The Scientific Method (Page 13)

zeffur
zeffur: Gotcha...truth has no point in your fairy tale domain.
On topic things like Mongolian throat singing is all about the scientific method.

Toodles!

enjoy...
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AchillesSinatra
AchillesSinatra: Sinatra vids are ok, too.

After all, this deep thinking can be exhausting. Eh, chaps?
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AchillesSinatra
AchillesSinatra: Beware all ye who preach of a timeless, unchanging "Method" of science.

For instance, I often hear it said that science works on a principle of "methodological naturalism" -- that is, is a matter of methodological principle, science does not, indeed CANNOT, countenance any appeal to supernatural causation.

Well . . .



"God therefore placed the planets at different distances from the Sun so that according to their degrees of density they may enjoy more or less of the Sun's heat"

- Isaac Newton, Principia Mathematica, vol. II: 583 note



Wotcha gonna do? Say Newton didn't know science from Shinola?
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AchillesSinatra
AchillesSinatra: Or say "Screw Newton. That was then and this is now"?


Two problems:

1. Does this response not sit awkwardly with the notion of a "timeless, unchanging "Method" of science " ?

2. Richard Dawkins has a book--"The God Hypothesis"--devoted to examination of God as a scientific hypothesis. Now, Dawkins obviously does not believe the god hypothesis to be true; he DOES, however, consider it to be within the ambit of scientific inquiry.


Wotcha gonna do? Say Dawkins doesn't know science from Shinola?

In this case, I won't put up a fight.
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zeffur
(Post deleted by AchillesSinatra 3 years ago)
TheismIsUntenable
TheismIsUntenable: "...I remember a conversation I had years ago with a high school teacher, who explained proudly that in her school teachers were trying to get away from teaching just scientific facts, and wanted instead to give their students an idea of what the scientific method was. I replied that I had no idea what the scientific method was, and I thought she ought to teach her students scientific facts..." - Steven Weinberg

Respect

I guess I don't know how rigid of a process you're looking for. If we begin with the method you're taught as a kid in school, it'd be something like this (pulled from google):

- Ask a question.
- Perform research.
- Establish your hypothesis.
- Test your hypothesis by conducting an experiment.
- Make an observation.
- Analyze the results and draw a conclusion.
- Present the findings.

Are you looking for more specifics? Such as when we say "Perform research" what does that really mean? Same for "Conducting an experiment"?
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zeffur
zeffur: The problem starts when nitwits draw & present their indefensible conclusions---especially when it comes to evolution...

They offer no verified truth & only their beliefs--which aren't consistent with the truth---they are consistent with ignorance & imagination--nothing more.

Then they have the audacity to say if you can't disprove their bullshite--then it stands--which of course is total rubbish because the burden of proof is on the person making the positive assertion--which they NEVER prove & have NEVER provided compelling/convincing unbiased evidence & a cogent explanation for---hence they have NOTHING to validate that their beliefs are valid/true in any way---hence they have nothing genuine to offer to anyone but their biased & bogus beliefs--which isn't real science, because there is no repeatable tests results to confirm their shite is anything more than biased & bogus beliefs/conclusions.
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Jace_of_spades
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lewqui1
lewqui1: BlueShirt1 says:



TIU . . .

QUOTE
I guess I don't know how rigid of a process you're looking for. If we begin with the method you're taught as a kid in school, it'd be something like this (pulled from google):

- Ask a question.
- Perform research.
- Establish your hypothesis.
- Test your hypothesis by conducting an experiment.
- Make an observation.
- Analyze the results and draw a conclusion.
- Present the findings.
UNQUOTE




Yes, this is indeed the kind of thing we routinely see rehashed in elementary textbooks and television showcases. It's problematic in all kinds of ways. I'll just focus on one for now.

The "Method" outlined above is a mismash of just about every idea that has ever been proposed on the so-called "Scientific Method". It starts out in vaguely Baconian (after Francis Bacon) inductivist form before morphing into hypothetico-deductivism and other protean gymnastics.

According to the "Method" above, one begins with a question (or observation, as we often see), in the absence of a hypothesis. The hypothesis, you will notice, comes later (step 3).

As many have pointed out, and I'll paraphrase Kant here . . .

"Observation without theory is blind; theory without observation is empty"

It's kinda pointless to just look at stuff, or ask a "question", at least if you wanna do science, unless you already have some theoretical (cf. hypothesis) notion in mind.

It's something of a platitude nowadays, pace Francis Bacon, that observation is "theory-laden". There are no "neutral" facts just sitting there waiting to be read, so to speak. What is observed depends on the conceptual apparatus one brings to bear.

Two men sit on the beach around dusk: one sees the sun set; the other sees the Earth rotating.


"Philosophical accounts of the nature of science, or of the 'scientific method', are, in part, accounts of the relation, or relations, of theory and experiment in science. A simplistic view of the history of philosophy of science since the eighteenth century would show one philosophy, inductivism, holding sway for a century and a half before being replaced by hypothetico-deductivism. Francis Bacon is usually blamed for inductivism, a position that we all now plainly see as silly. Indeed, over a hundred years ago, Charles Darwin, who publicly gave lip-service to the 'Baconian method', privately ridiculed inductivism, saying that "one might as well go into a gravel pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours". " . . .etc

- Robert N. Brandon, "Concepts and Methods in Evolutionary Biology"


"Facts do not 'speak for themselves'; they are read in the light of theory" - S J Gould


"How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view, if it is to be of any service." - Charles Darwin
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BlueShirt1
BlueShirt1: "Are you looking for more specifics? Such as when we say "Perform research" what does that really mean? Same for "Conducting an experiment"?"

- TIU



I'm not so much asking for "more specifics". What I'm doing, rather, is pointing out the "Method" you have quoted above, even in skeletal form, does not capture what scientists as a whole do.

Take "perform an experiment", as just another example.

There are areas of science, or at least what most of us intuitively regard as good science, where no experiments are performed.

This may be because experiments CANNOT be performed (astrophysicists can hardly go banging galaxies together to see what happens), or perhaps because the scientists involved are engaged in non-experimental taxonomy.

Now, if the "Method" you quoted constitutes necessary and sufficient conditions for doing science, we'd have to conclude that those folks mentioned above, whatever it is they're doing, is not science.
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BlueShirt1
BlueShirt1: Or consider paleontology and other historical sciences. . .

These guys, as a rule, are dealing with the past: experiments, by and large, are not possible.

Are we to conclude these people are not doing science?
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zeffur
zeffur: re: "Two men sit on the beach around dusk: one sees the sun set; the other sees the Earth rotating."

You can't see the earth spin/rotate or orbit from earth--that would require an outer space position to make such an actual observation. You can infer that the sun or the earth or both are rotating around the other or each other--but, you can't prove it from earth with the unaided eye--as both are actually in motion... The sun actually rotates on an axis at different rates between 24 days (at the equator) & 30 days (at the poles) due to being a gas/plasma that can spin at different rates.
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BlueShirt1
BlueShirt1: "You can deduce that the sun or the earth or both are rotating around the other or each other" - Zeffur


Er, no, you can't . . . at least not validly.

Venus also "sets", ya know? (not to mention the stars, the other planets . . .)

By your reasoning we should be able to deduce that either

(i) The Earth and Venus are revolving around each other, or

(ii) One is revolving around the other



and that would be a poor deduction.
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zeffur
zeffur: I changed the word to infer (above)--rather than deduce...

We now actually have the ability to observe different celestial bodies from outer space because we have sent devices into space that we can stop spinning & radio images back to earth...
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TheismIsUntenable
TheismIsUntenable: infer
verb
deduce
reason
work out
conclude


https://www.google.com/search?q=infer+synonyms&oq=infer+synonyms&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i512j0i22i30l6j0i10i22i30j0i22i30.3775j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
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TheismIsUntenable
TheismIsUntenable: I definitely see issues but I'm not sure they are as widespread as advertised.

In astrophysics/astronomy, their experiments are at the mercy of nature. They are effectively, in many cases, waiting for something to happen that can relay some meaningful information. Instead of colliding planets themselves, they wait for such an event to transpire.

Classification sciences like anthropology or paleontology seem much harder to deal with, but do seem to conform to many of the same principles found in other disciplines.



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zeffur
zeffur: "Inference: is an interpretation that goes beyond the literal information given. Deduction: is an understanding based on the evidence given in the text. e.g. the police find a body with a knife sticking out of it. They can deduce that the person has probably been murdered."
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BlueShirt1
BlueShirt1: "In astrophysics/astronomy, their experiments are at the mercy of nature. They are effectively, in many cases, waiting for something to happen that can relay some meaningful information. Instead of colliding planets themselves, they wait for such an event to transpire." - TIU



This is indeed what these guys do, though I daresay most of us would balk at applying the term "experiment" to such activities.

Don't you feel the term implies some kind of "interference"?

My watching the sunset, for example, can scarcely be described as an experiment.
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BlueShirt1
BlueShirt1: @ Zeffur


As TIU surely knows, the term "deduce" (deduction, etc) has both a common language usage, as well as a strict logical usage. They are not quite the same.

The form of inference employed by Sherlock Holmes, despite what he says himself, is not, by and large, what logicians refer to as "deduction".

They would call it "abduction" or "inference to the best explanation".

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BlueShirt1
BlueShirt1: "They [the police] can deduce that the person has probably been murdered" - Zeffur


In the ordinary language usage of the term "deduction", they can indeed do so.

In the strict logical usage, they cannot.

Under the latter, true premises, combined with a valid deductive structure, CANNOT FAIL to yield a true conclusion.

But as we all know, the police can be wrong about these things.
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TheismIsUntenable
TheismIsUntenable: @Blue

"This is indeed what these guys do, though I daresay most of us would balk at applying the term "experiment" to such activities."

I'm not sure if that's true. Whether the situation is deliberately concocted by a human, or driven by nature it seems that if it's an experiment when we do it that should also be the same for nature.

"My watching the sunset, for example, can scarcely be described an an experiment."

I think in the context of the scientific method, this would not qualify as an experiment. However, I think of this as a (very loose) experiment. I don't think you have to have suspicions about what will happen to have an experiment. I think of a lot of entertainment is an experiment to see if you actually enjoy whatever act/show/film/etc. it is.

Even eating is experimental. If you see a new thing you haven't eaten before you're not sure if you will enjoy it until you pop it into your mouth. And maybe you will get diarrhea, who knows.
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BlueShirt1
BlueShirt1: @ TIU

(from my 2nd post, page 1)


(2) Before setting out, we must pay careful attention to our application of the concept "method". We must agree that the concept properly applies to certain processes, quintessentially a cookbook recipe for instance (just follow the steps and voila!), and must be withheld from others which depend more on luck or creativity than rigid adherence to a set of rules; a lottery scoop or the writing of a novel, say. If the overzealous defender of science insists on applying the concept "method" no matter what, then the whole notion of a substantive "scientific method" is trivialized and we might as well stop right now and head down the pub instead for a few bevvies.
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BlueShirt1
BlueShirt1: and (you mentioned hypotheses) . . .


6) A final thought for the time being, before I bore the pants off everyone. Given that "hypotheses" always seem to get a mention when the issue of TSM is broached, is the formation of a hypothesis the kind of thing you'd regard as methodical? Is there a step-by-step algorithm for constructing hypotheses? Is this not what would be more aptly described as a creative process? And surely the concepts of creativity and method are diametrically opposed to one another: the more of one, the less of the other.

August Kekulé famously claimed that the ring-structure of the benzene molecule came to him in a dream of a snake eating its own tail -- hardly what might be called a methodical discovery!
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TheismIsUntenable
TheismIsUntenable: I definitely don't view the scientific method like I would view the directions in a cookbook. It certainly is a guideline more than anything.

"is the formation of a hypothesis the kind of thing you'd regard as methodical?"

If I embrace your idea that creativity and method are diametrically opposed, then no. But I'm not sure if that is true. Bearing in mind that I'm a determinist, creativity seems to demand method as well.

But I think I have pretty much resolved to agree with the things you've posted on the matter.
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BlueShirt1
BlueShirt1: Re above (formation of hypotheses/theories)


"There is, of course, no logical [cf. "methodical" - me] way leading to the establishment of a theory but only groping constructive attempts controlled by careful consideration of factual knowledge."

-- Albert Einstein

He said many similar things throughout his career.


A distinction is often made between the so-called "context of discovery" (how theories come to be) and the "context of justification" (how theories are justified).


Einstein, above, is not denying that science is methodical. What he is denying (as many others do) is that the FORMATION of theories/hypotheses is a methodical business.
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