Jeff Ricker wrote:
> Annette Taylor posted a wonderful update describing how she
> attempted to explain the scientific aspects of psychology to
> the chemistry instructor who saw psychology as being unscientific.
> Nevertheless, in a second post, she seemed to take it all back
> by stating the following:
>
> > Science used to be defined in Popperian terms, as an enterprise with
> > its goal as prediction and control. Chaos theory thoroughly
> > destroyed that notion. Complex systems are unpredictable.
Jeff - I agree with your objection (below) to these claims, but I think
you're misattributing them. Annette didn't make that post, William McCown
did. Were you somehow convinced by the post that an individual's behavior is
unpredictable? ;)
> Science is based on the notion that general principles
> describing predictable relationships can be constructed.
> I still am not very familiar with chaos theory, but I
> would be surprised if the goals of prediction
> and control have been "thoroughly destroyed" by it.
You're obviously correct about this - "general principles describing
predicable relationships can be constructed", and have been successfully
constructed for thousands of years (at least). At worst, Chaos theory sets
limits on the possible accuracy of prediction of certain, very specific
phenomena over certain time spans. It means that Leibniz was wrong when he
said that he could predict the entire future of the universe from a
sufficiently detailed knowledge of its current state (and of the laws
controlling change). But it certainly does not mean much of anything more
than that.
Paul Smith
Alverno College
