So how do scientists gain knowledge, if not by using the scientific method?pic.twitter.com/KaSVdLklhh
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So how do scientists gain knowledge, if not by using the scientific method?pic.twitter.com/KaSVdLklhh
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.
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.
Curious what your source is for "nearly all scientists claim to believe it"? I associate it with science fans, less so with good scientists (though there are _some_ very good scientists who use the phrase). Also, related:pic.twitter.com/JGflUiSIoa
I always thought that "the scientific method", like a lot of philosophical ideas, boils down to "y'know, thinking, doing, learning, the way you would if you actually gave a shit". It's sort of vacuous, but you need to give it a name to distinguish it from blind stupidity.
I'm quite happy to adopt "y'know, thinking, doing, learning, the way you would if you actually gave a shit" as a formal definition of "The Scientific Method" 
Interesting comparison: in mathematics, what makes something a proof? I think the answer is, that it convinces other mathematicians of something. Likewise, science is about convincing other scientists (and others) that nature behaves in a particular way.
There’s a lot of truth to this; but science is genuinely different from (e.g.) theology, where “convincing other theologists” is the whole of it. No one has been able to find a hard-line test for what makes science different, but the differences are vital and worth investigating.
I think a proof actually does refer to...a shape, sort of, Out There, even if different people will write it up differently and disagree on what counts as "trivial" vs what needs more unpacking. There is a pattern in which write-ups will get graded as "proofs" vs. "not proofs".
Yes…. setting aside the unanswerable metaphysical questions, math is uniquely hard-edged in the sense that once a matter is settled, it virtually always stays settled. Whereas this is rare in the general case of convincing a group.
I think this is only because mathematics does not say anything about nature or rely on experiments, so mathematicians can use a much higher bar of convincement. Apart from that, anything that meets this bar is a proof.
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