gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) (09/01/88)
In article <dpl4c#3C744O=eric@snark.UUCP> eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) writes: >In article <1578@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> Gilbert Cockton writes: >Gilbert, you have 'scientific method' confused with reductive materialism. >Scientific method is a *theory of confirmation*, proceeding from the >identification of 'truth' with 'predictive value'. On the confusion, I only find myself echoing what many scientists themselves believe. There is very little in your alternative which could be called a method. Certainly, the presence of language, understanding and intention in human interaction makes it very difficult to talk of predictive value. Many robust laboratory results in psychology don't seem to extend unconditionally to real world situations. This difficulty of extension to the real world is one of the major headaches for scientific psychology. I'd be interested in the "authority" of reducing scientific method to "something to do with prediction". It's not an argument I've seen before and I can't see what you could "predict" on the work of an apprentice scientist told that that this is all there is to method! Truth is going to come harder than this. The other interesting point raised is what forms of non-Truth are they and why are they inferior. >Another point: you attribute the lure of 'big science' to its success at >facilitating 'material production', but very much as though that's a sort >of inferior substitute for something else. Care to name the 'something else'? There are many "something elses" but their relationship to material production is not one of substitution. Obviously, all the "immaterial" :-) must co-exist with the material. But as you asked, the areas beyond material production are: human relationships, professional standards, organisational design, job design, personal autonomy, transmission and preservation of knowledge about material production, educational attainment, access to cultural resources, life skills, social skills, avoidance of alienation and anomie, writing good comedy scripts, art etc. etc. >I'll bet you wouldn't speak so slightingly of 'material production' if you >were living in the conditions of poverty, misery and fear that were the lot >of 99.9% of humanity before the beginnings of scientific improvements in >'material production'. I'm not speaking slightingly of material production at all, just of the philistinism and narrow mindedness that results when forms of knowing proven for control of the physical environment are held to be the only meaningful forms of knowing for the human environment. It is the dominance of positivist epistemology that's the problem, not the achievements of human interaction with nature. But your association of science and invention is very very shakey. I do not for one moment believe that anyone with more than a week's reading on the Industrial Revolution believes that scientific method has been a sufficient cause for improvements in the improved control over nature witnessed since the Renaissance. The relationship between science, industrialisation and demography is a stock undergraduate history question (which I have answered in my time). The influence of "science" is in no way clear cut. If you seriously want to argue that "science" has been the sole cause of material progress in modern history, then you should test out your views against the historical record, both industrial and pre-industrial. Were the Greeks scientific? The Romans? The Egyptians? Modern Americans? Nineteenth century engineers? Chinese Ming porcelain craftsmen? Renaissance herbalists? Too many scientists highjack developments in history without ever bothering to study the real complexities of historical change. The history of medicine is a well-contained area for study and I would recommend the work of the British Welcome Insititute for the History of Medicine as one good place to start if one is seriously interested in establishing the proper credit for scientific attitudes in the expansion of our control over nature. >'Big science' has flaws, but it gets imitated because it is a stunning and >unprecedented *success* for humanity. You forget or ignore this only at the >risk of looking rather silly. Depends on my audience. *YOU* would look very silly in an audience on historians of science, economic historians, technological historians and intellectual historians. -- Gilbert Cockton, Department of Computing Science, The University, Glasgow gilbert@uk.ac.glasgow.cs <europe>!ukc!glasgow!gilbert