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To: RobbyS
"Much passes under the umbrella of "science" that does not utilize the "scientific method."(more on that later). Most importantly, psychology, which relies heavily on Kantian philosophy. "

That's funny. I have a B.A. in psychology and I definitely remember taking and using the scientific method in a number of classes.

"As to the identification of science and the scientific method, that is not true. Dawkins' atheism is founded on that identification, assuming that knowledge--the content of science--is what we know through the scientific method and that what we do not know will be known at some time in the future.

How does that help us in a discussion of what science is and is not? You seem to be requiring that science encompass all methods of acquiring knowledge. Science only encompasses knowledge that is evidenced through the use of methodological naturalism which is a set of procedures that allow us to understand the physical world.

I'm not sure where you get the idea that science proclaims all knowledge attainable, but it really doesn't fit in with the science and scientists I know.

"Thus miracles are categorically impossible even though one happens before one's eyes.

Are you suggesting that miracles, or the study of miracles, should be considered science? Miracles by definition are supernatural, something which science does not deal with, simply because, by their very nature miracles are unfalsifiable.

I think you are playing loose and fast with the definition of science.

953 posted on 08/02/2005 2:16:40 PM PDT by b_sharp (Science adjusts theories to fit evidence, creationism distorts evidence to fit the Bible.)
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To: b_sharp

Miracles are phenomena that do not fit into the scheme of the scientific method (I will remind you that Huxley and Darwin, like many other scientists, had different notions of what scientific method was, since Darwin was looking for explanatory power and Huxley for what can be treated experimentally). As for psychology, it still faces the conundrum that Freud did when he abandoned neurology for a quite different approach: that human beings are quite mysterious beings who do not fit the categories of the physical sciences. That we are intellectual beings does not mean that the psychologist can know who is behind the mask.


1,124 posted on 08/02/2005 10:05:15 PM PDT by RobbyS (chirho)
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