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Without hypothesis you don't have scientific method on a particular subject. This is the weakness I was talking about. Since you can't use scientific method to

Without hypothesis you don't have scientific method on a particular subject. This is the weakness I was talking about. Since you can't use scientific method to bootstrap itself - as far as anyone can tell - this is enough to question scientific method's ability to resolve _all_ issues and declare any result on things not applicable to it. Is this important? You tell me. You may find it useful not to apply unsuitable methods to all situations.

Nursie 10y ago
Why does a hypothesis need to be defined by the scientific method? I can pull an idea out of my butt (all grasshoppers are blue!), state it formally as a hypothesis and then apply scientific investigation to it. I don't see this bootstrap problem you're talking about. Scientific method likely cannot resolve all possible categories of question, no. Empiricism is a fundamental assumption, that things are repeatable and hold true under investigation. However this is a very different sort of assumption to the rejection of evidence based on faith that is implicit to creationism. One is our best effort to understand the world around us, the other is wilful ignorance.
- Karunamon 10y ago
  Why does a hypothesis need to be defined by the scientific method? Because a thing which you believe and yet is not defined by the scientific method (or rather, empiricism) is known as "faith", a concept which you and the rest of this thread has spent a good deal of energy attacking.
  - Nursie 10y ago
    A hypothesis is not something that you believe though, it is something subject to test.
    - Karunamon 10y ago
      And yet before you test it (if you get around to testing it, and you have the ability and resource to do so), it's just another thing you believe might be the cause of some effect. In other words, it has no empirical base. It's an idea. A thought, held in the belief that some future action by you or others may prove it correct.
      - Nursie 10y ago
        Sure, it's an idea, it's not something you believe anything about though, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept. A hypothesis is a statement of a possibility to be investigated and either upheld or invalidated. It is in no way equivalent to a belief.
        Karunamon 10y ago
        I'm not seeing the substantial difference between those two things, aside from the unrelated-to-my-point variable of how much the idea-holder wants it to be upheld. That variable certainly exists - it's why we have blind-controlled trials as the gold standard of research.
        Nursie 10y ago
        Surely that's the whole point of a belief - here is something I know to be true. As compared to a hypothesis - here is an idea that should be tested by investigation, I make no prior judgement to its truth
        Karunamon 10y ago
        (oops!) I don't think a true null hypothesis exists as long as humans are involved in concocting them, the person could want, consciously or subconsciously, any output from any experiment. Maybe one outcome leads to more research that's a major paint to secure funding for and one is much easier? Maybe the outfit funding the study clearly wants one particular result? Which goes right back to what I'm saying: humans are not purely logical, true null hypotheses don't exist, and the only difference between a "hypothesis" and a "belief" by what you just described is the degree to which the person with the idea wants a specific outcome - a variable which is completely unrelated to the eventual truthiness or falsity of the output.
    - crististm 10y ago
      The underlying issue is that having faith in Empiricism(1) is reasonable but having faith in God is ignorance. Quoting Hamming: "A man was fishing with a net in the sea. He concluded that there is no smaller fish in the sea than what he caught". (s/fishing net/scientific method) (1)Empiricism modulo quantum effects - and here we go again.

Nursie 10y ago

Why does a hypothesis need to be defined by the scientific method? I can pull an idea out of my butt (all grasshoppers are blue!), state it formally as a hypothesis and then apply scientific investigation to it. I don't see this bootstrap problem you're talking about. Scientific method likely cannot resolve all possible categories of question, no. Empiricism is a fundamental assumption, that things are repeatable and hold true under investigation. However this is a very different sort of assumption to the rejection of evidence based on faith that is implicit to creationism. One is our best effort to understand the world around us, the other is wilful ignorance.

Karunamon 10y ago
Why does a hypothesis need to be defined by the scientific method? Because a thing which you believe and yet is not defined by the scientific method (or rather, empiricism) is known as "faith", a concept which you and the rest of this thread has spent a good deal of energy attacking.
- Nursie 10y ago
  A hypothesis is not something that you believe though, it is something subject to test.
  - Karunamon 10y ago
    And yet before you test it (if you get around to testing it, and you have the ability and resource to do so), it's just another thing you believe might be the cause of some effect. In other words, it has no empirical base. It's an idea. A thought, held in the belief that some future action by you or others may prove it correct.
    - Nursie 10y ago
      Sure, it's an idea, it's not something you believe anything about though, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept. A hypothesis is a statement of a possibility to be investigated and either upheld or invalidated. It is in no way equivalent to a belief.
      - Karunamon 10y ago
        I'm not seeing the substantial difference between those two things, aside from the unrelated-to-my-point variable of how much the idea-holder wants it to be upheld. That variable certainly exists - it's why we have blind-controlled trials as the gold standard of research.
        Nursie 10y ago
        Surely that's the whole point of a belief - here is something I know to be true. As compared to a hypothesis - here is an idea that should be tested by investigation, I make no prior judgement to its truth
        Karunamon 10y ago
        (oops!) I don't think a true null hypothesis exists as long as humans are involved in concocting them, the person could want, consciously or subconsciously, any output from any experiment. Maybe one outcome leads to more research that's a major paint to secure funding for and one is much easier? Maybe the outfit funding the study clearly wants one particular result? Which goes right back to what I'm saying: humans are not purely logical, true null hypotheses don't exist, and the only difference between a "hypothesis" and a "belief" by what you just described is the degree to which the person with the idea wants a specific outcome - a variable which is completely unrelated to the eventual truthiness or falsity of the output.
  - crististm 10y ago
    The underlying issue is that having faith in Empiricism(1) is reasonable but having faith in God is ignorance. Quoting Hamming: "A man was fishing with a net in the sea. He concluded that there is no smaller fish in the sea than what he caught". (s/fishing net/scientific method) (1)Empiricism modulo quantum effects - and here we go again.