Posted on 12/24/2015 6:40:17 AM PST by C19fan
Facts are stubborn things, regardless of how "funny" you find them, FRiend.
Does the name Archimedes ring a bell? Perhaps Copernicus? Galileo? Faraday? Maxwell? etc.
Government laws are artificial constructs (hopefully based on tradition and good political philosophy such as that of Locke and Burke) that limit the behavior of individuals for the sake of the community as a whole. They don't define scientific laws.
And thank God they don't. Lysenko "defined" the laws of genetics in Russia and set that country's science programs back decades.
Terms like 'hypothesis' and 'theory' have a degree of vagueness to them. What counts as a hypothesis (or just a guess), and when a hypothesis becomes well established enough to count as a theory are sometimes controversial decisions. Right now there are highly respected physicists who call it 'String Theory' and others who demand that it be called the 'String Hypothesis'. Who's right? The last thing any of these scientists will want to do is consult US Law to determine the issue.
There is an interesting discussion on Quantum Mechanics right now. For a long time the majority of scientists held that the Copenhagen Model was the best guess as to what was going on at the atomic level. Now there are at least four candidates for describing why Quantum Mechanics is as non-intuitive as it is, and the Copenhagen Model is now only held by a small percent of scientists. No new experiments or measurements are involved in this process. The only thing that is happening is that scientists and philosophers are thinking very deeply about the data that has already been gathered and trying to determine the most likely reason for why we see what we see.
The philosophers are not 'kings' that determine everything. They are merely playing a small part in the process by which knowledge is gained and turned into wisdom.
Yup, I always follow the scientific articles in the financial market magazine outlets.
No, certainly not in their own minds, the ancients called it "philosophy" and had no concept of "natural science", with all of today's terms, definitions, assumptions & rules.
Specifically, they had no formal ideas & rules we call "scientific method".
For a timeline on how scientific methodology slowly developed, see this link.
Yes, it does show hints & suggestions of scientific method in early years (i.e., Epicurus), but these still considered themselves philosophers, not scientists, and any science was simply an aspect of their larger philosophies.
Full-blown scientific methodology, as we know it today, did not arrive until the 19th & 20th centuries.
To cite just two examples:
who_would_fardels_bear: "Does the name Archimedes ring a bell? Perhaps Copernicus? Galileo? Faraday? Maxwell? etc."
Archimedes, Copernicus & Galileo considered themselves philosophers, not scientists, though they were concerned with the natural world.
Galileo especially contributed ideas which helped separate science from both philosophy and religion, but still described himself as a philosopher and mathematician.
Point is: the full scientific method did not, like Athena pop full grown from the head of Zeus.
Rather it evolved step-by-step, piece by piece over many centuries.
And people did not call themselves "scientists" until relatively recently.
who_would_fardels_bear: "Government laws are artificial constructs (hopefully based on tradition and good political philosophy such as that of Locke and Burke) that limit the behavior of individuals for the sake of the community as a whole.
They don't define scientific laws."
No, you misunderstand, so I'll repeat: US law says that terms and definitions of what is, or is not, science will be set by scientists, and nobody else.
This ruling came in reference to the debate over evolution versus "creation science".
It said that science (i.e., evolution) is what scientists say, not what anti-scientist claim.
That's my point here.
who_would_fardels_bear: "Terms like 'hypothesis' and 'theory' have a degree of vagueness to them.
What counts as a hypothesis (or just a guess), and when a hypothesis becomes well established enough to count as a theory are sometimes controversial decisions.
Right now there are highly respected physicists who call it 'String Theory' and others who demand that it be called the 'String Hypothesis'.
Who's right?
The last thing any of these scientists will want to do is consult US Law to determine the issue."
Again, you misunderstand: US law, as applied in evolution versus "creation science" cases says that science will be determined by scientists, and nobody else.
So you or I cannot concoct some cockamamie notion and demand that it be recognized as "science".
It won't be, until scientist say it is.
As for scientific definitions of "hypothesis", "theory" and "fact", those are well established in both doctrine and practice, for all of "normal" reality.
They only get into controversy in areas like "string theory" which are so theoretical and divorced from normal measurements they are really as much metaphysics as natural-science, for now at least.
who_would_fardels_bear: "The philosophers are not 'kings' that determine everything.
They are merely playing a small part in the process by which knowledge is gained and turned into wisdom."
Agreed, of course.
But you seemed to suggest previously that philosophers were going to rule over scientists (making philosophers "kings", right?), and I was merely hoping to disabuse you of such suggestions.
Though well enough to have defeated Japan, and given our cities their light.
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