At 8:47 AM -0400 10/18/99, Michael Sylvester wrote:
> Since different methodologies give different answers,why should one
>methodology be more trustworthy than the other?
>If a placebo works ,why not use it?
Because a treatment works better.
Placebos were (and are) used when there is no treatment available that is
effective enough to justify its side effects.
This basic pragmatism is at the heart of scientific behavior, and there is
nothing 'Eurocentric' about it.
I'm sure that the Egyptian and Mesopotamian astronomers and architects who
were the original scientists worked this way, as did the Minoan navigators
and the Greeks who inherited their practices.
The Hellenistic civilization which produced the first formal descriptions
of the sceintific method was not limited to Greece. It also included Egypt
(Africa) where the city of Alexandria contained the greatest library of
ancient times, and Asia Minor (including what is now Turkey and Syria).
The mathematics of modern science would be impossible without concepts that
the Arabs learned from the (East) Indians.
When one rejects scientific practices, one rejects the collective
experience of ALL effective civilizations, not just those that happen to be
located in Europe.
Those practices will continue to propagate to the extent to which they are
effective (see Susan Blackmore on 'memes'), and that, rather than logical
argument, is the final answer.
Some observations:
The cultures of the Pacific Rim are manufacturing computer chips, not
prayer wheels. They also buy and use computers.
The Indian economy is increasingly based on computer programming; a product
which can be exported electronically (the Indians have long been excellent
mathematicians -- they invented the concept of 'zero' -- and the logic that
mathematics represents).
A new phenomenon in major American hospitals which has surfaced in the last
year:
inhabitants of third-world nations flying into the U.S. and taking a cab to
a major hospital emergency room for treatment of serious illnesses that
can't be treated at home. They've learned from friends and relatives here
that most hospital emergency rooms will treat anyone who walks through the
door.
Bellevue in NYC discovered this when they checked there records to see how
many homeless people they were treating. They found fewer homeless than
expected, but many more foreign nationals.
Cultural practices (memes) are selected to the extent that they are more
effective than competing ones. The competition is now world-wide. This,
not academic prattle, will be the final arbiter.
</rant>
* PAUL K. BRANDON [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
* Psychology Dept Minnesota State University, Mankato *
* 23 Armstrong Hall, Mankato, MN 56001 ph 507-389-6217 *
* http://www.mankato.msus.edu/dept/psych/welcome.html *
