Eva,
I wasn't aware I had done any such thing. I am simply saying that what the
historians of science, and some philosophically inclined scientists like
the physicists Victor Weisskopf and Hans Christian Von Baeyer, describe
scientists doing is an integrated whole brain exercise, yet the definitions
commonly used by scientists, like the definition that was posted on this
list serve, deny the right brain component. They also deny the cultural
groundedness of science.
Simply put, there is an art to science and the metaphors it employs come
out of the general culture. Definitions of science which ignore these
facts are simply inaccurate. How most scientists define what they do is a
myth in the pejorative sense.
To describe science as just a method is ahistorical. That is like saying
neo-classical economics is just a method, when we know that it embodies
deep myths of a dominant elite within the culture and which enables them to
justify their social dominance and their policies. The mechanical
mythology of classical science is just as biased and also lends credibility
to a social elite - the scientific establishment - and its control of the
institution of science and through that the way in which the culture
experiences and interprets the world.
What is instructive is that if you read the biographies of the great
scientists, the ones recognized as breaking paradigms, most of them came to
science via the arts or have a very strong artistic streak. Newton was an
alchemist first and foremost and to the end. Alchemy integrates mind,
spirit and experimentation inextricably up together. He gave up the study
of mechanics in his thirties and devoted the entire rest of his long life
to alchemy. Maynard Keynes referred to him as the last great magician.
Heisenberg, the Newton of our times, was a classicist before he was a
physicist and the study of the classics is about understanding ancient
cultures and their myths, their philosophies and particularly their poetry,
the ultimate fusion of emotion and intellect.
Mike
>>
>> Yes, scientists are human, but when we try to define something, shouldn't
>> it define what is, not what its practitioners mistakenly assume it to be ?
>> Science in its description of itself denies the entire right brain creative
>> side of itself. It does this because the mythology of science is
>> objectivity and subjective pattern making is heresy to that mythology. Yet
>> in fact science is a blend of the two.
>>
>
>Science is a method. I detest any separation of
>thinking into "artist" and "scientist". I think we
>all do and need both, but this has nothing to do with
>the way science works.
>
>Eva
>
>
>> Mike H
>>
>> >Mike H:
>> >> Regarding the subject of what is science and definitions which emphasized
>> >> observation and rejection of theories when counter factual data is
>> >> presented, I thought the two following documents would be of interest.
>> >>
>> >> Scientists do not as a rule observe and then theorize. They typically do
>> >> it the other way round. When they find the data does not confirm the
>> >> hypothesis, the usual reaction is not to reject the hypothesis, but to
>> >> assume it was a bad set of data and proceed to draw another set.
>> >>
>> >
>> >Scientists are human, they not always adhere to their own principles.
>> >That doesn't make those principles defunct. The good news is that
>> >the method always wins out in the long run, when all the data is in
>> >the public domain, and peers have a free run at the re-analysis.
>> >I sent on your piece on Gold for a review...
>> >
>> >Eva
>> >"So the universe is not quite as you thought
>> >it was.
>> > You'd better rearrange your beliefs, then.
>> > Because you certainly can't rearrange the
>> > universe."
>> > -- Isaac Asimov &
>> > Robert Silverberg,
>> > _Nightfall_
>> >[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>
>>
>>
>>
