by LuisP » Sun Nov 16, 2014 2:23 pm
Wags
I'm not a very able "two-liner" when it comes to punch my thoughts. Hope you have then the patience to read.
You either misunderstood me or I did not make myself clear or you simply refuse to understand what I say.
I am not an apologist of “rubbishing” science. Matter of fact, I used to believe in it completely. Until, that is, I came to be familiar – just lightly, unfortunately - with the fact that science is an “incomplete tool” that can, for that single fact alone, be Wrong, and that outside the perimeter of what we Know exists an even greater one of things that “we only suspect”.
And I am setting my feet there, on that larger suspicion zone.
One which “science” – as it is “practiced” using its “methods” – is incapable of providing answers, therefore laying ground for questions to be asked as to why not “enlarge” the method with what – till a very recent past – were tools best described as Fraud or Pathology.
If a scientist named Galileo said that “In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual” and another scientist named Einstein further clarified “If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth” why then, I ask, can’t you see that “the method” may be sound …. but it cannot be applied to anything ?
Philosophers of Science have tried to reason precisely this – why can’t you ?
One, name of Paul Feyerabend, said that “a distinction between science and nonscience is neither possible nor desirable”, another, name of Larry Laudan, said that “ If we would stand up and be counted on the side of reason, we ought to drop terms like 'pseudo-science' and 'unscientific' from our vocabulary” and yet another, name of Thomas Kuhn, went as far as saying that “The notion of scientific truth, at any given moment, cannot be established solely by objective criteria” !
Not only “philosophers” but real “hands-on scientists” have realized as much.
It is not just the recurrent Tesla and his statement (prophecy? warning ?) that “The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence" but what about John O’M.Bockris, who is considered to be one of the top two or three electrochemists of the 20th century, and his book published in 2005 titled “The New Paradigm: A Confrontation Between Physics and the Paranormal Phenomena” where he addresses dozens of “phenomena” – scientifically detected and also scientifically unexplained – that fall, all of them, outside the domain of mainstream science ?
You, Wags, may say that if one questions “Science” and its “Method” when up against paradigm-inconsistent findings is just “ because one is incapable of following it (and) is just lazy non science opinion” where “advocacy has usurped scrutiny”.
But Brockis had this to say :
- “Historically, big discoveries have been made by following up experiments anomalous to the theory of the time … At present, the attitude towards paradigm-inconsistent findings is automatically to reject them, with anger, insisting that they are due to sloppy experiments or fraud”.
I hope I’m not sounding presumptuous, but just true, if I say that I stand with Brockis. And with Galileo, Tesla, Einstein, Feyerabend, Laudan and Kuhn.
Math, Wags, may be the “Translator” of science.
But it is far less than its Language.
As all those guys knew it.
And so strived to understand what their “method” couldn’t explain, and by that “advocacy” changed “science” as it was known.
For only after having understood, were they able to translate it.
Not before.
Problem is, will it take Genius to do that ?
or a simple change of present “methods” be enough ?
Who is lazy, Wags ?