Imagine it is a lot time ago and you observe that things fall when you drop them in the air. You want to figure out how fast they are falling. You can either apply some kind of scientific method to do an experiment, record the results and get an answer or you can not do that. Which I wouldn’t count as an alternative to science. It is just the absence of science.
Comment on Why is science better than the alternative? (And what is that alternative, exactly?)
froghorse@lemm.ee 10 months agoOk, I’ll put it another way.
What does science do?
What is another way to do that?
Izzy@lemmy.world 10 months ago
froghorse@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Really. What does science do, exactly?
BitSound@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Science doesn’t “do” anything. It’s not an entity. People use the scientific method to investigate how the universe works. There aren’t really any alternatives.
Say you came across someone claiming that their tonic cured cancer. Why should you trust them? Well, there’s no other option than see if it works (or see if someone else you trust has already done so, preferably with a peer-reviewed, double-blind study and all that). Now you’re using the scientific method.
I mean, I guess you’ve got other options. You can blindly trust them. You can pray to the deity of your choice. You can cast snake bones and interpret how they land. None of these provide actual knowledge though. They’re all just guesses until you try it out, at which point you’re again using the scientific method. That’s why there’s no alternative. If you disagree that those options are just guesses, then prove it. Guess what? You’ll be proving it with the scientific method.
It’s like “alternative medicine”. There’s no such thing. If something works, it’s medicine. If it doesn’t, it’s not.
froghorse@lemm.ee 10 months ago
So science is something we use for getting us knowledge about the universe?
We could call it a tool then. Right?
And it’s better because it delivers higher quality knowledge?
marcos@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Science was born from the pragmatism ideology, so it’s defined by its goal, and all the features you hear around are just implementation details.
If you get something else that does the same thing, it will be called “science”.
Mugmoor@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
Stop being obtuse.
froghorse@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Science gets us high-quality knowledge. Or at least that’s my personal take. I was hoping for a second opinion. But ok.
Mugmoor@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
Your intentions may be good, but you’re going about it the completely wrong way. You’ve been given several answers but you refuse to accept them. My gut says you aren’t trolling, but this is what trolls do.
froghorse@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Possibly. Or maybe it’s you.
You could try just answering the question.
What exactly does science do?
BitSound@lemmy.world 10 months ago
How did that authoritative source get their knowledge? If it wasn’t through the scientific method, then it’s not knowledge. So you can proxy your knowledge through someone else you trust that did the legwork of going through the scientific process, but that’s not another way of obtaining knowledge, it’s just the scientific process with extra steps.
Personal experience can also result in knowledge, through the use of the scientific method. You can drop an apple and see that it falls. That’s the observation part of the scientific method. You can go further and try to figure out why that happens, by using the scientific method yourself based on your personal observations of the apple.
There really isn’t another way. It’s the scientific method all the way down.
BURN@lemmy.world 10 months ago
There’s no such thing as an authoritative source on the natural order of the world. Personal experience is liable to confirmation bias and inconsistencies.