>
>Feyerabend wanted to abolish any separation between science and other
>stuff.
>He was willing to let anything be called science, since people had done
>science, and made important discoveries, starting from all sort of
>preconceptions. . . . That is tantamount to
>equating astrology and astronomy.
>
> >how and why would one equate astronomy and astrology? are there
>
> >objective standards to do so? "use" is relative to need, no?
>
>
>No, I'm hard pressed to think of an objective standard for doing so. My
>intent in that post was to highlight the ambiguity in trying to define
>science and how unsatisfactory refusing to define science is.
>
>Scott Martens
>
That's why the pragmatic/sociological definition of science helps: astrology isn't science because it's not accepted as a science by people who call themselves scientists, it isn't taught in sciewnce depts, etc. If you evaluate it by scientific standards, moreover, it turns oit that it si very bad science, not worth serious consideration. So the scientists are right to ignore it. Does it really matter whether you say it's very bad science or not science at all? There is no a priori determinable essence of science. Science is a set of social practices we stumbled on that happens to allow us to do things we want pretty effectively. So why should we expect a definition of it more exact than a description of those practices?
jks
_________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.