[ExI] Science or Scientism?

[John Clark]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2018 at 12:23 PM William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> *Develop a measuring instrument.  Use it until you have proved its
> reliability.  Apply it to some problem and find that measurements correlate
> with something important, which means that you can use it to predict that
> something.  Is this not science?   **Conclusion:  if you can measure
> something  and predict something with some accuracy, I say you have done
> science.*
>

I agree with that but I think the believers in strict instrumentalism push
this too far, they don't want me to say anything about atoms or electrons
or electricity, I should just say if I change the arrangement of a
experiment in a certain way the needle on a voltmeter will change from 7.4
to 7.2 and I should not draw any larger conclusions larger than that.


> > *Science does not imply certain areas of study.  Repeat - NOT.*
>

Yes, science is defined by the method to study not the area being studied.
If you're using the scientific method then you're doing science.

* > (personally, I'd like to see measurements of dark energy, and other
> concepts made up so that the theoretical equations make sense - some of
> these concepts make no more sense than saying God did it)*
>

But they've got to call it something and dark energy is as good a name as
any, scientists freely admit that although it makes up 70% of the universe
they have no idea what the hell it is, it is the deepest mystery in physics.

 John K Clark
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20181102/dd7efc97/attachment.html>