On 28 Aug, 16:30, n...@webtv.net (Rec Room) wrote:
> Dave Smith wrote:
> >It seems to me that those who are committed to
> > scientific methods of inquiry are likely to reject
> > supernatural forces and dualism, to be sceptical
> > of the notion of free will, to see problems with
> > the notion of moral responsibility, to doubt the
> > existence of souls, and so on.
>
> That can happen, and probably is the case more often than not. But such
> personal stances shouldn't necessarily or unfailingly be a by-product of
> the methodological naturalism of science. Unlike philosophical
> naturalism, the latter doesn't "set" nihilistic canon a priori or in
> advance (i.e., free will, morals, souls, or whatever absolutely do not
> exist)....

Sorry I wasn't clear,  I was thinking of a personal philosophical
stance rather than scientific practice when I wrote about commitment
to scientific methods of inquiry.  I was suggesting that adoption of
the second tenet would tend to be associated with adoption of the
other tenets.

>...And science's "practice" really isn't even constrained to a
> single scheme or method or a generalized characterization for multiple
> ones. Percy Bridgman, from *Reflections of a Physicist*:
>
> "It seems to me that there is a good deal of ballyhoo about scientific
> method. I venture to think that the people who talk most about it are
> the people who do least about it. Scientific method is what working
> scientists do, not what other people or even they themselves may say
> about it. [...] The working scientist is always too much concerned with
> getting down to brass tacks to be willing to spend his time on
> generalities. [...] What appears to him as the essence of the situation
> is that he is not consciously following any prescribed course of action,
> but feels complete freedom to utilize any method or device whatever
> which in the particular situation before him seems likely to yield the
> correct answer. In his attack on his specific problem he suffers no
> inhibitions of precedent or authority, but is completely free to adopt
> any course that his ingenuity is capable of suggesting to him. No one
> standing on the outside can predict what the individual scientist will
> do or what method he will follow. In short, science is what scientists
> do, and there are as many scientific methods as there are individual
> scientists."

This seems rather exaggerated to me.  I'm sure many scientists use
very similar methods to each other, and the methods they use are often
fairly predictable and standardised.

> Alan Kay, from Edge's *World Question Center, 2005*: "So, science is a
> relationship between what we can represent and are able to think about,
> and 'what's out there': it's an extension of good map making, most often
> using various forms of mathematics as the mapping languages. When we
> guess in science we are guessing about approximations and mappings to
> languages, we are not guessing about 'the truth' (and we are not in a
> good state of mind for doing science if we think we are guessing 'the
> truth' or 'finding the truth'). This is not at all well understood
> outside of science, and there are unfortunately a few people with
> degrees in science who don't seem to understand it either."

Philosophers often think of truth in terms of correspondence between
ideas and observations, or in terms of how well theories seem to
work.  It isn't clear how we would recognise 'The Truth' even if we
discovered it.

Dave Smith

Dave Smith wrote: 

>This seems rather exaggerated to me.
> I'm sure many scientists use very
> similar methods to each other, and the
> methods they use are often fairly
> predictable and standardised. 


Especially within a particular lab or field of research. But oddly
enough, it's often scientists themselves and philosophers of science who
also have a background as the working former, who spit-out these
exceedingly liberal assessments. More conventional PoS'ers and whatever
classroom textbooks they influence or author seem to sway toward the
opposite (since they're all about rounding practices up with a formal
lasso). 

Peter Medawar, from *Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought*:
"Ask a scientist what he conceives the scientific method to be, and he
will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shifty-eyed: solemn,
because he feels he ought to declare an opinion; shifty-eyed, because he
is wondering how to conceal the fact that he has no opinion to declare.
[....] If the purpose of scientific methodology is to prescribe or
expound a system of enquiry or even a code of practice for scientific
behavior, then scientists seem to be able to get on very well without
it. Most scientists receive no tuition in scientific method, but those
who have been instructed perform no better as scientists than those who
have not. Of what other branch of learning can it be said that it gives
its proficients no advantage; that it need not be taught or, if taught,
need not be learned?" 

~E

On 29 Aug, 17:57, n...@webtv.net (Rec Room) wrote:
> Dave Smith wrote:
> >This seems rather exaggerated to me.
> > I'm sure many scientists use very
> > similar methods to each other, and the
> > methods they use are often fairly
> > predictable and standardised.
>
> Especially within a particular lab or field of research. But oddly
> enough, it's often scientists themselves and philosophers of science who
> also have a background as the working former, who spit-out these
> exceedingly liberal assessments. More conventional PoS'ers and whatever
> classroom textbooks they influence or author seem to sway toward the
> opposite (since they're all about rounding practices up with a formal
> lasso).
>
> Peter Medawar, from *Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought*:
> "Ask a scientist what he conceives the scientific method to be, and he
> will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shifty-eyed: solemn,
> because he feels he ought to declare an opinion; shifty-eyed, because he
> is wondering how to conceal the fact that he has no opinion to declare.
> [....] If the purpose of scientific methodology is to prescribe or
> expound a system of enquiry or even a code of practice for scientific
> behavior, then scientists seem to be able to get on very well without
> it. Most scientists receive no tuition in scientific method, but those
> who have been instructed perform no better as scientists than those who
> have not. Of what other branch of learning can it be said that it gives
> its proficients no advantage; that it need not be taught or, if taught,
> need not be learned?"
>
> ~E

Being able to talk in general and abstract terms about scientific
method and being a good practising scientist don't necessarily
accompany each other, I suppose.

Dave Smith