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I've just finished reading Feyerabend's Tyranny of Science which goes down a very similar path to OP's interview: >In this wide-ranging and accessible book Fey

I've just finished reading Feyerabend's Tyranny of Science which goes down a very similar path to OP's interview: >In this wide-ranging and accessible book Feyerabend challenges some modern myths about science, including the myth that ‘science is successful’. He argues that some very basic assumptions about science are simply false and that substantial parts of scientific ideology were created on the basis of superficial generalizations that led to absurd misconceptions about the nature of human life. Far from solving the pressing problems of our age, such as war and poverty, scientific theorizing glorifies ephemeral generalities, at the cost of confronting the real particulars that make life meaningful. Objectivity and generality are based on abstraction, and as such, they come at a high price. For abstraction drives a wedge between our thoughts and our experience, resulting in the degeneration of both. Theoreticians, as opposed to practitioners, tend to impose a tyranny on the concepts they use, abstracting away from the subjective experience that makes life meaningful. Feyerabend concludes by arguing that practical experience is a better guide to reality than any theory, by itself, ever could be, and he stresses that there is no tyranny that cannot be resisted, even if it is exerted with the best possible intentions. In other words: there's a 'tacit knowledge' that we ignore by just writing down what we can measure in numbers. Feyerabend died before it became en vogue to talk about colonialism's impact, but his points are similar. (This ties in with her gut feeling: the scientific literature pretends the gut feeling does not exist, we invent a logical story of how we've deduced an insight after we've stumbled over the insight)

marmakoide 3y ago
The scientific literature pretending that gut feeling does not exist, is, in my own opinion, a legend. Most discoveries/invention were stumbled upon by collective efforts, a bit of intuition, lots of work, and a share of luck. Once something is found/made, then we clean up so as it can be shared and taught. Scientists always had gut feelings, routinely shared and share their feelings, it's what makes most of discussion between scientists. It was always ok to have feelings. However, to build something somewhat reliable, feelings are not enough, so you do the work to turn a feeling into a falsifiable theory that ypu put to the test.
- hyperthesis 3y ago
  Yes: "Eureka!", benzene ring, https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_effect https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_effect BTW TFA uses "feelings" in two different senses: hunch, inkling, intuition, suspicion, gut instinct vs. emotion (as in music). In mathematics, there is even the formal term "conjecture" for an unproven theorem.
davidktr 3y ago
But do "we" really ignore the tacit knowledge? I think you are wrong that "scientific literature" pretends those things. The issue of "context of discovery" vs "context of justification" is a hundred years old. And modern accounts of measurement and modeling make it quite clear that there is much more going on than simply writing down numbers. Theories/hypotheses can come from anywhere, I don't think that is even disputed. However, when doing science, maths, engineering, the question is often what people are even saying, and what counts as evidence that something works. You cannnot do this without abstractions, and at some point we'll have to agree what those abstractions are. Should we leave it to individual experience if LK-99 is a superconductor? You don't need formal maths training to raise a barn or build a kayak because there is brutal feedback if you are wrong. You'll need maths training to learn how to be right about things that will not give you any feedback.

marmakoide 3y ago

The scientific literature pretending that gut feeling does not exist, is, in my own opinion, a legend. Most discoveries/invention were stumbled upon by collective efforts, a bit of intuition, lots of work, and a share of luck. Once something is found/made, then we clean up so as it can be shared and taught. Scientists always had gut feelings, routinely shared and share their feelings, it's what makes most of discussion between scientists. It was always ok to have feelings. However, to build something somewhat reliable, feelings are not enough, so you do the work to turn a feeling into a falsifiable theory that ypu put to the test.

hyperthesis 3y ago
Yes: "Eureka!", benzene ring, https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_effect https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_effect BTW TFA uses "feelings" in two different senses: hunch, inkling, intuition, suspicion, gut instinct vs. emotion (as in music). In mathematics, there is even the formal term "conjecture" for an unproven theorem.

davidktr 3y ago

But do "we" really ignore the tacit knowledge? I think you are wrong that "scientific literature" pretends those things. The issue of "context of discovery" vs "context of justification" is a hundred years old. And modern accounts of measurement and modeling make it quite clear that there is much more going on than simply writing down numbers. Theories/hypotheses can come from anywhere, I don't think that is even disputed. However, when doing science, maths, engineering, the question is often what people are even saying, and what counts as evidence that something works. You cannnot do this without abstractions, and at some point we'll have to agree what those abstractions are. Should we leave it to individual experience if LK-99 is a superconductor? You don't need formal maths training to raise a barn or build a kayak because there is brutal feedback if you are wrong. You'll need maths training to learn how to be right about things that will not give you any feedback.