I'll leave Annette's attempt to tackle the Crazy Old Sea Captain (alleged) parable of science for others to follow up, and take it in a different direction. Fundamental issues in philosophy of science can be an appallingly difficult to disentangle (at least I've found it to be so), but I'll throw in the following:
Does not the superseding of Newtonian mechanics and theory of gravitation by Einsteinian relativity theory provide an illustration that science is not *inherently* circular? On an issue closely related (I think) to this one, Philip Kitcher argues that "the fact that concepts and categories are involved in observation doesn't mean that the content of the experience is determined by them or that we cannot be led by experience to reconceptualize the phenomena." (N. Koertge [ed], *A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodern Myths About Science* [1998, pp. 38-40]) Isn't this precisely what Einstein managed to achieve, the reconceptualizing of basic phenomena in physics, thereby escaping from the propensity to circularity? Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London http://www.esterson.org --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------- >Subject: Re: The Crazy Old Sea Captain - A Parable of Science? >From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2008 17:03:35 -0800 (PST) >[...] > As for the circularity issue, I think that at least in psychological science > it is exactly want leads to the ultimate demise of a theory: How does > the captain know what time to fire the cannon: he sets his watch by the > large clock out side the watchmaker's shop. How does the watchmaker > know what time it is? He sets his clock by the firing of the captain's cannon. > So it is, with, for example, levels of processing. A very nice proposition but > suffering from a fatal flaw: how do we know that we have processed > something more deeply? We remember it better. What does it mean to > have remembered something better? Well, it means we have processed > it more deeply. > This type of a lack of independent evidence when dealing with > the abstract nature of human cognitive processes can't work. > We are already in a deep black box for which we have to infer > its working. Circularity doesn't allow us to make a clear inference. > Who wants to take this in another direction? >Annette --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
