To begin with, and for some time now, I pass on most Quora requests to answer questions. In large part, I do this because I find it hard to know whether they’re being posed by a person or a BOT. Clearly, if this particular question is being asked by a BOT, it’s one powerful AI….
This is an amazingly intuitive question and could easily take a whole book to explore [something I actually did a few years back when I wrote, “The Science of Discovery (why do scientists so rarely make breakthroughs)”, 2016]. Shameless plugs from self-promoting authors aside (please forgive me), the gist of my answer is this. The…
Basic? Not really. For instance, one of Popper’s main drives appears to be what at first glance seems to be a simple question: How do we differentiate between science and pseudoscience? To me, that he posited a possible solution to this problem is an act of courage. That he dared to find fault in the…
If the person who asked this question had been a neurotypical, I would have offered the following reply: How similar is a neurotypical person who asks this kind of question to the part of the body which most resembles the tied opening of a dark-colored balloon? The thing is, you have identified yourself as having…
First, I find this question especially insightful. Juxtaposing these two men and their work reveals a lot about science’s internal struggles. In the broadest sense, then, all science looks to reduce infinitely complex, real world things to brief (by comparison) and useful descriptions of their nature. The problem, which both Popper and Kuhn tried to…
What a complicated question! My two cents? Jacob Bernoulli’s, Ars Conjectandi (The Art of Conjecture), published in 1713, is the first book to be published on what has come to be called, statistics. And anytime science treats statistics as science, it is doing something Bernoulli warned against. Here, Bernoulli is the man who invented statistics…
My apologies for not writing this from scratch. And for the blatant plug. The following is excerpted from my recent book; The Science of Discovery. See more at http://stevenpaglierani.com) ———————————————————————————————————————- Even a brief review of the posts on Quora requesting an answer to this question reveals the depth of the problem with assuming there is…
In my model, there are four possible kinds of science: physical science (the science of visible things; e.g. matter), mental science (the science of invisible things; e.g energy), theoretical science (the science of unchanging things; theories & facts), and real world science (the science of changing things; real world outcomes). Notice there are two pairs…
Just a few “brief” thoughts; questions, really; meant only to stimulate a respectful dialogue. I love science and scientists. So please, let’s do our best to emulate the great scientists by remaining curious and open minded. [1] The Scientific Method lacks of a scientific definition: We tend to think of the Scientific Method as clear…
Ah, John, perhaps you’ve never actually read Descartes’ books? Or perhaps you’ve never looked at them closely, or are only parroting what others claim? Whatever the case, in truth, the entire reason Descartes titled his first published book Discourse on Method is because in it, he enumerates his four step scientific method.Ironically, while few people…
To begin with, it makes sense you’d ask about this difference. These two things have much in common, including that they both refer to philosophical viewpoints used as tools in the search for truth. And flaws aside, both have served us well.But both also have problems. A hypothesis is an untested, guessed answer. The current…
First, Kura, thank you for asking what is surely a wonderfully stimulating question, albeit, it’s a question which I personally find to be mind-breakingly complex. Your question not only refers to the nature of science itself (“finitely settled”). It also refers to those who practice science (the “scientific integrity” of scientists), all of whom are…