Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!reading!cf-cm!cybaswan!eederavi
From: eederavi@cybaswan.UUCP (Farzin Deravi)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Ontological status of science
Message-ID: <94@cybaswan.UUCP>
Date: 29 Sep 88 12:50:24 GMT
References: <19880820041348.2.NICK@HOWARD-JOHNSONS.LCS.MIT.EDU> <1311@garth.UUCP> <545@cseg.uucp> <343@quintus.UUCP> <1632@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Reply-To: eederavi@cybaswan.UUCP (Farzin Deravi)
Organization: University of Wales at Swansea
Lines: 35

In article <1632@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) writes:
>In article <343@quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
>>Perhaps Gilbert Cockton could clarify the ontological status of "Science" 
>> for us (:-).
>Could I resist this? No.
>
>There are two sciences:
>
>	1) the activity of people who call themselves scientists
>	2) the intellectual artefact of philosophers/philosophisers
>	   who have a prescriptive model of certainty which they want
>	   to ascribe to the best practices of 1.
>
>1 obviously works some of the time.
>2 hasn't really got anywhere effective - the great breakthroughs in
>  knowledge do not appear to be due to a slavish following of text
>  book method.
>
>Note that while 1 is generally reasonable and gets on with things,
>2 spends a lot of time comparing itself to its neighbours (religion,
>intuition etc) and actually influences the politics of research.
>

The interested reader may wish to refer to the writings
of Prof Paul K. Feyerabend: Against Method (1975), Science in a Free Society
(1978) and Farewell to Reason (1988).


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