me: >>science, however, is a social activity in search of consensus ( ... ), unlike art or music. <<
Sabri:> I am not so sure. The way I see it, all of these activities are in search of consensus and in all of them there are deviants. And it is thanks to these deviants that there is progress or, better said, change in all of them. These deviants are the ones who manage to change the existing forms and norms to new ones. And one day, some new deviants come and change the forms and norms the old deviants constructed to new ones, and the spiral continues. < Seeking consensus is not the same thing as imposing one. In economics, the neoclassicals _impose_ a consensus (since they control the journals, the hiring decisions, the tenure-and-promotion decisions, etc.) Econ. is a pseudoscience, though not the same kind of pseudoscience as astrology and the like. Science, as I understand it (and being an economist, I'm not a scientist), tries to come to a general agreement about "truth" via replication, logical examination, etc. But it has respect for deviants who aren't too far away from the mainstream's "research project." Those deviants who deviate "too much" from the mainstream (as "plate tectonics" did until only a few years ago) suffer professional costs. But science, when practiced well, can be opened up to such deviant ideas, however. Of course, that's more of a normative vision of science than a description of what really happens. I can imagine that science can easily become decadent and corrupt, so that actual science deviates strongly from the ideal (and deviants end up being forever so, no matter how valid their ideas). This is likely to happen to the extent that science is commercialized. -- Jim Devine "The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side." -- James Baldwin This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm
