"Really?"
Yes.
"How exactly are you defining science?
The context of my response made it clear that I was referring to the quintessential idea of science as it utilizes the scientific method--without any qualitative bias from philosophy to infringe on the goal of quantitative and probable fact.
"Do you think your characterization of "consensus" applies to these scientists"
Yes.
"Are you claiming that there is "consensus" among all economists?"
Yes. Insofar as they deal with the science of economics rather than any qualifying motives.
"Do you feel that all political scientists are in constant agreement with one another"
No.
"Are you asserting that all behavioral scientists are in consensus and explain things with a high probability of truth?
Yes, and No. They are in consensus as to the pure science, but as to truth: I agree with the author's assertion that science is the most reliable way of increasing the probability that an hypothesis is "true". Whether it is a "high" probability of truth depends on a number of factors.
"(Have you ever watched a trial where scientific experts called by the defense AND by the prosecution testify about a defendant's claim of insanity?)"
Yes.
"Please explain your definition of "science.""
As I touched on earlier, the context of the discussion I was having was couched in terms which exemplified the polarized extremes of science and mysticism. As your allusions correctly imply, there are a lot of tunnels and bridges between these two islands, which I shall call for sake of clarity, the Islands of Fancy and Fact...even though neither is absolutely one or the other.
On the island of Fancy, "consensus" could only come from imposition, or from happenstance. Fancy is mercurial, capricious, and adventitious. On the island of Fact, there is a consensus which reveals itself in TRUST. Knowledge, on the island of Fact, is derived from a method which uses experimentation to test and to replicate (verify) various assumptions about the material world.
Most people who live on the island of Fancy do so because they are self absorbed and lazy. They dream of all manner of interesting things, but they rely on and trust only the people from the Island of Fact...at least, when it comes down to serious matters of life.
When they need surgery, they go to the island of Fact. There are people on the island of Fancy who can reach into their abdomen with their hand and pull out diseases--but most of the people on Fancy don't believe this when it comes right down to the crunch. When they wish to fly or travel by boat, they go to Fact, because it is something they are able to trust and rely on. They would not rely on a mystic claiming they could fly on his "flying carpet". They would not try to walk across the water. They would not eat "mystical" food for nourishment.
Strangely enough, however, they spend their lives insisting on the foolishness of the people they trust their lives on--while simultaneously making truth claims about their fancies...truth claims which they have imagined, and which they cannot justify--truth claims which they do not trust.
The scientific method is reliable, acceptable, and preferable to all people (almost)...when reality does not permit them the leisure of fanciful thought.
Scientists may well appreciate mythology, folklore, and "revealed truths," and all other non-scientific approaches associated with a more primitive time. But they recognize that these fancies have no more probability of "truth" than do modern claims of bending spoons and the like. Scientists will test these claims (they have), and if they have any probability of truth they will continue to experiment.
The scientific method does not scoff at anything. Any hypothesis may be examined objectively for correspondence with veridicality ( I just discovered this word while looking up a synonym for "factuality" which I did not like. This word has a certain pretentiousness about it which lends it some interest<g>).
You seemed to be implying some "looseness" in certain of the social sciences. Your point is taken; but it is not a criticism of the scientific method, per se; rather, it is a recognition of how pragmatic concerns, and human assumptions of meaning, naturally inform behaviour and policy, and express the ways in which individual and group interests are socially funded and expressed.
Qualifications intrude on science; they do not define it. The only philosophical axiom behind the method of science is the assumption that the scientific method is the most reliable method for determining the highest truth probability for in or about the natural world. Nothing else.
In the developed natural sciences, there are controlled experiments and predictions. Neither are available to the social scientist in quite the same way. Natural scientists attempt to formulate the laws that govern the phenomena they study. The social scientists do as well, but they are limited by their subject as to how much they may employ the scientific method. They are less exacting as to the process of hypothesis, experimentation, results, and verification.
Social science is not able to co-ordinate controlled experiments and predictions in the way that natural science is. In dealing with human beings and human institutions, "social" scientists are restricted in experimental process, and in manipulating that which is being studied. Hence a reliance on methods such as statistics which are less predictive than when they are a result of mathematical replication.
Another huge problem with the "social" sciences is the fact that they usually have a qualitative bias, and are attempting to prove or apply a philosophical or social meaning rather than to simply observe, predict, replicate, and concretize the objective quantitative truths of behaviour. There is nothing wrong with this. It is necessary to consider meaning. It is necessary to qualify the reasons why one ought to do this or to do that. I think the objection of science is not to the necessity of qualifying life by virtue of philosophy, if you will...but that the application of otherworldly fancy to social goals MAY place the "days of our lives" outside of rational and objective reach, and DOES place thoughtful people at the mercy of whatever fancy may be in vogue, or in force at the time. In natural science, theory and observation are separated in a relatively clear way. Not always so in the social sciences, which have a qualifying bias.
Pure science is the method. Without the method of using experimentation to show that a truth claim may be replicated repeatedly...where is science...and where is TRUST?
A rational person should accept that theory which is best confirmed by observations. In the social sciences, pragmatic and practical concerns oppose or prevent the tools of observation and replication to some degree. Observations of the social world are often coloured by extraneous data. Pure science is better able to utilize the scientific method. Nevertheless, it deals in probabilities; not in certainties. The practitioners do not claim perfection; only objectivity.
Science is a human endeavour. Humans are creatures of limited perception. Science is, therefore, limited by human, social, and political opposition and error.
There is always an a priori assumption of error in all scientific findings and beliefs. All scientific beliefs are tentative, even though they be ever so predictive and probable. An experiment tomorrow may prove them wrong.
The purpose of science is to understand the physical world--from the Greek studies of the atom to the modern study of QM. It is about refining the accuracy and predictability of that knowledge through hypotheses, experimentation, and comparison. As there is no underlying mystical or otherworldly bias to contaminate the process, there exists a commonality which unites the scientific community; and there is a consensus which allows them to work together across myriad disciplines.
Science sends people to the moon and lands them safely...and then it brings them home. This is possible because they all trust the method used by each, and they trust that nothing is hidden. All claims may be independently tested to discover how dependable and congruent are the results. No other methodology in the natural or the supernatural world is able to do these things. |
