On Sep 19, 2006, at 2:04 PM, bob allen wrote:
> > it is not science which has become the prostitute, it is > individuals which have prostituted themselves and > commit fraud- science is just a process, not a thing. > After a long life in the sciences and engineering, I've come to believe that the scientific method has some basic flaws, two of which are as follows (there are others as well): 1. It can only be applied to questions which lend themselves to experimentation. Thus, many questions of "existence" (eg, does ball lighting occur in nature, do aliens visit earth, is there life after death, does cold fusion ever occur, etc etc) are almost entirely unreachable by its method. BTW, many of these questions are the most interesting, which I believe leads to the common perception that scientists often don't pursue the truly intriguing problems. 2. It depends upon the familiar sequence of hypothesis, experimentation, prediction, testing of predictions, new hypothesis, etc. Every step in the process has rigorous criteria and a whole slew of "best practices" that have grown up over the centuries, except one -- the hypothesis step. This is the step that depends the most on intuition, guessing, and a large dose of the A-HA! factor. It is also the step that is most likely to be shut down by propaganda, dominant paradigms, profit motive, et.al. In every age, the ability to conceive of novel hypotheses is compromised in certain ways, and science is narrowed as a result. And here's a third: because so many scientists believe that the scientific method is the ONLY path to valid knowledge, they will rarely admit its weaknesses or that important information about the universe can come in any other way. -K _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
