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>"Even if scientific progress is impossible, what is your justification that any other source of knowledge (such as culture) would be reliable?" We'll get to t

>"Even if scientific progress is impossible, what is your justification that any other source of knowledge (such as culture) would be reliable?" We'll get to that later. Over the course of this debate we've been flitting around from idea to idea, I'd like to restore some focus. Going back to the question I asked previously about the humours, my question was not "did the theory arise from the application of the scientific method?", but rather "could the theory have arisen from the application of the scientific method?". In other words, take what you know about the humours, could this have arisen through application of the scientific method (observation, testing of hypotheses, etc...)? Now that I've hopefully clarified the question, what is your answer?

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
I think I did actually answer that? It possibly did, so it can? Really, that isn't so much a question about the model of humors as it is about the definition of "the scientific method" that you happen to be using. If you define it to align with the modern understanding of the philosophy of science, then no, I don't see how it could possibly arise from that. But if you define it more broadly to encompass the ancient roots of today's philosophy of science, as might be appropriate when discussing past times, then it well might have. Even if the methodology isn't exactly up to modern standards, it is still useful to distinguish the predecessors of modern science from fundamentally different contemporary approaches (some of which have their own modern day forms). The core idea that was extended into modern science is empiricism, and it seems that the model of humors might very well have been at least inspired by an empirical observation of how blood separates into four distinguishable "fluids", which might be enough to say that it could have arisen from the (proto-?)scientific method? Really, it's just another case where you have to be careful to not fall victim to essentialism. Whether the model of humors could have arisen from the scientific method depends on the definition of "scientific method" you are using. For some definitions, it could, for some it clearly could not. You just have to be careful to not mix up the different definitions in the same context.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago

I think I did actually answer that? It possibly did, so it can? Really, that isn't so much a question about the model of humors as it is about the definition of "the scientific method" that you happen to be using. If you define it to align with the modern understanding of the philosophy of science, then no, I don't see how it could possibly arise from that. But if you define it more broadly to encompass the ancient roots of today's philosophy of science, as might be appropriate when discussing past times, then it well might have. Even if the methodology isn't exactly up to modern standards, it is still useful to distinguish the predecessors of modern science from fundamentally different contemporary approaches (some of which have their own modern day forms). The core idea that was extended into modern science is empiricism, and it seems that the model of humors might very well have been at least inspired by an empirical observation of how blood separates into four distinguishable "fluids", which might be enough to say that it could have arisen from the (proto-?)scientific method? Really, it's just another case where you have to be careful to not fall victim to essentialism. Whether the model of humors could have arisen from the scientific method depends on the definition of "scientific method" you are using. For some definitions, it could, for some it clearly could not. You just have to be careful to not mix up the different definitions in the same context.