Stefan,
I think the “founding myth of modern science” is that it led a revolt against established authority by bringing experiential observation of nature into the loop; and historically, there’s a lot of truth to that. But science in the Peircean sense was always a loop, going back to Aristotle at least (who was a better observer than most Aristotelians were in the 15th-16th centuries). Also, many of the hypotheses which the early moderns tried to test were indeed derived from prior sources, so they certainly didn’t “start from scratch” in that sense either. And I’d concur with your observations about the current “sociological phenomenon” of “science.” Gary f. From: sb [mailto:peirc...@semiotikon.de] Sent: 12-Jul-16 16:22 Gary, John, Olga, what is this thing "science" you are talking about? Do you mean the sociological phenomen or the idea of science? I think these two are a bit mixed up in your exchange. When i look at science as a sociological phenomenen i must say i have seen much hedonism, betrayal, lying, irrationality and unreasonableness in this business. In contrast i have seen farmers, nurses, carpenters, in short the so called ordinary man in the street with quite a scientific attitude. And i think it is this attitude, that makes science. It's the attitude beyond fallibilism, that people are open to being proven false. Or even more the openess of people to see things from an different angle which is beyond the true/false binary. It's also the attitude to speak the truth. Speak the truth to power or a friend and the willingness to risk something in so doing. Thoreau gave a short description of this ethos: "It takes two to speak the truth - one to speak and another to hear". Basically, that is the basis of the relation of Grapheus and the Graphist in the EG. But all the techniques, methods, statistics etc. are almost decorative accessory in contrast to the ethos. It can be found inside and outside the sociological phenomenon "science". It also existed long before modern science. It is one of the founding myths of modern science that it started from scratch. But where did the knowledge of the scientific revolution come from? It came from philosophy, religion, alchemy, astrology etc. All the best Stefan
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