Comment on Finish him. đȘ
thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.ca âš6â© âšmonthsâ© agoOh thanks for editing in an example-- that wasnât 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 itâs more about the importance of diversity in the scientific community⊠it doesnât really address the Demarcation Problem, and it doesnât discuss peer review or anything as far as I could tell.
Mentioning in passing that âscience is socialâ (which is IMO uncontroversially true in a non-demarcation way, btw) is a few shades away from âany textbook will tell you that science is a particular process of peer review.â I think the Science and Pseudo-Science entry that I linked is more germane.
yeahiknow3@lemmings.world âš6â© âšmonthsâ© ago
Iâm not sure what we are arguing about here. The concept of âscienceâ is fairly new and most people we would think of as âscientistsâ 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. âScienceâ doesnât mean figuring out the truth. That wouldnât 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 isnât? Need counter examples). The royal academy of sciences was created for that reason, funny enough â because Francis Bacon has pointed out what I just did, that science requires an intellectual community (letâs be honest, humans are fairly dumb on their own â 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 âscienceâ that seem to be⊠not about finding the truth at all. But Iâm 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: itâs very difficult to come up with a definition that perfectly picks out legitimate science without also applying to pseudo nonsense (see Pigliucciâs Nonsense on Stilts). That said, we know what is and isnât 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 isnât as tidy and uncomplicated as âfiguring out the truth.â It clearly involves some sort of methodology and it clearly involves people checking each otherâs work and so on and so forth, and itâs different from math and different from astrology. You tell me how you want to define it, but it sure as shit isnât âdoing stuff in oneâs garage alone without writing it down or reproducing the results â