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comment by b_b
b_b  ·  3666 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A Random Thought

    ...you're convinced that we're missing something important through our dogged adherence to scientific method and we should therefore cast off our current understanding of the universe.

Conflating the science and philosophy is an all too common mistake. I wish I knew where the failure lay. I think we can all agree that no one gets a good science education in school. This, I believe, has to do with politics, education policy, and the fact that very few people who know a lot about science become high school teachers. And this is to say nothing about the non-existent philosophy education that we all receive. Obviously "I don't like science" is a completely untenable stance--science is here to stay, whereas the individual is not. People who say that really should be asking themselves why they don't like what they think scientists say about the universe and how they can reconcile the current body of knowledge with their own worldview. READ MORE, kids!





kleinbl00  ·  3666 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Conflating the science and philosophy is an all too common mistake. I wish I knew where the failure lay.

My suspicion is that we teach two important philosophies:

1) Scientific method is based on doubt

2) Self-confidence is a muscle to be exercised and developed

with not enough emphasis on the fact that not all doubts are created equal. Scientific advancement is presented as a chain of identical links, from "fire" to "Large Hadron Collider" with the emphasis on exploration of the unknown as the cause of progress. However, nobody points out that a much larger body of expertise is necessary to snipe at String Theory in 2014 than was required to disprove the four humors in the Enlightenment. That, after all, might damage the fragile young egos into thinking that everything worth discovering has been discovered.

It's become harder and harder to say "you're wrong" in a classroom, but sometimes ideas are wrong.