http://www.nysun.com/arts/fight-for-the-life-of-the-mind/76744/
[Krimel]
Thanks for the tip, Platt. I especially enjoyed the final paragraph:
"There is progress in science, and some views really are superior to
others,
regardless of the color, gender, or country of origin of the scientist
holding that view. Despite the fact that scientific data are "theory
laden,"
science is truly different than art, music, religion, and other forms of
human expression because it has a self-correcting mechanism built into it.
If you don't catch the flaws in your theory, the slant in your bias, or
the
distortion in your preferences, someone else will, usually with great glee
and in a public forum - for example, a competing journal! Scientists may
be
biased, but science itself, for all its flaws, is still the best system
ever
devised for understanding how the world works."
DM: Is science so unique? What is this self-correcting mechanism?
If it means that theory is checked against experience do we not have
to do that with all forms of knowledge? I agree that science is impressively
successful, but why is that? Is it because it is such a co-operative
activity?
Above all one that is not paralysed by disagreement. But why is that?
One reason is measurement and quantity, these are aspects of experience
and experiment that are easier to agree than other aspects. But not all
of experience can be quantified and measured and so science alone would
be a poor form of knowledge. But what to measure and research? Here
scientists can
disagree as much as in any other field. And just because other field find
agreement and
testing more difficult (you can't experiment on human behaviour often due to
ethical problems)
is these any reason to fail to do them too. Science is perhaps less
advantaged by its method
(and there is no single method) than its subject matter. But let's not only
deal with
easy, quantifiable subject matter. Science also mainly deals with order and
processes
that repeat. Most of life-experience is without order and is unique.
Something
art and religion tries to handle whilst science merely washes its hands of
such difficulties,
not to mention questions of value.
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