What IS Science And What IS NOT Science?

Such beliefs are philosophy and/or religion. To do science, you must take your beliefs and test them. That is, you must try to prove your beliefs wrong. Beliefs that cannot survive critical testing are not part of science.

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Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

It is falsifiable. That is it is testable. It has been well tested. Samples of ancient atmosphere are found in ice cores, and have been tested.Science does not make as many assumptions about "uniformitarianism" as you might think. Rather, it uses available evidence to extend its measurement back to the past. It calibrates all of its measuring methods. Such disasters leave evidence. It would show up in the calibration of the various measuring procedures. If you can provide the citations, so that we can know which studies you are talking about, then we will have something to investigate.

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Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

It isn't easy to define science. Some people define it as "that which scientists do", itself an admission of the difficulty in defining science.When people attempt to define science, they often emphasize that it uses "the scientific method." However, the term "the scientific method" is itself quite slippery, and thus difficult to define. Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" was a report on how science had actually been done, and it shook philosophy of science for it showed that much of what had been written was problematic. Now that Kuhn is safely dead, philosophers of science seem to be going back to their old ways.Following the work of Kuhn, Feyerabend also criticised the then current philosophy of science. Two of his book titles are suggestive: "Anything goes" and "Against method".Feyerabend, too, is now safely dead. There are still critics the traditional accounts of science, but they don't speak with the same authority as Kuhn and Feyerabend, so are more likely to be ignored.Most scientists go by Popper's account of science. In my opinion, Popper's philosophy was falsified by Kuhn. Those who dismiss Kuhn's criticisms are left in the awkward position of defending falsification as an essential component of science, while denying that falsification can be applicable to an account of how science operates.

In Message 91, I suggested that it is difficult to define science. In this post I present my own feeble attempt.

1. Method, not belief.

Philosophers like to describe knowledge in terms of beliefs. They talk about "belief systems." In describing science, they tend to think of it as a belief system. In my opinion, this is a problem in philosophy of science (and in philosophy of knowledge). Scientists are not strongly wedded to beliefs. They will quickly drop beliefs that the evidence shows to be wrong. Scientists are, however, strongly attached to their methods and procedures. They are reluctant to abandon methods that have worked well, unless they have a replacement method that will work even better.

2. Science is systematic.

A scientific discipline is, first and foremost, a systematic study of some aspect of reality. That science is systematic is important for two reasons:

(a) Because it is systematic, others can learn the systematic methods being used. Thus the study can be a shared endeavor.
(b) The systematic nature lends itself to mathematical analysis. Mathematics is the abstract study of systems (or of patterns or regularities). Such a mathematical analysis of the systematic methods can aid in understanding the results of the scientific study.
(c) The systematic methods could, in principle, be extended to parts of reality to which they have not yet been applied. This provides a way of making predictions.

3. Pragmatism

Scientific methods are evaluated by how well they work. In other words, scientific judgment is, at its core, pragmatic judgment.

4. Explanations

Scientists usually produce explanations. To philosophers, these explanations look like belief systems. Thus the philosophers tend to think of the explanations as being the scientific knowledge. But they are mistaken. The scientific knowledge is the knowledge of procedure and method. This is not to deny the value of an explanation. For having a good explanation makes it far easier to teach the systematic methods and procedures.Sociologists of knowledge at times see scientists collaborating to develop a good explanation. This suggests to them that the explanation is a social construct. They may well be correct about this. But some of them reach mistaken conclusions. Because they follow the philosophers and take the scientific knowledge to be the explanation (as a belief system), they conclude that scientific knowledge is itself socially constructed.

Do you really believe that Einstein came up with E=mc² by going out and making a few simple measurements? Your account of science fails to account for how we got from the chariot to the car. Among other things, Kuhn criticized falsificationism.Do a Google on "Kuhn Popper".

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Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

Quite the contrary. My post casts great doubt on the usefulness of a simple dictionary definition for defining science.Dictionaries are not really standards. A dictionary is descriptive, not prescriptive. Those who compile dictionaries look at how a word is being used in speech and literature, and they build their definition in an attempt to account for that usage.In terms of usage, most people defer to scientists on the question of what is or is not science.

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Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

There is actually pretty strong agreement.It is difficult to define science, and there is disagreement over what should be the definition. But when it comes to any particular activity, there is broad agreement as to whether that particular activity is science or not. I agree that it is possible to do science without peer review. However, if you want the results of your science to be widely accepted, that will take peer review. Scientists are, by nature, rather skeptical folk. They won't take your word for it. They will want to either see the evidence themselves, or to see that the evidence has been carefully scrutinized by other investigators.Peer review in science isn't that much different from what we expect in other aspects of life. We don't just take an accusation in our criminal justice system. We expect evidence, and we expect the evidence to be reviewed by a jury. We don't just hire a new employee on his word, we ask for references and we may then give a probationary appointment so that he/she can prove his abilities.The peer review system in science is the quality control system used by science. And nobody claims it is perfect. It can happen that peer review will reject good science, and it can happen that some bad science will make it through peer review. But, overall, it is an effective system of quality control. I have posted elsewhere (in Message 6) on what ID proponents would have to do, if they want their study to be considered science.

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Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

Wow! You sure have that wrong.Science is only equipped to answer questions about the physical world. Therefore it must exclude anything beyond that. Ruling something out just means it is not part of science. It need not imply that it is false. Objectivity in science requires that science rule out that which science is not equipped to study.

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Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

It is likely that it will be changed from its current form. It is unlikely that it will be completely thrown out. There is too much supporting evidence.Even if ToE is thrown out, it won't help creationism. There is no doubt that Noah's flood and the Adam and Eve story are just stories, and are not reports of actual events. Science might change its theories, but it cannot change the evidence.

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Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

Okay, thanks for the clarification.You had stated it as a comment on "the scientific method". In my opinion, the scientific method includes the developing of hypotheses and theories. It is that part, the developing of hypotheses and theories, that makes it difficult to precisely specify the scientific method.Testing is, of course, very important. And it is the part that creationists try to evade.

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Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

I hear that there are a bunch of creationists in the land of fruits and nuts.

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Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

Strange. It has seemed to me that you are blowing it up. You are claiming that he is doing creo science, but thus far we have no evidence of it.From your description, it sounds to me as if he has a tank of guppies for about the same kind of reason that many other people have tanks of guppies in their homes. He just happened to mention it to make a rhetorical point (perhaps intended as a joke).

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Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber

Sorry, you are mistaken. There is a debate. And the reason that there is a debate, is that creationists repeatedly claim that they are doing science, and that their science warrants a place in the school science curriculum.If you think the debate is a sham, and that it should be ended, then there is no point in appealing to Percy. You must appeal to the creationists. This is their debate. If the creationists were to keep their creationism within their churches and their sunday schools, and take it out of the public arena, then there would no longer be any need for a debate and sites like this would have to find some other reason for their existence.

Wow!That's a huge misunderstanding of how science works. Science does not dream up some imaginative fairy tale in order to interpret the evidence. The interpretation is largely forced on science by the nature of the evidence. And that does not mean science can't get it wrong. It often gets it a little bit wrong, and has to correct its theories as more evidence comes in.Keep in mind that modern geology started with scientists who were assuming flood geology as their working hypothesis, until the evidence clearly made the flood hypothesis untenable. There is no such assumption. Most scientists will openly admit that "intelligent" is a poorly understood term. There is no tyrannical and oppressive hold. If you prefer a broader view of science, broad enough to include astrology (as Behe admitted would be required to count ID as science), then you can find it all around. Every major newspaper has astrology charts. I can look up astrologers in my local phone directory.The problem for astrology, is that it doesn't work. That's the same problem that creationism has. If you can show us some good creation science that actually works, bring it on. Scientists are, for the most part, down-to-earth pragmatists. They will go with what works, whether or not it fits any preconceived definition of science.

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Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber