Cheerskep: Wikipedia may not be the last word in scientific authorities but
it's a little handier than my psychology texts and could help us move from
individual beliefs to some more consensus observations:
"Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge" or "knowing") is the
effort to discover, and increase human understanding of how the physical
world works. Using controlled methods, scientists collect data in the form
of observations, records of observable physical evidence of natural
phenomena, and analyze this information to construct theoretical
explanations of how things work."
I would suggest that you consult an academic journal of your choice to view
how "observations" are reported. (I might choose "Journal of Experimental
Psychology".) The controlled methods referred to above are set out so that
replicability is established (how could someone else test the observation)
what are the observations, what are the statistical procedures used to
assess the observations, what are the implications for science of the
observations and where might future research lead.
If you chose to argue that humans' learning originates in careful
observations and consideration of their meaning, reliability and
significance, I'd be happy to agree. If we're talking about scientific
method, that's a different story.
Geoff C
From: [email protected]
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Science and Art
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2008 13:42:48 EST
In a message dated 12/19/08 1:36:24 PM, [email protected] writes:
> The science I know about starts with hypotheses,
>
Nah. It starts with observations. Once you have data to be "accounted for",
"explained", THEN you come up with a hypothesis. Of course there's even
"science" that is initiated by neither. This science is LOOKING FOR
observations.
E.g. dissection, autopsies, chemical analyses.
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