3 ms·

So not being able to control a cause in an experiment is fine then - how is that not speculative science in that experiment if the theory isn't a theory of ever

• mjburgess 2y ago
  I'm not trying to equate science with "perfect knowledge". I'm simply saying that if you open a physics textbook you'll find causal theories. These cannot, often, be tested in a wide variety of experimental setups. Instead they are used to design the experiments, and sometimes, post-facto, adjust the measures based on these theories. This is perfectly fine. And it does make science in some minimal literal sense "speculative". My issue is with an extreme depature from this method. Where you open a psychology textbook and there are no causal theories, no quantification of the number and nature of causes, and hence no way of designing experiments with controls, and so on. This kinds of activity may, at some great distance, resemble each other -- but one is capable of reliably producing knowldge (even if in small quantity), and the other is not. That latter mechanism produces, imv, at least as much wholesale nonesense.
  • RandomLensman 2y ago
    To get to causal theories from hypotheses needs a lot experiments that were somewhat speculative then. And, yes, there are well and poorly designed experiments (and analyses) but I don't think the speculative nature prior to having a theory is what necessarily separates them.