From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Wed Dec 11 2002 - 01:05:59 MST
Olga writes
> Carl Sagan wrote: "There is no other species on Earth that does science. It
> is, so far, entirely a human invention, evolved by natural selection in the
> cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it works. It is not perfect. It can
> be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have,
> self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything."
>
> I'm wondering, Lee, why you seem to think that the scientific method is
> overvalued. What method would you use in its place?
Hi Olga!
First, I dispute that there really is anything called
"the scientific method", or, if there is, that it is
anything practiced regularly by human beings.
>From http://phyun5.ucr.edu/wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node6.html#SECTION02121000000000000000
1. Observe some aspect of the universe.
2. Invent a tentative description, called a hypothesis,
that is consistent with what you have observed.
3. Use the hypothesis to make predictions.
4. Test those predictions by experiments or further observations
and modify the hypothesis in the light of your results.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until there are no discrepancies between
theory and experiment and/or observation.
Ahem, well, I don't believe that the history of science
(or of anything else, for that matter) supports this
idea of how science is done.
Nobody does that! Scientists are like bookkeepers, detectives,
brick-layers, auto mechanics, and good historians. They run
across things, either out of interest or necessity, and either
want to explain them or put them to use some way.
Then they do accomplish something like (2) above, but that
description is way too high falutin' (now that Damien is
back he can give me the proper comeuppance for appealing
to "plain folks" ;-)
Nobody does that. They get some kind of hunch, usually non-verbal,
about what is happening, and never formalize it into an hypothesis.
It's only after years that someone has failed to prove something
they badly wanted to, e.g., Cantor's continuum, that it gets called
an "hypothesis" out of sheer frustration.
As for (3), sometimes people verbally articulate what they
expect to happen, and sometimes they don't. If they can't
expect anything, then their brain is broken.
As for (4), yes, the brick-layer will try out a new way of
mixing mortar than a co-worker suggests, a housewife will
fall for a new product advertised on TV that she thinks might
be the ticket to solving some problem she has, and the prize-
fighter will try out a new punch that she's seen in a Kung
Fu movie.
BIG DEAL. Apes try out new things, and even kittens do.
So in conclusion, the scientific method is a humbug.
To replace it? We just keep trucking, trying to concentrate,
trying to think, trying to keep an open mind, trying to admit
(especially to ourselves) when we have been wrong, and trying
to keep on living. Even if it means getting frozen.
Lee
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