Comment on Finish him. 🪓

• thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Science is a particular method of peer review…?

  This thread prompted me to revisit what I think “science” means, and I’ve been through a number of different Wikipedia pages, dictionary definitions, etc. but that inquiry just reinforced that this “science == participation in the institutions/communities of science” idea just doesn’t seem to hold up.

  Where does this idea come from? I keep seeing this “science is this very particular thing, it’s not just forming falsifiable hypotheses and then testing them,” but then when I look it up, the sources I find say exactly the opposite.

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  • testfactor@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I think this theory of science is so prevalent in this thread because you have to adhere to it in order to dunk on Elon Musk.

    I doubt most of these ardents would have taken this position in a random thread about sea cucumbers or something.

    I like dunking on Musk as much as the next guy, but the amount of double-think people are willing to commit to to do it is always pretty off-putting to me.

    It’s like every ArsTechnica article on SpaceX has people come out of the woodwork to say that their accomplishments are trash and not even worth reporting because of Elon, which, like, you have to be delusional if you don’t think SpaceX is absolutely killing it.

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  • yeahiknow3@lemmings.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    See any textbook on the Philosophy of Science.

    The irony of plebs arguing among themselves over the definition of science without any notion of the preceding centuries of debate is absolutely delicious, btw.

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    • thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Oh thanks for editing in an example-- that wasn’t there when I wrote my reply, but what did you think of the other Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy links I provided?

      That article that you linked (Scientific Pluralism) is an interesting read, but it’s more about the importance of diversity in the scientific community… it doesn’t really address the Demarcation Problem, and it doesn’t discuss peer review or anything as far as I could tell.

      Mentioning in passing that “science is social” (which is IMO uncontroversially true in a non-demarcation way, btw) is a few shades away from “any textbook will tell you that science is a particular process of peer review.” I think the Science and Pseudo-Science entry that I linked is more germane.

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      • yeahiknow3@lemmings.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I’m not sure what we are arguing about here. The concept of “science” is fairly new and most people we would think of as “scientists” throughout history, such as Newton, actually thought of themselves as natural philosophers, hence the P in PhD. The modern concept of science arose as a kind of description of something humans do together. “Science” doesn’t mean figuring out the truth. That wouldn’t make any sense, because philosophy, logic, mathematics, etc, are all concerned with figuring out the truth as well. Science is an institution, a social endeavor (except when it isn’t? Need counter examples). The royal academy of sciences was created for that reason, funny enough — because Francis Bacon has pointed out what I just did, that science requires an intellectual community (let’s be honest, humans are fairly dumb on their own — imagine having to invent mathematics from scratch just to do physics).

        Anyway, in the mid 1950s there was a now famous work by Thomas Kuhn called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions which added an extra layer to the debate when he pointed out aspects of “science” that seem to be… not about finding the truth at all. But I’m guessing you already know that. Human beings are driven by many motivations, after all, and finding the truth is rarely one of them.

        Anyway, the demarcation problem, yes: it’s very difficult to come up with a definition that perfectly picks out legitimate science without also applying to pseudo nonsense (see Pigliucci‘s Nonsense on Stilts). That said, we know what is and isn’t science. We are just having trouble coming up with a perfect definition that works every time.

        Incidentally, having trouble defining science is literally my position. Science is something we do that isn’t as tidy and uncomplicated as “figuring out the truth.” It clearly involves some sort of methodology and it clearly involves people checking each other’s work and so on and so forth, and it’s different from math and different from astrology. You tell me how you want to define it, but it sure as shit isn’t “doing stuff in one’s garage alone without writing it down or reproducing the results “

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    • thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Your desire to collapse all fact-finding into the concept of “science”

      Well that’s a reach. I had to buy a new laptop charger and find facts about what voltage, etc. I needed… I certainly don’t consider that fact-finding exercise to be science, and I don’t think I said anything to suggest that.

      But okay, I don’t have a textbook handy, but let’s see what we can find out about the Philosophy of Science:

      Philosophy of Science - Wikipedia

      Seems to pretty clearly indicate “lots of interesting and useful ideas, no consensus.” Peer review mentioned 0 times. The “Defining Science” section links to a page for the demarcation problem, so let’s go look at that.

      Demarcation Problem - Wikipedia

      “The debate continues after more than two millennia of dialogue among philosophers of science and scientists in various fields.”

      And the article basically continues to that effect, IMO: Demarcation is difficult, unclear, and there is no consensus. Peer review mentioned 0 times.

      Maybe it’s just Wikipedia that has this misconception. Let’s check some other sources.

      The Philosophy of Science - UC Berkeley, Understanding Science 101

      “Despite this diversity of opinion, philosophers of science can largely agree on one thing: there is no single, simple way to define science!”

      Re: Demarcation problem:

      “Modern philosophers of science largely agree that there is no single, simple criterion that can be used to demarcate the boundaries of science.”

      Starting to sound familiar. Lots of opinions from Aristotle to Cartwright, none of whom highlight peer review or acceptance by the institutions as criteria. The page does talk about empiricism, parsimony, falsification, etc. though, consistent with other sources.

      Glossary - “science” - UC Berkeley, Understanding Science 101

      This one is simple:

      Our knowledge of the natural world and the process through which that knowledge is built. The process of science relies on the testing of ideas with evidence gathered from the natural world. Science as a whole cannot be precisely defined but can be broadly described by a set of key characteristics. To learn more, visit A science checklist.

      Let’s look at the checklist.

      Science is embedded in the scientific community - UC Berkeley, Understanding Science 101

      The page heading sounds pretty prescriptive, and that’s about the closest I can find that claims “if it’s not peer reviewed, it’s not science.” The body (IMO rightfully) describes the importance of community involvement in science, but doesn’t say anything like “it’s not science unless it involves the community.”

      Take this excerpt about Gregor Mendel:

      However, even in such cases [as Gregor Mendel’s], research must ultimately involve the scientific community if that work is to have any impact on the progress of science.

      So yes, sharing his findings with the world was why it was able to have an impact, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to interpret that he wasn’t doing science while he was working in isolation, or that it only became science retroactively after it was a) shared, and b) accepted.

      Let’s take a look at another textbook and see what it says:

      1.6: Science and Non-Science - Introduction to History and Philosophy of Science

      This chapter suggests that you can take two approaches to demarcation:

      • What makes a theory scientific or non-scientific?
      • What makes a “change in a scientific mosaic” scientific?

      For theories - They’re clear that there are no clear universal demarcation criteria, but offer these suggestions:

      • Suggestion 1: An empirical theory is scientific if it is based on experience.
      • Suggestion 2: An empirical theory is considered scientific if it explains all the known facts of its domain.
      • Suggestion 3: An empirical theory is scientific if it explains, by and large, the known facts of its domain.

      For changes - This pertains specifically to whether a change to “a scientific mosaic” is scientific or not, which necessarily pertains to a scientific community. But I’d argue that this analysis seems pretty clearly downstream of a priori participation in a scientific community, not attempting to define science as such.

      Didn’t read the whole textbook, so I might still be missing something, but the focus in the chapter is still definitely on the properties of the inquiry, not on the scientific institutions surrounding it.

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Also looked at the entries for Scientific Method and Pseudo-science, which seem to be consistent with the other sources

      TL;DR/Conclusion

      So I’m still getting a really strong signal that:

      • Science/non-science doesn’t have a clear demarcation line, and that problem is called the Demarcation Problem. It has a special name because it’s still a big deal.
      • Ideas about what is science vs. non-science focus mostly on the properties of the inquiry: Is it a testable, falsifiable hypothesis that can be investigated with empirical observations?
      • Scientific communities are still super important, and you can make statements about how scientific activity should interact with communities, but community involvement is not usually a factor in demarcation
      • Peer review is useful and stuff, but has little interaction with the science/non-science demarcation question… I don’t think it came up in any of the sources I looked at

      So… Do I still seem misguided? Are Wikipedia and UC Berkeley and this textbook called “Introduction to History and Philosophy of Science” and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy all also misguided? Or am I just interpreting them wrong?

      Like I started this investigation feeling 100% ready to learn that my concept of “what Science is” was misguided… But idk, I did a bunch of reading based on your suggestion, and I gotta say I feel pretty guided right now.

      If you wanna throw something else to read my way though, I’ll happily have a look at it.

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      • yeahiknow3@lemmings.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        You should publish your findings and collect your Nobel prize. You’ve solved philosophy.

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• TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Everyone is always a fan of going over to a dictionary and making only one definition of a word “the true one” because it falls in line with their particular argument of the moment.

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  • yeahiknow3@lemmings.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    We can use any sound or collection of letters to describe any phenomenon you like, and I’m not against using “science” to mean “empirical inquiry” or whatever. Just keep in mind you’ll be referring to something different than philosophers of science who use the word. This is why jargon exists, and perhaps “science” is a bit too colloquial for technical definitions.

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