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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (69868)	1/12/2009 6:08:56 PM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Respond to of 71178

"That's recognizing reality" Not in the scientific community it isn't. Your reply doesn't have a clear meaning. It could mean multiple things. It could mean your asserting that I'm not recognizing reality of the scientific community. But that reply wouldn't make a lot of sense as I wasn't talking about the scientific community. It could mean that a lot of people in the scientific community disagree with my assessment. That may or may not be true, but even if we assume its true, its not an argument against my ideas. "X disagrees with Y", isn't an argument for "Not Y". It could mean that you pointing out how my statement isn't scientific, but it couldn't reasonably be expected to be. You don't get a control group for historical changes. A sample of 1 with no control group, doesn't allow for experimentation. or even real observational science. Or of course it could mean something else, if it does, let me know what you mean.

To: koan who wrote (69868)	1/12/2009 7:41:10 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	2 Recommendations Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 71178

"not in the scientific community..." Imo you need to take a step back and not be so passionate. Politics isn't science; never was and never will be. Politics thrive on ambiguity whereas science does its level best to overcome ambiguity. Where necessary it does so by setting boundaries. "Political science" is an oxymoron. "Economics" tries to sell itself as a science of money. It's actually the politics of money. That's what made the old joke funny: If you laid seven world leaders of economic theory end to end, they'd point in seven different directions ... eight if one of them is from Harvard. Certain things are very much part of our daily life: politics, religion, music, relationships etc. These things are currently not amenable to scientific treatment, except in the most limited and descriptive way. Thus sociology discusses in limited statistical terms a series of perhaps informative trends, but it's just a nibbling 'round the edges of an essentially indigestible article. I personally balk at the "softer" sciences. I've never met a pair of psychologists, for example, who were on any firmer ground, mutual or otherwise, than, oh, economists. It is imo a noxious fossil from the Century of Progress that the myth persists that all will one day yield to science. The day it does, my world begins to collapse. Imagine there being a science of wisdom and beauty. This bleak prospect frightened some of the literary giants of the 20th century. Orwell and Huxley sort of leap to mind. cheers js