Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!think!ames!umd5!uvaarpa!virginia!uvacs!dsr
From: dsr@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU (Dana S. Richards)
Newsgroups: sci.misc
Subject: Re: Science
Message-ID: <2311@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU>
Date: 15 Mar 88 16:12:16 GMT
References: <5017@uwmcsd1.UUCP> <2790@gryphon.CTS.COM> <1221@uop.edu> <5143@uwmcsd1.UUCP> <3592@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <5229@uwmcsd1.UUCP>
Reply-To: dsr@uvacs.cs.virginia.edu.UUCP (Dana S. Richards)
Organization: U.Va. CS dept.  Charlottesville, VA
Lines: 26

In article <5229@uwmcsd1.UUCP> markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins) writes:

>Half the difficulty in trying to refute or verify someone like Velikovsky is
>that practically noone has the requisite background to match the scope of
>his works.  At the very least, if he were wrong, it showed that specialization
>had crippled the ability of science to properly evaluate someone's hypotheses.

It is unfortunate that you have chosen V as your example.  His success in
impressing people relies solely on their NOT being able to evaluate it.
Experts in the various fields he feigns expertise have shown that his 
conclusions make no sense and, further, he usually gets his facts wrong
(often deliberately misquoting).  Why should anyone try to understand
V's "big picture" when it is built on sand?

>People who want to protect the integrity of science, without constraining 
>against new ideas should want to see the end to this mindless pursuit of
>ever-increasing specialization.

This, I believe, is a misconception.  While there is much specialization,
there is many (perhaps an equal number) of people trying to make sense of
it all.  The specialist are neccessary, and since they produce new facts
are much more visible.  On the other hand, much of the cross-synthesis
I have seen has been infertile. (The physics vs. mysticism angle has been
particularly barren.)

dana