It's not relativism, thats PoMo. Its pragmatism. (at least if you're talking JP).
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Replying to @HPluckrose @ericvonotter
So did people before science have no access to truth?
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Replying to @premodernism @ericvonotter
There wasn't really a before science. People have always tested things empirically & found evidence they are true. eg How crops grow best.
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eg, by 13th century, at least, was being noted that often illiterate surgeon-barbers had higher success rate than university trained doctors
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Some ideologically-motivated historians will claim that this is evidence of folk knowledge over scientific knowledge. It's the opposite.
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If true (data scanty but seems likely given what each were doing) it was the triumph of empiricism over myth.
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University-trained doctors were taught the ideas of Greek medicine mixed with Christianity. Humours, Wandering uteri. etc.
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The uneducated had no access to this & just kept trying different things to see what worked. This seems to have worked better.
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Replying to @HPluckrose @ericvonotter
Yeah! Exactly! That's pragmatism in a nutshell.
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It's empiricism. We now know why foxglove worked better for heart problems than purging, for example.
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