1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 There is the budding edge of science (Kuhn’s paradigm shifting science  vs normal science) which speculates beyond the empirical evidence.  Science practice often overlooks (and sometimes intentionally suppresses) valid data that doesn’t agree with established scientific dogma. The history of science is full of such shenanigans. I don’t personally know, but IMHO almost all of conventional science will eventually be replaced by something else, as Newtonian Science has been replaced by Quantum Science, yet most of the equations of Newtonian Science remain as good approximations for most on-Earth situations.

2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 Kuhn’s work is itself controversial, as Social Epistemology (a discipline where these issues are explored) demonstrates.  I was influenced by Steve Fuller’s books, Social Epistemology (1988) and Thomas Kuhn: A philosophical History for Our Times (2001). The former explores the social underbelly of science and the later studies the social influences on Kuhn and analyzes the social responses to Kuhn.  Fuller appears discredited today by his studies and defense of Intelligent Design, which he claims is quite distinct from Creationism. If the designer in ID is the autopoietic cosmos itself and not some external god or force, I can cite empirical evidence that might point to this. He is excluded as contributor to Social Epistemology: Essential Readings edited by Goldman and Whitcomb (2011) – which I have not read. The discipline of Social Epistemology has recently merged with the discipline of Information Science, and this is distinct from the discipline of Science and Technology Studies.  Today there is an accelerating fragmentation of disciplines with gaps growing between them.  And, all this at a time when the belief in empirical evidence is being challenged by major corporations and politicians.

3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 Somewhere else I commented on the limitations of models that exclude humans, so I agree with the criticism of the chemical analogy for a Global Brain. However, it is a common scientific practice to start with analogies and then attempt to modify them for new situations. Within a frame of essential complementarity (which I tentatively support) we might need more than one, logically consistent explanatory system; where only one system can be operational when situational specific.

4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 Paradigm shifting science has many failures and a few outstanding successes.  On the other hand, Kuhn’s work has multiple interpretations and remains controversial.   Andrew Pickering’s THE MANGLE OF PRACTICE, Time, Agency, and Science (1995), and his later edited The Mangle in Practice: Science, Society, and Becoming (2008) cite detailed studies of how empirical researchers often shift many aspects of their research as they adjust process towards a meaningful conclusion. And I highly recommend his The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future (2010) where he champion’s a process ontology over an existential ontology for science.  I prefer to use the two ontologies as a complementarity.  The upshot of it all is that the nature of science is evolving and if you look beneath the claims for superiority you will find exciting turbulence.

5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 I don’t expect “perfection” in published documents. I have never read a doc where I haven’t noticed somethings “missing”; not so much error as incomplete.  Since so much is inter-connected, it is probably impossible to craft/compose a single document (and even a web of documents) that is complete.

6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 I keep remembering a statement from my studies in the philosophy of science:
FACTS ARE THEORY LADEN & THEORIES ARE CULTURE LADEN.

7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0 [extracted from an email]

2 Responses

  • MaheshGam

    i agree with you, science is always changing. the theories proven to be true can and will be altered with another theory., but as far as humans are concerned, science is the most logical and reliable way of understanding whats around us and what we live in, there are many theories to define what science is, this is one of them
    http://www.worldtransformation.com/what-is-science/

    Reply
    • nuet

      @MaheshGam  Unfortunately, the multiple sites and organization reached by your link is a subtle antithesis of science. Using references to many scientists and scientific knowledge it claims to know the real truth. The very title of the book: ‘The Book of Real Answers to Everything!’. In science there are no “real answers to everything” – that is a dogmatic belief.
       
      My time is too valuable to read all the material. But one part caught my eye: “why was it that humans acquired a fully conscious mind while other species didn’t?” >> “while mothers’ training of their infants in unconditional selflessness enabled an unconditionally selflessly behaved, fully cooperative society to develop, this training in unconditional selflessness had an accidental by-product: it produced brains trained to think selflessly and thus truthfully and thus effectively and thus become ‘conscious’ of the relationship of events that occur through time. Other species who can’t develop unconditional selflessness can’t think truthfully and thus effectively because unconditional selflessness, which they are unable to recognise, is the truthful theme or meaning of existence.”
       
      It is scientific knowledge that many other species care for their young.
       
      This kind of dogmatic belief, in the innocent guise of wanting to uplift humankind, actually blocks scientific advancement in discovery useful knowledge to assist us in our crisis. This is not to say that some recommendations in FREEDOM may be useful; but the whole is not.
       
      Please do not reply to this.

      Reply

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