Mark said:
One problem that I see with radical empiricism (probably because I do not know
much about it), which is in effect the scientific method as I see it, is the
non-inclusion of the imagination.
dmb says:
I believe you were way off on the wrong foot with your very first sentence.
Luckily, somebody else pulled this series of quotes together already. Copy and
paste.....
Arrival at the Metaphysics of Quality
The Scientific Method
±³The number of rational hypotheses that can explain any given phenomenon is
infinite.´
³If true, that law is not a minor flaw in scientific reasoning. The law is
completely nihilistic. It isa catastrophic logical disproof of the general
validity of all scientific method! If the purpose of scientific method is to
select from among a multitude of hypotheses, and if the number of hypotheses
grows faster than experimental method can handle, then it is clear that
allhypotheses can never be tested. If all hypotheses cannot be tested, then the
results of any experiment are inconclusive and the entire scientific method
falls short of its goal of establishingproven knowledge.´
³Scientific truth was not dogma, good for eternity, but a temporal quantitative
entity that could be studied like anything else.´³The purpose of scientific
method is to select a single truth from among many hypotheticaltruths. That,
more than anything else, is what science is all about. But historically science
hasdone exactly the opposite. Through multiplication upon multiplication of
facts, information,theories and hypotheses, it is science itself that is
leading mankind from single absolute truthsto multiple, indeterminate, relative
ones. The major producer of the social chaos, theindeterminacy of thought and
values that rational knowledge is supposed to eliminate, is noneother than
science itself.´
Quality -³Quality is a characteristic of thought and statement that is
recognized by a non-thinkingprocess. Because definitions are a product of
rigid, formal thinking, quality cannot be defined.´³He had to answer the
question, If you can¶t define it, what makes you think it exists? Hisanswer was
an old one belonging to a philosophic school that called itself realism. ³A
thingexists,´ he said, ³if a world without it can¶t function normally. If we
can show that a world without Quality functions abnormally, then we have shown
that Quality exists, whether it¶sdefined or not.´
´³Does this undefined ³quality´ of yours exist in the things we observe?´ they
asked. ³Or is itsubjective, existing only in the observer?´³If Quality exists
in the object, then you must explain just why scientific instruments are
unableto detect it. You must suggest instruments that will detect it, or live
with the explanation that instruments don´t detect it because your whole
Quality concept, to put it politely, is a large pile of nonsense. On the other
hand, if Quality is subjective, existing only in the observer, then this
Quality that you make so much of is just a fancy name for whatever you like.´
³His Quality...´excellence,´ ³worth,´ ³goodness´...was not a physical property
and was notmeasurable.´
³And so: he rejected the left horn. Quality is not objective, he said. It
doesn¶t reside in thematerial world. Then: he rejected the right horn. Quality
is not subjective, he said. It doesn¶treside merely in the mind. And finally:
Phædrus, following a path that to his knowledge had never been taken before in
thehistory of Western thought, went straight between the horns of the
subjectivity-objectivity dilemma and said Quality is neither a part of mind,
nor is it a part of matter. It is a third entity which is independent of the
two.
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