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To: betty boop
It just seems disingenuous to me, Nebullis, to suggest that scientists are always completely neutral with respect to matters of faith, or successful in preventing their personal biases from intruding on, and perhaps significantly shaping, their theories. Scientists are, after all, human.

Oh, come on, betty! Did I really suggest that? This is what I said at #292: "The formation of a hypothesis is not free of world-view or personal view preferences. Nor should it be. It is formed on a foundation of a body of prior scientific knowledge and an imagination, however that may be informed..."

580 posted on 06/27/2003 10:26:07 AM PDT by Nebullis
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To: Nebullis
The formation of a hypothesis is not free of world-view or personal view preferences. Nor should it be. It is formed on a foundation of a body of prior scientific knowledge and an imagination, however that may be informed.

In some hypothetical "perfect world," perhaps it would be true that world view or personal preferences would not unduly shape (or distort) the results of scientific inquiry. Science does pride itself, after all, on being "objective." But there's often a big difference between what is normative and what we actually see.

I don't see how it would be possible (or even necessarily desirable) to construct a hypothesis absent the larger frame of a world view. Still, if the world view is "unreasonable," that must have some impact on the soundness of any hypothesis predicated on it. That's all I meant to say.

Nebullis, I really wasn't trying to put words in your mouth.

581 posted on 06/27/2003 10:39:28 AM PDT by betty boop (Nothing is outside of us, but we forget this at every sound. -- Nietzsche)
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