If you will go back and read metmom's posts that I was responding to, you will see that I gave an appropriate response. She essentially said that PhDs should not be granted to scientists, I guess because (for the most part), we don't delve into the existentialist nonsense that is typical of the subject philosophy. The PhD degree and the subject of philosophy use two different meanings of the word "philosophy".
As for your assertion that science is merely about the gathering of information: it is MUCH more than that. It doesn't take a PhD to gather information; it doesn't even take a person. But to analyze and understand that information, to place it within the context of a greater body of knowledge, to use that information to make predictions about other information which is currently unknown, and then to design the appropriate experiments to gain that new information--that takes a certain kind of thinking. There is both knowledge and wisdom--both meanings of the Greek word sophos--involved.
To get from “information gathering” to “wisdom” you seemed to feel obliged to use “knowledge” as a portal: knowledge | noun 1; facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject (my MAC OSX dictionary; an Oxford Dictionary product, I believe).
Gets you a little closer, I guess, if only marginally. You go on to declare that science is so much more than “information gathering,” and illustrate your point by describing an ever more sophisticated and elaborate method for gathering information. Admirable, laudatory even, but simply a more sophisticated and elaborate method of information gathering.
“we don't delve into the existentialist nonsense that is typical of the subject philosophy.”
“Existentialist nonsense” such as “all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”? “Existentialist nonsense” such as “In the beginning”? (That there was a beginning at all was not commonly acknowledged by Science until 1964, but it was known to ‘nonsensicalists’ from earliest recorded history if not before). “Existentialist nonsense” such as the concept “freedom of inquiry” without which the Science you tout as the fount of all wisdom would not even exist? “Existentialist nonsense” such as “freedom of association” without which you and I would not even have a forum on which we could gather and argue? Old hat, you say? Past glories, long forgotten? OK, something more “modern.”
E=mc2
A simple formula (which physicists now say may be wrong). It enabled Mankind to unlock the secrets of the atom (at least some of them). So tell me, which part of Einstein’s magnificent inspiration impelled the Truman Administration to go into days of agonizing “Existentialist nonsense” before a decision was made to drop the bomb that ended WWII? There was no scientific reason to not just go ahead and drop the bomb without a moment’s hesitation beyond the technical considerations involved in the bomb’s effective delivery.
Which leads us to the issue; whence comes the ethics of science? Are there any ethics in science? Should there be (think the Tuskegee study)?
Granted, there is a lot of “Existentialist nonsense” out there, but before you start contentedly counting the ways, let me remind you of all the blind alleys and sidetracks that Science has gone galloping happily down, and of the raging snit into which scientists fall whenever they are reminded of those galloping goofs.