“(and why did it take so long for people to figure out the part about empirical verification)?”
Most of the immediate progress after the advent of empiricism was about engineering more than science. I think the biggest hurdle wasn’t lack of understanding of the importance of empirical verification, but lack of understanding of human biases.
Early scientists just assumed that they were either unbiased or that their biases wouldn’t affect the data. They had no idea of the power of expectation and selection biases, placebo effects, etc. It wasn’t until people realized this and started controlling for it that science took off.
‘An important aspect of my proposal will be to expand the definitions of the words “scientific theory” and “scientific method”’
I have to admit that this idea makes me extremely wary, but that’s probably because I’m used to statements like this coming from people with a harmful agenda (i.e. creationists). I’ll try to keep an open mind when I read your future posts in this series.
“(and why did it take so long for people to figure out the part about empirical verification)?”
Most of the immediate progress after the advent of empiricism was about engineering more than science. I think the biggest hurdle wasn’t lack of understanding of the importance of empirical verification, but lack of understanding of human biases.
Early scientists just assumed that they were either unbiased or that their biases wouldn’t affect the data. They had no idea of the power of expectation and selection biases, placebo effects, etc. It wasn’t until people realized this and started controlling for it that science took off.
‘An important aspect of my proposal will be to expand the definitions of the words “scientific theory” and “scientific method”’
I have to admit that this idea makes me extremely wary, but that’s probably because I’m used to statements like this coming from people with a harmful agenda (i.e. creationists). I’ll try to keep an open mind when I read your future posts in this series.