4 ms·

Yep, Aristotle was wrong. "Chicken and egg problems" aren't paradoxes, the challenge is to find which is the egg.

bbor 2y ago
Lol whenever you can so casually say that a great scientist is wrong, that might be a good heuristic to know you misunderstood the question. It's a philosophical paradox stemming from our conception of species, not an empirical question about fossil records :)
- brna-2 2y ago
  Almost started discussing this with you. :D
- andrewflnr 2y ago
  True in the abstract, but calling Aristotle a "great scientist" is a stretch at best. He wasn't much of an empiricist.
  - bbor 2y ago
    Very true and well put, but IMHO that's not a productive definition of "scientist". You're definitely on the side of common usage, but this is one of the many hills I'd die on; all scientists necessarily employ intuitive intellectual tools at some point in their process, so it feels silly to cut out those who primarily use them if they're still productively employing systematic thought. The upside of this is that Mathematicians get to be scientists, too! The downside is that you also have to let the darn philosophers in ;)
    - andrewflnr 2y ago
      You're basically saying that scientist and "using systematic thought" should be synonymous. Why have two terms for the same thing? Whereas we definitely need a separate term for people who focus on empirical work, since that implies distinct properties of the kind of work. Mathematical and philosophical work simply aren't the same as scientific work, despite the non-zero overlap. It's almost like there's a reason the common usage is the way it is.
      - bbor 2y ago
        Why have two terms for the same thing? Well, the alternative is "focuses on empirical work" -- every defined term is inherently redundant, I'd say. Mathematical and philosophical work simply aren't the same as scientific work, despite **the non-zero overlap.** Hopefully this makes it clear why I see it as a matter of taste :) Personally, I find the utility of including all systematic human pursuits as one lineage to be much greater than the utility of cordoning off empirical physical science. The latter is the status quo, often phrased along the lines of "for a long time everyone was silly and wishy-washy, and then science came around in the 1600s." For one thing this silences many great voices from the past, and for another I'd say it's behind the current crises around what exactly constitutes "human" or "social" sciences. For example: the answer to "what is psychology" is a lot easier to productively answer if we start the search in 400 BCE instead of 1900 CE.
        andrewflnr 2y ago
        Non-zero overlap is a laughably bad reason for dissolving distinctions between kinds of things. Almost everything has overlap. It's the differences that need names. "Silencing voices" is entirely beside the point. We don't need to invalidate all past mathematical or philosophical work by not calling it science. Except, of course, that quite a lot of it is flat wrong. "Social science" and psychology are actually excellent examples. Their status as science is questioned exactly because their connection to empirical evidence is so tenuous.
      - iinnPP 2y ago
        The definition of science has changed quite a bit over time. To frame the problem we would need to figure out what came first, the scientist or the definition.
        andrewflnr 2y ago
        People who did experiments to try to find out truth definitely came before the word "scientist".

bbor 2y ago

Lol whenever you can so casually say that a great scientist is wrong, that might be a good heuristic to know you misunderstood the question. It's a philosophical paradox stemming from our conception of species, not an empirical question about fossil records :)

brna-2 2y ago
Almost started discussing this with you. :D
andrewflnr 2y ago
True in the abstract, but calling Aristotle a "great scientist" is a stretch at best. He wasn't much of an empiricist.
- bbor 2y ago
  Very true and well put, but IMHO that's not a productive definition of "scientist". You're definitely on the side of common usage, but this is one of the many hills I'd die on; all scientists necessarily employ intuitive intellectual tools at some point in their process, so it feels silly to cut out those who primarily use them if they're still productively employing systematic thought. The upside of this is that Mathematicians get to be scientists, too! The downside is that you also have to let the darn philosophers in ;)
  - andrewflnr 2y ago
    You're basically saying that scientist and "using systematic thought" should be synonymous. Why have two terms for the same thing? Whereas we definitely need a separate term for people who focus on empirical work, since that implies distinct properties of the kind of work. Mathematical and philosophical work simply aren't the same as scientific work, despite the non-zero overlap. It's almost like there's a reason the common usage is the way it is.
    - bbor 2y ago
      Why have two terms for the same thing? Well, the alternative is "focuses on empirical work" -- every defined term is inherently redundant, I'd say. Mathematical and philosophical work simply aren't the same as scientific work, despite **the non-zero overlap.** Hopefully this makes it clear why I see it as a matter of taste :) Personally, I find the utility of including all systematic human pursuits as one lineage to be much greater than the utility of cordoning off empirical physical science. The latter is the status quo, often phrased along the lines of "for a long time everyone was silly and wishy-washy, and then science came around in the 1600s." For one thing this silences many great voices from the past, and for another I'd say it's behind the current crises around what exactly constitutes "human" or "social" sciences. For example: the answer to "what is psychology" is a lot easier to productively answer if we start the search in 400 BCE instead of 1900 CE.
      - andrewflnr 2y ago
        Non-zero overlap is a laughably bad reason for dissolving distinctions between kinds of things. Almost everything has overlap. It's the differences that need names. "Silencing voices" is entirely beside the point. We don't need to invalidate all past mathematical or philosophical work by not calling it science. Except, of course, that quite a lot of it is flat wrong. "Social science" and psychology are actually excellent examples. Their status as science is questioned exactly because their connection to empirical evidence is so tenuous.
    - iinnPP 2y ago
      The definition of science has changed quite a bit over time. To frame the problem we would need to figure out what came first, the scientist or the definition.
      - andrewflnr 2y ago
        People who did experiments to try to find out truth definitely came before the word "scientist".