Steve, Platt, Ron et al > Platt: > >The whole scientific enterprise is accepted on faith. > > Steve: > I don't accept science on faith. I apply the same standards for scientific > claims > as to claims made by anyone about anything.
Steve, you are confusing "the scientific enterprise" with specific bodies of scientific knowledge. Yes, scientific knowledge is contingent on empiricism, but Platt is in some sense correct - much as it pains me to say ;-) - even if "whole accepted on faith" is the kind of thing only an extremist would say. There are several articles of "faith" in science ... ultimate intelligibility is one (as Ron indicates) ... and objectivism (SOMism) is another (despite the weirder aspects of quantum physics - observer participation, non-locality, many-worlds, whatever, etc.) ... and another is the myth that science is (not just should be, notice) value-free. Scientific method is not itself testable by scientific method. Few scientists would stand up and claim those articles on faith - it would be very unscientific to do so - but few would disagree with them despite being unable to formulate any empirically testable hypotheses about them. See Nick Maxwell. Ian Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
