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Science is the simply the process of stating testable hypotheses and testing them. "Memorizing a long number makes people want to eat cake" is a testable hypot
by foobarbazqux 13y ago
Science is the simply the process of stating testable hypotheses and testing them. "Memorizing a long number makes people want to eat cake" is a testable hypothesis, but the concluding hypothesis "we have the same pool of resources allocated to cognitive processing and willpower" is not, because we have no way to measure those things.
Yes, advances in neurology might make such claims testable, at which point they'll become falsifiable, but until then the brain essentially remains a black box for which much of the speculation about its workings is outside the realm of science. As our experimental techniques get better, the number of things that we can include under the umbrella of science grows.
In the end, science literally means objective (i.e. agreed upon) knowledge, and at this point we are unable to generate much objective knowledge about the inside of our heads. Subjective, experiential, and personal inquiry, via psychology, into the workings of our minds is however tremendously valuable, and it yields a different and complementary kind of knowledge.
It will be interesting to see the extent to which neuroscience bridges the gap in our lifetimes.