09.30.07
Who, or what, is anti-science?
There is a long record of conflict and persecution in the history of science, as in any area of endeavor. Scientists are given to the same failings as other human beings: greed, status anxiety, envy, and fear. To believe the pious statements by professional organizations about the enlightened way “science works” is comparable to accepting the civics textbook renderings of “how a law is made.” There is a way, all right, that science is supposed to work (and laws supposedly are made), and then there is reality.
Stephen P. Smith said,
September 30, 2007 at 10:39 pm
Laws are found provisional, e.g, gravity only follows the law in a particular domain, and we see a quantum gravity that is different from general relativity. I think it is true that all natural laws are provisional, Stephen Hawking is saying something similar. Regarding science, a transcendental science combines Popper’s and Kuhn’s science, Edmond Husserl followed this path. Otherwise, scientists will be subjected to their own emotions when confronted by laws that are only provisional.