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From: obnoxio@BRAHMS.BERKELEY.EDU (Obnoxious Math Grad Student)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Knowledge and the Academics
Message-ID: <8705240623.AA24884@brahms.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Sun, 24-May-87 02:23:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: brahms.8705240623.AA24884
Posted: Sun May 24 02:23:43 1987
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References: <8705220612.AA16224@brahms.Berkeley.EDU> <2068@husc6.UUCP>
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Reply-To: obnoxio@brahms.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student)
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In article <2068@husc6.UUCP>, gallagher@husc4 (paul gallagher) writes:
>>Sorry to disillusion you, Richard, but compared to the *real* intellec-
>>tual achievements of this century (within science) . . . 	[me]

>How do you distinguish science from non-science?  Also how can the
>non-sciences straighten up their act?

Wooo!  Two great questions!  Damned if I know.

I don't think the non-sciences need to "straighten up their act", so
much as stop putting on inappropriate/inapplicable airs of scientific
accuracy.

>I've recently read some articles in historical biology (on the origin
>of bone), and I don't see how the sorts of evidence and the sort of
>reasoning the authors use differs from those used in the history of
>human society (which is not to say there is no difference)?  How is a
>fact or a theory in a science like paleontology any more certain than
>one in history or a social science?

I'd like to hear some knowledgable opinions on this.  Paleontology at
times seems borderline to me.  Then again, so does astrophysics.

However, one difference that stands out is the ontology of the subject
matter, as opposed to the epistemology of the investigator.  The pale-
ontologist and astrophysicist are trying to understand and make conclu-
sions about definite or presumed definite objects.  Historians and so-
ciologists, however, are trying to grab onto something much more elu-
sive.  There is nothing wrong with that--but there is something wrong
with pretending that such elusiveness can be defined or measured away.

There was an article in the February(?) issue of "Astronomy" which at-
tacked the current wave of interest in inflationary cosmology as so much
metaphysical speculation.  I disagreed, but only on technical grounds.
(For example, they said that inflation makes only one testable predic-
tion.  This is untrue.)

ucbvax!brahms!weemba	Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720
"Do not believe astrophysical observations until confirmed by theory."