From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Wed Dec 11 2002 - 11:12:43 MST
> (Lee Corbin <lcorbin@tsoft.com>):
>
> 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.
So the method is humbug because while scientists are doing it
they don't call things by their formal names or use the numbered
steps in order? That's a pretty silly objection. While I
certainly agree that 90% of working scientists aren't consciously
following a method-like-a-recipe, that doesn't mean the method
isn't there. Descriptions such as the above are meant to
capture the essence of which scientific practices work and
which don't with some philosophical rigor. The fact that many
scientists may not think in those terms is irrelevant. The
fact is that they /do/ form hypotheses and they /do/ create
falsifying experiments and the /do/ rely on things like
statistical tests and earlier methods and results that also
used these methods. And of course those who apply for grants
better be able to describe their work in more formal, rigorous
terms if they expect to get funded.
Further, the codification of the method is not meant to be a
revealed truth from on high or anything--it's just a hypothesis
in its own right about what works, and is being tested all the
time. But it's important to have an underlying philosophy of
science because sometimes it's not clear what a result means or
how to interpret it, or what tests would further enlighten.
Yes, it may at first appear that scientists are just "trying
things out" in naive ways that even children and animals can
do, but children and animals often make bad conclusions: if a
child always gets a cold in the winter, he'll think they're
actually caused by cold weather; if he takes an herb and his
cold goes away, he'll think the herb cured him. People have
been "trying things out" informally for thousands of years,
and that's given us shamans, faith healers, accupuncture,
ayurveda, and piles of dead bodies. For over 10,000 years
of human history, a kid with lukemia died 100% of the time,
no exceptions. Because of modern science, now /most/ kids
with lukemia survive. And that science was, both imformally
and formally, based on the philosophical foundations laid
down by Bacon, Popper, and other philosophers of science.
/Something/ is different about what scientists are doing
today, that works, and what they had been doing for 10,000
years, which didn't work. Calling that difference "scientific
method" is a good way to identify it. Do you have a better
term?
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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