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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Weird Science (What charley said)
Message-ID: <1666@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 23-Sep-85 15:09:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1666
Posted: Mon Sep 23 15:09:55 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 25-Sep-85 12:20:14 EDT
References: <460@ecsvax.UUCP> <1753@pyuxd.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 85

In article <1753@pyuxd.UUCP> rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) writes:

>You may not like science (or you may, it's hard to tell), but to suggest
>substituting for it a set of methods that have repeatedly given us lies,
>bogus assumptions, and frauds, seems unconscionable.

Well, funny thing, science itself has given us "lies", has sometimes
presented "frauds", and has generally contained lots of "bogus assumptions".
We don't value science for its ability to give us truth; indeed, properly
practiced, it spends a lot of time telling us what we don't know.  Science
is most important as a tool for investigation of natural order-- and that
last phrase is quite important.  A mehtodology which relies and
repeatability and induction simply fails to work where these cannot be
either guaranteed or assumed.

>> I believe it was Charley who tried to convince you of the subjectivity
>> of science. [Gary Smith]

It wasn't me.  My argument with Rich over science is that he invariably
assumes knowledge of things for which their is no evidence of the proper
type.

>>  Let me try my hand at it.  Put simply, the work of a
>> scientist, no matter how honest and noble a scientist he is, in large
>> part always reflects his preconceived notions and assumptions.  Why?
>> The reason is that the questions a scientist asks govern the results
>> of his work.  Asking questions is a very subjective activity; it
>> always reflects what concerns the asker.  To the degree that some
>> questions are asked and others are NOT asked, science is therefore
>> subjective.  Add to that Heisenberg's insights, and science is no
>> longer the objective and value-free endeavor that you want it to be.
>> It seems highly dishonest to ever claim objectivity.  It is an
>> impossibility.

>Before QM became a popularized method of "debunking" science, determinism,
>or whatever pet peeve one might have, the use of a word like "impossibility"
>was condemned by the mysticalists and wishful thinkers:  "How dare you
>claim that that is impossible?"

Oh really?  Do you have some useful proof?  Actually, the truth of the
matter is that until Maxwell, Einstein and Planck came along, physicists
were beginning to talk about knowing all there was to know about basic
physics.  Einstein was comepletely convinced that the randomness the Quantum
types were asserting was flatly wrong.

>  Nowadays, now that a bastardization of
>Heisenberg is so popular among mysticalists and wishful thinkers as a means
>of proving themselves right, it seems to be "O.K." to use the word.
>When science is deemed to support them, it proves something they don't like
>as "impossible".  But if science shows the flaws in a system of thinking
>that makes the consequences of that system "impossible", the word is being
>misused.  Let's get serious:  do you throw out a system that offers us
>facts about the universe because you feel it can never be "objective" in
>favor of a system that introduces so much more subjectivity and presumption
>into the mix as to destroy any hope of acquiring knowledge from such a
>system?  To do this is to bring us back to an age of know nothing wishywashy
>mysticism.

As usual Rich is trying to assert a dichotomy where there are a lot of
options in fact.  The choice is not between science and mysticism; the
choice is whether or not we want to challenge the ability of science to
satifiactorily investigate some phenomena.  Let's take mystics as a case in
point.  Now Rich is hardly in any position to claim that the claims of any
particular mystic or group of mystics are false.  He hasn't (apparently) had
such an experience, he knows as little about the brain and the mind as the
rest of us, and he hasn't been studying the physiology of these people.  All
he can do is speculate.

>> The horrors committed in the name of science always are founded on
>> just such an assertion: "These are the facts--science proved them.
>> This is the objective truth.  You cannot argue with us, for we have
>> the Truth as Science has given it to us."

>I'm getting sick of this obnoxious, manipulative lie.  "Horrors committed
>in the name of science"?  On the contrary, my friend, these horrors all
>came from adding in their own bogus presumptions together with the facts.
>"Hmmm, Darwinism talks about survival of the fittest.  Obviously my Aryan
>race is superior and more fit than those Jews, who cause all our problems.
>(An example of a proven scientific fact that introduced a "horror of
>science"?)  The obvious thing to do is to purify the Aryan race and get
>rid of the Jews!"  Let's get serious, really.  

Well, you for one are not so pure.

Charley Wingate


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