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
“Nearly all” is just my anecdotal experience, which may be distorted by memory or atypical. Perhaps it’s also a generational thing? Indoctrination with 1950s philosophy of science may have been more prevalent when I was a student than it has been in recent decades.
The scientific method should at least be given respect as an organizing myth, one still followed in the structure of a paper, especially when there is a definite experiment. It is also worthy to try to explain how science differs from other things, both to children and outsiders.
I can see the value of that, but I think it’s doing more harm than good, on balance. One way: implicit assumption that if we spend $2bn on scientific field X we’ll get 2x the output of spending $1bn, so long as everyone is bureaucratically forced to “use the scientific method.”
Since we haven’t actually got any the-scientific-method, we can’t hold anyone to it, we can only force them to perform meaningless rituals. And since there’s no method, there’s no guarantee that spending more money will do any good. Fred Brooks’ Man-Month Myth…
I'm enough of a contrarian that after years of saying the "scientific method" is BS, I'm disagreeing with you. But myths are important, no? And however nebulous its boundaries, it is a very important thing in the modern condition, one that needs to be explained sometimes.
I do think it’s important to defend the unique value of science! Now more than ever in the past century. I agree sometimes myths can be useful for such things. I worry the populace is now savvy enough that telling them demonstrably false stories may be counterproductive.
My big, probably oversimplified, story is that science and rationality lost credibility because the stories used to justify them were false, and eventually everyone realized they were false, but proponents didn’t switch to more accurate ones. So now everything is falling apart.
If moving beyond rationality is the inevitable shape of a successive developmental stage then there doesn't need to be anything wrong with, or false about, rationality or its justifications for some people to reject it. /
But if that rejection is communicated to others who aren't ready for it, without its own attendant justification and the tools or whatever to help them also develop appropriately, then it can cause backward instead of forward movement. /
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