance of reason, defend
them --exactly like medieval theologians emotionally over-invested in DOGMAS,
as a matter of FAITH-- finally die off -- giving way to a younger generation
not so much entrenched in fossilized, by-now dubious beliefs.
There is little "objectivity" in Science -- except in the MICRO-scale where
researchers (merely technicians) are too specialized in their areas of
inquiry to dare to "theorize"
anyway. Science labors under the iron weight of peer-pressure (facing those
same old farts who determine who's "respectable" and who isn't), academic
worship of sacred cows favored by the scientific Establishment, and of course
POLITICS -- the mercenary business of getting funded and published. Science
IN PRACTICE is just like medieval RELIGION, except for its being
materialistic --money-grubbing-- instead of "spiritual."
The only people who extol Science as some sort of bias-free paradise for
Reason are either paid propagandists for the profession ("Every profession is
a conspiracy against the public"--GB Shaw) or else cockeyed optimists who
can't distinguish between the ideal and the real. One sign of myth passing
for reality is this "pop," subjectively-based reification of Scientific
Method -- in which professional scientists have more grounding and about
which they're consequently more humble. "Scientific Method" is aimed at
DISPROVING hypotheses, NOT "proving" them -- i.e., at EXCLUDING certain
variables as "causative" (correlative, to be more precise) of observable
effects. There's a taboo about daring to state that anything is TRUE -- one
can only safely state what is NOT true, being dis-proven. Well and good if
you're looking to eliminate possible variables and narrow the field for
further research (i.e., for more tightly-focused DIS-proving), but in complex
systems like the organic, there are just TOO MANY VARIABLES to ever be
individually addressed (much less to be restricted to "laboratory
conditions," a highly ARTIFICIAL and by definition OUT OF CONTEXT situation!.
More must be EXCLUDED from the equation than could ever be subjected to
"testing," and any real "causes" of a phenomenon will consequently be among
those variables that ELUDE confinement under "laboratory conditions." Hence
Scientific Method ceases to be accurate, or even MEANINGFUL, beyond a certain
narrow scale and range of propositions where there exists an unrepresentative
lack of complexity and synergistic function. It's the method itself which
predisposes toward MECHANISTIC explanations, because "Science" is by
definition technically incapable of addressing any phenomena that are more
complex -- e.g., phenomena such as Life. Everything must fit too neatly into
a Procrustean bed.
Not that I'm knocking "science," defined as an IDEAL, just CRITIQUING it, in
terms of its methodological limitations -- limitations which are glossed over
by laymen lacking laboratory experience and by the general public that's
encouraged to have FAITH in it rather than fully understand how it works ...
In earning my degree in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, I had the good
fortune to have as my curriculum advisor Dr Stanley Bailis, editor of a
"holistic" interdisciplinary journal for scientific theoreticians, who
required us to take a semester of courses which analyzed the NATURE of
so-called "Science," from fundamental propositions to methodological
problems, and beyond.
This was NOT an effort to "debunk" such things as Evolution (which, alas, has
been turned into some "pop science" oversimplification, presumably by design,
for "the masses") but a truly SCIENTIFIC examination of the field, holding it
to high standards -- higher than those which many "experts" have, they being
often irrational in vainglory
and capable of unscrupulous behavior such as plagiarism and falsification of
results.
(Besides, being an authority in one discrete field of practice --name any--
in no wise qualifies one to speak as an authority on SCIENCE -- or even to
UNDERSTAND it!)
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