The popularity of this concept of """the"" scientific method" is baffling. Basically no philosophers of science held that such a thing existed post-Kuhn, and that wasn't universally believed before then. Yet it is The Standard taught in many public schools.
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Replying to @FateOfTwist_
Yup; and nearly all scientists claim to believe in it, although two minutes of consideration of their own typical working day would be adequate to disprove it. It’s a law of nature that everyone has to have a religion, and this is one of them.
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Replying to @Meaningness
It just smells of bad education to me. Where did the phrase even come from and why is it the standard?
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Replying to @FateOfTwist_ @Meaningness
like, it's what is taught to children and teenagers. It's not something scientists make up for themselves and teach at the level of post-secondary
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Replying to @FateOfTwist_ @Meaningness
perhaps it’s propaganda from science to the lay public? (not saying scientists intentionally designed it as propaganda, just that it’s a pat, reassuring story that seems to function as such.)
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Replying to @KevinSimler @FateOfTwist_
Yes; although maybe more from HS science teachers than from actual scientists.
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Replying to @Meaningness @KevinSimler
Pretty sure it's in the curriculum, not just how science teachers interpret it. Who set these curricula?
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And what have the philosophers of science been doing? How did they let this happen?
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Replying to @FateOfTwist_ @KevinSimler
I’m not sure about this, and I’d like to hear from an insider. But I *think* that the answer is that they figured out that the rationalist stories were all wrong—starting with Kuhn in 1962, and then then “Stanford Disunity Mafia” worked out the details in the 1980s. >
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And then the field imploded. It was only funded because scientists wanted philosophers to tell the world that Science is the one true way to Truth, and philosophers stopped saying that. >
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And also the philosophers didn’t have a positive alternative—an explanation of how science *does* work which would point to ways we could do it better. That’s what I’m trying to do.
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Replying to @Meaningness @KevinSimler
Have you read much of the scientific practice and neopragmatist schools of philosophy, and history and philosophy of science in particular? I think you'd find a lot of affinity in van Fraassen's Scientific Representation, Chang's Is Water H2O, and Putnam's Renewing Philosophy
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Replying to @FateOfTwist_ @KevinSimler
Thank you! I have read things by each of those three, but not the specific works you mention…. and yes they are to my taste
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