>
>Justin we appear more at cross purposes in light of your reply below.
>
This is evident. I am an epistemological pragmatist and a scientific realist. I think science is how we know the way the world is. You are some sort of Hegelian who wants a supra-scientific necessity and intelliginility that I don't aspire to and don't thionk we can have.
>I am basically unhappy with any forumation which does not explain why a
>scientific explanation is better then an non-scientific one.
Better for what purpose? If I want to know why my love is true, I'm probably not looking for a scientific answer.
>On the other hand I think you approach it on the basis of accepting a
>scientific answer and seeing this problem resolved in how scietists come to
>such answers.
A Hegelian insight: we start where we are. And broadly speaking, scientific materialsim is where we are.
>I am asking what makes science superior? It is not asked because I believe
>it is not superior, but rather because I want to know why it is superior,
>what is its relation as explanation to truth (reality)?
Lenin once said that Marxism is all-powerful because it is true. That contains the basic insight: science is superior to nonscientific approaches for explaining and manipulating our world because it is (approximately) true. And we know it is true because it works. You can't change lead into gold through alchemy, but you can (though very expensively) through nuclear chemistry.
>From this point of view the errors of science and provisionality, are not
>considered (they are assumed but are are not criticial - the point being to
>understand the special characteristics of science which also embraces
>scientific error and views which may be only provisional).
I have no idea what this means. I am no Popperian, but he was onto something when he suggested that science as a process could be understood as the continual testing of provisional hypotheses, which we put forward as true, but expect to find to be false in some respect, and replaceable with better ones. So understood, provisionality and error are essential to science.
>
>Using provisionality helps, but what is happening is that you have
>introduced another level of mystery - it makes sense but dances around the
>relationship of science to truth (reality).
It's not supposed to solve that problem. A crude version of my answer is
that science aspires towards true statements about the nature of its
objects. The statements are true is they say of what is, that it is, and of
what is not, taht it is not (Aristotle).
>
>To return for a moment to my original example (in science it is much easier
>to go back in time to assess the problems). In the late 19th century and
>early twentith, biological opinion on human races was racist (human races
>obviously exist) - scientists had "proved" or appear to have proved that
>some races were smarter and others less so. In this scientific opinion was
>firm, the dissident voices were available within science but the wieght of
>proof was clearly on the side of racism.
>
ACtually that's not true. Gould had done a good job of showing that many of the falalcies of scientific racism were detectable even at the time. See his Mismeasure of Man. But suppose it were true. Surely it is possible that humanity is divided inyto races with different natural capacities on average. It's possible, just not true.
>There was no sense of provisionality in this, if anything provisionality
>extended over some anti-racist views but the racist "science" was clearly
>not provisional either within the scientific community or society as a
>whole.
Well, to the extent that people were not provisional about a supposedly
scientific hypothesis--and Gould shows that a lot of them were not--they did
not approach it in a scientific spirit. Of course, some scientific
perspectives become so deeply entrenched that we treat them dogmatically
until they displaced by a new framework. This is one of Kuhn's lessons. Thus
the transition from, e.g., classical mechansics to relativity theory and
quantum mechanics.
>
>We know this [race theory] now to be all rubbish. Now the point is what
>separated this rubbish from real science even in 1890 or 1920?
Seperated it for what purpose? In the first place it wasn't true. In the second place, it wasn't empirically supported or framed in terms of empirically adequate concepts even then. In the third place, even if it had been (as classical mechanics was before it was displaced), its being wrong wouldn't make it rubbish if it was the best theory available at the time.
>My question is at the time of acceptence, before any disproof was
>available, before it was understood to even be under challenge what was its
>relationship to truth (reality) and science?
OK, mu answers are (a) it wasn't true, and (b) to the extent that it was
well-formulated, empircally supported, and provisionally accepted, it was
good science.
There is a big difference between real error and basically correct
formulations which need revision - it strikes at the difference between
science and non-science (even when the former has all the appearances of
science).
>
But classical mechanics is basically wrong. It didn't need to be cleaned up, it needed to be replaced, and was. We only use it now faute de mieux, because for most purposes it's good enough. And it was good science. As indeed was the phlogiston theory, which was totally replaced and does not even survive as calculating inmstrument like classical mechanics. You are using "scientific" to mean "true." I'm not.
>Necessarily this is an abstract way of approaching it, I am not putting
>forward a concept which is all that useful in assessing science by either
>scientists or lay people.
What good is it then?
But just because it cannot be usefully used in such a direct manner does not mean that abstract theory is not useful - and in my case I argue that seeing sciences as ontologies resting on a greater ontology which assumes a particular unity between object and subject makes understanding such errors within their historical context understandable without reference to their latter refutation (which would be anchronistic).
I don't understand this. My view is anachronistic because, what? You think I have to say that we can only understand a view as scientific using some future perspective that is not available to the people whoa dopted it at the time? Why's that? And if so, what's wrong with it? Why is their perspective the one that counts? A Hegelian point: the higher stages allow us to see the truth in the ideas we have overcome, as well as their limits.
>>Likewise when a subject matter is correctly conceived, despite all the
>>human errors in experimentation and conceptualisation, provisionality
>>becomes just a handy but not crucial concept, and scientifically correct
>>explanation can be seen as part of developing whole which reflects reality
>>to the extent of its subject matter and to the level of its internal
>>development.
>
Huh?
jks
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