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Nice, this needed to be said, have an upvote. But let me talk about point 3. Science has many parts, one large part is gathering observations without even tryin

by D_Alex 14y ago

Nice, this needed to be said, have an upvote. But let me talk about point 3. Science has many parts, one large part is gathering observations without even trying to explain - eg. look at the work of 19th century naturalists, who travelled the world collecting drawings of local flora and fauna. Another part is formulating and testing hypotheses based on casual observation which are not yet supported by a theory, and do not really have explanatory powers eg. black men have larger... nostrils. Quite often an explanation for a hypothesis is found long after the hypothesis itself has been proven correct. Eg: "puerperal fever is a contagious disease (and washing hands helps prevent its transmission)" has been establishd long before the germ theory of disease was even formed.

lutusp 14y ago
> Science has many parts, one large part is gathering observations without even trying to explain ... Yes, and science requires microscopes and telescopes. But science isn't defined by microscopes and telescopes, it's defined by what scientists do with them. By themselves, these individual elements aren't science, because they don't lead to a falsifiable proposed explanation, the single essential element in the definition of science. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability Quote: "Simply, to be scientific, a theory must predict at least some observation potentially refutable by observation." > Quite often an explanation for a hypothesis is found long after the hypothesis itself has been proven correct ... A hypothesis cannot be "proven correct". That's reserved to theories -- explanations that generalize observations and predict their relevance to phenomena not yet examined. > "puerperal fever is a contagious disease (and washing hands helps prevent its transmission)" has been establishd long before the germ theory of disease was even formed. Yes, and shaking a dried gourd over a cold sufferer will cure his cold. Isn't that science? -- it always works! If I visit 1000 cold sufferers and shake my gourd over them, every single one of them will get better if I shake the gourd long enough. So is my procedure science? No, it is not -- because I have not tried to explain why my method works, nor have I considered alternative explanations for my result. The dried gourd example, and a thousand other examples of sloppy thinking, show that testable, falsifiable explanations are a requirement for science.

by D_Alex 14y ago

lutusp 14y ago

> Science has many parts, one large part is gathering observations without even trying to explain ... Yes, and science requires microscopes and telescopes. But science isn't defined by microscopes and telescopes, it's defined by what scientists do with them. By themselves, these individual elements aren't science, because they don't lead to a falsifiable proposed explanation, the single essential element in the definition of science. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability Quote: "Simply, to be scientific, a theory must predict at least some observation potentially refutable by observation." > Quite often an explanation for a hypothesis is found long after the hypothesis itself has been proven correct ... A hypothesis cannot be "proven correct". That's reserved to theories -- explanations that generalize observations and predict their relevance to phenomena not yet examined. > "puerperal fever is a contagious disease (and washing hands helps prevent its transmission)" has been establishd long before the germ theory of disease was even formed. Yes, and shaking a dried gourd over a cold sufferer will cure his cold. Isn't that science? -- it always works! If I visit 1000 cold sufferers and shake my gourd over them, every single one of them will get better if I shake the gourd long enough. So is my procedure science? No, it is not -- because I have not tried to explain why my method works, nor have I considered alternative explanations for my result. The dried gourd example, and a thousand other examples of sloppy thinking, show that testable, falsifiable explanations are a requirement for science.