Talk:Science/Archive 4

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The particular issue of "what about the EO Wilson quote"

As mentioned above, I thought it worth thinking about what might be wrong with the E.O. Wilson quote because it seems people currently active in discussion are headed towards something like it BUT, it previously had objections - big objections which led to the need for all the talk page activity. Let me start with a primitive proposal. If the E.O. Wilson quote is simply not broad enough for example, what about using it with my "broad then tight idea" for the opening lines. Cutting and pasting like that would give:

Science in its broadest and oldest sense, it is any knowledge which can be put into the form of a logical and convincing explanation and communicated. In most contemporary contexts it is a systematic enterprise of gathering knowledge about the world and organizing and condensing that knowledge into testable laws and theories.

Comments?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:58, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Tetrast, because of the length of the additional discussion I hope you don't mind if I respond here concerning the opening lines question. You have proposed:

Science, in the broadest and oldest sense, is any knowledge that can be put into a form which will allow it to be demonstrated to others, by correct prediction of outcomes from given conditions. In most contemporary contexts it is a systematic enterprise of gathering knowledge about the world and organizing and condensing that knowledge into testable laws and theories.

Is this a proposal you'd consider an improvement of the current opening lines?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 05:49, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm surfing around but growing sleepy. I'm sure that that's not my draft. I have and would put firstly the characterization of science in the sense for which people came to the wiki - "Science! She blinded me with" (old song) this big knowledge-producing thing not to mention engine of change in our lives, then secondly, but right afterward! the broad old definition still current (its continued currency is why I regard it as not "jumping around" in Kenosis's sense (with all due respect to Kenosis, that editor is long-time cool)). Your comment and mine should appear in chronological order below earlier comments below (I myself have been dinged for non-chron), not above them as they do now, but instead with a note here saying "continued far below" but I'm too near sleep to actually do anything. The Tetrast (talk) 06:18, 23 September 2010 (UTC).

Self-follow-up: That's it! Is science scientific? If it is, then it is not merely static knowledge. It's productive of knowledge, scienti-fic. Good night! The Tetrast (talk) 06:27, 23 September 2010 (UTC).

Hi Tetrast. That was how I understood you. Quite possible I got it wrong. I'll be interested to see what you reckon after a good night or two of sleep! I guess my concern is that probably Kenosis, and probably also SBHarris, are still not comfortable with the opening (not really sure yet) but in any case if we can improve those opening two sentences, why not? No rush of course.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:36, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I've looked around this page, and I found that the definition that you ascribed to me was SBHarris's. I'm still okay with mezzanine's

Science is an enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge into testable laws and theories about the world. In its oldest and broadest sense, science is a body of knowledge that can be logically and convincingly explained. (See History and etymology below).

The Tetrast (talk) 21:56, 23 September 2010 (UTC).

You are right sorry. This was SBHarris. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:37, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

• COMMENT: I would say that: “Science, in the broadest and oldest sense, is any knowledge that can be put into a form which will allow it to be demonstrated to others, by correct prediction of outcomes from given conditions.” Then, you can go on to the second sentence that you have, above. The first sentence differentiates personal knowledge (like religious knowledge, ethical knowledge, and the simple knowledge of what I had for breakfast 7 days ago, while dining alone), from general and demonstrable knowledge (crafts, laws of science, engineering, etc).

  The “explanatory” power of science has been overdone, and isn’t essential. For one thing, the explanations can change, yet prediction remain the same. Example: the Bohr model of the atom excellently “explained” the Rydberg constant, but it had point electrons in 2-D circular orbits, and it was later almost totally replaced. Yet the prediction for hydrogen stayed the same to the limits of the accuracy of the times. And Einstein reduces to Newton in many cases (e.g. it gives the same predictions for rocketry to many decimal places), yet is a completely different explanation of gravity (it’s not a force that “lives” in 3D space, like other forces, and this is one reason why it resists quantization).

  For another thing, predictions (often all we have) aren’t inherently explanatory, as we’ve seen from different “interpretations” of the equations of quantum mechanics, which are predictive, but NOT really explanatory (as they admit of many explanations and interpretations). In general, malpredictive equations are wrong, but that doesn’t mean predictive ones are “right” inasmuch as the mechanism they imply is the correct one. It’s the same-old problem of induction and falsification. Falsification is about prediction, not explanation.

  The “convincing” part is where science gets its social nature, for the question is: who is to be convinced, and what are the criteria? Often, it’s impossible to convince somebody who doesn’t want to believe something (global warming), even with evidence that convinces almost everybody. People who advance a theory are famously hard to convince that it is wrong.

  Magician James Randi, who teases out "bogus science" for the skeptics, is probably farther down the path to defining “real” science from non-science than many philsophers. Randi does it methodologically. When somebody claims new knowledge, Randi goes to work seeing how it can be made to result in a public demo, which should act as a test. Both the claimant and Randi have to agree on the conditions of what result will disprove the claim. So if the person states they can see X-rays, or talk to the dead, or dowse water, Randi has to come up with a test and claimants have to agree that if they don’t pass, they don’t win his million dollar challenge. When the test day comes, the money is held by an independent judge, who agrees to hand it over to the claimant if they succeed. Invariably, they never do. And invariably, they give some post hoc reason why didn’t succeed, and remain convinced of their power. But Randi keeps the money. It’s like a pari-mutual horse race.

  Now, this is the way crafts and engineering are demo’ed. And it should be the way science theories are demo'd, also, except science refuses to follow Randi’s rules. So theories are “tested” in circumstances where agreement hasn’t been obtained from all parties as to when they’ll be abandoned, and this is messy. New tests often just result only in modifications of existing theories, post hoc, so they remain retrodictive. This can be done almost ad infinitum. At some point, they either become too ugly to believe (this is rare); or else scientists abandon them only after being tempted away to a better and simpler theory, like sailors who refuse to leave a sinking ship, till a better one happens by. Kuhn has described all of this. At last, the older generation sinks with the old ship, and science progresses funeral by funeral (or retirement by retirement) ala Planck’s observation.

  Remember Pauli’s postulation of the neutrino to save conservation of energy, momentum, and angular momentum in beta-decay? Bohr was ready to abandon all three, except in some statistical sense. Pauli postulated an undetected particle that carried away all the problems. For 25 years, rather than abandon three of the best-tested theories in science, scientists assumed the neutrino. Then it was finally detected. One wonders how long this could have gone on. It illustrates how “falsification-proof” a good theory is. And we are now in essentially the same place with the Higgs, on which the standard model depends, but which has not been seen. So it’s not a new problem.

  That’s how it really happens. But “prediction” remains the core of convincing, and it’s “prediction before the fact” in public, that remains the core of how a theory, or scientific knowledge, must be tested. If not, it’s not falsifiable, and thus not science.SBHarris 22:21, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

A new theory and explanation of the same phenomena as those covered by an old theory certainly has to make the same predictions as have already proven true or highly accurate. The change of explanation relies on its implying predictions in which discrepancies between the two theories will appear upon even deeper or more minute investigation - Einstein's revisions of Newton's predictions won out. So predictions do get revised, even when only for near-lightspeed phenomena, which means around 1/7 lightspeed. So Einstein's predictions are decidedly better than Newton's for 6/7 of the speeds from rest through lightspeed.
Even when predictions are less revised less than explanations, it doesn't mean that explanation is not a basic goal of science - even in history and geography, whose works involve implicit predictions that other investigators would come to the same conclusions - the truth is what will steer you right, not wrong. I don't see what the problem is with revision of explanations, not to mention predictions - one of science's (and math's') core competencies and claims to value is self-revision when warranted by new evidence or knowledge - not that they unfailingly do so, but nobody's perfect.
So you say that explanations change too much - and you add that sometimes they change too little, and that scientists hang onto explanations past their seeming due date (seeming to some) and sometimes turn out to be right all the same (the neutrino, at which point I find myself agreeing with you about falsification).
A core kind of explanation is causal explanation and quantum physics helps us do that; it gives us a whole system for helping explain phenomena; it tells us about how what's before determines, both deterministically (the wave function's evolution) and probabilistically, what's after.
As for an explanation for quantum mechanics itself, that's a puzzler, and to some physical theorists it seems part of the 'ultimate theory' - who knows? - it's the kind of place where Newton said "Hypotheses non fingo." But it's an example of an extreme of physics, the most basic science, and its puzzlingness may have to do with people's weak physical intuition for it. I don't think that it takes much to see that scientists in all fields, from physics to geography and history, have continually sought to understand causes, compositions and processes, effects and differences made, and structures and final normal outcomes and destinations.
As for Randi, I'm an old fan, though I haven't kept up with him - I read his Flim-Flam! soon after it came out, as well as a battered early review copy (which I picked up I forget where) of his book on Uri Gellar. Randi is concerned, especially in his challenge tests, with the kind of science that makes predictions about events in the subject matter (i.e., not just historian X's prediction that other historians will agree with historian X about Y). That is not the whole of science. Randi also does his historical and current events investigations, and makes claims amounting to predictions that further investigation would bear him out, or when his claims are made with less assurance, then with the purport that future research may prove him wrong. The Tetrast (talk) 00:12, 23 September 2010 (UTC).

I've mentioned Smolin's book The Trouble With Physics, which really is an excellent illustration of how pathological things get when only explanation is paid attention to. For the last 30 years, high energy physics has been only changes in explanation, with no predictive value at all. Smolin thinks it's mostly wasted effort, and given us no real progress in that time (the neutrino flavor-changing stuff is just a variant of the old standard model). Strings and branes and higher spacial dimensions clearly don't predict anything new. So what's the point?

Sometimes scientists take a chance. A recent brane-world theory of the Big Bang (which gives an explanation for the Bang) says it predicts certain gravitational waves to be seen by the Planck probe, that should not be there in the standard spontaneous-Big Bang/inflation model. If these bear out, they win the Nobel; if not, back to square one. This illustrates to me that prediction is the whole of science. The form of a model may be prove very fecund to new ideas, yet be totally wrong. SBHarris 00:44, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

We really shouldn't get mixed up in ongoing conflicts of views among well-known professional physicists - Smolin et al. versus Witten, Hawking, et al. - about high-energy physics. We can't let the resolution of questions here depend on taking sides in that sort of ongoing controversy, even if some of us personally take sides.
You're treating science as being that which science seeks as its culmination - predictions standing up to testing and thus supporting an explanatory hypothesis or theory that there are rules such that things behave or cause or affect things in certain ways - if you didn't have such an explanation, how would you make a prediction? If there weren't effects or outcomes linked to those causes, how would you detect the predicted phenomenon? You think some people get too attached to explanations at the farthest edges of physics. Maybe so, maybe not. Anyway, science does not consist entirely of the farthest edges of physics. And much of the value of predictions is as tests of explanations (of course sometimes we just plain want to know the future, e.g., the future of the Big-Bang universe - but we use explanations and confirmed nearer-term predictions in order to buttress such a far-future prediction). The content of theories is explanations that started out as insecure hypotheses. If you think that they should give up on M-theory, then you're saying that they should seek some other kind of theory - some other kind of explanation. Or if not that, then they should stop seeking a theory or explanation. But saying that there's an ultimate barrier to inquiry, a barrier that defies all further comprehension - that there's something absolutely incomprehensible - would be no explanation. If as a practical matter we reach a dead-end, there's only to wonder whether it would remain a dead-end if we were smarter and/or our instruments more powerful. The Tetrast (talk) 01:17, 23 September 2010 (UTC).

I should note, additionally, that often explanations are hypotheses not about rules, norms, etc., but about the presence/absence of objects of certain kinds operating under known rules. Sometimes this is in fields which make few predictions about future events in the subject matter, few if any even about specific future finds (newly discovered fossils) in the subject matter, but only or mainly about what we would find - that it would be the same as that which the investigator making the claim found - if we investigate deeply enough (history). Do you exclude those fields? If so, then this becomes a more verbal argument about the tradition of meanings of the word "science." The Tetrast (talk) 01:39, 23 September 2010 (UTC).

The obvious answer to how to make a prediction without a physical model, is that you simply write down equations (sometimes by guess) and see which ones are predictive. These can imply physical models, but the problem in quantum mechanics, as you know, is that the physical models aren't anything like the world we know, and seem to speak of something that behaves unlike anything physical in our "world" (at our sensory scale). A quantum particle described by a complex function of time and space is sort of like an ocean wave, and sort of like a bullet, but the equations have characteristics of both, and so they really describe "something" unvisualizable, that is neither. So we have one set of equations, and many (bad) physical models with no way to differentiate. It happens often that the physical models change but the predictive equations remain. They are mathematical models, but should not be confused with physical models. The science part is the prediction, and the physical model part is something like philosophy or religion or art. Choose whatever you like. I can't complain so long as it gives the same answers. This might seem excessively pragmatic (as in instrumentalism and the various subvarieties of pragmatism), but you have to choose something as a standard and I choose prediction. Others choose various types of beauty, but have gotten into much trouble that way!

The naive instumentalist approach gives you a nice unification of crafts and the more complex natural sciences, and indeed everything you need to have about "public knowledge", as in "publically demonstrable knowledge." As to your second question, no I don't exclude any field which makes clear predictions about future observations, be they new fossils or manuscripts found, new stars discovered along with their distributions, or electron scintillations observed on a screen. These are are all "real" events and measurements. Place your "bets" beforehand, is all I ask. SBHarris 02:34, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I've already addressed the question of the idea of an explanation for quantum mechanics itself, and its lacking an underlying more-or-less explanatory physical model that suits our usual common-sense physical intuitions (and it's an edge of physics, but it's probably not alone in that lack in regard to common sense of one kind or another, but that may say more about our common sense than about anything else - I tend to like common sense but sometimes we need to be critical about it - maybe the theory is even more significant for succeeding in its explanations and predictions while defying our common sense - some have argued about that). Quantum mechanics itself is already a system for explaining and predicting phenomena, relating observable causes to observable effects, explaining the effects and predicting them through mathematical formalisms. Other systems, say an economic model whose assumptions go against common sense, yet still worked, still could help explain phenomena - it would still help relate observable causes to observable effects, i.e., explain effects as well as predict them. And that's what scientific researchers want to be able to do. Anyway, you're looking for a kind of best 'standard' or sign or mark that something is a science. I don't see how it's helpful to reduce science to such a mark. As to future finds of manuscripts etc., the historian is unable in many cases to do better than draw conclusions based on the preponderance of the evidence and predict that further finds would probably bear out his firmest or least shaky conclusions. The scientist and founding pragmatist Peirce saw science as a process of hypothetical explanation, deductive prediction, and inductive testing and evaluation. And it's getting time for me to turn in. The Tetrast (talk) 03:28, 23 September 2010 (UTC).

I should add that since your way of looking at it unifies crafts with the sciences, it has a defect. It means that your definition is overly broad. But again, that's for another day. 03:30, 23 September 2010 (UTC).

Other systems, say an economic model whose assumptions go against common sense, yet still worked, still could help explain phenomena - it would still help relate observable causes to observable effects, i.e., explain effects as well as predict them.

And here I have to say that an "explanation" that includes assumptions that go against common sense, and which may later utterly change and yet still provide the same mathematical model, is not "explanatory," in the usual sense, at all. QM in fully-developed (Dirac) form is 80 years old now-- how long is it to be considered the "edge" of physics? Feynman later developed a geometric way of visualizing field equations. Did this "explain" anything? Or is it merely a faster tool for keeping track of the field equations only? (since it posulates various unbelievable things also, such as a "particle" taking all possible paths at once). We don't really know. I don't think my definition is overly broad, simply because it includes various bits of "toy" knowledge that are "obvious" even without laborious and formal application of the "scientific method." The scientific method can be employed in various toy ways also (grade schoolers do it all the time under teacher direction, making simple observations, simple hypotheses to test, and so on) and we don't rule all this out as being "non-science" simply because it's very simple. We simply say that it's real science, but of a very simple kind. Why can we not do that with the knowledge, rather than the method? To deny that knowledge that doesn't come from the scientific method as we know it, counts as "scientific knowledge" is to suggest that there was no scientific knowledge before 1900 or so. Perhaps 1800. But we all know that isn't true. Neither Kepler nor Newton could have written down the "scientific method." Indeed Kepler was an astrologer. But he made fundamental theoretical discoveries anyway. So some of the method was employed long before it was formalized. In a sense, the "method for finding methods" is a meta-step, but that doesn't mean that anything before it doesn't "count."SBHarris 23:28, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

There's a difference between (A) explanation of effects in terms of causes - for which purpose quantum physics is a whole system - and (B) employment of a physical model to explain a mathematical formalism's success in such explanation and prediction. People want such a physical model when the mathematical formalism is indispensable to the theory. It's not clear to me what the lack of such a common-sense physical model says about us or about science or about the physical world. Quantum mechanics is an edge of physics, I said, (not the edge), I meant in that it's believed that there's nothing "beneath" it; in fact I'm not quite sure what that means either. Anyway, when physicists penetrate to some very arcane (though universal) phenomena, our common-sense hunter-gatherer intuitions seem increasingly fallible, but I don't think that that means that science doesn't try to explain things, especially effects in terms of causes.
Now, we've been pursuing this on a theoretical level but I'll point out that the occasion of this discussion is the editing of a Wikipedia article. We all have our points of view and our more-or-less original thinking on the subject matter, but we can't base the article on a view in significant conflict with the typical views of scientists, the educated public, and tradition. That would go against the no-POV and no-OR rules. "Science" simply does not include craft in traditional or modern reasonably strict senses. Aristotle distinguished craft and know-how as techne from science as episteme. Techne and episteme were translated by Romans to ars and scientia respectively. If you look at encyclopedia articles on science, you will not find coverage of pottery, carpentry, or other crafts; and what coverage they have of medicine is in terms of medical science, scientific research for ultimately medical purposes. Nor in encyclopedia articles will you find coverage of science merely as a collection of predictive statements (confirmed or otherwise) in terms of laws, parameters, classifications, and particular facts. They treat science not merely as the book about nature, but as the research (and not just formulated method) for that book, and also in terms of the research community itself. That's their perspective, the perspective also of the typical scientist, and it's also the perspective which the general reader, especially the educated general reader, usually expects in coming to this Wikipedia article. And it is indeed the perspective of this Wikipedia article. For those reasons that's the sense, that of this article's perspective, in which science should be defined first in this article; then in the oldest broadest sense (body of knowledge convincingly explainable, episteme, scientia - not techne, ars).

Science is an enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge into testable laws and theories about the world. In its oldest and broadest sense, science is a body of knowledge that can be logically and convincingly explained. (See History and etymology below)

The Tetrast (talk) 01:03, 25 September 2010 (UTC).

Quick follow=up - there I am arguing for mezzanine's definition, but now I see that a form of it has already been incorporated into the article! 01:20, 25 September 2010 (UTC).

Hi Tetrast. Yes, or in fact you could say that his previous proposal is replaced by the one you and I contributed to. But it may still be possible to improve it? Can you think of any ways to make it less controversial to others? I think SBHarris still has doubts but I do hope it close to what he can accept.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:26, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Tetrast, the distinction you are making is presumably Aristotle's? It is handily to be found discussed in the opening lines of Metaphysics. He does however connect the crafts and sciences, and in a way that is interesting if we think about what science has become. In a sense what we call science today is for the most part something between his true theoretical science, something based on the pleasant pursuit of truth, and his idea of a good craftsman, a craftsman who can actually explain something about what he is doing, and teach it to others. What makes such a craftsman more scientific is when they reach higher levels of generalization. But Bacon, the turning point for modern science as it sees itself (although it forgets him personally), argued that Aristotle was wrong to be so keen on generalization, and effectively wanted scientists to be more like craftsmen. Eventually this is what happened. Modern scientists are distinguished to some extent from how science was once understood by the fact that it is not only now acceptable or even orthodox to avoid discussions about the whys and hows of science itself (not just metaphysical reasons as per Bacon, also methodology etc) but also to work mainly in specialized areas and even avoid thinking too much about things outside their area. Scientists arguing about the importance of their work these days often like to try to develop scenarios where their work might one day be useful to people, or make money. That is far less controversial today than saying that you just love testing your own ignorance. I think Aristotle's insights still sometimes make a mockery of us. The confusion surrounding the methodology profession is a good example. The theory of evolution was not developed from a program of experimentation but by carefully thinking through some everyday things (animals are like their parents, but different; differences will be passed on more frequently if they increase survival chances; and the only slightly tricky one, that if enough differences accumulate in two descendant populations, then they won't look the same or be able to interbreed anymore) and coming to strong generalizations, classical style. Even though it was hard to prove or disprove such a near-tautological chain of logic with real observations of events, there was nothing wrong with that. But people like Intelligent Design propagandists notice the incompatibility between what science does and what methodologists say it should do and have a field day with it.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:06, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't now how to comment briefly on all that! I don't know whether Sbharris used the word "craft" in the sense of Aristotle's "art." I tend to think of craft as a combination of skill (e.g. manual dexterity) and know-how. Aristotle's "art" is know-how, knowing by what means/method etc. one accomplishes what. Insofar as it is knowledge at all, it's true that it is akin to science; its knowledge component can, but does not have to be, scientific knowledge (e.g., medical science). Anyway, with Aristotle's "art," you have, at the soundbyte level, two components - it's knowledge with regard to competential doing. With science (not as Aristotle defines it), both components are cognitive, in a sense it's knowledge with regard to knowledge - it's knowing or understanding what is cognitively established by what - in a sense it's rational or logical knowledge, except not confined to the armchair, but instead embodied in lab and field as well - verifying conclusions by checking their accord not with Aristotle but with nature. But I can't be brief in an adequate response. Let's see - I'll skip over some stuff. As regards evolution, Darwin's basic argument is quite compelling to me in its simple reasoning and its explanatory power; with such an argument it's been reasonable from the start to be patient for it to be further borne out, as I think has happened. I have to confess that I don't know much about the methodologists' arguments or about Intelligent Design and issues of evolutionary mechanisms - generally I'm pretty wary of "God in the gaps" stuff. But I can imagine that methodologists' arguments could be used to make good science look bad. The Tetrast (talk) 20:23, 23 September 2010 (UTC).

No short answer necessary of course. It just seemed like a moment for talking a bit "around" the subject looking for perspectives to check where we all are.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:37, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Observations and discoveries

The current treatment seems to be giving undue weight to the role of theory and experiment in science. There are many sciences in which the main activity is the collection and classification of plain facts. Examples include taxonomy such as botany; astronomy and space exploration; geography and geology and so on. In many of these cases, experiment is difficult, impossible or irrelevant and the main point of the knowledge gained is that a particular thing exists in a certain place. The distinction might be summarised with Rutherford's "all science is either physics or stamp collecting". Colonel Warden (talk) 23:11, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

It's not quite that bad. It is still possible to hypothesize in sciences such as geology, astronomy, etc. The point is to hypothesize a possible configuration or conformation, and to wait for discovery (an observation). Thus the discoveries occur at a specific location rather than at a specific time. But the hypothesis still should be published by the researcher before the discovery. For example, in geology, the materials still follow the laws of thermodynamics and reasoning can still take place for the hypothesis. And as in physics, disproof of a hypothesis counts as progress. It's just the search is spatial rather than temporal, etc. The 3 Kelvin background hiss was predicted, then discovered in radioastronomy by 2 engineers who were still hypothesizing that the hiss was due to a white dielectric material covering the telescope (pigeon droppings which were duly scrubbed away by the future Nobel laureates). They did confirm that the hiss was isotropic (uniformly distributed in angle). --Ancheta Wis (talk) 00:01, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

For biology, I take stock in Theodosius Dobzhansky (March 1973) "Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution" American Biology Teacher. If this is still myth, someone must be working on making it a theorem. For example, DNA, which Francis Crick claimed to be the 'secret of life', can complement Dobzhansky's claim. Neil Shubin selected as his research problem the intermediate form between fish and four-limbed animals. He knew that amphibians arose about 375 million years ago, so he set about searching on Ellesmere Island for an intermediate life form with legs, and found Tiktaalik, a flat-snouted fish with eyes aiming upward and not sideways, which he associates with animals with fleshy fins for pushing upward. Next he set about finding the DNA section that Tiktaalik would have needed to evolve legs. Shubin hyhpothesizes that the paddlefish and Tiktaalik share that DNA section. My point is that he sought such a life form and his team found its fossils on Ellesmere Island. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 02:54, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

At one point I'd urged that the intro speak of science as organizing knowledge into laws, theories, and accounts in order, by "accounts", to allude to geography, history, astronomy, and so on. Ancheta just above covers some of the ground of how observational and descriptive sciences can help some more-theoretical sciences to new discoveries. They can also help bear out theories already generally supported, and bring out the trickiness of applications for understanding of particular events. They are a source of questions and data for more general sciences. Astronomy poses questions and offers many kinds of data for physics and sometimes chemistry, while geography and history do so for other social studies, biology, and Earth sciences.
However I'd like to say that those things are not the fullness of what justifies sciences such as history, geography, and astronomy; those sciences examine at more of a ground level the phenomena which more theoretical sciences try to explain; the descriptive sciences are also explanatory in purpose, seeking to establish not only relative places and times, but also patterns, sequences, and causal links (this often involves application of more general theories) at that ground level where so many theoretical sciences intersect; this is often handy for more general sciences, but the more general sciences are often handy for the descriptive ones. Geography is especially interdisciplinary and is called a 'synoptic' science. The actual tapestry and history of our world is of intrinsic scientific interest - if it were not, then no phenomena of our world would be of intrinsic scientific interest. They are all 'stained', more or less, with the arbitrary, brute 'thisness' of the descriptive sciences' subject matter.
All the sciences of the (actual) world are about actual things and occurrences, and seek to understand, in ascending order of universality and abstractness, their actual linkages, orderings, hierarchies, etc., their classifications, their domains and total-populational parameters and elements, and their norms and laws. Sciences urge themselves toward ascent along that order, and that results in a bias against descriptive science as being less advanced. But analogously all science of the actual world is at the lowest rung vis-a-vis statistics, probability theory, mathematical logic, etc., and pure mathematics. The human/social, biological, chemical & material, and physical sciences used to be called the "special sciences" and Peirce proposed the name "idioscopy" for them. I'd argue that, just as mechanics is the most mathematical science, likewise the most idioscopic sciences of all are human geography and history, as the studies of actual intelligent life's places, times, and the links among them.
So I guess what I'm saying is that I agree with Colonel Ward that some things should be said about history, geography, etc., in the article - briefer things than what I've just said! - but still, some things. The Tetrast (talk) 16:12, 22 September 2010 (UTC).

Hi Tetrast. I think I pretty much agree with everything you say on this talk page. I guess the focus for now has been to compromise on the lead though, because I feel that if this is "good enough" then people can work better on the various sections of this articles that are very important.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Andrew Lancaster (talk • contribs) 16:52, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Almost forgot about the 'elephant in the room' - the frequent distrust and the lack of sureness of results, of fields like history - human/social studies often have that problem at various levels of generality and that's a lot of why people often shy away from calling them sciences. I'd agree something like that need not go unmentioned. The Tetrast (talk) 16:23, 22 September 2010 (UTC).

I think I agree although once again I am not sure where to fit this, especially if it is the lead you mean. I remember getting into this whole question for the first time as an undergraduate who liked reading too much and being fascinated with the "methodologist" sub-cultures which it seems nearly every discipline has, all of them telling their peers (whether they be economists, physicists etc) that real scientific methodology is happening in other disciplines and something urgently needs to be done in the home field. The uncertainty in science should be embraced. The over-simple story of the methodology movement can not explain how we arrived at the theory of evolution for example (because that theory is actually so elegant that it can be built from a small number of very simple every day facts).--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:52, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi, Andrew. In answer to one of your remarks, no, I wasn't talking about the lead except in passing (including the word "accounts" in the sequence "laws, theories, and accounts"). Mainly I was talking about how descriptive and observational sciences should get some coverage in the article. Speaking of methodology, scientists in descriptive/observational fields such as geography sometimes have argued that their methods are scientific, so what they do is science, but I know very little about those cases. The Tetrast (talk) 17:12, 22 September 2010 (UTC).

Topical note: "How the Titanic tore apart," by Alan Boyle, Sept. 21, 21010, MSNBC.com:

Gallo, a researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, said he considered this the first purely scientific mission to the Titanic since the original survey of the site in the mid-1980s. Numerous voyages have been conducted in the intervening quarter-century, but "all of those have had science as a sidebar," Gallo told me.

"The primary mission of most of those was either recovery of artifacts, by RMS Titanic, or adventure tourism, with Deep Ocean Adventures," he observed. "Sure, they all came back with exciting images, but was that science? No."

They're learning more about what actually happened to the ship. The Tetrast (talk) 21:18, 22 September 2010 (UTC).

Science policy

I see that there is an omission on the article page: science policy. Perhaps it might be possible to support adequate science policy by adding a link, at least, to science policy to this page, perhaps in the current politics section. I propose a section as well, since public policy will have an effect on future funding of research in water consumption, energy consumption, on capital equipment, and of course on the branches of natural science, as well as on practical applications of social science (such as education). Even something as simple as policy to support tourism can only have beneficial results for a tourist destination. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 04:03, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

As far as adding a section like that is concerned, I see no major reason to expect controversy - more just a question of someone feeling they have the time, energy and knowledge?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:30, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Agree. This is definitely something important and very uncontroversial. Feel free to do it. :) mezzaninelounge (talk) 14:11, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

AW, if I may suggest a key moment in the concept of science policy, are you aware that Francis Bacon wrote a sort of utopia called New Atlantis showing a country ruled by a scientific elite? Of course that would not be interesting but the man, though now hardly remembered for much more than possibly having been Shakespere, was a major influence on several centuries of English scientists.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:05, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree that Lord Chancellor Sir Francis Bacon had a formative effect on science policy. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 18:46, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

In my opinion this section, Science#Science_policy, is an excellent addition to this article, and is off to a good start. ... Kenosis (talk) 18:15, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Just re-reading the article made me realize the scholar-bureaucrats of the Han dynasty have something to teach the deadlocked political systems of today -- there is analogy between rivers and political currents:

1. Faction A creates a position, and while in power, implements it, giving rise to side-effects which are undesirable to Faction B.
2. Faction B gains power & neutralizes (position) A, thereby destroying all the side-effects of A (including the positive benefits to the target population)
3. What is needed is technology analogous to the canal lock which 'drains the swamp' and creates a 'neutral position' irrespective of the counter-currents of A & B. Joseph Needham documents an astounding amount of technology which passed from China to the West (unremarked), see the twenty-some volumes of Science and Civilisation in China with some volumes yet to be published.
4. 'Boats' travelling on 'river A' can enter the lock before it is drained, and rejoin 'river B' when that river's current fills the lock. I speak metaphorically here, of course.
5. This process just described, is in ancient Chinese terminology called the Mandate of Heaven. For example the first emperor created his Terracotta Army which had working crossbows. The peasants dug them up and overthrew the Qin dynasty. Later dynasties reputedly sequestered copies of Sunzi's Art of War to keep important knowledge of military science from getting to the people. After the Vietnam war, Sunzi was reexamined yet one more time in the West (whose importance East Asia had never forgotten). Yet the canal lock analogy is not just about conflict.

--Ancheta Wis (talk) 22:08, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

What about the dangers of science? One of the interesting things about science policy historically is the danger it is perceived to represent to any community, not only in terms of weapons (the first thing that comes into our mind today) but more in terms of its ability to put old beliefs to question. Consider Socrates and Galileo. Aristotle has comments about the dangers of innovation in his Politics. Commentators like Leo Strauss argued that classical and medieval elites consciously chose not to encourage science.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:29, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and not only in evolution of species. The world we live in is full of competition, not just for material things such as land and resources such as light, air, water, and people, but also for control of the ideas we live by — popularity, acclaim, money, and power; since science researchers intrinsically seek new ideas, support for a science policy inevitably leads to new ideas, and disruption of the ideas many of us live by.

What are the dangers of seeking to maintain a status quo? Populations like black rhinos caN live by being grumpy, which is fine for them, if they are dominant, but what if a more dominant population arises? Then it doesn't look too good for the future of the grumpy ones — one subspecies is already extinct - for both rhinos and for computer hardware manufacturers.

Change in Template:Science

I've removed "Sacred Sciences" from Template:Science here. Covering philosophy, theology and canon law under the auspices of "Sacred Sciences", in turn under the category of "science" is stretching things a whole lot. Reminds me of Dr. Zaius. Maybe the template should be on a few more watchlists, as it was that way for the last couple weeks. I just happened to notice it today. ... Kenosis (talk) 21:55, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

It may be helpful to create a Template:Humanities so that those topics can be placed there, along with the others listed in the Humanities article. I just put up a proposal for such a template at Talk:Humanities/Archives/2015#Proposal_for_a_Template_for_Humanities. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 10:45, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

That'd be super. Thanks Ancheta Wis. ... Kenosis (talk) 12:08, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Tentatively proposed addition

Here's something on classification of sciences which I whipped up. I can think of possible reasons not to add it to the article, reasons that I would have trouble defending against if people agree with those reasons:

1. It's too long, article doesn't need it, etc.
2. The viewpoint is not general enough, it's more my POV than I realize.
3. It depends so much on "common knowledge" about sciences that it would be tedious to track down specific references in support of much of it.
4. Some of it is simplistic or dated.

Anyway, here it is, for whatever it's worth:

• • •
Sciences involve various ways of organizing and condensing knowledge into theories and accounts. These ways include, for example, linkages, classifications, basic elements, and laws.

• Some sciences, such as astronomy, geography, and history, are especially interdisciplinary and seek to learn the tapestry of actual events including linkages, orderings, and their explanations. Such a science applies often more general sciences in doing so and, in turn, provides data sometimes embodying answers or questions for those other sciences.
• Some sciences involve much classification; biology, for example, includes (but is hardly limited to) the sorting of species into genera and higher classifications for such reasons as traits and genealogy, and seeks to account for the evolution of various forms; the classifications embody various results of biological research.
• Some sciences, including such general examples as chemistry and physics, pursue analysis of a domain into its basic elements and parameters as well as their combinations, and seek to understand the processes of change and transformation among them.
• Sciences such as physics, chemistry, and, increasingly, biology, seek and find laws and norms of correlation, dependence, and cause and effect. Even fields such as economics and psychology, studying highly complex phenomena, pursue and make claims of rules and norms.

Some patterns can better be seen from both sides of a fence; sciences often join forces, as when paleobiology, showing correlated distributions of fossils (of both animals and plants) on separated continents, joined geology to uphold the theory of continental drift, which evolved into the current theory of plate tectonics.
• • •

Not sure if it is deliberate on your side, or my own interests leading me, but when I read this, looking for the common theme, I come up with a much simpler and easier to source point which is the one discussed above concerning the ancient argument between deduction and induction, with Aristotle and Bacon sometimes seen as partisans of the one and the other. I have in fact tried to fit something of this theme in the history section lately. But maybe I am way of track?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:34, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Tetrast, and AL, one might argue that these points list some of the ways that we all use to understand something — that is, we might seek 'linkages' between clues (to fit a proposed explanation), or we might sort into 'classifications' to be limited to no more than the magical number seven, plus or minus two, or we seek 'basic elements', as Thales proposed for water, or that we seek 'statements of a relationship'.

One might also argue that the rhetoric of science seeks to cast these ways into an exploration. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 09:34, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, it doesn't matter at this point, I'm disinclined to try to add my proposed addition if it doesn't immediately seem good and useful.
Anyway, it's like Peirce's division of sciences into nomological (pertaining to laws in nature), classificatory, and descriptive/explanatory. Peirce's way echoes the traditional propositional logical quantities - the 'universal' ("every..."), the 'particular' ("some...," which in quantity is actually more vague than particular), and the 'singular' ("this..."). Peirce included the concern with elements under the nomological concerns, but still classed chemistry as a classificatory science (at least as chemistry stood in 1903); perhaps Peirce didn't think that the chemical elements are basic enough or few enough. I do those things a little differently and end up with something that echoes logical quantities differently and Aristotle's four causes get echoed too. When I think of the idea of a universe or total population and its parametric alternatives, I end up with ideas like that of elements. One delves down, finds a bunch a basic elements, and studies them and their combinations in increasing complication/complexity. I don't know what to call this perspective, maybe the "totalistic" or "parametric." The classificatory perspective is almost the reverse, one tries to sort species, specializations, into increasingly general classes. The idea of "links" and "orderings" here is to think of singulars or individuals not as isolated but instead as connected in many a larger tapestry which is a "this" too, which is what you get in sciences particularly concerned with individual cases, such as astronomy, geography, and history.
The deductive-inductive dichotomy basically leads to the distinction between mathematics and other sciences. One needs to distinguish modes of reasoning employed at various stages from the mode of reasoning employed to draw research conclusions. Fields of mathematical research typically draw deductive conclusions. The conclusions of the natural and life sciences are not deductive, although they apply deductive formalisms and formalize the collaboration (rather than a competition) among various modes of inference. The truth of mechanics as a deductive mathematical formalism representing the actual is not itself a deductive conclusion. The natural and life sciences also apply inductive statistical formalisms, but the truth or reasonable accuracy of such a formalism's fit to the actual is also not an inductive conclusion, I think, but instead a kind of compelling or cogent surmise, if one distinguishes inductive generalization from surmise to a simplest way of accounting for things. The Tetrast (talk) 17:20, 28 September 2010 (UTC).

Lots of different cross references there to different ways of classifying these ways of reasoning. Thanks for that. OTOH, I like Hume's approach, which does not require so many special terms. Recommended, in case you have not read it. I think almost all knowledge comes from induction originally, and deduction secondly. This means all knowledge comes from looking for correspondences - constantly proposing and reviewing ways of categorizing sets of things. Hume also described theories of causation this way, with the only point there being that linked causes and effects are always in a certain time sequence.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:31, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Tetras, the proposed addition looks reasonable and resembles the summary above. I think it should be integrated somewhere in the beginning of this text. mezzaninelounge (talk) 18:02, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

  Mezzanine, thanks, but at this point I think that we might as well let it sit a bit, till folks are agreed that it's not too much my POV or OR. There are two issues:
1. There is the idea of characterizing sciences by the forms into which they tend to organize and condense knowledge, which I think is not just my idea, POV, or OR.
2. There is my particular system for doing so, which is the way that I think, and I doubt that we'll find a reliable source to back up my little system (not that there are so many competing systems, more that people usually don't care about a system of such characterizations as 'descriptive,' 'classificatory,' 'laws-oriented,' etc. - instead people just pick a few such characterizations and apply them when they seem handy); there the question is, is it reasonable and noncontroversial for the article, even if I came up with it and didn't find it somewhere; in any case it should not be presented as a standard system already in use for characterization of sciences. Well, if it gets into the article, people may modify it anyway.
  Andrew, Hume's deductive-inductive distinction works to classify sciences at a broader level - mathematics vs. sciences of positive phenomena. And that's pretty much it as far as classification goes. I read Hume many years ago on induction and deduction. I think that one can distinguish inference modes a little farther than that dichotomy (for example Peirce, a scientist, logician, and one of the founders of statistics, had a trichotomy of modes - hypothetical, deductive, and inductive, which he saw collaborating cyclically in science, in what we now call the hypothetico-deductive method - see Modes of inference and Scientific method at the Peirce wiki), and I think (half-differently from Peirce) that correspondingly one can distinguish farther the broadest classes of sciences of discovery ('pure' maths, natural/life sciences, and fields intermediate between them), but still the inference modes serve to classify sciences of discovery only at the highest taxon.
The classifications (maybe I should call them 'characterizatons' since they're not so neat and tidy) that I proposed for the wiki are not by typical inference mode of research conclusion, but are by the forms (such as laws and classifications) into which knowledge is organized and condensed (which was part of some of the earlier proposed versions of the lead-off sentence ("organizes and condenses knowledge into laws and theories" etc.) - I mean not that we should restore such phrasing there, but instead that we already regard such organization and condensation of knowledge as an important issue involved in some possibly definitive way in math/science). When biology does classification, it's not just for classification's sake but as a last step of a research process, and the classification embodies many and various research results - one might almost say, as the Taxonomy wiki actually says, that the purpose of biology's classifications is as a 'means' to communicate a wealth of research results (I don't think that they're merely a means, but you can see how easily one could talk that way, given what the classifications embody). Now it's not so unusual to classify or at least characterize natural and life sciences by their being more nomological (oriented to laws of nature), or more classificatory, or more descriptive (those were Peirce's ways), or whatever else along those lines one can come up with (like my "totalistic" or "parametric" perspective). People really use such characterizations often enough, if not always with those exact words that I used. They help us refer to the differences between sciences like mechanics and astronomy. It's not a substitute for classification by research conclusions' typical inference mode; instead it's simply another aspect of characterization of sciences. The Tetrast (talk) 21:42, 28 September 2010 (UTC). Little edit. The Tetrast (talk) 22:36, 28 September 2010 (UTC).

Tetrast, I ask this question here rather than on the scientific method talk page, because the editors here are more engaged. Might Peirce have espoused the deductive-nomological model rather than a hypothetico-deductive model? Now that I form the question, it appears that Peirce might have leaned more toward an abductive-deductive-nomological model.

It's not just a selfish question; this might be a summary characterization of the proposed section. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 00:31, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

I've noticed you doing helpful work, not asking selfish questions, so I'd say go ahead and ask a selfish question if you want. Anyway, the proposed section doesn't seem to be about models of explanation or research process; one can use laws, parameters, classes, and objects to predict as well as to explain, and as being things about which to develop predictions and explanations as well. Now, some sciences pertain especially to laws, others arrange classes and try to bring them under universal laws, and so on, but different people might explain the variousness of perspectives in different ways - in particular some people regard some of those perspectives as more advanced or more scientific - they want all science to be about discovering laws, so for them geography just can't be a science at all, no way. (I do think that math & science are subject to a kind of special pull toward the universal, but I wouldn't say that descriptive sciences aren't science at all.) For my part, what I had in mind was to lay out the perspectives of various sciences somewhat systematically, let their variety 'hang out', and point to the interplay and metaboly in which they're involved together and really quite naturally.
Peirce's model of scientific method is not deductive-nomological; the deductive-nomological model is not a model of scientific method but only of explanation; it hardly seems a model, more a classification. Anyway, in Peirce's view, the explanandum need not be a deductive implication from the proposed explanans. It just needs to follow "as a matter of course" - it could follow inductively. Anyway the explanans should simplify the complication, reduce the 'surprise" of the explanandum, without being even more surprising or strange itself. Any hypothesis that explains something odd is 'critically' justified - at the level of criticism of individual arguments, in that which Peirce called 'logic proper' or 'critical logic'. Methodologically, things have only just begun, in Peirce's model of scientific method. The explanatory hypotheses are insecure and need to be tested. So, next there is to select among them - one needs explanations with testable deduced implications. That's where deduction regularly comes in - the deduction of testable implications of the hypothesis. And one must judge the hypotheses for how they economize not only explanation but also - via their trials - the inquiry process itself. Anyway tests are actually performed and evaluated inductively. The Tetrast (talk) 02:08, 29 September 2010 (UTC).

Tetras, I agree that the POV may be overstated as far as describing science the way it does in the article. The classification approach that you mentioned (grouping science based on their content and approach) does not seem particularly controversial and is widely practiced in academia. I don't think we have to be strict or in depth about it. We can be descriptive about how they are grouped. The natural and social sciences articles do this very well anyway, and so duplicacy can be minimized. mezzaninelounge (talk) 14:54, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

So you're saying leave it out? Or put it in? Maybe I haven't had enough coffee yet. The Tetrast (talk) 18:13, 29 September 2010 (UTC).

Put it in but don't overkill it. :) mezzaninelounge (talk) 20:05, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Is the version that I already showed overkill? Or are you thinking that I planned to take it much farther? I don't think that it can be taken much farther without taking undue length in the article. Here's where it is currently. I added a Peirce-style comment about generalization: —Preceding unsigned comment added by The Tetrast (talk • contribs) 22:28, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

[unindent]

• • •
Sciences involve various ways of organizing and condensing knowledge into theories and accounts. These ways include, for example, linkages, classifications, sets of elements, and laws.

• Some sciences, such as astronomy, geography, and history, seek to learn the tapestry of actual events in their links, orderings, causes and effects, and correlations. Such a science applies often more general sciences in doing so and, in turn, provides data sometimes embodying answers or questions for those other sciences.
• Some sciences involve much classification; biology, for example, includes (but is hardly limited to) the assorting of species into genera and higher classifications for such reasons as traits and genealogy, and seeks to account for the evolution of various forms; the classifications embody various results of biological research.
• Some sciences, including such general examples as chemistry and physics, pursue analysis of a domain into its basic elements and parameters as well as their combinations, and seek to understand the processes of change and transformation among them.
• Sciences such as physics, chemistry, and, increasingly, biology, seek and find laws and norms. Even fields such as economics and psychology, studying highly complex phenomena, pursue and make claims of rules and norms.

No science is fitted by any single one of those characterizations exclusively; it is a question of more or less. Furthermore, sciences tend to seek generalization. For example, descriptive and historical fields seek not only particular explanations, but also to mount toward classifications and sets of variously combined common elements, while classificatory fields seek, across classes, to find such elements and universal laws.

Some patterns can better be seen from both sides of a fence; sciences often join forces, as when paleobiology, showing correlated distributions of fossils (of both animals and plants) on separated continents, joined geology to uphold the theory of continental drift, which evolved into the current theory of plate tectonics.
• • •

How's that? The Tetrast (talk) 22:28, 29 September 2010 (UTC).

Something even simpler (1)

Tetras, I'm thinking of something even simpler. Before going into the goals, etc about individual or groups of sciences, I recommend using "traditional categories." e.g., natural sciences include physics, chemistry, etc whereas social sciences include psychology, sociology, etc. I understand where you're going with the above classification (with minor disagreement on certain details), I suspect the readers of this article, will be a little lost and overwhelmed by the intent and verbiage of the above classification scheme. I suggest we just state what is currently widely known, simple, and conventional. My two cents. :) mezzaninelounge (talk) 23:06, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

So be it. I have fun scribbling those things whether they get used or not. :) The Tetrast (talk) 00:27, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

It's ok. Don't lose hope. :) mezzaninelounge (talk) 20:39, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not bothered about not using it. Really, it failed a test of usefulness insofar as even fellow editors found it rather complicated or murky or something. Curiously, it kind of echoes the more familiar division into natural and social sciences - sciences of motion & forces (systematic laws), matter (elements & combinations), life (species, genera, phyla, etc.), and behavior/people/society (tapestries of links & orderings). So if my proposed account is really an abstraction from certain prominent aspects of those sciences, the implication is that we shouldn't get so abstract at such length; instead, for an article like this it's better to get into those 'simpler' or more 'concrete' divisions (natural & social). If somebody doesn't beat me to it, I'll look at the natural/social science articles and see what I can pull together. The Tetrast (talk) 21:09, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

Oops, I see the article already covers the natural/social distinction, and other distinctions. The Tetrast (talk) 22:25, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

They are mentioned but only in passing. I think they can be much improved, i.e., more clarification. mezzaninelounge (talk) 22:34, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Tetrast, I have inserted a new header markup. Is this OK? If you and mezzaninelounge are OK with this, then this might serve as a followup thread to your proposal. If not, I will revert myself. I have an idea which might amplify the intent of your proposal.

The heart of my discomfort with the division of science into natural/social is the question of intersubjective verifiability. What I am getting at is the sheer scale of the natural world. The natural world is so big that science cannot 'fake it'. But the social world is highly vulnerable to the exercise of sheer political power -- after all, any parent has exercised it with 'because I say so'. Thus social constructs have this achilles heel. Even the first emperor of the Han dynasty recognized the limitations of military power, which he legitimized with the social constructs enforced by the legalist scholars of his empire. Needham notes that the Han Dynasty, which conquered the short-lived Qin dynasty, were made aware of the need for law by Lu Chia and by Shu-Sun Thung, as defined by the scholars, rather than the generals. --"You conquered the empire on horseback, but from horseback you will never succeed in ruling it" —Lu Chia (196 BCE, 前漢書 (Chi'en Han Shu) (History of the former Han dynasty) ch. 43, p. 6b and Tung Chien Kang Mu (Essential Mirror of Universal History) ch. 3, p. 46b) as referenced in Needham, Robinson & Huang 2004 Science and Civilisation in China VII.2, p.10

It is clear to me & to other editors of this page that there is a continuity between the ancient philosophers we have been discussing previously, and today's science. It cannot be otherwise, if scholars of history & political science somehow espouse the idea of science in their own subjects of study. Otherwise, there can be no science in social science other than sheer power, which is intersubjective verifiability in its brute form (there are more civilized forms, as you point out in your proposed addition). Please take this contribution in a kindly light which I am happy to revert so that you can get down to the business of writing to the article. I myself am acutely aware of the softness of the soft sciences; we need something reliable in science. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 23:58, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

The new talk section incorporating some of the old is fine with me.
It sounds like your concern is not the natural/social distinction but the characterization of social studies as science, is that correct?
I agree that the social sciences/studies have a special problem in their reflexive or partly-reflexive structure. Real objective things don't depend on our opinions and thoughts about them, but human and social things consist partly in people's thoughts, so objectivity gets slippery, and the social world, shaped in part by people's thoughts, takes on the tinge of a figment. Well, that's a fancy way of saying that there are social fictions. Anyway, like I said (in an earlier section) about the 'elephant in the room' - the frequent distrust and the lack of sureness of results, of fields like history - human/social studies often have that problem at various levels of generality and that's a lot of why people often shy away from calling them sciences. I'd agree something like that need not go unmentioned in the article. People suspect bias by strivings for power or influence, like you say, and for wealth & means, glamour/glory/wattage/fashion, and honors, standing, etc. In his 1903 classification of the sciences, Peirce included "Biography, which at present is rather a mass of lies than a science" (Collected Papers v. 1, paragraph 201). The Tetrast (talk) 00:33, 1 October 2010 (UTC).

Tetrast, Thank you. We both agree that merely calling biography a science does not make it one, because it must also be reliable, predictable. A biography characterized by reliable principles would grow, person by person, as verified by each person who can vouch for the biographee, as verification. And here I can cite Max Born's solution for verifiability: How can we know something is red? His observation is that no one person alone can state that something is red. But two people can agree, from their respective pairs of sense impressions, that something is red. Multiply this intersubjective agreement by the number of people in a society and we have the basis for an objective statement, pair by pair. ("Nobody has yet devised a means of keeping a society together without traditional ethical principles or of deducing them by the rational methods used in science."--Max Born, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Nov 1965 p. 5, which cites his 1965 revision of Natural philosophy of cause and chance, Appendix C, Symbol and Reality) --Ancheta Wis (talk) 02:15, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

ML, I propose that Aristotle's master artisans of techne can teach the rest of us examples of the science behind society. To take a homely example from American government: it is observable that the daily courtesies of trust and compromise are an essential part of American politics. Max Born cites his experience as a British subject, that Monarchy is an essential part of the political stability of the UK. Lee Kuan Yew's interview in the New York Times Sept 11, 2010 gives an assessment of what it takes for Singapore to be a country; it is instructive to compare his statement to Abraham Lincoln's second message to Congress: "A nation may be said to consist of its territory, its people, and its laws. ". --Ancheta Wis (talk) 02:42, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

But it is probably prudent to listen to Newton: "To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. 'Tis much better to do a little with certainty, & leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing." -- Statement from unpublished notes for the Preface to Opticks (1704) quoted in Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (1983) by Richard S. Westfall, p. 643

So if it is just a slogan right now to include all of the scholarly studies under the Sciences right now, we are probably better off to admit it is a goal rather than proclaim it as an accomplishment.Or better, to show how little has been accomplished in the soft sciences thus far. It's OK, it's reality. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 05:12, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

AW, from the 1600s to 1800s these types of statements amongst British philosophers were normally understood as having Francis Bacon as their origin.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:09, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

See Category:Cognitive biases, Framing (social sciences), Complexity.--Ancheta Wis (talk) 04:53, 1 October.

Something even simpler (2)

Re-framing. To sum up attempt #1, Max Born's solution for intersubjective verifiability is to construct objective statements from sets of sense pairs by two different observers, each agreeing on the construction of that statement, relationship by relationship, for the whole population. (Obviously, this process gets delegated to trusted pairs.) Max Born then admits that the use of ethical principles in societies came before rational scientific observations. Successful examples of societies were mentioned in #1 above with the striking result that different political solutions appeared for each different society, ranging from mutual respect, to reliance on the Queen's peace, to exhortation, to rhetorical statements founded in the use of force. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 12:20, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

So, Tetrast, it appears that the preceding paragraph is an instance of one point in your summary above:

• Some sciences, such as astronomy, geography, and history, seek to learn the tapestry of actual events in their links, orderings, causes and effects, and correlations. Such a science applies often more general sciences in doing so and, in turn, provides data sometimes embodying answers or questions for those other sciences.

There is a long road ahead to even a single simple statement at the level of the text in the article. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 12:49, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Ancheta, No problems with the proposed header change. I understand your concern of subjectivity in the social sciences. No doubt, there is subjectivity, but once you get rid of the baloney, it is not as subjective as most people think. That said. There are also appropriate "methodological checks" that are used in the social sciences, particularly psychology such as double blind or single blind experiments. Of course, you are already aware of some variant of this when you talked about Max Born's intersubjective verifiability. On the other issue, I think we should start looking at constructing a simple protypical paragraph on how science is divided into the social and natural sciences. No doubt, this has already been done in this article, but I think a little more "clarification" would be beneficial. As for Aristotle's work, I am not sure if I understand what you would like to propose here. Also I must confess, Lee Kuan Yew may be brilliant but he is a very controversial character. I am not sure how he would fit in this article. mezzaninelounge (talk) 15:58, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I think that Ancheta is putting material before us simply in order to provide background, things to weigh in mind as we proceed. Also, Ancheta, I already agreed with mezzanine not to put my proposed paragraphs into the article, though I don't think that the reason for omitting them is reliability problems of behavioral/human/social studies; if we were including them, we could say "sciences or studies" in reference to human/social studies, and in another paragraph mention the controversies over them and over their statuses as sciences. In any case I think that we can include something about the pattern of distrust even by other scientists toward human/social studies, since that pattern is a long-standing fact, although I'm unsure off-hand where to find a reference consisting in a general comment or discussion on that. We needn't belabor the point in the article itself or take sides on it in the article, just point it out and tell where people to go to find more discussion, criticisms/defenses of behavioral/human/social studies. The idea of cognitive biases, practicing intersubjective verification, repetition and reproduction of results, collateral views and evidence, double-blind tests, etc., certainly are pertinent. Two eyes are better than one, two heads better than one, etc., in science; Plato's Socrates argues for it, and I guess it's part of the reason for the dialogue form that Plato used. Anyway, it helps distinguish the objectively real from artifacts of an individual viewpoint or cognitive process, not to mention elicits info that comes to light through parallax views. So we get the idea of a thick cable of arguments rather than a single chain, and of course the perennial idea of a structure, supports, checks, and balances, various directed forces in stable balance, full of reinforcements, buttressings, etc., something well based that can serve as a basis for more. This goes to the most epic disputations in which I got involved with the Peirceans at the peirce-l e-forum. Peirce held that signs and interpretants (interpretations, signs as interpretive of other signs), do not convey experience or acquaintance with their object, and that one needs acquaintance/experience of their objects, experience outside of, and collateral to, the given sign (symptom, semblance, symbol, whatever) or sign system, in order to know what object the sign refers to. I held that this is needed also in order to know what quality a symbol for a kind of thing comprehends or intends, and also in order to test and check interpretants, and that this collateral acquaintance (stored in experience or freshly sought) with the object in respect of its signs constitutes a kind of recognition which is a fourth semiotic element in addition to Peirce's object, sign, and interpretant; interpretant and recognition are analogous to decoding and recipient. "Recognition" is not the best word, it's too psychological. I mean a kind of lesson learned from (mathematical, worldly, whatever) experience. Now, this collaterality idea applies not just to an individual mind but to a given community of minds. Anyway, this comment has gone on long enough. The Tetrast (talk) 18:31, 1 October 2010 (UTC). Edited The Tetrast (talk) 18:45, 1 October 2010 (UTC).

Tetras, as always, no major disagreements. Although, I would qualify and emphasize that two eyes are generally better than one, but not always. The blind may lead the blind sometimes. Have a good weekend folks. :) mezzaninelounge (talk) 20:14, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Tetrast, I found a John F. Sowa citation for a Peirce-like chain "induction->abduction->deduction" in Sowa's Figure 5, and as you know, Sowa cites Peirce's existential graphs for Sowa's conceptual graphs. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 06:05, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Ancheta, thanks for pointing that out. I believe on the basis of Sowa's article "The Challenge of Knowledge Soup" http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/challenge.pdf that Sowa is discussing the same cycle as Peirce did, but Sowa begins it with the induction that follows up on previous predictions and actions. Same cycle, but Sowa hops onto the wheel at the induction stage. Sowa diagrams the cyclical process as making a full circuit. I think that Peirce would stick with abductive inference as the first stage, precipitated by observations in conflict with one's "knowledge soup," as Sowa calls it, (or by conficts in the soup itself); Peirce thinks that an inquiry starts out in medias res or in medias soup if you will, with an observation (a kind of perception or cognition) unsettling in the context the soup of one's beliefs/knowledge (more cognitions). Sowa is discussing cognitive process, and he wants perception as the in-door or start, and action as the out-door or end (and has a Peirce quote to support that idea), but Sowa makes it perception-induction-abduction-deduction-action. Sowa thinks that perception stage belongs most prominently after action and before induction. Peirce has perception at the troubling-observation stage, and perception and action at the inductive stage. Peirce was discussing inquiries, and, logically, the starting point of an inquiry, a questioning along some line, is at the point where an troublesome unsureness, the question, is raised provoking explanatory hypotheses, and the end state is where the answer becomes sufficiently sure and definite through induction through ongoing experimental or observational tests; the inquiry becomes settled, not with theoretical infallibility but solidly enough to stand up to tests at least for the time being. From an unsettling to a settling. Peirce has logic's course being that of inquiry in terms of going from the vague to the definite. "Looking upon the course of logic as a whole we see that it proceeds from the question to the answer,—from the vague to the definite. And so likewise all the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite" - Peirce in his 1898 lectures (and he used the word "evolution" in a very broad sense). The Tetrast (talk) 17:48, 4 October 2010 (UTC). Edited The Tetrast (talk) 17:58, 4 October 2010 (UTC). Another edit. The Tetrast (talk) 18:09, 4 October 2010 (UTC).

Image removed

Though scientists who believe in evolution admit they can never be certain, they are still very probably correct

I've removed the image and caption at right from the section on "Certainty and science", and am placing it here in the event participants here wish to discuss it further. The basic reasoning for its removal is given in my edit summary here. ... Kenosis (talk) 17:03, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Speaking of "Certainty and science", I thought of adding the following to the second paragraph, Peirce on phony & actual doubt, & on multiplicity of variety of arguments, a segue to Stanovich's multiplicity & variety of causal ('model-based') reasoning/explanation which leads off the 3rd paragraph.

The fallibilist C. S. Peirce argued that merely quarrelsome, verbal, or hyperbolic doubt is fruitless for inquiry,[6] but also that the inquirer should work to attain to genuine doubt rather than relying complacently and uncritically on common sense,[7] and that the successful sciences trust, not to any single chain of inference (no stronger than its weakest link), but to the cable of multiple and various arguments intimately connected.[8]

No? The Tetrast (talk) 18:56, 26 September 2010 (UTC).

Yep, Peirce was way ahead of even Fleck on this basic slant, who in turn was way ahead of Popper (well, who wasn't Peirce way ahead of?). OK with me, Tetrast. There's a lot in Peirce's material that's very useful in the context of "certainty and science", and I think among other things that what you've put here is a reasonably good illustration of the role of scientific community as well as of avoiding the common trap of using bivalent logic in situations that are actually polyvalent. The sentence as you've proposed it is a bit run-on, but I'd support something along these basic lines. Others, including me I suppose, can always work on tightening it up a bit. ... Kenosis (talk) 20:08, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I rewrote it a bit. Your remark reminds me in an "ain't it the truth?" way of the following: "In the next to last chapter Mayo tries her hand at one of American philosophy's perennial amusements, the game of Peirce Knew It All Along." - Cosma Shalizi, review of Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge by Deborah G. Mayo. The Tetrast (talk) 20:36, 26 September 2010 (UTC).

And Hume said many of the same things before Pierce? And indeed wasn't Hume just marginally more clear about it than his predecessors like Bacon and Hobbes? Part of what perhaps changed was the social climate. Hume had to spend a lot of time defending himself from allegations of atheism. Today only politicians have to worry about things like that. Going further back than Hume, it was even more serious, even Hume spoke rarely and carefully of Hobbes and Machiavelli as inspirations although their importance was obvious.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:56, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

For a quick review and comparison, see Empiricism#British empiricism (Locke, Berkeley and Hume), cf. Empiricism#Integration of empiricism and rationalism (Peirce, James and Dewey), And yes, Peirce articulated a lot that the best philosophers and analysts are still grappling with today--and dagnabbit, whatever the issue is that's on the table in present-day discourse, Peirce usually seems to have been right about it. I love the comment by Shalizi. ... Kenosis (talk) 00:05, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I believe that with some "permanent" questions, including the question of how we know things, philosophers will always tend to come to one or another of the limited options available. Knowing our ignorance, or the limits, is pretty much what such discussion becomes. I also like the way the pragmatists explain this point BTW and do not wish to criticize them on this. I just wanted to point out that certainly concerning this point, Hume was probably the earlier person to express very similar thoughts in a clear way.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:30, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I have added another image. Hopefully this one captures more of the thoughts mentioned here regarding reasonable versus methodical skepticism.-Tesseract2 (talk) 15:03, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I would still like to see more in this article on the widely held evolution notion. The image portrayed the scientific consensus that all life is related and has descended from a common ancestor.--Csikszentmihalyi (talk) 11:54, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I can't say that I agree. See the evolution tag on the right here. I was delighted to find that there is TONS of coverage on wikipedia in general; some of the articles in the "research and history" section... brilliant... -Tesseract2 (talk) 16:38, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Csikszentmihalyi, can you explain what you mean? Sorry I haven't quite understood yet. The theory of evolution is an example, yes, but what more do you intend here?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:49, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Aristotle, Metaphysics 1.981b

This link Aristot. Met. 1.981b appears to be the source of the italicized quote contained in "In general the sign of knowledge or ignorance is the ability to teach, and for this reason we hold that art rather than experience is scientific knowledge; for the artists can teach, but the others cannot. Further, we do not consider any of the senses to be Wisdom. They are indeed our chief sources of knowledge about particulars, but they do not tell us the reason for anything, ..." (not the W. D. Ross translation, which translates others as men of mere experience).

I am mapping 'art' to techne and 'experience' to '????' (ie others-->'experience'?)

While trying to understand the article sentence being cited above, i.e. "knowledge that can be logically and convincingly explained". I found this rationale for 'the others cannot', which still does not pin down for me the Greek equivalent for 'others', or perhaps 'experience'.

The reason that this passage is so significant for me is that (my teacher) Feynman was actively anti-philosophical (a peculiarly American trait) and he wrestled his entire life with the question 'how do I understand ...'. The best he could come up with was 'what I cannot create I do not understand', which he had preserved in a corner of his blackboard until the day of his death. In my experience, Feynman was the epitome of techne and he tried very hard to make sure that people could reconstruct whatever he said from the clues that he left in his lectures. He had nothing but scorn for any researcher who attempted to rest on his/her laurels and woe to anyone who tried to put something over on someone else, based on their flim-flam, in his (Feynman's) presence.

So thank you for the sentence. I appreciate it and the reference. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 04:27, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Note: The trans-wiki links in Wiktionary have revealed to me that 'experience' is Εμπειρία (empeiria in Greek)--Ancheta Wis (talk) 12:32, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Correct. AW, if you use those Perseus links you can look on the top right-hand side and you'll see a "load" link which will give you the Greek. Each Greek word can be clicked to go to a dictionary and analysis. If there are any particular words you want help on, I'd be happy to try to help. Here is the passage you cited above:

In general the sign of knowledge (eidotos) or ignorance (mē eidotos) is the ability to teach, and for this reason we hold that art (technē) rather than experience (empeiria) is scientific knowledge (epistēmē); for the artists can teach, but the others cannot. Further, we do not consider any of the senses to be Wisdom (sophia). They are indeed our chief sources of knowledge about particulars, but they do not tell us the reason for anything, ...

ὅλως τε σημεῖον τοῦ εἰδότος καὶ μὴ εἰδότος τὸ δύνασθαι διδάσκειν ἐστίν, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τὴν τέχνην τῆς ἐμπειρίας ἡγούμεθα μᾶλλον ἐπιστήμην εἶναι: δύνανται γάρ, οἱ δὲ οὐ δύνανται διδάσκειν. ἔτι δὲ τῶν αἰσθήσεων οὐδεμίαν ἡγούμεθα εἶναι σοφίαν:

There are no words for either "the artists" or "the others". They are both inferred by the translator. Hope this helps.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:08, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

It is useful to look at the preceding paragraphs.

It would seem that for practical purposes experience is in no way inferior to art; indeed we see men of experience succeeding more than those who have theory without experience.The reason of this is a that experience is knowledge of particulars, but art of universals; and actions and the effects produced are all concerned with the particular. For it is not man that the physician cures, except incidentally, but Callias or Socrates or some other person similarly named, who is incidentally a man as well. [20] So if a man has theory without experience, and knows the universal, but does not know the particular contained in it, he will often fail in his treatment; for it is the particular that must be treated.Nevertheless we consider that knowledge and proficiency belong to art rather than to experience, and we assume that artists are wiser than men of mere experience (which implies that in all cases wisdom depends rather upon knowledge);and this is because the former know the cause, whereas the latter do not. For the experienced know the fact, but not the wherefore; but the artists know the wherefore and the cause. For the same reason we consider that the master craftsmen in every profession are more estimable and know more and are wiser than the artisans,

Aristotle is distinguishing two types of artisan, those who work based on habit without having a theory about why things work, and what he calls "master artisans" who are essentially coming close to be scientists (especially today).

we think that the artisans, like certain inanimate objects, do things, but without knowing what they are doing (as, for instance, fire burns);only whereas inanimate objects perform all their actions in virtue of a certain natural quality, artisans perform theirs through habit. Thus the master craftsmen are superior in wisdom, not because they can do things, but because they possess a theory and know the causes.

Perhaps you should then also read the passage in the Nicomachean Ethics where he distinguishes arts and sciences [1]. He says that scientific knowledge is concerning eternally true things. (I guess we would say laws of nature today.) In other words he distinguishes based on objects. Art on the other hand is concerned with making things [2]. Perhaps also interesting:-

a man knows a thing scientifically when he possesses a conviction arrived at in a certain way [demonstration by deduction from assumptions about universals], and when the first principles on which that conviction rests are known to him with certainty—for unless he is more certain of his first principles than of the conclusion drawn from them he will only possess the knowledge in question accidentally. Let this stand as our definition of Scientific Knowledge.

Aristotle was of course criticized for emphasizing deduction over induction by people like Bacon. The assumptions required for deduction come from experience and induction. Aristotle does not deny this, but he emphasizes that the scientific step is after the building up of experience, when you put the data together and state the conclusions.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:45, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I can't help adding that Aristotle's position versus Bacon about what makes something scientific, induction or deduction, can be positively compared to how the theory of evolution was developed: was it the know how of the animal breeders and others Darwin talked to that was scientific, (i.e. the people who built up the empirical knowledge) or the conclusions drawn from that know-how? The theory of evolution really only requires as assumptions a small number of very every-day observations:

1. Animals inherit some but not all traits from parents.

2. Some of these traits can help or impede an animal to reproduce.

=>Therefore new traits will accumulate and change over time in any specific population.

3. There is no known limit to this accumulation, but it is known that differences between individuals can mean they look like different species and no longer interbreed.

• Then pull out comparisons to evidence such as island populations, embryology, the fossil record, as a confirming cross check.

Cheers--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:40, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm. A bit of a minefield, see On the Origin of Species#Impact on the scientific community for the disputes between those favouring John Stuart Mill's concept of science and supporting Darwin, and those drawing on William Whewell's approach to dismiss Darwin. Rather upsetting Darwin, who'd tried hard to follow Whewell's concept of consilience, and found both Whewell and Adam Sedgwick dismissing his book as failing to show true induction. He'd also been strongly influenced by John Herschel's concepts of science, and felt it was "a great blow and discouragement" when he heard a rumour that "Herschel says my Book “is the law of higgledy-pigglety”,[3] though I seem to recall him getting more encouraging comments from Herschel later. Also note that Darwin's theory of evolution, as accepted in his lifetime, was common descent, and it took rather longer for natural selection to be accepted. But I digress. As for using the knowledge of mere animal and plant breeders in developing his theories, that was rather daring of Darwin; at that time science was the preserve of wealthy amateurs and clergymen, who had been educated in true science, very much a gentlemanly occupation. . . . dave souza, talk 21:39, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

It is a fascinating example of what science really is. My point above is, sort of, that it could be used to argue lots of different "theories" about scientific method. Taking the knowledge of "artisans" and then deducing universal truths is very Aristotelian or Socratic, but on the contrary he was at the same time doing what I call cross checking above, which was very Baconian and inductive (setting out tables and all that). Which was more important? I think neither. And of course both Bacon and Aristotle were, as often happens, better remembered for their more rhetorical moments. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:44, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Just so. Darwin was educated in the prime of natural theology and natural philosophy, and met those figures named above who were in the process of redefining science. While he received more support from Mills and the empirical school, he'd tried hard to show that many lines of evidence were explained by evolution to meet Whewell's criteria, and this shows in the structure of the Origin. Oh, and of course he quoted Whewell and Bacon at the front of the book, enlisting their views of science.[4] . . dave souza, talk 21:53, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Andrew Lancaster, Since note 14 is currently a duplicate of note 5, I propose to display the quote from Nichomachean Ethics in its stead.

• "a man knows a thing scientifically when he possesses a conviction arrived at in a certain way, and when the first principles on which that conviction rests are known to him with certainty—for unless he is more certain of his first principles than of the conclusion drawn from them he will only possess the knowledge in question accidentally" — Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 6 (H. Rackham, ed.) Aristot. Nic. Eth. 1139b

OK? I guess my reservation is that it puts a deductive slant on inquiry, but that is what Aristotle was pushing anyway. It is not balanced by the somewhat more tentative view that is put forward as inquiry today. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 13:48, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

I had not noticed the doubling up of that quote, or maybe I intended to fix it and forgot. Your proposal sounds logical to me.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:14, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Andrew Lancaster, it appears that there is some talk in the thread above, on evolution, to which Aristotle and his commentators might be able to contribute, no? --Ancheta Wis (talk) 16:49, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

The Philosophy of Science

The philosophy of science is essentially the requirement of data when searching for a solution to a problem. The solutions to the problems are tested through a system of theory, hypothesis, and results that support or disprove the theory. The theory must be general, formal, falsifiable, and parsimonious. Science is data driven. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hughesdepayen (talk • contribs) 23:06, 5 October 2010 (UTC) Hughesdepayen (talk) 23:08, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Current hatnote

The current hatnote:

This article is about the general term "Science", particularly as it refers to experimental sciences. For the specific topics of study by scientists, see natural science.

For other uses, see Talk:Science/Archive 4 (disambiguation).

may violate the "Examples of improper use" section of WP:Hatnote. I think this tends to draw the visitors attention away from the article, which it should not do. The hatnote should be shortened to just:

For other uses, see Talk:Science/Archive 4 (disambiguation).

This should be more than sufficient.—RJH (talk) 15:26, 14 October 2010 (UTC) This has been a message from Wikipedia.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.50.40.204 (talk • contribs)

Sounds reasonable. mezzaninelounge (talk) 17:51, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

No problem I think.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:14, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Even though

What's the purpose of 'even though' in 'heliocentric theory, the theory of evolution, and germ theory still bear the name "theory" even though, in practice, they are considered factual' ? Theory is a set of basic principles from which other outcomes derive. The set my be factulal or not - this does not matter. Everywhere when you see limited set of postulates with far-reaching consequences you have a theory. The current phrasing implicates that theory is something doubtful by definition which is not the case.--MathFacts (talk) 14:04, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I think this sentence attempts to address the common perception of the word "theory," which has different connotations outside of the context of the scientific model. The "even though" takes notice of the common interpretation of the word. VQuakr (talk) 21:19, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Protoscience and fringe science

The current heading is Pseudoscience, fringe science, and junk science. To me that looks like fringe is in bad company. To me fringe has a touch of scientific method, which the other two are lacking. Another one is protoscience which I couldn't find at all in the article, so I just added it to "See also" for the time being. Odd if this issue has not yet been on the agenda, proto and fringe science being closer to mainstream and worthy of a separate treatment? / Kurtan (talk) 01:12, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Social sciences excluded in opening para.

I seem to recall older discussions of which the outcome was that "natural science" and "social science" - at a minimum - were *both* "science", and that the article would not directly or indirectly imply that either was not. The current sentence "Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is an enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the natural world." clearly implies that only "natural science" (by use of the phrase "about the natural world") is "science." The unclear attempt in a later paragraph of the introduction to supposedly clarify the place of the social sciences does not compensate for the prominent dismissal of all but "natural science" as "science" in the first paragraph. It should be changed to clearly reflect the totality of science as *both* the natural and social sciences. Shoreranger (talk) 20:44, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Do I understand that in principle the word "natural" is the problem, because it can be used in a way which contrasts with human things? If that is the case then could we just remove the word "natural"?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:59, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Shoreranger, the problem is an overloading of the meaning of the world 'natural'. By the time of Newton, 'natural' came to mean 'beyond the power of any man, enormous, cosmic', whereas 'social' has the overloaded meaning of 'adhering to the social contract'. There needs to be a modifying term which means both 'beyond power by fiat' and which yet allows for stable society (that is, somehow non anarchistic interaction, somehow also voluntary, somehow also stemming from nature, somehow also scalable -- you see the problem I am grappling with, I hope. There needs to be a non-parochial definition here. ) --Ancheta Wis (talk) 23:37, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

In addition, I know of no society which has not arisen and which is not already defunct that has not solved the stability problem. Some societies have open borders, some are closed, some are selective ... Where is the citation that shows that there can be a stable society, market, culture, ... ? How long can such a society expect itself to last, with any reliability? I guess I am asking some fundamental questions here for which I have no resources to cite. Does anyone have answers here? --Ancheta Wis (talk) 23:59, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Society doesn't have to be all that stable in order to be real, any more than does the weather.
As to the world studied by physical, chemical, biological, and human/social sciences, there's no currently accepted standard label for it. In the past I've suggested that we make do with "the natural world and its inhabitants," "the actual world," "the concrete world," etc. But terms broad enough to cover things like nature and society while excluding "other things" (such as number) tend to sound a little curious or to provoke ontological or metaphysical objections and arguments.
Mathematics is not purely "fiat-istic" but it's neither a natural nor a social science; some would call it a social science by a very stretched idea of its being about certain objects in minds in a society; but that ignores the fact of mathematics' much greater universality; math can help decide questions of psychology and sociology, but their findings don't help prove the well-orderability of the real numbers, and so on.
Sciences of motion, matter, life, and mind used to be called "special sciences"; Peirce suggested also calling them "idioscopy" but that didn't catch on.
Really, I'd prefer that the article's opening line say "about the world" (like E. O. Wilson does) rather than "about the natural world" as it does now. We had such long discussions about it, I can't remember whether I actually voted for "about the natural world." I'd like even better "the actual world" or "the concrete world" but others didn't like them. The Tetrast (talk) 00:32, 4 January 2011 (UTC).

Then "about the world" gets my vote. Thank you, Tetrast. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 00:53, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you too and you're welcome, Ancheta. That means that we have four out of four here in favor of the change now. I guess we should wait a bit for a few others from the earlier discussions to respond. Not that I want to drag it out after the earlier marathon! The Tetrast (talk) 03:25, 4 January 2011 (UTC).

Thank you all for the well-considered responses to my post. While it may not be perfect, I would also vote for "of the world" as an improvement over the last alternative. Shoreranger (talk) 15:30, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

This is a late vote. I vote for or should I say, affirm the change of "natural world" to "the world".mezzaninelounge (talk) 16:00, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Likewise supporting "of the world" MartinPoulter (talk) 17:24, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

In the meantime, I have done it. I don't think I ever saw such a simple consensus! :) --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:04, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Okay, so now I get to add a bit of devil's advocacy. "Natural world" was as opposed to WHAT? The NON-natural or supernatural world? Or merely the natural world as opposed to world of ideas and the world of the mind? But the latter (as pointed out) are capable of being studied scientifically (psychology and the social sciences, and (yes) mathematics and the formal sciences). This is all now in the lede, and is good (it's a much better lede than it was). But I point out now that we don't actually mean "world" in any concrete fashion (so "natural world" is worse), but just "world" doesn't even go far enough. We say "word" but we really do mean everything, do we not? Science is defined not by WHAT it studies, but HOW it studies it and what knowledge results. WHAT it studies, can really be anything and everything, if the result is knowledge (which it will be, if the method is correctly applied-- even negative knowledge is knowledge). If you are using the "world" to mean EVERYTHING, that fine, but "anything and everything," or something to that effect, is more explicit and correct. Perhaps this needs a short sentence. I'll try BOLDly putting one in, and see what you think.

Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is an enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about anything in the universe. This view supposes that anything is capable of being studied by the scientific method, in order to yield at least some (perhaps very limited) scientific knowledge about it.

That's true, is it not? Can you come up with any counterexamples? SBHarris 21:24, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

The phrase "anything in the universe" is vague in the wrong ways - the word "anything" suggests "anything you like, anything you want to study!" - more freedom of choice than, as a practical matter, we actually have. "The universe and the things in it" or "the cosmos and its parts" is less suggestive of that and thus better. But howsoever one says it, it's just too wordy. "The world" says it plainly enough to people with an understanding of everyday English.
Now, by "the world," I think that people generally mean this actual concrete world that we live in, not the hazier world of mathematical possibilities; some think that technically the world of possibilities shouldn't be called a "world." But whatever one calls it, the realm of possibilities or hypotheticalities or whatever is broader, from a classificational viewpoint, than the world as studied by science in the usual sense of the word "science", classificationally broader in that mathematical principles help establish scientific findings, but one doesn't appeal to mechanics or physics, much less to sociology, to prove the Pythagorean theorem.
Readers come here expecting an article on the sciences of actual happenings and causations - motion, matter, life, and maybe mind or society etc. (not everybody grants that human/social studies have been successful enough to be sciences), and not about those more general relations which are studied as orderings, operations, combinations and permutations, graphs, etc., by mathematics. There is a tradition for calling them "formal sciences" and the like, but that's a special tradition, widely unfamiliar like its precedents. The special tradition of a broader sense of the word "science" is covered in the article. Anyway, so we say that science about the world, as a point of reference for those who think of math, like Peirce, as being about hypothetical possibilities, hypothetical necessities, or like Rudy Rucker, as being about "what can be," or like many, as being about abstract nonlinguistic objects (Quine). That's how a lot of people think, no matter arguments about whether science is defined by what it studies or how it studies (I think it's defined by both). That's it, three words: "about the world.". Then the article mentions a distinction of method: the building of testable explanations and predictions. There's a kind of mix of methods and goals there, but people tend to disagree about what the mix is, so it's best left alone. The Tetrast (talk) 23:27, 5 January 2011 (UTC).

Personally I don't have a big opinion about world versus universe versus nature. All can imply things that are not intended. (The world can imply "The Earth".) No word seems perfect so I wiki-linked to Nature (philosophy). But I do not find Sbharris's new sentence helpful. It is just that it seems to be one of those cases where too much is trying to be fitted into a lead?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:02, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I think that your link to "Nature (philosophy)" was a good choice. I agree that SBHarris is trying to say too much in the lead. In his proposed opening he says "This view supposes..." - to what, exactly, does the phrase "this view" refer back in his proposed opening's previous sentence? Discussion of science's suppositions needs to be a bit more direct, anyway it shouldn't seem shoehorned. (1) Science is based on the supposition that scientific method (taken far enough) can discover anything about the real (objective) world - or - (2) one logically supposes that the real is both discoverable by sufficient inquiry and objective (independent of particular opinion), and scientific method is based ON that supposition. I think (2) makes more sense, but SBHarris, trying to keep it short and sweet (since it's in the lead), ends up making it sound more like (1). Anyway why, at that point, is one talking about science's suppositions about the world? Why not about science's values, science as a community and way of life? Well, my point is that it's all too much for the lead. I hope I'm being articulate. I'm trying to keep my remarks short and sweet - I complained about the previous "marathon" but I was one of the worst offenders. The Tetrast (talk) 07:53, 6 January 2011 (UTC). Edited. The Tetrast (talk) 08:09, 6 January 2011 (UTC).

It may be worthwhile to insert 'public' as in 'public enterprise' in the lede. This amounts to a public science policy that ideas be as free as the air (air being a free good, not just a public good). Steven Johnson, in The invention of air (a 2008 book on Enlightenment Europe and America, especially on Joseph Priestley) quotes Jefferson: "That ideas should spread freely from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, ... like the air ... incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation." -- Johnson p.xiii (with acknowledgement on p.241, that Johnson learned the Jefferson quotation from Lawrence Lessig.) --Ancheta Wis (talk) 13:22, 6 January 2011 (UTC). I forgot to sign, and I personally have no problem if this word doesn't show up in the lede.

The question of whether a scientist can work alone truly is a subtle one again, and for the same reasons as usual I think we need to be careful about putting too much in the lead in this respect?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:31, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I have nothing much to add other than I agree with Tetras's position of keeping the lead simple and straightforward. I have no principled objections to SBHarris's point. My main concern is stylistic. Additional terms and clarifying statements make the lead muddled and unwieldy. I think it is good the way it is. mezzaninelounge (talk) 18:10, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Okay, then, I've made a minor change, by pipe-linking world to universe, rather than keeping it as a simple link to world. It's not so obvious why, but let me explain. I realize that in the article on world it says already that the word CAN be used philosophically to mean the universe or reality, but I want to make sure of this. As we use the word "world" (which I like in lots of ways for its simplicity, as you do) in this article, the pipelink at the same times tells the reader that we mean Weldt in the sense of "universe" (which includes the mental "worlds" of ideas, culture, mathematics). Not just physical reality of objects and atoms.

Historically, the philosophy of science has been a battleground between philosophical realists (naive and otherwise) and phisosophical idealists. There is something to be said for both those who argue that 1) all we know is physical objects (all our ideas are just physical impulses in physical neurons) vs. 2) the people who say that (just as obviously) all we know is ideas, since ideas are the only way the world is represented in our minds, whether the world exists independently, or not! Either of these views impacts the definition of "science," because it impacts what "science" studies. We can't just allow science in our definition to study only "physical objects," or only just only "ideas,"because either of these makes us decide or declare what "the world" is made of, and we don't want to go there. So it's better to just say "world" and mean "univese" (which includes ideas and the minds that contain them) and keep it wide as possible, in order to avoid this argument altogether.

In summary, thanks for your thinking all. I personally am satisfied with the lede now, and think it's better than most of what you'll find in the literature. SBHarris 01:27, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I disagree and think that the link embedded in "world" should be reverted to Nature (philosophy). Science as discussed in the wiki is mainly science in the everyday sense - not pure mathematics or probability theory or mathematical logic or even philosophy, but instead the explanatory and special-tests-conducting study of the actual, the concrete, that which "reacts with other like objects in the environment" as Peirce put it - the world of motion, matter, life, people - and not more generally the study of the real, the objective, which includes not only the actual and reactive but also broader, less concrete, more abstract things, abstract properties and relations. The Reality wiki goes into discussions of philosophical realism - that's the sense in which I'm using the word "real" when I say that numbers and mathematical relations are real - they're objective in the sense of not depending on particular opinion. By "universe" (in the sense of "cosmos," not "universe of discourse") in the broadest sense I mean the whole of all that which, animal, vegetable, mineral, or particle, does have physicality, actuality. The Tetrast (talk) 01:56, 7 January 2011 (UTC). Edited. The Tetrast (talk) 02:12, 7 January 2011 (UTC).

SBHarris just changed the embedded link from Reality to Universe. I'm okay with that. Now he has my vote. The Tetrast (talk) 02:27, 7 January 2011 (UTC).

Looks good. mezzaninelounge (talk) 14:43, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from Jonadon, 10 January 2011

{{edit semi-protected}} There is an extra period at the end of the second paragraph. Jonadon (talk) 02:11, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Done, thanks. The Tetrast (talk) 02:32, 10 January 2011 (UTC).

Philosophy of Science

There has been a huge edit to this section by User:Rtc. Mostly bringing back Popper - I'm all for that - - didn't know he'd gone. However, I have some points to make:

1. Does P really deny the existence of ALL evidence? - I think we need a quote if the unobtainable appendix is to be trusted.
2. The Preface to 'Realism ...' has a provocative title, but some explanation of the bald statement is needed.

Some edits are a complete rewrite of part of the section. Where does it all come from? It has obviously been typed rather than copied, because of the several typos (needs a copyedit), but surely it has come from somewhere. Who says empiricism is the most popular position? What does it mean to say it is 'held together'? - Is this from some science populariser?

The whole looks like a revision of the Philosophy of Science article in the Science one.

Myrvin (talk) 09:28, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) == Can we get some discussion about edits to the Philosophy of Science section? == I notice quite a lot of change to the Philosophy of Science section, by User:Rtc. I am not sure about quite a few things in the section. Part of this is because I am not a big reader of Popper.:-

• Empiricism is the most popular school of thought in the philosophy of science?
• Empiricism is generally a belief held together with a belief in positivism?
• Popper is the first "critical rationalist" and someone who believes that observations come from theories and not theories from observations?
• Popper's ideas on falsifiability are in sharp opposition to mainstream philosophy of science?

Also Empiricism is consistently spelled wrongly. I guess my first question is whether Popper is really so unpopular?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:06, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

There appears to be an echo. Myrvin (talk) 12:20, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Indeed! I'll merge our sections by nowikiing my header, and post on his/her talk page and ask them to come discuss here perhaps.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:14, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

There are a few overstatements about Popper's position in this article. Might have to look at them carefully before making some small quick edits. mezzaninelounge (talk) 16:04, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

It needs copy editing anyway, yes. And I think that concerning content yes, "overstatement" is perhaps a good word for my concern and possibly Myrvins's. Obviously Popper needs to be in there somewhere, but the description seems a little bit overboard in several directions.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:41, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback. First, let me disclose that basically all of the passages about Popper in this article and the Philosophy of Science article were written by me -- so you don't get a false impression; I don't want to mislead you about that. Some of them were written by me some years ago (including parts of the section I inserted over the past few days), and some of them written during the past days. If you find a statement about Popper in Wikipedia that looks controversial, it was likely written by me -- in contrast to most people, I actually read most of Poppers works, and they often don't say what people believe them to say.

• "Does P really deny the existence of ALL evidence?" Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Yes, concerning what is usually meant with "evidence". Popper actually uses the term "evidence" frequently. But when we talk about "evidence", we usually mean some sort of observation from which to induce a theory or make it probable. Popper, on the other hand, uses the term "evidence" to mean something that presupposes the theory (since "evidence" contains notions from the theory and is hence theory-laden) yet can be in conflict with the theory. Admittedly, there are some passages in the Logic of Scientific Discovery where Popper speaks about corroboration by evidence as something to justify rational belief in a theory, but these passages are dubious and have never been repeated, explained or affirmed; rather, later statements, like those found in the "Replies to my Critics" (P.A. Schilpp, The Philosophy of Karl Popper) clearly contradict them. I agree that it is very unfortunate that the English version of the Logic of Scientific Discovery is out of date and lacks several important appendices from the German edition. Please complain to the publisher about this, and I really mean it!
• "The Preface to 'Realism ...' has a provocative title, but some explanation of the bald statement is needed" I already added some explanation, trying to say that Popper does not say that science has no method. he says two things: 1. Science has no method that is positive, that can generate knowledge instead of merely eliminate it; 2. Science has no method that is in any way particular to science. Note the title is "on the nonexistence of scientific method", not "on the nonexistence of method" or "on the nonexistence of method in science"
• "Popper is the first 'critical rationalist'" Yes, at least the first one who used that term and the first one who held critical rationalism as a coherent philosophy. Many of its ideas may have existed before, but in isolation. As a philosophy, it is unequivocally attributed to Popper. This seems uncontroversial to me.
• "and someone who believes that observations come from theories and not theories from observations?" Yes -- this is the basic point Popper is trying to make. He says statements about observations come from theories (by using the theory to explain the particular observation) and theories are eliminated by conflicting observation.
• "Empiricism is the most popular school of thought in the philosophy of science?" "Popper's ideas on falsifiability are in sharp opposition to mainstream philosophy of science?" Yes, but with an important qualification. The mainstream philosophy of science is some sort of inductivism. This is acknowledged by Popper himself, for example in Objective Knowledge. It is true that mainstream philosophy of science has often found Popperian thinking attractive, but few have actually understood how far Popper really goes. So what you can often find is an inductivist position formulated in Popperian terms. Take, for example, the most popular Popperian term, falsifiability. It is used very often to say things like "This idea is not falsifiable, thus it is not scientific [and thus can be ignored, or can be ignored by scientists, or may be treated differently that scientific ideas in public discourse]" when it comes to questionable positions, often during political debates. The statement may use the term "falsifiability", but not in a way that Popper would agree with. Popper says, very explicitly, in the first sections of Logic of Scientific discovery that the definition of science is, in principle, completely arbitrary and that some idea is not bad merely because it isn't falsifiable -- contrasting it to what the inductivist or positivist would say. "The fact that value judgments influence my proposals does not mean that I am making the mistake of which I have accused the positivists---that of trying to kill metaphysics by calling it names. I do not even go so far as to assert that metaphysics has no value for empirical science" ([5])
• "I guess my first question is whether Popper is really so unpopular?" Popper is very popular. But only because people assume Popper to agree with their own, inductivist/positivist philosophy. This is caused by many web sites and sources that describe Popper in such a way. However, the real Popper is really very unpopular. Some philosophers know the real Popper and accordingly criticize him harshly. See, for example, this article: A Skeptical Look at Karl Popper. Or this book: Popper and After. David Miller even speaks about the "dissident spirit" of critical rationalism. [6] Also, note the little-known fact that Popper has cited some creationist in a positive way and has given some support to some creationist ideas (in Objective Knowledge, I think it was in "Natural Selection and the Emergence of Mind" or "Evolution and the tree of knowlege" as far as I remember).
• "There are a few overstatements about Popper's position in this article." I do not want to deny that this may be the case. Maybe the statements, though essentially correct, are fomulated in a way that provokes too much debate where such a debate is misplaced and would rather belong to more specialized articles. If you can fix it would be great. --rtc (talk) 17:55, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Rtc You obviously know your Popper. And I've read quite a lot of it too. One big problem with what you have written is that (as you say) it is only what YOU have written. To include a view in Wikipedia, you need to cite some published work. It can be your work, as long as it's properly published. If, as you state, your views on Popper are controversial, then you must find someone to cite - otherwise (as I used to tell my students) it's just your opinion. Myrvin (talk) 18:48, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

But I am merely describing Popper's opinion, not my own (although they may often coincide). All that I have written can be found in Popper's writings. There may be some general statements that are unsourced, but let's be honest: The article currently has hardly any source about such statements. Just take the entire first paragraph of the philosophy of science section with statements like "For example, it is universally agreed that scientific hypotheses and theories must be capable of being independently tested and verified by other scientists in order to become accepted by the scientific community." There is no source for that. This is not an excuse for having some statements without a source and I agree that sources are needed, but sometimes unsourced statements need to be temporarily added to balance other unsourced statements like the mentioned ones. BTW, the current link for the "rationality, criticism and logic" source points to an incomplete version of that article, but if I try to replace it by http://www.ooci ties.com/criticalrationalist/rcl.doc which has the full version, it gets blocked as spam. Why are oocities links disallowed? --rtc (talk) 18:58, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

rtc, if you have print copies of Popper, you can google for a precise set of keywords in the text and typically get right down to the page number in the publication, but from an online version in Google Books. I have noticed that a logical query for author title subject phrase will not work because the hit results are buried in the millions of candidates from the Google search. However, I have had good results just using the keywords. In that way you can get verifiable results that other editors can read, and which you can even include in your citations. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 19:55, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

rtc, just as a sample editing hint, using your own query: David Miller (2006), Out of Error, p.ix You can put square brackets around your query + one space with the human-readable phrase which you are publicizing, and avoid the auto-numbering, which is not as readable. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 20:03, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

• Evidence: I don't think I mean what you suggest by evidence. Of course P denies the effectiveness of evidence to (inductively) support a theory. But you say he does say that evidence can go against a theory. So that is the existence of some evidence. As I said, we really need a translation of that quote for it to make sense.
• Popular science: I've no doubt Popper wrote (or implied) that empiricism was the most popular way before he came along. (Except maybe for Hume) But does someone say that it’s more popular now? Anyway, I think all we need is a Popper quote to that effect preceded by “Popper wrote that:”. For this article I don’t care whether he’s popular or not. It would be nice to have the views of others if they disagree - and I think they do.
• You cannot say that your views on Popper are controversial and then say you are just describing his opinion. Presumably – and I think you’ve said it – others disagree with your view on his opinion.
• I saw that part in the POS article and I don’t like it either. Myrvin (talk) 20:54, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

• "As I said, we really need a translation of that quote for it to make sense." It's not available online, so I will have to look it up in the book and type it... Will do it in a few hours.
• "You cannot say that your views on Popper are controversial and then say you are just describing his opinion." Why not? My description of Popper, if controversial, doesn't necessarily have to be controversial because it's wrong but it could just be controversial because many clearly wrong descriptions of Popper can be found on the web and in secondary sources and people just take them for granted. Popper himself criticized a lot that he has been misrepresented (about secondary sources, of course, not the web). Sure, what I wrote might also be controversial because it IS wrong. Then we have to discuss what is wrong about it and what has to be changed. I am constantly adding further sources even as we discuss, some of which should be available online on google books and on the web. So please check the sources and see if you can agree with how I describe them, and if you cannot agree, then please voice your concerns.
• "But does someone say that it’s more popular now?" http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/gardner_popper.html -- already mentioned above -- clearly seems to say so: "Today [Popper's] followers among philosophers of science are a diminishing minority, convinced that [his] vast reputation is enormously inflated." But I won't insist on the question of popularity of views being discussed in the article. If you think the section is better without these qualifications, just remove them. --rtc (talk) 21:22, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I shall wait a while and look again. Myrvin (talk) 21:43, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

A different point: I think your use of the 'common sense theory of knowledge' is confusing. You do not say what that is. In Obj Kn, P says it is a vague concept. I don't think you need it, you can contrast Popper with induction. Myrvin (talk) 21:58, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I now checked the new appendix XIX, which is essentially a presentation of the Popper-Miller argument against probabilistic induction. Indeed, there is no literal statement saying that evidence does not exist. It says, rather, that positive support by evidence does not exist, which I guess is what I meant when I added that statement – and which is what the term evidence usually implies. "Induktionstheoretiker sind geneigt, den positiven Support einer Hypothese h durch empirische Prüfsätze e als Induktion zu interpretieren" (II) "Da jeder nicht-deduktive Support negativ ist, so ist auch jeder induktive Support (falls es ihn gibt) ganz allgemein Countersupport. Induktion (soweit es so etwas gibt) ist also immer Counterinduktion." (III) ("Inductivists tend to understand the positive support of a hypothesis h by empirical evidence e as induction" -- "Because any non-deductive support is negative, any inductive support (if it exists) is, in a very general way, countersupport. So induction (if it exists) is always counter-induction"). On the other hand it should be noted that new appendix *XIV ("Falsifizierbarkeit als logisches Abgrenzungskriterium und die Unbeweisbarkeit von empirischen Falsifikationen" -- "Falsifiability as a logical criterion for demarcation and the non-demonstrability of empirical falsifications") which argues that "evidence" not merely doesn't prove a theory but also doesn't disprove it. "Nun könnte man aber unter dem Prediakt 'falsifizierbar' auch etwas ganz anderes verstehen: Man könnte ja sagen, daß eine Theorie nur dann 'falsifizierbar' oder 'empirisch widerlegbar' ist, wenn wir im Prinzip mit Sicherheit entscheiden können, ob sie tatsächlich empirisch widerlegt wurde oder nicht. Und es wird dann mit vollem Recht behauptet, daß Theorien (in diesem Sinn!) nicht falsifizierbar sind." ("Now you could understand the property 'falsifiable' as something entirely different: One could say that a theory is 'falsifiable' or 'empirically refutable' only if we could, in principle, decide with certainty if it has actually been empirically refuted or not. And then it is claimed, rightly, that theories cannot (in this sense!) be falsified.") I am going to change the statement with respect to the problematic part.

FWIW, here is a list of new appendices missing from the English edition. *XIII. Zwei Axiome für absolute Wahrscheinlichkeit und Boolesche Algebra. (two axioms for absolute probability and boolean algebra) *XIV. Falsifizierbarkeit als logisches Abgrenzungskriterium und die Unbeweisbarkeit von empirischen Falsifikationen (Falsifiability as a logical criterion for demarcation and the non-demonstrability of empirical falsifications) *XV. Über Wahrheitsnähe (On truth-likeness) *XVI. Zur Null-Wahrscheinlichkeit (Addendum on zero probability) *XVII. Argumente gegen die Bayessche induktive Wahrscheinlichkeit (arguments against the bayesian inductive probability) *XVIII. Zum Abschluß: Ein einfacher Beweis, daß es keine probabilistische Induktion gibt (Closing remarks: A simple proof that probabilistic induction doesn't exist) *XIX. Support und Countersupport: Die Induktion wird zur Counterinduktion, die Epagoge kehrt zum Elenchus zurück (Support and countersupport: induction becomes counter-induction, returning from epagoge to elenchus *XX. Probabilistische Unabhängigkeit in der relativen Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie: Korrektur eines Auslassungsfehlers (probabilistic independence in the relative theory of probability: Fixing an omission) Addition of *XIII to *XVIII in 7th German ed 1982, *XIX in 8th German ed 1984 and *XX in 10th German ed 1994 (There are various addenda to various sections that seem to be missing, too.) --rtc (talk) 01:43, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Popper's position that there is no scientific method can be disproven by one counterexample: When Gauss was once asked how he came about his theorems, he replied

• durch planmässiges Tattonieren (through systematic palpable experimentation). —Carl Friedrich Gauss in Mackay, Alan L. (ed.) (1991), Dictionary of Scientific Quotations, p.100

in fact, I'll give another: How does Popper's statement stand up against the planned setup in 1917 of the voyage to Principe to verify general relativity in 1919? If Popper were right this experiment and the whole enterprise/voyage would have been wrongheaded; instead it vindicated GR. I think Popper's statement would be more accurate if he (or rtc as delegate) restricted himself to counterexamples against inductivism and not against all of scientific method. Scientific method requires imagination and creativity; Einstein asked himself "what would I see if I were riding on a beam of light". Surely there is room for that in scientific method. If the word 'theory' were the same as 'imagination' then I would have no argument with Popper's position. But the words are different; the meanings are different. Theory-laden is not the same as thought-laden. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 05:49, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

• • You are starting to discuss Popper's philosophy. I don't think that this is the right place to do that; please discuss the article and how it describes Popper's views. And, of course, I disagree. --rtc (talk) 14:24, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

@Rtc, just some general comments about your approach.

• You say you are using Popper rather than secondary sources. If so then at least make sure you quote or cite Popper more clearly to show how.
• Concerning this approach, there is always a challenge on Wikipedia, in my opinion, about how to handle writers like philosophers who can be both complicated and well-known. Firstly, what is written commonly about such people is in itself sometimes WP:NOTABLE even if wrong, and sometimes should be mentioned on Wikipedia. Apart from the WP:NOTE policy, another guide to when to use them is WP:WEIGHT. Secondly, some people would argue that you should even prefer those secondary sources as a matter of policy. (Consider WP:PRIMARY.) I do not think this is a correct interpretation of WP policy for this kind of subject because we do not have to always use secondary sources, and not all secondary sources are notable. On the other hand most truly notable sources will be specializing in one area which will also be an area it is less likely to be wrong about.
• A second challenge I think you face is that in this case you are writing about Popper in a large article which is not actually about Popper. We need to avoid making the discussion of Popper becoming over-dominant in the article.
• Putting aside the above a bit I notice that in fact some of the things you've been asserting to not sound like they are from Popper but more like personal opinions, for example comments about whether Popper is in conflict with the mainstream or whether empiricism is the mainstream. Whatever your sources, you always have to be a bit self-critical when making comments about what is or is not mainstream. There are so many opinions around. Ideally you should have tertiary source for such comments. (Preferably not just one writer like a Popper or a Stephen Jay Gould.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:11, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

• "If so then at least make sure you quote or cite Popper more clearly to show how." I'm trying, so please be more specific if there is something in the current version of the article that you think should have a quotation of citation.
• "Firstly, what is written commonly about such people is in itself sometimes WP:NOTABLE even if wrong, and sometimes should be mentioned on Wikipedia." I completely agree with that, but again, please be more specific if this refers to the current version instead of being a general statement.
• "We need to avoid making the discussion of Popper becoming over-dominant in the article" Again, I agree. I already started removing some statements about some more specific issues.
• "in fact some of the things you've been asserting to not sound like they are from Popper but more like personal opinions, for example comments about whether Popper is in conflict with the mainstream or whether empiricism is the mainstream." But it isn't (just) my opinion, it is (also) Popper's. In the source mentioned above (the new appendices missing from the English edition of LScD, but also in other parts of the book), Popper frequently complains about this. And I already cited other sources, independent from Popper (the Martin Gardner article, the Miller book), that agree with this. And as I already mentioned, I certainly agree that Popper is pretty mainstream with respect to falsifiability, though not in a way that has much to do with the way Popper uses that term. I'm not sure I can find a tertiary source about this. If you think that it should thus be removed, or should be worded in a different way, or changed altogether what it says, go ahead. My concern is just that the article ends end up in a way that makes a clear difference between Popper's views and empiricism, and not mix it all together into a seemingly uniform position as many sources do. --rtc (talk) 14:24, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

@Rtc, just to make it clear those remarks were intended to be general and were based on your initial edits. I'll try to find time to watch your subsequent edits and see if there are specific examples.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:44, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Continuation

I thought I'd start a new subsection.

The POS section is looking much better. A couple of points:

1. I still don't like the words "Empiricism is generally held together with inductivism" - I don't know what they mean. Is ind. the glue to Emp.?
2. There should aso be mention of Kuhn, Feyerabend and Lakatos. F appears in Philosophocal critiques, with a small mention of Lakatos. But no Kuhn.
3. Empiricism amd Inductivism should have less denegrating pieces early on. Locke etc. If, indeed it is still popular - or even if not.
4. And what about Decartes and Hume? Myrvin (talk) 20:04, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I basically agree with the flavor of what you are saying. But a few comments intended to help refine what is needed:-

• How far do we need to go into detail? Or, to put the question another way, if Positivism, Kuhn, Feyerabend and Lakatos are not explained, then should there be so much on instrumentalism and methodological naturalism, which are kind of just new fangled words for things that were argued a long time ago anyway?
• We have a tricky general question to work out when it comes to asking ourselves how much we should use the cheap textbook trick of dividing up modern philosophers into empiricists, inductivists, etc. Anther approach is just to name the important figures, but then these semi-artificial categories are I guess notable in themselves. On the other other hand I suppose there is a main article for philosophy of science where things like that must be handled.
• Descartes and Hume are mentioned in passing at least. Maybe no-one should be mentioned in anymore than a passing way in this sub-section which has its own main article? But then again we now have a big section on Popper. Can we compress that a bit?
• I think the section could maybe be allowed to be a bit longer but we don't want it to become an article in itself.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:50, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

• "I still don't like the words" You are right, that's not good wording. I will try to improve. Sorry... I'm not a native English speaker.
• "There should aso be mention of Kuhn, Feyerabend and Lakatos" Definitely, though we need to be careful. Kuhn has not really developed a philosophy of science but essentially made a sociological study of the history of science that was then used as a basis for philosophical discussion. (Sure, his whole approach has some philosophical aspects, too). All of this needs to be made clear, since there is not Kuhn in isolation... You can only understand him correctly if you give the wider background that his work developed in response to Popper, and the impact of his work with repect to postmodernism. Feyerabend, on the other hand, did not have so much impact and in fact the differences between Feyerabend's position and critical rationalism were not as huge as Feyerabend always wanted to see them. After all, he acknowledges to have started as a critical rationalist once himself. If you describe him in the POS section, make sure to specifically described in the light of his criticism of critical rationalism. Only then you can understand his position correctly. Lakatos position has even less that distinguishes it from critical rationalism, since he didn't even reject it the way Feyerabned did. So I agree, go ahead and add them, but keep all of this in mind. They all belong to the broader context of critical rationalism and don't exist as views in isolation the way that inductivism does.
• "But then again we now have a big section on Popper. Can we compress that a bit?" It can probably be further compressed, and maybe some parts can be moved to other sections or subsections, especially the discussion of the critical rationalist objections to the justificationist epistemology.
• "I think the section could maybe be allowed to be a bit longer but we don't want it to become an article in itself" I agree. --rtc (talk) 04:42, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Just an idea but actually on looking things over I think that in a practical way, for this article the idea of using a reasonably fair and general quote like the Gould quote in order to contrast a few big ideas and names, is probably a "least worst" way to get in a good overall feeling of some of the things happening in philosophy of science. It might also be a way to compress the Popper discussion and also contrast him to some of his contemporaries?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:19, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

During the Popper compression process perhaps we might also correct the impression that Kuhn was only influenced by Popper. Kuhn also read Ludwik Fleck's 1935 work in German, as he acknowledges in the preface to the English translation. There is a positivist link here: the positivist Otto Neurath wrote a Unified science monograph which was a companion to Kuhn's contribution (Structure of Scientific Revolutions) to the failed positivist attempt at the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 14:16, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

So does anyone have any good secondary comments we could use that would be helpful in this way?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:42, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Merging with scientific method section

Scientific method is a subfield of the philosophy of science, so I think it should be a subsection of the philosophy of science section in this article. And I think that the current section on scientific method really needs some work. It contains a lot of WP:SYNTH ("According to psychologist Keith Stanovich ... Philosopher Barry Stroud adds that ..."), anecdotes ("During the Yom Kippur War, cognitive psychologist Daniel Kahneman was asked ...") and trivia ("eventually, the discovery that our night vision is not troubled by red light ..."), unsourced claims ("Unlike a mathematical proof, a scientific theory is empirical ..."), plus it often doesn't give proper attribution and describes as uniform views what is in fact a number of different and conflicting positions. Much is written from the vague point of view of methodological naturalism and it is my impression that it was specifically written with a purpose in mind: The purpose of implicitly taking a stance against controversial pseudosciences. While pseudosciences are an important topic, I don't think that the whole scientific method section does well to discuss this and I don't think it is of good quality in general. But merging would at least be a start, like putting the philosophy of science section in front, so the reader can see that philosophy of science and scientific method is not such a uniform thing and that even among the most reasonable of all thinkers not everyone has though about it in exactly the same uniform way. --rtc (talk) 04:05, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

After re-reading the section, it is clear that you really refer to the Certainty and Science sub-section of scientific method in your call for re-write. And we might dispute what contains what. Scientific method is not philosophical, but actionable. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 10:17, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

That said, Lakatos' Proofs and Refutations points to his view that mathematics is empirical, and not certain. I don't think Lakatos comes right out and says it in the book, and he died before his editors could publish much else. (By the way, I would appreciate a page number citation for your claim that "mathematics uses the exact same principles as science".) I got the clear message from Lakatos that there is a mythos involved, but Lakatos was very careful in his publications. He uses characters to voice his points of view, just like Galileo in Two New Sciences: "Epsilon: Really Lambda, your unquenchable thirst for certainty is becoming tiresome! How many times do I have to tell you that we know nothing for certain? But your desire for certainty is making you raise very boring problems — and is blinding you to the interesting ones." — Proofs and Refutations p. 126 (and it appears that Lambda's role is Lakatos working on boring problems :-) --Ancheta Wis (talk) 11:02, 15 January 2011 (UTC))

My addition to the scientific method article concerning "mathematics uses the exact same principles as science" has to be read with a grain of salt. I added this statement merely to say something about Lakatos view at all in the article, which was missing completely. It's not supposed to be an exact presentation of Lakatos' view, something that can hardly be done using only a single statement. It is supposed to point into the general direction of Lakatos' position. More specifically, by "the exact same principles" I meant that mathematics, according to Lakatos, makes use of contradiction, criticism and revision in an essential way, and the same thing is true for science. It was not supposed to say that mathematics, by itself, is necessarily empirical. It is true that Proofs and Refutations might point to this view, but I don't think Lakatos would completely agree with it. You cannot empirically refute a theorem like the Riemann hypothesis... I think what Lakatos does is to "base" mathematics on the non-empirical consequences of empirical theories. (Note the frequently overlooked fact, discussed at length by Bartley in some of the appendices of Bartley's Retreat to Commitment as far as I remember, that not all logical consequences of emprical theories are empirical) --rtc (talk) 15:00, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

rtc, thank you for your clarification. In light of your clarification I will change the citation to a note, stating that this claim is a paraphrase of Lakatos' Proofs and Refutations. Lakatos indeed has some nice mathematics in the book when he publicizes the usefulness of rewriting systems, as shown by the contribution of Poincaré's rewrite of Euler's formula for polyhedra. But the core of his book, that there is an ostensive component to mathematics, is that mathematics is a succession of dominant theories, ranging from logic, to concrete models, to topology ( and although Lakatos did not live to say it in print, to science. Thus in Lakatos' terminology, science is a dominant theory. -- Don't worry, I'm not putting that in the article). --Ancheta Wis (talk) 16:24, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

The more I think about it the more I am worried about the idea that the scientific method is a subfield of POS. This seems to be close to saying that science is a subfield of, or coterminus with, POS. POS is (inter alia) a critical commentary on science and on what scientists do, and maybe on what science really is. Is what historians do a subfield of the Phil of History? or what mathematicians do a subfield of the Phil of Maths? How to fit in philosophy in a field is always a problem, but I think this suggestion does not work. Myrvin (talk) 13:22, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure you are right about this. It is true that what historians do is a basic subject which the philosophy of history discusses. But that does not necessarily make one a sub-field of the other. One is studying and to some extent perhaps advising the other.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:41, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

"POS is (inter alia) a critical commentary on science and on what scientists do, and maybe on what science really is" But so is the scientific method section of the article... You cannot write about scientific method without presupposing a philosophical view. Currently, the section on scientific method is written from the perspective of methodological naturalism, and doesn't even mention that other views might exist. On the other hand, the philosophy of science section already contains some discussion about scientific method. --rtc (talk) 15:00, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

rtc, the "perspective from ... naturalism" is antidote to supernaturalism. Historically, the philosophical position of methodological naturalism was that a scientific method was the best hope for demarcating science, and that would keep people thinking. Otherwise, once we accept the supernatural as an explanation, it becomes all too easy that thinking and scepticism stop in our minds, and that fatalism then reign over our minds. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 16:24, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

That may be the motivation behind naturalism, but it is not a justification for writing the scientific method section exclusively from this perspective, without mentioning that other perspective exist. In fact, many views have been held on the scientific method. Just take the view, often held by creationists, that is contrary to methodological naturalism and that propses that supernatural explanations should not only be allowed, but in fact are essential for science and that true science can be done with a firm belief in god only... In fact, the fairly strict separation between science and religion is a recent thing. In times before the enlightment, science and religion were closely tied to each other. As long as we properly attribute views, and describe it in a neutral way that doesn't subtly sneak propaganda into the article, I don't see why views other than naturalism shouldn't be included also. --rtc (talk) 17:07, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Which other perspectives exist then? My difficulty with the discussion of this subject is perhaps because all modern science seems to me to use methodological naturalism? It is a recently coined term, but it seems to me to be the same argument Bacon took up from Machiavelli and applied more broadly. Perhaps it can be argued that the Cartesian thread in modern science has always resisted it to some extent? (e.g. Leibniz?) But I am not so sure that would be an uncontroversial statement. Interested to hear what others say.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:16, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

"My difficulty with the discussion of this subject is perhaps because all modern science seems to me to use methodological naturalism?" In what respect? If you pick a random scientist and ask him what methodological naturalism is, he will probably tell you that he has no clue and he will probably not agree with you that he is "using" methodological naturalism or any other philosophical view about the scientific method. A scientist will probably tell you "I am using some specific techniques in my work that I learned in class and from fellow scientists. I don't think about the deeper philosophical meaning or methodological basis of all of this and I'm not reading books about methodological naturalism. I'm interested in science -- not in philosophy!". If you read scientific journals, the term "methodological naturalism" and the positions associated with it basically never come up. They merely come up in science vs. pseudoscience debates and perhaps in philosophy of science debates. The other views, like critical rationalism, instrumentalism and so on, all conflict with methodological naturalism to some degree; they are different points of view on the scientific method. Even though people holding methodological naturalism (mainly people from the skeptics or brights movement) usually don't make much of a difference. The way they see the world is usually just a distinction of the good (science) and the evil (pseudoscience), and their sole goal is a political one, like to keep pseudoscience out of the classroom, and as long as they can use some philosophical position in some way as a means to an end to argue against evil pseudoscience (like most think you can use notions like falsifiability to make the point that pseudoscience doesn't belong into science classrooms), they will happily adopt it, even if, in a strict sense, the positions adopted conflict with each other. What I am trying to say is that the section on the scientific method should 1) clearly state what point of view it is talking about instead of implying there is only one, 2) give sources about this specific, named view, 3) mention other views and make a difference between them 4) not instead create a uniform patchwork philosophy of the scientific method by combining a great number of sources in a WP:SYNTH way as it currently does. --rtc (talk) 18:21, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Maybe you've misunderstood my point. I am not saying the term "methodological naturalism" is commonly used. I even doubt it is notable enough to use here. But I am saying that the way it is defined in the article right now (as opposed to any political movements who use the term) it just seems to describe something prevalent in modern science.

Perhaps it also helps to mention that when I asked what alternatives we could discuss of course there is one, but I am not sure we want to go that way, and that is Aristotle. Today we would call the approach teleological, but modern people find it hard to even understand how anyone could ever have accepted it. In Aristotle supernatural explanations are not avoided at all but instead it is argued that scientists should work on the assumption that everything has a purpose and human reason has a natural link to what these purposes are such that it helps guide us to be able to make realistic discussions about them. Bacon's Novum Organum, based on Machiavelli's approach which did the same thing already in political discussion, was all about attacking this approach. People read Bacon today and wonder what the fuss was about, because it seems so obvious, if they even know there was a fuss, but for several hundred years he was considered a pivotal person in the history of science. What he said was more surprising at the time. Now, is there any other alternative to Bacon's approach alive today?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:47, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

It seems to me that many or most scientists chug along without much thought to the philosophy of what they do. Many (like Feynman?) may even hold POS in contempt. They do what they do and POS comments on and criticises what they do. Perhaps the scientific method part needs altering too. BUT, scientific method is not a subfield of POS. Myrvin (talk) 16:37, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

"It seems to me that many or most scientists chug along without much thought to the philosophy of what they do ... They do what they do and POS comments on and criticises what they do." But does the scientific method section really say "what they do"? No. It recites philosophical views that "comment on and criticse what they do". And this is in fact the only way you can talk about scientific method in a general way. Since talking about it in a general way needs abstract, general notions like "events of nature", "reproducible way", "useful predictions", "observation", "controlled conditions" etc. that themselves already presuppose a philosophical view. In this case, the notions are from methodological naturalism. Sure, methodological naturalism may seem so natural to many that they forget or don't even notice that it is a view that contains philosophical positions -- that it is not the only way to see science (though it is certainly a very important view). For many, in fact, science is just identical to methodological naturalism. But there are other views of science, historical as well as contemporary ones. Inductivism, Instrumentalism, critical rationalism and supernaturalism are only four of them (which is not supposed to suggest that the five don't overlap here and there). --rtc (talk) 17:07, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Just a passing note FWIW - there's an ambiguity in the phrase "philosophy of science". When Feynman boils scientific method down to explanatory guess, computation of the implications, and testing of the implications vs. reality, he's doing methodology of inquiry, and that's arguably part of philosophy, philosophical logic in particular, general like the general study of statistics. So it is philosophy about science, in some sense. On the other hand, philosophy that consists in criticism of actual scientific inquiry involves applications of such methodology, and is philosophy of science in a more usual sense. That methodology itself (as a study), like the study of statistics in general, is inquiry at a more general level than are the sciences of motion, matter, life, people. That doesn't make the sciences into subfields of philosophy (or philosophical logic) except in whatever strained sense sciences are "subfields" of statistics and ultimately of mathematics per se. On the other hand, the application of philosophical logic for critical study of actually practiced science can appeal to sociological, psychological, etc., principles and findings pertinent to understanding about science. Peirce went so far as to erect the latter kind of philosophy of science into a top-taxon department (which is farther than I would go), such that maths, general (or "cenoscopic") philosophy, and sciences are "sciences of discovery" while "philosophy of science" is based on them and is "science of review." Of course, there will be mixed study of science, study that mixes both the types described above. Yet the distinction seems helpful; scientists (Feynman for example) have tended to be more interested in methodology (especially normative) than in (attempted) philosophy of science in the more usual sense. The Tetrast (talk) 17:51, 15 January 2011 (UTC).

By the way, I have looked at the Scientific method article and find it a complete mess. The History of scientific method however, seems fine. Myrvin (talk) 09:21, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Myrvin, the scientific method article is the result of contributions of a long series of editors, dating back to the beginning of the encyclopedia. The editors have different philosophical positions, but the use of a method is the common thread. I claim here (but do not state in that article, as that would be OR) that if one doesn't know something, that one can approach an subject previously unknown to oneself using a scientific method. You can follow the hyperlinks in the DNA section (marked by Double Helix icons), for example, and get a synopsis of the article in that way (so a little article lives in the larger article). The article is heavily overlapped because it embodies the concept of a state machine whose states are marked by the little Double Helix icons. Fortunately, the wiki-links allow a reader to move from one state to the next by causing events (clicks), and in this way, move from one state of understanding to the next. The state machine is taught, in stages, to students who learn the individual names from their individual teachers, according to their individual scientific interest. There are commonalities, such as the ethos imparted (i.e. no fudging of predictions, no back-entry of data, etc.) and everything is meant to be open (per the ethos). In the history of science, every mistake has been made, but what survives works. And what has survived is reproducible per the ethos. The reproducibility requirement is the reason for the loop in the state machine. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 11:07, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

I have responded on the Talk:Scientific method pages. Myrvin (talk) 13:50, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Just an observation. I think the Philosophy of Science section is getting just a little.... bit too long. Maybe remove the quote by Gould and replace it with a simple paraphrase? mezzaninelounge (talk) 13:18, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Positivism

I am still wondering if it is really uncontroversial to say that empiricism and inductivism are generally beliefs held by positivists. It seems plain wrong to me. Bacon and Hume were not positivists. Maybe this is not added by Rtc. If it is deemed better to separate this comment into a new sub-section please do so. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:09, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Second post. OK, I have adjusted the one sentence which drew my attention because it appears to me that the word positivism added nothing there anyway, so I just removed it for now. But I see this raises another issue. The article mentions positivism but never discusses it. I think I am right in saying not all empiricism is positivism and so just mentioning it that way was not right. But lower down in the philosophy of science section we mention the criticisms of Popper concerning positivism. So I think there maybe needs to be something about positivism itself. Perhaps, just as there is a paragraph about Popper as a 20th century idealist, maybe there should be a paragraph about positivism.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:40, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree. I removed positivism completely; it should be added separately, as you propose. About the relation to emiricism: I think it is fair to say that all positivists are inductivists and all inductivists hold empiricism. On the other hand, empricism, in its broadest sense, does not presuppose inductivism, and is even actually compatible with critical rationalism. Popper said he sees himself also as a critical empiricist. --rtc (talk) 16:33, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, indeed I've read it argued, convincingly I think, that empiricism and rationalism are, like many such distinctions, not necessarily strict categories. Bacon argued for induction because it was not liked by Aristotelians. Descartes argued the case for mathematics, and therefore in a sense more for deduction than induction, but not necessarily because he thought science could happen without induction. It is interesting to look at real scientists who considered themselves Baconian or Cartesian such as Newton and Leibniz.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:19, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Can someone consider how we can get at least a quick definition of positivism in? I am not a fan of it, but not to include it seems distorted.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:16, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Maybe the main difference here is between those who think that scientific theories can be proved, and those who do not. As I understand it, positivists reckon that many theories cannot be proved because they cannot be verified empirically. However, what is left can (at least in principal) be proved by experiment. Locke and Berkeley may well be in this camp. Hume cast doubt on this proof by experience because it involved induction, and Popper followed him. Maybe we could have a subheading of 'Scientific proof' and go from there. Myrvin (talk) 13:45, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

But then something needs to be done with Certainty and Science. Myrvin (talk) 14:30, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd be very wary of putting any Enlightment philosophers into a school of thought which came into being after they were long dead.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:40, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I have misled you. I am suggesting a beginning to the POS section that sketches the concept scientific truth from Aristotle through the enlightenment and on to the positivists.Myrvin (talk) 16:28, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Andrew Lancaster, I found some material on logical positivism in Lakatos (1976) Proofs and Refutations p. 2: "According to logical positivism, a statement is meaningful only if it is either 'tautological' or empirical. " Lakatos p. 2 notes formalism is a characteristic of positivism: "formalism is a bulwark of logical positivist philosophy". (Lakatos p.3: "The dogmas of logical positivism have been detrimental to the history and philosophy of mathematics." Lakatos then explores the Euler characteristic as an example of discovery in informal mathematics. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 11:20, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from Wasatchhike, 16 January 2011

{{edit semi-protected}}

• Important information that was lost from the edit I just turned in (It Follows):

Perhaps there should be a section on "The ethical implications of scientific observations", and I think there should be. It could include such things like "scientific observations have found that earth's atmosphere has become warmer in recent years, and this may affect our political policy on the way we use the world". (a star is placed where this paragraph was meant to go) --

I found the last paragraph incredibly pervasive towards someones opinion (whether the person who wrote this is right or wrong, it does not belong in there. It reads:

"Resistance to certain scientific ideas derives in large part from assumptions and biases that can be demonstrated experimentally in young children and that may persist into adulthood. In particular, both adults and children resist acquiring scientific information that clashes with common-sense intuitions about the physical and psychological domains. Additionally, when learning information from other people, both adults and children are sensitive to the trustworthiness of the source of that information. Resistance to science, then, is particularly exaggerated in societies where nonscientific ideologies have the advantages of being both grounded in common sense and transmitted by trustworthy sources. This resistance to science has important social implications, because scientifically ignorant publics are unprepared to evaluate policies about such things as global warming, vaccination, genetically modified organisms, stem cell research, and cloning.[75]"

This is clearly an opinion. In the first place scientific studies do not talk about ethics or moral theories, they just give facts and theories of nature and the physical world. The author said that political leaders act like children (what political leaders?), and he clearly seems to imply that people who don't agree with his ownself on the issues of "global warming, vaccination, genetically modified organisms, stem cell research, and cloning" are ignorant and children. These statements are vastly stretching the topic into a position that cannot be supported by any amount of references.

The Author turns science into an ideology (and as such, a belief system), when he says "resistance to science has important social implications, because scientifically ignorant publics are unprepared to evaluate policies." So it makes it sound like science is a single unified ideology, a path we all need to take. No so. It is the study of the natural world. Chemistry, biology, and physics observe and theorize about the natural world. They do not encompass a belief system that says resisting science has negative consequences. Perhaps belief or religion have the scope to make such a statement. What if someone edited the article about the Bible to say "resistance to the Bible has important social implications, because biblically ignorant publics are unprepared to evaluate policies." Now, there might certainly be some people who believe this, but such a statement doesn't fit the context of an encyclopedia article, which requires neutrality.

Also, one sentence required sounded unclear was "Resistance to science, then, is particularly exaggerated in societies where nonscientific ideologies have the advantages of being both grounded in common sense and transmitted by trustworthy sources." So another way to say this is--'when "nonscientific ideologies" have common sense they have "resistance to science". To me Common Sense is an attribute, we might say something like "that person has common sense", and it would be saying something good about them. So then, are Nonscientific Ideologies grounded in Common Sense?; science is supposed to make sense. I assume the author meant that 'Nonscientific Ideologies grounded in traditional untested Common Sense' or have the term 'Common Sense' in quotation marks, "common sense". But even so, I still don't think that sentence belongs in the article.

Now on another note, I think another thing that needs to be changed about this article is to dis-attach political science. Political Science more accurately fits under Philosophy perhaps. But I think such a thing as Sociology might be okay in being attached to the Science article.

Wasatchhike (talk) 16:34, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Partly done: I actually took the whole paragraph out, not so much because of your objections (which seem about half valid to me), but because the whole thing was a word-for-word copy of the abstract of the article it cited. That's a huge problem, and one that cannot be ignored. Personally, I think that if any of that info is included, it needs to be clear that it's just the opinion of one set of researchers (per WP:C). As to your last sentence, you're flat wrong about political science, in that political scientists make theories about the world, conduct both controlled experiments and real world observations, and modify theories based on those experiments/observations. I can't think of any reason why they shouldn't be classified as scientists. Qwyrxian (talk) 06:21, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

To be devil's advocate: You say: "[Science] is the study of the natural world. Chemistry, biology, and physics observe and theorize about the natural world. They do not encompass a belief system that says resisting science has negative consequences." While it is true that science does not tell us that having bridges and airplanes fall down, and needless deaths from polio, malaria and AIDS actually ARE negative consequences, science certainly does tell you that if you already believe that they are, that resisting scientific knowledge, which tells one how to prevent some of these things, will indeed have negative consequences (as already defined). The ethical/aesthetic addition is not very large, and it is one that all but crazy people (by definition) already agree upon and have already added.

In other words, really, nobody wants buildings to fall down due to unscientific construction (Haiti), nor their children to die from epidemics (Nigeria), so the additional philosophical content needed, is not in dispute. What IS in dispute is whether resisting the methods and findings of science is bad for you, which is essentially the same question as whether resisting the findings of engineering and medicine is bad for you. Nobody holds that debate in an airplane! The debate is completely in the epistemological camp, over specific questions such as whether or not polio can be prevented by vaccines (some Muslim leaders in Nigeria said no), whether autism is caused by vaccines (a large group in the UK, lead by at least one dishonest doctor, said yes), and whether or not AIDS can be cured with good nutrition and vitamin C (the government of South Africa listened to this from Duesberg and Rath for some time before cheaper antiretrovirals became available). Those ARE intrinsically scientific questions. It does no good to pretend sophomorically that they can simply be fobbed off into an anterior metaphysical debate about questions that are outside science's realm. Usually they can't, because those arguments THERE actually have been settled already. The debate is NOT about whether or not having your children die is a negative or positive thing and science doesn't address that; it's wrong to pretend that this is where things stick. The debate is utilitarian because we already agree about desired outcomes, and that means it's directly about science as means to an agreed end. SBHarris 17:10, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Some grammar fixes in the opening paragraphs

Second paragraph, second sentence: remove 'and' from the beginning of the sentence - one shouldn't start a sentence with 'and'. Second paragraph, last sentence: replace 'but' at the beginning of the sentence with 'however'. Also, I find the first sentence of the second paragraph to be circular. What about removing the last bit, so it simply reads: "Since classical antiquity science as a type of knowledge was closely linked to philosophy."

The lead does read badly. I've added some definitions and done a copy edit. I am also worried about assertions about the term's history and its relation to philosophy that do not seem to be properly cited. Furthermore, why do BAsic classifications come before History and etymology? Myrvin (talk) 10:07, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Concerning bad readability and lacking sourcing, these are not always a sign of anything more than just more work to be done someday by someone, maybe even you :) . And concerning what should come first history/etymology or basic classifications, it is a bit hard to develop a general consensus "rule" on such things, so probably better to look at concrete proposals or real edits. And anyway sentences which start with and or but can sometimes be quite acceptable. And hopefully the draft sentence re-write you propose is not the final draft? For someone with refined taste in writing style is a little awkward?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:13, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Always interested in what people with a refined taste in writing style have to say. Would you please point to the particular unrefined and awkward sentence to which you refer?Myrvin (talk) 07:56, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I was referring to your proposal just above: "Since classical antiquity science as a type of knowledge was closely linked to philosophy." I was being a bit tongue in cheek (maybe you are just citing an old sentence, I did not even check) so don't take me too seriously, but it has something of Yoda about it? I felt it worth commenting for fun at least given the theme was improving readability and grammar. :) --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:47, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Ah! That wasn't me but an unsigned other. I still don't see what is so wrong with it though. Perhaps 'has been' rather than 'was'?Myrvin (talk) 21:46, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I think a more conventional word order would be "As a type of knowledge science has been closely linked to philosophy since classical antiquity." I am guessing the odd word order probably developed as the sentence has evolved over time though. I probably played a role in this!--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:06, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

High probability

There is something fishy about the words: "Instead, science is proud to make predictions with great probability, bearing in mind that the most likely event is not always what actually happens." And I don't see the point of the Yom Kippur war example. Ancheta may have something to say. Myrvin (talk) 14:44, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

LoL! Who wrote that? mezzaninelounge (talk) 00:39, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I personally would just strike that content. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 11:26, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Done. Myrvin (talk) 11:54, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Lead definition

My edit here has been reverted because there was "no need to change" it. I didn't alter what was there, I just added what I thought was a more effective definition which was a direct quotation. It mentions the 'physical world' rather than 'universe'. It mentions 'unbiased observations'. And it doesn't include the word 'enterprise' which sounds like a commercial venture. The citations for the old version include the whole of Popper's 'Logik' and the whole of E Wilson's book, which isn't very precise. Myrvin (talk) 19:21, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

The word enterprise means "undertaking." This definition was inspired in part by E. O. Wilson's definition, which describes science as a "systematic enterprise ...." A lot of discussion has been done on this topic, some of it quite contentious. I recommend going over these discussions first before proposing or making a change to the lead definition. The current definition has gone through a considerable amount of revision and has garnered wide consensus among the editors of this page. Its change or relegation to a second sentence is unnecessary. I'm sure the other editors feel the same way. mezzaninelounge (talk) 19:32, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

By the way, this is Wikipedia, we are way cooler than Britannica Encyclopedia. There is no need to quote their definition.mezzaninelounge (talk) 19:33, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

We recently had a long, long discussion about the lead. See as far back as Talk:Science/Archive_2 (hard to say where it properly begins - somewhere around August 2010 I think), continue in Talk:Science/Archive_3#Voting_to_resolve_lead_definition_of_this_article and keep reading, and then continue into Talk:Science/Archive_4. The Tetrast (talk) 20:05, 26 January 2011 (UTC).

I don't think you're going to win this one Myrvin. I surrender. Myrvin (talk) 20:38, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Have a beer. It's ok man. :) mezzaninelounge (talk) 20:40, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

In relation to those earlier discussions, the current lede once again is Wikipedia:Undue and is disproportionately skewed towards "natural science" being implied to be the dominant or *true* science, and the social sciences are again relegated to an afterthought or some kind of anomoly. Shoreranger (talk) 15:07, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for moving your post a little but if this discussion continues to any length the above two short posts are going to become confusing. Concerning that lead sentence can you explain a bit more how you think it should be changed. As you probably realize getting the balance on this has been difficult and there are valid concerns on many sides. The current lead sentence does not really totally exclude social sciences? Especially when you consider the second sentence? Is the word testable perhaps the main concern?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:59, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

"testable" is certainly not the main concern, as many social science methodologies include testing and experimentation. Shoreranger (talk) 20:08, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Shoreranger, The categorical framework is: Nature subsumes People subsumes Society subsumes Social Science. Thus Social Science is covered, somewhat more removed from the Nature category than Matter, say, but definitely in its purview. I agree that this framework could become obsolete. However you are going to have to pursuade others of its obsolescence. One sign of this possibility: some influential members of the American Anthropological Association recently decided to drop the word 'Science' from its long term plan; this move surprised other members, obviously. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 16:18, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes and it seems debate about what that was all about will go on for some time! :) --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:53, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

a sourcing question to keep in mind

Rather than paste in an ugly template for something uncontroversial, I just thought to remark here, for a reminder to myself as much as to others, that the sentence "By the 17th century, "natural philosophy" (which is today called "natural science") could be considered separately from "philosophy" in general." should eventually have a more convincing source than "Consider, for example, Isaac Newton (1687) Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica". No deadline on this of course, but I reckon there must be a secondary source somewhere, or many, which will do the job better.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:31, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Image

The Image is awful. The American Flag is out of place and the personification doesn't seem to match anything but the commission and the artist's personal vision. The previous lead image with the young woman performing a chemistry experiment was at least more representative. Go back to the previous image, please. Undo this: [7] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.59.169.46 (talk)

The previous image is close to the bottom of the article. Perhaps you search for a better alternative. Let us know, and we will change it. mezzaninelounge (talk) 17:38, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Still the same image! many people are not linking to this page because of that nationalistic symbol. There are thousands online that are better. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.141.58.145 (talk) 14:42, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Don't just complain ... perhaps you could search for a better alternative and propose it here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.177.1.210 (talk) 14:46, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I've found some. http://www.robertclack.co.uk/curriculum/Science.cfm http://www.filebuzz.com/software_screenshot/full/185637-Perfect_Science_Icons.jpg Or if we don't like those, or can't use them, then we can have something else. It doesn't matter. I don't care. Almost ANYTHING else is better than the flag of a country that a large part of the human race finds highly objectionable. I'm sorry to say that, but it's true. Leaving that image there shows an astonishing lack of awareness and brings politics into science. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.141.58.145 (talk) 10:46, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Funny that you of all people would complain of nationalism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.250.168.229 (talk) 23:04, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the change. Much appreciated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.141.58.145 (talk) 15:28, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I didn't mind the image's incidental flag or the woman (I like both outside this context), but I didn't find the image either evocative of, or relevant to, science in general. Frack's image looks good but I assume that there's a copyright issue. Any of the science icons at the other site would look redundant to the science icon already atop the Science series infobox near the wiki's top. I see no reason to have another image if it's just in order to have an image. If suitable and available image comes along, then fine; otherwise I suggest doing without. The Tetrast (talk) 17:10, 5 May 2011 (UTC).

I was the one who moved the Boston image up from the first section a little while back. Please forgive me, but I find it objectionable that anybody would find such a beautiful flag objectionable, but then, I too am quite biased on the subject. In terms of this article the IP is, of course, correct, so I moved the Boston photo back to where it was and have found a rendering of the helium atom that will hopefully prove to be of more global acceptance. – Paine Ellsworth ( CLIMAX )  21:43, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Paine: no need to apologise. Many thanks for all your hard work. 81.141.58.145 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Theo75 (talk • contribs) 12:06, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Removal of atom picture

Paine, this article is about science and not "natural science." By having two images on one particular example, it gives undue weight to the natural sciences, particular chemistry and atomic physics. It is simply overkill to have two images of the atom model. The text that follows the introduction on modeling is overkill, goes on a tangent, and is unecyclopedic. Plus, it is very physics and math centric, which may not be relevant to the use of model organisms in biology, medicine, or psychology. In the end, this is an introductory text on science in general. A lot of discussion and consensus has been devoted to this (see history of this talk page). Also in the future, please discuss my edits first before undoing them. It's just courtesy. mezzaninelounge (talk) 19:43, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually, as I explained on your talk page it's not courtesy to discuss undoing someone's edits first. It's actually courtesy that after you're reverted you come to the talk page and discuss your changes. As a side note, I actually also think the pictures should be removed, but this article has a number of editors, so I'd like to hear what others think. Qwyrxian (talk) 23:43, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Please stay focused and discuss the issue (picture and text) at hand. If you have something to say, I am willing to consider and discuss it. But please do not presume to be the self-appointed arbiter here or to revert my good faith edits just to prove a point. mezzaninelounge (talk) 02:50, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

The problem is, you're now edit warring to keep your preferred version in the article. Are you actually saying that anytime you make a good faith change to the article, it automatically stays forever unless a talk page consensus says it shouldn't? If so, then I have to say you're getting the process backwards from the way it's usually done on Wikipedia. WP:BRD means "Be bold, make a change. If someone reverts it, then go to the talk page and discuss it." It does not allow you to then return the article to your preferred version while the discussion is going on. I'm not going to revert you again, because I have no interest in edit warring. I just want you to understand that your approach is going to make it difficult for you to engage in productive collaboration in the future. Qwyrxian (talk) 03:51, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

If you're going to follow and impose Wikipedia guidelines and policies, you can start by discussing this issue on my talk page (see WP: User pages). mezzaninelounge (talk) 04:04, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Forgive me, Danielkueh, for not responding in a timely manner. Aside from the main topic, it's sad that you both (you and Qwyrxian) could use a "redundant" rereading of Wikipedia:AGF, because you both seem bent on not assuming good faith in each other. Next, your first argument in your editsummary, that both the image and text were "redundant", was an unacceptable argument to me for going against Wikipedia:PRESERVE. Repetitiveness is often a good tool of instruction. However, your above more specific argument, that such redundancy may not be acceptable in a "general science" article is much stronger. Since the image is a good example of a scientific "model", which is what that subsection is about, then it should stay. As much as I like the other image that I installed in the lede, I would rather see that one replaced by a more "general" image than to see the "model" image deleted. I honestly don't know if a more general image can be found, but I shall look for one, and I hope you will, too. As for the text, it is a valid parenthetical explanation for the application of the term "model", and it should also be kept, in my opinion. So I plan to replace the text and leave the image out until a more general image can be found for the lede. Is this acceptable to you? – Paine Ellsworth ( CLIMAX )  19:02, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

• PS. As for your ideas about "courtesy", these will probably evolve as you continue to edit. People revert my edits all the time, and I do not consider it discourteous, not here on Wikipedia. In this respect I would have to agree with editor Qwyrxian. I'm sorry if reverts harm your sensibilities, but some editors, like myself, are very big on the Wikipedia:PRESERVE idea. So when you delete what editors feel are perfectly good texts or images, then do prepare yourself for immediate reverts, and then discussion if you wish to do so.

Paine, No, the parenthetical text is poorly written, strangely long (overkill), unintelligible to the general readership, and distracts from the main point of that section, which is about hypothesis-driven experimentation. The development of models is not the main focus of many hypothesis-driven experiments, but just one of several possible outcomes. Again, this is not a natural science or an applied mathematics article. Many researchers in the social, behavioral, and even life sciences are not obsessed with developing models. Even if they are, the models that they develop may be different from the type of model being alluded to in that deleted parenthetical text. If anything, this section needs more cleanup and needs to focus on the general principles and approaches that are found and used in all of the sciences, rather than just giving undue weight or focusing on specific examples/approaches in physics and chemistry. As for Wikipedia policies, the primary policy that really matters is NPOV. This policy is not properly applied in an article that is slanted to one particular view point or gives undue weight to one particular field. My only interest is to have an article that is clearly written, informative, and coherent.

As for the image, again, there is no reason to have it there. I hate to be repetitive, but this is not a natural science article. We already have a picture of an atom, which you inserted into the lede (which I did not revert). Find something else. As stated in the title, that section is about "Experimentation and hypothesizing." A picture that illustrates that would be much more informative than an outdated model of an atom, which is not even the main focus of that section. If you can't find another picture, then it is ok. We don't have to put pictures everywhere for the sake of them. It clutters the article. If people just want pictures, then they should just go to the Wikicommons page. That is what it is for. mezzaninelounge (talk) 21:14, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Agree. There are, however, many science hierarchies, so establishing due and undue weight to the various sciences in an article like this could turn out to be a monumental task, and often controversial. Expect to have a good time! – Paine Ellsworth ( CLIMAX )  22:38, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Paine, Great! I am glad we're in agreement. As for the hierarchy, I have heard of that before and I have seen variants of it. I myself am not against it in principle, but I'm not sure if it is a view shared by the entire scientific community. Plus, I don't see it discussed very much in reputable scientific journals. Plus, an unfortunate consequence of that hierarchy is that it often ventures off into the territory of what constitutes a "hard" or "soft" science, which is a difficult and often unproductive discussion. mezzaninelounge (talk) 12:57, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

The hierarchies exist whether or not they are "recognized". They are not discussed because, in essence, they are like skeletons in the family closet. There are many cul de sacs in science, but there have been a few good finds, too. It is our nature to discuss no matter how difficult or unproductive. I find this to be a strength of the hierarchies, not a weakness. The hierarchies give science an infrastructure that is able to set necessary priorities. This is good for everything from budgeting to survival. – Paine Ellsworth ( CLIMAX )  18:09, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Do you have a peer-reviewed article to support that hierarchy claim? If not, then it constitutes as original research, which means we can't include it or rely on it when editing this article. I'm not against discussion on topics like this. I actually enjoy them. But I've been reminded of the WP:soapbox policy, which a discussion on hard and soft science often leads to. mezzaninelounge (talk) 18:22, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)You might find something in the Reductionism article, to which a discussion of science hierarchies generally boils down. However, since it's been relegated to the ranks of philosophy, then it should get little if any treatment in this article. I do not mean to disparage philosophy— it is often the foundation of science— but that subject is amply covered elsewhere in Wikipedia. The only reason I brought all this up is to remind you there might be occasional tassles over undue weight in this general article on science. – Paine Ellsworth ( CLIMAX )  20:41, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Understand. mezzaninelounge (talk) 21:51, 11 May 2011 (UTC)