dsr@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU (Dana S. Richards) (03/16/88)
In article <5229@uwmcsd1.UUCP> markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins) writes: >Half the difficulty in trying to refute or verify someone like Velikovsky is >that practically noone has the requisite background to match the scope of >his works. At the very least, if he were wrong, it showed that specialization >had crippled the ability of science to properly evaluate someone's hypotheses. It is unfortunate that you have chosen V as your example. His success in impressing people relies solely on their NOT being able to evaluate it. Experts in the various fields he feigns expertise have shown that his conclusions make no sense and, further, he usually gets his facts wrong (often deliberately misquoting). Why should anyone try to understand V's "big picture" when it is built on sand? >People who want to protect the integrity of science, without constraining >against new ideas should want to see the end to this mindless pursuit of >ever-increasing specialization. This, I believe, is a misconception. While there is much specialization, there is many (perhaps an equal number) of people trying to make sense of it all. The specialist are neccessary, and since they produce new facts are much more visible. On the other hand, much of the cross-synthesis I have seen has been infertile. (The physics vs. mysticism angle has been particularly barren.) dana
markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins) (03/17/88)
In article <2311@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU> dsr@uvacs.cs.virginia.edu.UUCP (Dana S. Richards) writes: >In article <5229@uwmcsd1.UUCP> markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins) writes: > >>Half the difficulty in trying to refute or verify someone like Velikovsky is >>that practically noone has the requisite background to match the scope of >>his works. At the very least, if he were wrong, it showed that specialization >>had crippled the ability of science to properly evaluate someone's hypotheses. > >It is unfortunate that you have chosen V as your example. His success in >impressing people relies solely on their NOT being able to evaluate it. >Experts in the various fields he feigns expertise have shown that his >conclusions make no sense and, further, he usually gets his facts wrong >(often deliberately misquoting). I'd be interested in seeing an example of this. I've heard a lot about this. >Why should anyone try to understand >V's "big picture" when it is built on sand? To see if it makes any sense. It's the big picture we are primarily interested in. If the details prove inaccurate, often they can be refined to make things consistent. A good example of this is Infinitesimals before people like Robinson. The underlying theory of infinitesimals actually turns out to be CONSISTENT, but back in the 19th century the concept was not made clear enough to be consistent ... so it was virtually abandoned for 100 years until Robinson used Model Theory to give it a proper formulation. It usually happens that the people who first come across the ideas do not have them completely sorted out. Consistency is something that is developed over time. > >>People who want to protect the integrity of science, without constraining >>against new ideas should want to see the end to this mindless pursuit of >>ever-increasing specialization. > >This, I believe, is a misconception. While there is much specialization, >there is many (perhaps an equal number) of people trying to make sense of >it all. I'd go further and say that there is a growing trend in this direction. >The specialist are neccessary, and since they produce new facts >are much more visible. On the other hand, much of the cross-synthesis >I have seen has been infertile. (The physics vs. mysticism angle has been >particularly barren.) Specialization, as I consider the term is exclusionary. Committment and persistence are still possible even when you concentrate one several fields. This is something I call multi-specialization (for lack of a better name.) It has the best of both worlds: an overall grasp of the big-picture AND the depth that a specialist typically has. The simple fact is that in the process of learning wwe are also META-LEARNING (i.e. learning how to learn). I believe, based on my experience, that there is a threshold beyond which the accumulated experience with learning makes accquiring new expertises virtually effortless (but there is still the time factor to some degree.)