To: Giordano Bruno who wrote (29641 ) 8/14/2012 11:51:40 AM From: Solon Read Replies (1) | Respond to "No thank you, I simply don't have that much faith in science's ever evolving postulations." Forget about faith. I rely rationally upon the proven record of Science and her success in equipping humans to understand, and to utilize reality. Science gets the poisoned appendix out. Going to your knees to mutter mumble jumble does not. Pulling a parachute cord gets you safely to the ground. Sprinkling blood into a pentagram and jumping with a hope and a prayer does nothing. "In this, science is little different from many other occupations. Take the building trades, for example. Most builders are honest and hard working, taking pride in their work. Some of them, depending on the incentives, take shortcuts. This may be standard or tolerated, so long as it doesn't put other workers at risk or jeopardise the project as a whole. An electrician who does such shoddy work that other workers are severely inconvenienced or put in danger will not receive further work. Furthermore, if the work is so obviously bad that customers can see the consequences, then that jeopardises the work of other tradespeople. It is to the advantage of builders not to make a big noise about poor work or corruption, but to quietly push out the worst offenders -- who are well recognised by other builders -- and to tolerate the minor cheating that occurs [20] . Science basically operates the same way. There are internal audiences and external audiences. The preferred way to handle shoddy research is to quietly deal with the serious offenders and to ignore the widespread minor cheating. In such a situation, cheaters do not bring science into public disrepute whereas, ironically, those who blow the whistle on cheaters are perceived as posing a threat to business as usual." But human contamination does not justify throwing the baby out with the bath water. but interesting and informative. Propaganda is everywhere that government exists. It is, however, a question of degree--and that is important. "Science may never fully understand consciousness but that's ok too. Consciousness may not want to be understood by science.
