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To: Physicist
I reject the premise that science requires either facts or evidence.

The examples you gave depend a great deal on evidence. Without the evidence of the senses, not even the questions could be formulated. What you are saying is that no new evidence is used in those descriptions, just an analysis of existing evidence--a new look at existing concepts.

Science IS the use of reason to interpret the evidence of our senses. Even the science of logic or mathematics uses evidence--introspective evidence. Even scientific speculation (theorizing about what might be real) must be consistent with reason and evidence.

Bad science occurs with faulty reasoning or a conceptual break with the observed. Often this is in the form of claiming as real that which has neither been rationally deduced nor observed.

848 posted on 01/21/2003 3:15:34 PM PST by beavus (Butthead! Butthead! Come quick! Bare ass on TV!!)
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To: beavus
The examples you gave depend a great deal on evidence. Without the evidence of the senses, not even the questions could be formulated.

That's true in a trivial sense that could apply to virtually any statement, but I was responding to the proposition that for a statement to be called scientific, there must exist evidence specifically in support of it. The point is not, "is there any basis for making such a statement", but "is the existence of evidence necessary and/or sufficient for a statement to be scientific". There is no evidence for the existence of extra physical dimensions in nature, and indisputable evidence that Bill Clinton is a congenital scumbag, but while the first idea is scientific, the second is not.

864 posted on 01/21/2003 5:46:26 PM PST by Physicist
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