11-07-2007, 12:47 PM
Hi Vorty
you say I am getting things mixed up. Funny! Especially when you mention the chemist with his bottles... Anyway...
That I didn't mention linguistics, archeology, law and even mathematics etc is because I wasn't addressing them. Is astonomy a natural science? A good question. Is mathematics a science? Well I'll let you think about it a little more. Have any mathematician friends? Ask their opinion too. You might be suprised. Is archeology a science?
We all realize that our discussion is regards what we consider science, what we consider the purpose of science. Don't worry be happy. Especially don't get offended if someone questions the scientific nature of your discipline. No reason to get uptight. Evidently there is disagreement on the meaning and use of the word "science". I admire the work of linguists, historians and adore mathematicians even though I think they do NOT have a clue of what experimentation is all about. Astronomers do as they have to rely on instruments that need to profoundly understood to be reliable and calibrated. That goes for archeologists when they have to rely on high tech tools (radioactive dating, radar, ...).
I think I could manage with patience to the give to a linguist and historian the flavor of what it means to experiment and calibrate. They would recongize the issue of questioning the reliability of the sources. But for them I fear it would be just a metaphor. Ok some sources are unreliable more than others, but no source is unbiased and complete. How do to keep track of the uncertainties? Natural sciences do that everyday, so much so that an observation, be it passive or active, is useless if it is not accompanied by an assessment of the uncertainties. The issue of assessing uncertainities might be recongized by a linguist or historian as they too need to cross-examine the sources and to build a good case, an argument, in favor of some thesis. This idea of building a case using logic and a judicious use of "evidence" is as old as argumentations are and dates to the greeks. They quickly learned to recongize good logic ("All men are mortal, socrates is a man, socrates is mortal") from bad logic ("God is love, love is blind, Ray Charles is blind, Ray Charles is God"). But then the issue of what is a "judicious" choice of evidence remains. In natural science there is more to just framing good arguements or telling a good myth. In natural science the last call comes from experimental verification. For a natural scientist it is the very essence of understanding nature, the true goal of natural science. If I look through a tube full of pieces of stranglely shaped pieces of glass and see something, is that something real or an artifact of the piece of glass? Again an historian might appreciate the metaphor but I ask whether he grasps the essence because natural science, although a social construct (duh...), REALLY does have much to say about the REAL world out there.
anyway...
you say I am getting things mixed up. Funny! Especially when you mention the chemist with his bottles... Anyway...
That I didn't mention linguistics, archeology, law and even mathematics etc is because I wasn't addressing them. Is astonomy a natural science? A good question. Is mathematics a science? Well I'll let you think about it a little more. Have any mathematician friends? Ask their opinion too. You might be suprised. Is archeology a science?
We all realize that our discussion is regards what we consider science, what we consider the purpose of science. Don't worry be happy. Especially don't get offended if someone questions the scientific nature of your discipline. No reason to get uptight. Evidently there is disagreement on the meaning and use of the word "science". I admire the work of linguists, historians and adore mathematicians even though I think they do NOT have a clue of what experimentation is all about. Astronomers do as they have to rely on instruments that need to profoundly understood to be reliable and calibrated. That goes for archeologists when they have to rely on high tech tools (radioactive dating, radar, ...).
I think I could manage with patience to the give to a linguist and historian the flavor of what it means to experiment and calibrate. They would recongize the issue of questioning the reliability of the sources. But for them I fear it would be just a metaphor. Ok some sources are unreliable more than others, but no source is unbiased and complete. How do to keep track of the uncertainties? Natural sciences do that everyday, so much so that an observation, be it passive or active, is useless if it is not accompanied by an assessment of the uncertainties. The issue of assessing uncertainities might be recongized by a linguist or historian as they too need to cross-examine the sources and to build a good case, an argument, in favor of some thesis. This idea of building a case using logic and a judicious use of "evidence" is as old as argumentations are and dates to the greeks. They quickly learned to recongize good logic ("All men are mortal, socrates is a man, socrates is mortal") from bad logic ("God is love, love is blind, Ray Charles is blind, Ray Charles is God"). But then the issue of what is a "judicious" choice of evidence remains. In natural science there is more to just framing good arguements or telling a good myth. In natural science the last call comes from experimental verification. For a natural scientist it is the very essence of understanding nature, the true goal of natural science. If I look through a tube full of pieces of stranglely shaped pieces of glass and see something, is that something real or an artifact of the piece of glass? Again an historian might appreciate the metaphor but I ask whether he grasps the essence because natural science, although a social construct (duh...), REALLY does have much to say about the REAL world out there.
anyway...
Jeffery Wyss
"Si vos es non secui of solutio tunc vos es secui of preciptate."
"Si vos es non secui of solutio tunc vos es secui of preciptate."
