Caledonian: What fundamental principles? As far as I can tell the only fundamental principle is that it has to work. But I’m open to counterexamples, if you are.
The recognition of what ‘working’ is, and the tools that have been found useful in reaching that state, is what constitutes the scientific method.
The scientific method is actually pretty specific—and it is not a set of tools. There is no systematic method of advancing science, no set of rules/tools which are exclusively the means to attaining scientific knowledge.
Scientists do not concern themselves with what philosophers say about science—it is my experience that they are actively contemptuous of such. . . It’s almost as though the philosophers didn’t know what they were talking about.
That’s actually my point. Scientists do what works, and employ methodological diversity—the “scientific method” is not an actual description of how real scientists do their work, nor how real science has advanced. It’s propaganda, made up by certain people who were/are absolutely horrified that science has no defining and fundamental underlying principles—which would throw their entire schema of epistemology into turmoil.
The “rules” of science, if they exist, are subject to change at any time. Science has physical reality at the input and useful models at the output—and no bona fide, tried and true, structure in between.
The “rules” of science, if they exist, are subject to change at any time.
Here’s a rule of science: Your hypothesis must make testable predictions. It must be falsifiable.
Is that “subject to change at any time” ? I bet there are more.
While it may not perfectly describe how actual scientists do their work all the time, the scientific method is a description of the process of how we sort out good ideas/models from bad ones, which is the quintessential goal of science (the “advancement of science,” if you will).
Just to be clear on what we are discussing, here is the Oxford English Dictionary definition (I don’t like using dictionaries as authorities; I think it’s stupid. this is just to have a working definition on the table):
“A method or procedure… consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.”
In order for the scientific community to take a claim seriously, there are certain expectations that must be satisfied such as a reproducible experiment, peer reviewed publication, etc. When a hypothesis is proposed (assuming it has already met the baseline requirement of making testable predictions), it is thrust into the death pit of scientific inquiry where scientists do everything they can to test and falsify it. While the subject matter may span vastly different areas of science, this process is still generally followed.
Scientists who do science for a living may have gotten good at this process, so much so that they do it without belaboring each element as you would in a middle school science class, but they do it never the less.
It is true that in the past, bad science happened, and even today lapses in scientific integrity happen; however, the reason science is given the authority that it is is due to it’s strict adherence to the above process. (Also, as a disclaimer, there are many nuances to said process that I glossed over; I just wanted to get the general idea.)
If I may go out on a limb here, it sounds to me like the chaos you are talking about is the unavoidably arbitrary nature of
observation of phenomena and the unavoidably arbitrary nature of proposing hypotheses. Often times throughout history we have encountered entirely new areas of science by sheer accident. Likewise (unless they are making a phenomenological model) scientists have no better way to propose hypotheses than to guess at what the answer is based on observations that they currently have and then make new observations/experiments to see if they were right.
So I definitely agree with you on the chaotic nature of our stumbling across new phenomena on on our quest to understand reality, but to say that the process we go through to establish scientific knowledge is not systematic seems a bit extreme.
Caledonian: What fundamental principles? As far as I can tell the only fundamental principle is that it has to work. But I’m open to counterexamples, if you are.
The recognition of what ‘working’ is, and the tools that have been found useful in reaching that state, is what constitutes the scientific method.
The scientific method is actually pretty specific—and it is not a set of tools. There is no systematic method of advancing science, no set of rules/tools which are exclusively the means to attaining scientific knowledge.
Scientists do not concern themselves with what philosophers say about science—it is my experience that they are actively contemptuous of such. . . It’s almost as though the philosophers didn’t know what they were talking about.
That’s actually my point. Scientists do what works, and employ methodological diversity—the “scientific method” is not an actual description of how real scientists do their work, nor how real science has advanced. It’s propaganda, made up by certain people who were/are absolutely horrified that science has no defining and fundamental underlying principles—which would throw their entire schema of epistemology into turmoil.
The “rules” of science, if they exist, are subject to change at any time. Science has physical reality at the input and useful models at the output—and no bona fide, tried and true, structure in between.
Here’s a rule of science: Your hypothesis must make testable predictions. It must be falsifiable. Is that “subject to change at any time” ? I bet there are more.
While it may not perfectly describe how actual scientists do their work all the time, the scientific method is a description of the process of how we sort out good ideas/models from bad ones, which is the quintessential goal of science (the “advancement of science,” if you will).
Just to be clear on what we are discussing, here is the Oxford English Dictionary definition (I don’t like using dictionaries as authorities; I think it’s stupid. this is just to have a working definition on the table): “A method or procedure… consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.”
In order for the scientific community to take a claim seriously, there are certain expectations that must be satisfied such as a reproducible experiment, peer reviewed publication, etc. When a hypothesis is proposed (assuming it has already met the baseline requirement of making testable predictions), it is thrust into the death pit of scientific inquiry where scientists do everything they can to test and falsify it. While the subject matter may span vastly different areas of science, this process is still generally followed.
Scientists who do science for a living may have gotten good at this process, so much so that they do it without belaboring each element as you would in a middle school science class, but they do it never the less. It is true that in the past, bad science happened, and even today lapses in scientific integrity happen; however, the reason science is given the authority that it is is due to it’s strict adherence to the above process. (Also, as a disclaimer, there are many nuances to said process that I glossed over; I just wanted to get the general idea.)
If I may go out on a limb here, it sounds to me like the chaos you are talking about is the unavoidably arbitrary nature of observation of phenomena and the unavoidably arbitrary nature of proposing hypotheses. Often times throughout history we have encountered entirely new areas of science by sheer accident. Likewise (unless they are making a phenomenological model) scientists have no better way to propose hypotheses than to guess at what the answer is based on observations that they currently have and then make new observations/experiments to see if they were right.
So I definitely agree with you on the chaotic nature of our stumbling across new phenomena on on our quest to understand reality, but to say that the process we go through to establish scientific knowledge is not systematic seems a bit extreme.