|
there is a slight of hand in the writing, particular in the subtitle---scientific method refers both to the ideal-typical form of experiment as a basis for scientific investigation and the methods that the sciences actually employ in their normal operations, their everyday practices. by the end of the piece this sleight of hand is explained, and the point is pretty clear: there is a contrast at the least--a contradiction at worst---between the ideal-typical notion of the scientific method and the methods with which normal science operates.
so the article isn't a simple-minded science is hooey thing...it's doing something else that's a lot more interesting. i mean, conceptually it's not surprising to read that there's a problem with researchers finding what they're looking for and tending to discount dissonant information---from the viewpoint of history or philosophy of science that's in any way informed by thomas kuhn (or anyone who's written since in that historically oriented mode, using the language game of paradigm/normal science or a variant) this is not surprising. what *is* surprising is the specific cases that the article talks about, and the *ways* in which questions of epistemologial loops arise within those cases because they come framed in the approaches of practioners within various areas of the sciences and not from historians or philosophers of science.
the opening gambit of mine about those quaint professions of Faith in Science that one reads that seem to proliferate in threads about religion---i simply find those professions naive, unaware of even the most rudimentary problems that attend the philosophy of language--which are also generate epistemological problems---that are in no way addressed by the experimental method because by the structure of experiment research is predisposed to find what it is looking for----research is basically the generating and tracking of variations within a general frame that is set in advance.
none of this goes in the direction of "therefore creation science"....rather the opposite. there's abundant research out there that argues that the separation of, say, philosophy in the more language oriented mode from science---which *is* a form of philosophizing about the world---operates to the detriment of both. no-one benefits from naivete.
i'm interested in what other folk think, you included jinn, even though i think you got a little thrown by the way i framed the article...
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|