This is a weirdly anti science take from people on the left. “Poop smells” is less compelling a case for change than “we’re all gonna die of germs if we don’t get sanitation.”
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Replying to @TWLadyGrey @nberlat and
How is this anti-science? It’s a description of how things happened and tend to happen.
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Replying to @TheWeaseKing @nberlat and
Because it’s painting one of the marvels of modern discovery as a random happenstance.
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Replying to @TWLadyGrey @nberlat and
No one said that though. They said that we did things without knowing precisely WHY they worked that way, but that it seemed to work- and that we worked out why later.
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Replying to @TheWeaseKing @TWLadyGrey and
Another example: People knew about infection by contact with the infected for thousands of years prior to germ theory being proved.
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Replying to @TheWeaseKing @nberlat and
Semmelweis was trying to convince doctors to wash their hands in the 1850s!
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Replying to @TWLadyGrey @TheWeaseKing and
right, but through trial and error I believe, not because he had a well developed understanding of germs.
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Replying to @nberlat @TheWeaseKing and
I think we are crossing plots here. My assumption is a 19th century doctor was aware of how the scientific method works and it probably shaped his thinking.
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Replying to @TWLadyGrey @TheWeaseKing and
this is absolutely false! the scientific method is a modern day invention and historians and philosophers of science generally believe it has little to do with how science works!
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Replying to @nberlat @TheWeaseKing and
I think this debate is suffering from “science is what I say science is” and “the scientific method is what I say it is.”
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Well, no, it's acknowledging that if "science" literally just means "knowing things" then it becomes a much less useful term and then there's no such thing as a "pre-scientific civilization" etc
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Replying to @arthur_affect @nberlat and
So you and Noah are arguing that science doesn’t exist and thus we can’t thank science for life expectancy being what it is today. If that’s where you want to take this debate then
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Replying to @TWLadyGrey @arthur_affect and
of course not! we're arguing that evidence and history should be used to examine the workings of science itself! it's anti science, and anti historical, to insist science works the way you think it does and to dismiss counterevidence as ideologically intolerable!
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