That's just what a definition is. — Leontiskos
"X is what Xers do" is a tautological and uninformative statement. — Leontiskos
Better even if academic journals would be available freely in the net. Think about general science magazines if they would have links to all the original publications. There's still the paywall and simply you have to somehow have to have the knowledge of an interesting article being in some publication.As a starting place maybe it'd be nice if public libraries had access to academic journals. Taxes go to pay for that research after all. It should be accessible. — Moliere
I'd say that the Oxford English Dictionary's philosophy of language requires us to be able to pick out examples in order to derive definitions. — Moliere
Well as long as they are a scientist, then according to your definition whatever they are doing must be science. — Leontiskos
"Science is what scientists do when they are acting as scientists" — Moliere
And even if it were so, which I doubt, a tautology is always true. "Science is what scientists do" isn't something I could say is true strictly, but rather is a criteria for class inclusion for uses of "science" or "scientist" — Moliere
However there's still a lot of academic and scientific studies that people, who have done them, would enjoy if their ideas would be picked up by others. — ssu
Still, I think that there is a problem when there simply are so many scientists and academic researchers, group behavior kicks in and an incentive emerges to create your own "niche" by niche construction: a group creates it's own vocabulary and own scientific jargon, which isn't open to someone that hasn't studied the area. Then these people refer to each others studies and create their own field. Another name for this could be simply specialization: you create your own area of expertize by specialization on a narrower field. When there are a masses of people doing research, this is the easy way to get to those "new" findings. Hence even people in the natural sciences can have difficulties in understanding each other, let alone then the people who are studying the human sciences. Perhaps it's simply about numbers: 30 scientists can discuss and read each others research and have a great change of ideas, but 3 000 or 30 000 cannot. Some kind of pecking order has to be created. The end result is that you do get a science that is "Kuhnian" just by the simple fact that so many people are in science. — ssu
I remember another historian who went to great lengths to write one of her historical books to be as easily readable for the layman as she could do only then to be scolded by her peers for the book not being "academic" enough. For some to be as understandable as possible isn't the objective, the objective is to limit those who don't know the proper terms out of the discussion, even if they could participate in the discussion. Naturally people will simply argue that just like with abbreviations, we make it easier for people to read it when we use the academic jargon. But there can really be other intensions also. — ssu
(Yes, it's the length of the equation, even if mathematical beauty would say otherwise) — ssu
If the knowledge or insight is worth money, yes. However there's still a lot of academic and scientific studies that people, who have done them, would enjoy if their ideas would be picked up by others. — ssu
If we begin with Merriam-Webster, as you've done, then "Science is what scientists do as scientists" is filled out by our common-sense understanding of these terms. — Moliere
I've said more than just the statement of a theory, though: Good bookkeeping, communication of results over time, humans being coming together to create knowledge, the marriage to economic activity, and a basic sense of honesty — Moliere
We generally know what we mean by the word, and generally know who is included — Moliere
I've also said there are two explicit things I'd like a theory of science to accomplish: the demystification of process so that science is not perceived as magical, and a pedagogical simplification not for the purposes of identifying science, but for the purposes of learning how to do science: in some sense my definition of "science" is serviceable enough for those tasks, and we needn't begin at The Meaning of Being in order to say good an interesting things about the subject at hand. — Moliere
The brainstorming process itself, though, is more about arriving at a thesis to defend, if there indeed be such a thing in the firstplace, or even a sharing of different perspectives on how we understand the beast science -- whereas for me I'm thinking about it from the perspective of what to do in order to be valuable to the scientific project as it presently stands... — Moliere
That is I'm taking up a historical-empirical lens to the question -- the philosophical theory is "Science is what scientists do", which, of course, is defined only ostensively and so doesn't have some criteria for inclusion. — Moliere
Sure, but none of these pick out science in particular. For example, this describes an honest law firm as much as it describes anything else. — Leontiskos
I want to say that a scientist is ultimately interested in understanding the natural world, and he does things that achieve that end — Leontiskos
We know that it has implicit criteria for inclusion given the fact that you qualify it every time it produces a false conclusion, such as in the case of Fauci or in the case of scientists who are not properly "acting as scientists." — Leontiskos
Aristotelian definition in the broad sense is not something you can do without. — Leontiskos
I don't think a scientist needs to want to understand the natural world as a whole — Moliere
No definition picks out anything in particular...
...
Definitions don't pick things out at all... — Moliere
And this is all it is, actually. After reading Thomas Kuhn's work I found it perplexing how someone could see it as something revolutionary or something that would be tarnish the shining shield of science. The simple fact that people in groups behave as people in groups. Yet this doesn't make science itself something else, a totally "social construct" as some wrongly think.- tho normal social hierarchies that are alive in all parts of our life are still operational in the sciences, too. — Moliere
I think there's no reason to have this in the lounge... this is an open Philosophy Forum and hence the threads in the first page aren't so different from this in the end.:D I don't mind. It is the lounge for a reason, even if there are some heady thoughts out there -- I really wanted to brainstorm science with this thread, as in, trip across different ideas about science that are nevertheless important. And that requires a tolerance for branching out to related subjects (and since I've barely set a theme, well... have at it!) — Moliere
Sure, and that's not what I was saying. A scientist need not be interested in the whole of the natural world to be interested in the natural world. — Leontiskos
I'm not really sure where to start with these sorts of claims. Do words pick out anything at all? — Leontiskos
It would seem that we are back to Aristotle's defense of the PNC in Metaphysics IV. — Leontiskos
I think there's no reason to have this in the lounge... this is an open Philosophy Forum and hence the threads in the first page aren't so different from this in the end. — ssu
An interesting question is if science will change, or will it be rather similar to what we have now even in the distant future, let's say 200 years from now in 2224. Now we can see very well where science was in 1824, just on this verge of a huge sprint that was taken in the late 19th Century and in the 20th Century. Yet in 1824, what typically was taught in the universities of the time and what was publicly known might be different than we think now. But how close science in 2224 to science in 2024? The more similar it is, I think it's more depressing as one would hope that astonishing new ideas would come around.
But will they? — ssu
That's a similar conclusion I've made too.And as the economy changes the human practices that are a part of it will too. And the economy is never stable, so science will continue to change. — Moliere
Perhaps the real question is sciences like Physics, Chemistry or even Philosophy in general. — ssu
But great that you are optimistic! :) — ssu
Doesn't science more or less take the role of "justified" in knowledge as justified true belief? — jorndoe
That may seem overly depreciative/critical, yet science remains the single most successful epistemic endeavor in all of human history bar none, and doesn't carry any promise of omniscience — the forums depend on science. — jorndoe
I'm thinking that scientific methodologies are a means for models to converge on evidence/observations.
The models are revisable/adjustable and falsifiable (in principle always tentative/provisional).
So, in a way, sufficiently stabilized/usable models become parts of scientific theories, where "sufficiently" means within some domain of applicability or category of evidence/observations. — jorndoe
justified true belief can be much wider than science — Moliere
Doesn'tCan't science more or less takethea role of "justified" in knowledge as justified true belief? — Aug 13, 2024
an example — Moliere
Sure, make it ...
Can't science more or less take a role of "justified" in knowledge as justified true belief?
— Aug 13, 2024 — jorndoe
falsifiable (in principle always tentative/provisional). — jorndoe
The models adapt to accumulating evidence/observations if you will. Might be worth noting that the methodologies became more evidence/observation-driven/dependent, say, in the 1600s. Model-falsifiability is a must these days. — jorndoe
Well, science can redo conventional wisdom, make something counter-intuitive acceptable, and help put rovers and stuff on Mars. :) — jorndoe
With something like sociology or psychology (about ourselves), things become more complicated, and we may have to contend with less accurate/stable theories. — jorndoe
5. EXPERIENCE AS METHOD
The task of formulating an acceptable definition of the idea of an 'empirical science' is not without its difficulties. Some of these arise from the fact that there must be many theoretical systems with a logical structure very similar to the one which at any particular time is the accepted system of empirical science. This situation is sometimes described by saying that there is a great number-- presumably an infinite number -- of 'logically possible worlds'. Yet the system called 'empirical science' is intended to represent only one world: the 'real world' or the 'world of our experience'
Are appeals to "natural world" any less ambiguous than appeals to "scientific method"? — Moliere
One of the things that'd have to be worked out is how it is that scientists of different metaphysical beliefs can work together? — Moliere
I don't think that the first law of thermodynamics is strictly falsifiable — Moliere
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