This is a long post (like some of the previous ones on this thread). It's a complex and deep matter, difficult to express in few words, unless you already know who and where you are and what you're doing here :) Russell McMahon wrote: > 2. There's no questioning that Popper established that a systematic > methodology is possible in some cases. What's in question (by some) is > whether being able to deal with something by popper's methods or not is > important or relevant. Interestingly, those disciplines where it is > possible have embraced "The Scientific Method" with open arms and hearts > and regard it as foundational. Those who think less highly of it are > liable to be those who cannot use it and who therefore seek to downplay > its importance or relevance. There are some serious limitations to PS. One is that he seems to imply a number of preconditions that are less than proven. He implies that the world is testable. Of course it seems obvious that it is, but that's not really compatible with some of the results of some PSs. He also implies that the observer has no influence on the observed. May be, may not be. He also implies a time invariance, that things that were falsified yesterday would still be falsified today. And probably a few other things. I don't think it's quite as simple, once you get into the proverbial gory details. He also excludes most of the disciplines that deal with humans. We don't do a great deal of experimenting with humans, so testability lacks pretty severely in those disciplines. Yet these are the areas where we have a more than urgent need to get to a better understanding. Which means for me that whether or not something is PS is getting less and less important, to the same degree as matters that are by definition not treatable by PS are getting more and more important. (Just as an example, to make this a bit clearer, take the discipline Medicine, the definition of "health" and the decisions how to achieve it or getting closer to it. This is clearly outside of PS, and questions like these were in fact the origin of Popper's thinking about the issue, but they are also very clearly matter of vital importance. Which probably is the reason Popper himself doesn't seem to claim any importance at all for his distinction.) So while I don't have a problem /recognizing/ the Popperian distinction of what is PS and what is not, I fail to see the relevance of it (other than within history of philosophy). The distinction doesn't help me a whole lot to tell whether something is more real than something else /for my life/ (or for humanity, or for the planet, or for the universe -- all with or without capital first letter :). --------------------------------------------------------- >> And Popper's definition of science is not "scientific" by his own >> definition... so what does that say about it? > > I'm not sure that's really a meaningful question (no rudeness intended). > His method is not, I think, a model of a system. It's a description of a > method intended to evaluate systems. If in fact his definition is a > system then I suspect it can be falsified and altered by experimental > verification (or not) and altered and ... .[[So far the original model > passes all falsification attempts :-) :-) ]] I think it /is/ a meaningful question (no rudeness felt :). His definition is outside the realm of PS -- it doesn't predict anything, and thus it is neither testable nor falsifiable. Which means that the roots of the criteria that determine what is considered "science" and what not are outside of PS -- and thusly religion, according to you (if I understood you correctly in some previous posts). (This a theme that will be repeated below.) --------------------------------------------------------- >> So the question remains: what difference does it make whether you call >> something "science"? > To me the difference is vital when attempting to discover "truth" and > "reality". Now here you are getting on a slippery terrain. I'm not sure Popper ever suggested that his definition of science has anything to do with truth or reality (whether in quotes or not); I know, however, at least one citable location where he says his definition has nothing to do with truth (http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/popper_falsification.html): "Thus the problem which I tried to solve by proposing the criterion of falsifiability was neither a problem of meaningfulness or significance, nor a problem of truth or acceptability. It was the problem of drawing a line ..." > Popper says that systems which are amenable to his method are never > knowable with certainty Agreed. > BUT that one can (usually) produce increasinghly good models. Seems obvious, but is again a theory outside of PS. No risky predictions, not testable. Thusly, again according to you, this is religion. (It also is not part of the definition of PS, but it is part of determining the importance of whether or not something is PS. Which is a whole different thing, and something IMO clearly outside of PS -- and probably way inside religion.) > He says that systems that are not amenable to his method are never > knowable. Again agreed. I just think this also applies to the systems that fall within his criteria. I think that Popper's criteria necessarily imply that within PS, nothing is "knowable". There is a hope that successive falsification of theories will lead to "better" theories, but this hope is not much more than a hope, or at best something that's taken for obvious. (I have severe problems with most "obvious" things... most engineers probably have been fooled once too often by the "obvious" that wasn't that correct in the end :) PS forbids any positive assertion like "this is how it is". So in essence, PS can never lead to anything knowable. Which puts the phrase above in quite a different light: not only systems that are not amenable to his method are never knowable; systems that /are/ amenable to his method are by his own definition never knowable, too. > BUT - WE CANNOT TELL. We may be completely and utterly wrong. We cannot > tell. So, taking Popper seriously, nothing is knowable. Not if it is PS, not if it isn't -- which pretty much includes everything. WE CANNOT TELL. To which I agree -- but then, this takes a lot out of the steam of many points raised here, especially the importance of the difference between PS and NP. --------------------------------------------------------- > For various reasons we have some people who do NP (non Popper) > religion-science holding up their results as the absolute anseers to > reality while simultaneously deriding people with other flavours of > religion for their naievety and unscientific approach. Definitely. We also have people doing PS who do the same: they do PS, but they fail to recognize the (lack of) importance of whether or not something is PS (as stated by Popper himself). After doing their PS, they go ahead and claim PS as being closer to the "truth" than something else -- which is a claim clearly outside of the realm of PS. With which they show themselves as non-PSists, in their hearts. > True Popperian Science happily recognises that it and True religion (in > all forms) are orthogonal and vice versa and both coexist happily and > get on with their respective jobs. Not sure what you define as "True Popperian Science" or "True religion". I must admit I get goose pickles when somebody uses the (upper-case, in particular) "True ". (Probably James Newton gets goose pickles, too -- or whatever he gets -- when reading "true" with upper case T :) In this case it seems to imply that there is "Popperian science" and "True Popperian Science". I also have to admit that I'm lost with what that means. Again, according to you, anything outside PS is religion. The definition of PS is outside of PS (see above), so it seems that it is religion (in your terms). Which makes the statement that PS and religion are orthogonal a bit strange. I'm not sure there is a way to say that science (PS or otherwise) has a claim to "truth" or "reality" without putting it on the same dimension as religion (and thusly removing any possible orthogonality). Any orthogonality could only come from the /absence/ of any claim to "truth" or "importance". Maybe that's what Popper meant (some of what he says seems to agree with this). But then this says that there is no meaning, no importance in whether something is or is not PS -- it's merely a matter of "drawing a line", for no specific purpose (other than practising philosophy, which is what philosophers do and what they get paid for :) > Which form of science is which is important to me so that I can tell > which is the proper way of relating it to "other flavours of religion". > For NPS the approach is "we're all in the same boat". For PS it's "we > can't see each other (but we can still be friends)". Here we may be getting somewhere: "other flavors of religion". I'm not sure how you meant that, but this seems to agree more with what I wrote above than with the sentence that follows it. --------------------------------------------------------- > so, yes, Geology is religion too ;-) - or, to be fair, has many aspects > that are still religion given our capabilities*. Let me be brief here (for a change :) and just say that I think that most disciplines considered sciences have their religious aspects. People believing in the truth of a theory (and fighting for its recognition) are quite common; people believing in scientific "facts" and "truths" are also quite common (and not only in politics and marketing). --------------------------------------------------------- > FWIW - while "Creation" can not properly be dealt with by PS, God can, if > He/She/It wants to be. If God doesn't want to be it's not on, and this > makes the process rather uncertain. (eg God not wanting to play that day > and God not existing tend to have the same outcomes :-) ). If God chose > to invariably and independently verifiably turn water to wine on request > given certain conditions being met then this would be entirely testable > and modellable by PS.(eg Always given x, y &z except on bank holidays.) (This seems to be a bit besides the rest of the discussion, on the surface, but probably not in the deeper layers of your thoughts. So I give it a shot, from the deeper layers of my thoughts... trying to stay within the realms of philosophy, as applied to Popper's definition of science :) If He (the Creator of Everything) exists, who knows whether or not He re-creates the rules every day? He probably could. Throughout the last few hundred years of modern science (possibly a very short "moment" in the Creator's "universe" -- if there exists any time at all) we simply could have been lucky in that the changing rules didn't affect much of what we were trying to find out or what we were able to see, by mere accident... Which could severely interfere with the Popperian postulate that there exists something like consistent testability. So, I guess, one needs to postulate a Creator that does not interfere with the Popperian postulates, if PS should make any sense at all. Of which I'm not sure whether it makes sense, from whatever angle you look at it. And which, again, seems not to combine well with the claimed orthogonality of PS and religion. --------------------------------------------------------- >> I think the more important question is not what is science, but why you >> want to make that distinction. Without knowing that, it seems kind of >> futile. > > I hope the above answers that. If not please advise and I'll try > again, but shorter :-). I don't think it did answer that. It did raise a few new questions, though :) Gerhard -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist