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> accusing the whole New Zealand academic establishment—and the seven Auckland Uni professors who, in the infamous Listener letter, said that MM was not equival

> accusing the whole New Zealand academic establishment—and the seven Auckland Uni professors who, in the infamous Listener letter, said that MM was not equivalent to science—of being riddled with racism. I was a junior when I first grasped the concept of repeatable experiments, and my career wasn't even in science. I remember being blown away by the profoundness of it. Such a simple yet powerful idea in order to reliably predict your surroundings. You would be hard pressed to find another way of doing so. It is a beautiful concept when you think about it, and arguably the greatest achievement of the human race. Now, how does someone with a PhD simply not get what the scientific method is about? Like every single thing you have studied, your entire career, your achievements are all based on the scientific method. Is it really possible to go through the ranks, even do a PhD, without really having a basic understanding of the philosophy of science?

drewcoo 4y ago
> Now, how does someone with a PhD simply not get what the scientific method is about? I am no Dawkins apologist but the one true scientific method isn't how science works. I've seen anti-science folks use that as a strawman to try to "disprove" science. https://undsci.berkeley.edu/understanding-science-101/how-science-works/ https://undsci.berkeley.edu/understanding-science-101/how-sc...
eesmith 4y ago
> when I first grasped the concept of repeatable experiments .. hard pressed to find another way of doing so Astrophysics doesn't have the luxury of repeatable experiments for their primary research focus. No one studying supernovae is able to trigger one to happen, much less repeat the explosion. It's still a scientific field, yes? That's why the philosophy of science tends more to say "testability of hypotheses" than "repeatable experiments." If you read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method you'll see doubts about the universality of "the scientific method", like: "by the 1960s and 1970s numerous influential philosophers of science such as Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend had questioned the universality of the "scientific method" and in doing so largely replaced the notion of science as a homogeneous and universal method with that of it being a heterogeneous and local practice" and "historian of science Daniel Thurs's chapter in the 2015 book Newton's Apple and Other Myths about Science, which concluded that the scientific method is a myth or, at best, an idealization". As I understand it, the argument, which I am not qualified to resolve, is that MM is a valid "local practice" of doing science, just like every field has its own local practices. There are certainly invalid local practices, as with astrology. But with Polynesians we know they made some very successful advances in, eg., sea navigation that were unequaled by the rest of the world. That is surely a successful practice of observation, hypothesis, and other factors we recognize as part of the scientific method.
- potamic 4y ago
  One of the problems when people talk about the scientific method is that they treat it as a sort of a process or a formula to apply, but it couldn't be further from the fact. The point is the concept and there are different ways to realize the concept. You are right, it is more precisely about testability rather than experimentation, but the important point is that if your test shows otherwise, you discard the hypothesis. And that is where it differs primarily from traditional knowledge. Mind you, traditional knowledge is nothing to scoff at. It's the culmination of many many thousands of years of human experience, and no cultural group would have survived this long without a strong traditional knowledge. But does this mean this all traditional knowledge is science? That would destroy the whole notion of the scientific method. Are there some ideas in some traditional knowledge that were developed with the scientific method in mind? Most certainly, and we should treat them as scientific as long as we can verify them. But when you group all traditional knowledge as one body and claim everything under it to be scientific, then the scientific method will tell you, it is obviously unscientific.
  - eesmith 4y ago
    > But when you group all traditional knowledge as one body and claim everything under it to be scientific It might be useful to keep the topic on Mātauranga Māori, and not widen it to "all traditional knowledge." As I wrote, I am not qualified to understand the actual debate here. I have tried to read some of the issues, like https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/2545-matauranga-maori-and-science https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/2545-matauranga-ma... , and the best I can tell is that it's not being treated as "science" but contributes to how to do science, and what the goals of science are. Take modern medical research. It has a long history of being guided by the interests of white males, under a paternalistic system where the researcher had little constraints on "the pursuit of science." Over the last decades this has changed, and medical research is more bound by ethical constraints which aren't "science", but which are ways to decide which science to do, or to avoid. I think MM is supposed to be like that - to let Māori knowledge, culture, and "ways of knowing" influence how science is done. And I think people get hung up by the phrase "ways of knowing", as if there were a way of knowing which wasn't science. While I can't help wonder if that means things like "prioritize the well-being of local Māori tribes" over "get another publication out" or "follow the track towards tenure". But really, don't trust my interpretation.

drewcoo 4y ago

> Now, how does someone with a PhD simply not get what the scientific method is about? I am no Dawkins apologist but the one true scientific method isn't how science works. I've seen anti-science folks use that as a strawman to try to "disprove" science. https://undsci.berkeley.edu/understanding-science-101/how-science-works/ https://undsci.berkeley.edu/understanding-science-101/how-sc...

eesmith 4y ago

> when I first grasped the concept of repeatable experiments .. hard pressed to find another way of doing so Astrophysics doesn't have the luxury of repeatable experiments for their primary research focus. No one studying supernovae is able to trigger one to happen, much less repeat the explosion. It's still a scientific field, yes? That's why the philosophy of science tends more to say "testability of hypotheses" than "repeatable experiments." If you read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method you'll see doubts about the universality of "the scientific method", like: "by the 1960s and 1970s numerous influential philosophers of science such as Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend had questioned the universality of the "scientific method" and in doing so largely replaced the notion of science as a homogeneous and universal method with that of it being a heterogeneous and local practice" and "historian of science Daniel Thurs's chapter in the 2015 book Newton's Apple and Other Myths about Science, which concluded that the scientific method is a myth or, at best, an idealization". As I understand it, the argument, which I am not qualified to resolve, is that MM is a valid "local practice" of doing science, just like every field has its own local practices. There are certainly invalid local practices, as with astrology. But with Polynesians we know they made some very successful advances in, eg., sea navigation that were unequaled by the rest of the world. That is surely a successful practice of observation, hypothesis, and other factors we recognize as part of the scientific method.

potamic 4y ago
One of the problems when people talk about the scientific method is that they treat it as a sort of a process or a formula to apply, but it couldn't be further from the fact. The point is the concept and there are different ways to realize the concept. You are right, it is more precisely about testability rather than experimentation, but the important point is that if your test shows otherwise, you discard the hypothesis. And that is where it differs primarily from traditional knowledge. Mind you, traditional knowledge is nothing to scoff at. It's the culmination of many many thousands of years of human experience, and no cultural group would have survived this long without a strong traditional knowledge. But does this mean this all traditional knowledge is science? That would destroy the whole notion of the scientific method. Are there some ideas in some traditional knowledge that were developed with the scientific method in mind? Most certainly, and we should treat them as scientific as long as we can verify them. But when you group all traditional knowledge as one body and claim everything under it to be scientific, then the scientific method will tell you, it is obviously unscientific.
- eesmith 4y ago
  > But when you group all traditional knowledge as one body and claim everything under it to be scientific It might be useful to keep the topic on Mātauranga Māori, and not widen it to "all traditional knowledge." As I wrote, I am not qualified to understand the actual debate here. I have tried to read some of the issues, like https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/2545-matauranga-maori-and-science https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/2545-matauranga-ma... , and the best I can tell is that it's not being treated as "science" but contributes to how to do science, and what the goals of science are. Take modern medical research. It has a long history of being guided by the interests of white males, under a paternalistic system where the researcher had little constraints on "the pursuit of science." Over the last decades this has changed, and medical research is more bound by ethical constraints which aren't "science", but which are ways to decide which science to do, or to avoid. I think MM is supposed to be like that - to let Māori knowledge, culture, and "ways of knowing" influence how science is done. And I think people get hung up by the phrase "ways of knowing", as if there were a way of knowing which wasn't science. While I can't help wonder if that means things like "prioritize the well-being of local Māori tribes" over "get another publication out" or "follow the track towards tenure". But really, don't trust my interpretation.