Science is close-minded

[InfiniteNow]

 

Watch and you shall grok.

 

Couldn't agree more. :naughty:

http://hypography.com/forums/philosophy-of-science/15040-science-is-close-minded-25.html#post260423

 

 

Thanks for sharing it... again. :surprise:

[Glenn Lyvers]

Excellent video. Very informative and logical.

 

Thanks for sharing.

[IDMclean]

Couldn't agree more. ;)

http://hypography.com/forums/philosophy-of-science/15040-science-is-close-minded-25.html#post260423

 

 

Thanks for sharing it... again. :hyper:

 

Pardon, I missed that by one page. I had skimmed the first three pages and omitted backtracking because the last thing posted was about a hermaphroditic Mary.

[Kriminal99]

I agree that science as an idea is not close minded, but I think that the average scientist is. For every REAL scientist who is capable of creative thought, has a mind containing a network of concepts, etc. there are tons of people who just thought it sounded cool to be a scientist but are socially oriented at their heart (and mostly generalize from their experiences using metaphors).

 

Such people may be necessary to flesh out all the details and applications of other's work etc, but when they are given too much power over the system serious problems result. Sadly this is inevitable because there just isn't enough of the other type to go around. No matter how many paradigms of knowledge seeking the creative minority create, there will never be one that is forever their own.

 

They may be able to take bodies of knowledge that other people hand them and learn them detail by detail, but they could never create one. Knowing this, they come to the conclusion that science is only created piece by piece by tons of scientists figuring out one little thing at a time.

 

Thus, whenever someone too creative comes along, they are angered and unobjective about it. "Who does this person think they are?" is the kind of crap you hear from people like this. In addition, though they may be able to work with a body of knowledge created by someone else, if there is anything left out of that body of knowledge that was just "known" to the person who created it, it may be violated by these types. For instance, they may violate a general principal of all human knowledge because it seemed like a valid manipulation or extension of a mathematical system.

 

 

 

Although technology may be advanced by these people working out different applications, science is advanced by people who are extremely creative. Just about anything signifigant one of these drones could figure out, the last creative person would have.

[CraigD]

I agree that science as an idea is not close minded, but I think that the average scientist is. For every REAL scientist who is capable of creative thought, has a mind containing a network of concepts, etc. there are tons of people who just thought it sounded cool to be a scientist but are socially oriented at their heart (and mostly generalize from their experiences using metaphors).

...

Although technology may be advanced by these people working out different applications, science is advanced by people who are extremely creative. Just about anything signifigant one of these drones could figure out, the last creative person would have.

I think Krim is saying about the same thing Kuhn was in his famous 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I’d paraphrase, but don’t think I could do better than this, from a synopsis in The wikipedia article on Kuhn:

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (SSR), Kuhn argued that science does not progress via a linear accumulation of new knowledge, but undergoes periodic revolutions, also called "paradigm shifts" (although he did not coin the phrase), in which the nature of scientific inquiry within a particular field is abruptly transformed. In general, science is broken up into three distinct stages. Prescience, which lacks a central paradigm, comes first. This is followed by "normal science", when scientists attempt to enlarge the central paradigm by "puzzle-solving". Thus, the failure of a result to conform to the paradigm is seen not as refuting the paradigm, but as the mistake of the researcher, contra Popper's refutability criterion. As anomalous results build up, science reaches a crisis, at which point a new paradigm, which subsumes the old results along with the anomalous results into one framework, is accepted. This is termed revolutionary science.

In Kuhn’s formulation, however, revolutionary science is doesn’t result inevitably from work by a “REAL scientist who is capable of creative thought”, nor normal science inevitably from the work of “drones”, but both from swings in the mainstream consensus by many people, not only working scientists, but critics, commentators, artists, and nearly any kind of interested people.

 

A major criticism of the key ideas in SSR is that it understates the frequency with which scientific revolutions take place, viewing them as always widespread and separated by generations (30+ year intervals). It’s possible, and IMHO so, that the pre/normal/revolutionary cycle may occur with periods as short as days, and extent as small as within a single professional shop or academic department. It may even scale down to the individual, and be reflected in typical human learning processes.

[Pyrotex]

Many are called, but few are chosen.

Many people become scientists -- or, at least, they earn the degrees and credentials that enable them to claim to be scientists, fully qualified members of the "community of scientists".

But not all of them will make break-through discoveries. But this has very little to do with whether or not they are "close-minded".

 

To begin with, Krim, please define "close-minded". What do you mean by that phrase when you use it?

 

Being a "scientist" can take many forms. Some do brilliant work at teaching students, some manage to make new discoveries that do not shake the current paradigm, some find or invent new ways to measure universal constants to ever more precision, some confirm (or invalidate) the findings of others, some find commercial applications for older science, some find physical applications for older mathematics, some perform experiments that fail but in so doing eliminate some promising new theory.

 

These contributions to Science are all valid and important. All these contributions can, and often do, contribute to eventual Paradigm Shifts (which will bear somebody else's name--but that's okay). The majority of "scientists" do their best out of a love for the work; many will find themselves simply at the wrong place, or the wrong time, to get to do the BIG Science. Others will lack the inter-personal skills necessary to be a member of a scientific team. Others will be pulled away by personal interests. And yes, some may be dogmatic about this or that accepted Theory and be unwilling to consider alternatives.

 

To say that any "scientist" who doesn't personally accomplish cutting-edge Science, is somehow "close-minded", is irrational and unsubstantiated. All the more so if the speaker is not him or herself a professional scientist who has spent significant years working with and among them.

[maddog]

I agree that science as an idea is not close minded, but I think that the average scientist is.

A blanket statement that though maybe your opinion, does not map well onto "scientists". For the following reasons:

1. Not all scientist behave nor think the same. They are individuals and can think as they wish.

2. Science as followed by scientists are indoctrinated into a line of thinking that may have

some follow more than lead. This does not apply to all. And even a "follower" may come

up with such an innovative idea so as to become a future "leader" in his field.

3. The word "average" can not be used in any other fashion than to talk about the

aggregate of a collection. So an "average scientist" does not speak to any scientist in

particular. Otherwise this speaking wouldn't be scientific.

They may be able to take bodies of knowledge that other people hand them and learn them detail by detail, but they could never create one. Knowing this, they come to the conclusion that science is only created piece by piece by tons of scientists figuring out one little thing at a time.

Would this still be about the "average scientist" or are there "other" kinds ??

Thus, whenever someone too creative comes along, they are angered and unobjective about it. "Who does this person think they are?" is the kind of crap you hear from people like this. In addition, though they may be able to work with a body of knowledge created by someone else, if there is anything left out of that body of knowledge that was just "known" to the person who created it, it may be violated by these types. For instance, they may violate a general principal of all human knowledge because it seemed like a valid manipulation or extension of a mathematical system.

This is beginning to sound like a rant now (colored by personal experience)... ;)

 

maddog

[InfiniteNow]

This struck me as another relevant contribution to this thread. Enjoy. :hihi:

 

 

 

YouTube - RDF TV - The Baloney Detection Kit - Michael Shermer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUB4j0n2UDU