[extropy-chat] Science and Fools

[Keith Henson]

At 08:11 PM 20/03/05 -0500, Robin wrote:

snip (Robin and Hal are worth reading)

>I studied the sociology, history, and philosophy of science for many 
>years, and in the end I found the word "science" to be almost useless as a 
>referent for anything more specific than "people who study stuff."   That 
>is why I latched on to your earlier reference to criticism, which I can at 
>least make sense of.

This is beginning to be a recognized problem--even inside the social 
"sciences."

http://www.politicsandthelifesciences.org/Contents/Early-release/PLS2004-3-23-01-0002.pdf

This is an excellent article, from an insider viewpoint.

The outsider view was in 1992, written by Tooby and Cosmides.  Everyone on 
this list should be familiar with this material.

http://www.tyronepow.com/misc/TheAdaptedMind.htm

>But I'll rephrase my argument to apply to your suggestion to only follow 
>the consensus of experts in fields where progress has been rapid over the 
>last few hundred years.  If you allow yourself to disagree with experts 
>from fields that have not made rapid progress, you are in essence saying 
>that you are some combination of more informed, better at analysis, and 
>more rational than they are.

Sometimes, of course, that's the situation.  :-)

>Consider topics like moral philosophy, epistemology, what Shakespeare 
>really meant, how to write a compelling novel, how to seduce the opposite 
>sex, how to get a team to work together, etc.  Maybe progress hasn't been 
>rapid enough in these areas over the centuries.  But that doesn't mean 
>there aren't people who know a lot about these subjects, people you could 
>stand to learn from.  How can you justify disagreeing with people who have 
>studied these topics in great detail, just because progress hasn't been rapid?
>
>When I was an undergraduate physics student at UCI I recall hearing a 
>physics professor remark to his colleague that they could easily be rich, 
>if only they would bother to study business.  I recall similar comments by 
>physicists about biology and the social sciences - they presumed that the 
>rapid progress in physics was because physicists were just smarter than 
>other people, so that other fields would progress just as fast if 
>physicists would bother to study those fields.
>
>But this is just bull, as physicists find out when they do venture into 
>these other areas.

Indeed.  In fact, the progress in physics is because physics (for *all* of 
its complexity) is less complicated than biological systems.  And when you 
pile social on top of biological it *really* can get complicated.  Still, a 
solid knowledge of evolution can do wonders in guiding study in these fields.

>Some topics are just harder to make progress in.

Fields that don't have decent models of what is going on are particularly 
hard to get a handle on.

>But just because experts today don't know that much more than experts two 
>hundred years ago, that doesn't mean that experts don't know a hell of a 
>lot more than non-experts.

That's certainly true.  But there is a different character to fields that 
are empirical vs those that are based on sound, well understood 
theory.  The difference is like that of animal and plant breeding before 
Mendel and genetic engineering.

Keith Henson