Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watserv1!maytag!watdragon!violet!cpshelley From: cpshelley@violet.uwaterloo.ca (cameron shelley) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: Science (was Re: Consciousness) Message-ID: <1990Dec2.201517.10777@watdragon.waterloo.edu> Date: 2 Dec 90 20:15:17 GMT References: <1990Nov9.202525.11717@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> <3489@aipna.ed.ac.uk> <15724@venera.isi.edu> <1990Nov21.045833.11768@mentor.com> Sender: daemon@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Owner of Many System Processes) Organization: University of Waterloo Lines: 62 In article yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes: [...] > >The fact that science is useful for developing new technologies is >what separates it from superstition, religion, philosophy, art, and >politcs. Science is a better description because you can't build >supersonic jets and digital synthesizers based on philosophical >treatises or religious dogma. I would argue that, to a large extent, >technology is what "validates" science. (This is why it always >surprises me to find scientists who are anti-technology, although this >disease is relatively rare in the "applied" sciences like CS and AI. >Ironically, businesspeople seem more enamored of high-tech than basic >scientists.) This is an interesting view, which I don't think is entirely correct, depending on how it is interpreted. Firstly, the relationship between science and technology is not an equivalence. Developments in science do not necessarily rely on developments in technology, and vice versa. On the other hand, they *do* often have a direct influence on each other. This is especially evident when considering the need scientists have for increasingly better instrumentation for finer observation -- such as more powerful telescopes, microscopes, or computers. Mind you, the practitioners of various religions, much like scientists, have tools of their trade as well -- which I believe must seem very effective to their followers. Various traditional forms of medicine serve as good examples. A big difference between the two approaches however is that science refers in reality to two criteria of explanatory suffiency: 1) rigour/consistency and perhaps minimalness (formal adequecy), and 2) elegance and intuitiveness (informal adequecy). Ideally, informal requirements are subordinate to formal ones. If a theory which fufills the formal requirements does not meet the informal ones, it will meet with prolonged disapproval -- but will usually persist until ideas of elegance and intuitiveness have changed in light of the evidence. Evolution and quantum physics are examples of this, I think. The belief systems used by a shaman, politician, and the others you mention rest immediately on the informal requirements, which renders them and their tools far more arbitrary and subject to change. The conservatism of science, as related above, results in its ideas being subject to far wider review under more careful cicumstances than is the case for other belief systems which fall for support on informal doctrine first. This is not to say, however, that science is not subject to the same social pressures as anything else, merely that it is better equipped to stand apart from them. At this point, it would be correct to say, as you did, that the dissemination of science via technology does spread the validation even further afield, but often long after the work that made it possible -- although this does seem to be changing in this century. Perhaps this is another adjustment of informal ideas that I mentioned above... How's that? :> -- Cameron Shelley | "Logic, n. The art of thinking and reasoning cpshelley@violet.waterloo.edu| in strict accordance with the limitations and Davis Centre Rm 2136 | incapacities of the human misunderstanding..." Phone (519) 885-1211 x3390 | Ambrose Bierce