>>> Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> 01/19/2008 3:44 PM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
>
> So philosophers 2000 years ago were doing science?
>
> ^^^^^
> CB: Yes,some of them. The people who built the pyramids in Egypt,
> before the philosophers in Greece. Imhotep the Egyptian physician
did
> science. Hunters and gathers 10 of thousands of years ago were
doing
> science. See Levi-Strauss on the vast botanical knowledge of
> "primitive" peoples. Materialism. Lets call it materialism if that
> will help you. Modern nor ancient Europeans didn't discover science.
Thanks for clarifying; we're arguing from different premises. For me, science is a social practice that has existed for a few hundred years. According to many philosophers of science, the defining characteristics of science are systematic empiricism, testing falsifiable hypotheses, and submitting results for public verification.
^^^ CB: And you really think that started in the last few hundred years ? That's astonishingly Eurocentric and not paying attention to human history. Do you really think something like the pyramids could be built or bronze metallurgy or the many, many other human inventions down through the milllenia would have been discovered without that procedure.
Wow. Humans sure have been making lucky guesses for a long time. Or on the other hand, maybe there is a God.
^^ The work of philosophers 2000 years ago or the practices of people in hunting and gathering societies do not meet these criteria, so they weren't doing science.
^^^^^ CB: I think the builders of the pyramids and the inventors of bronze probably did meet these criteria. The inventors of the bow and arrow , and stone tools probably did too. Many of the methods of midwives down through the millenia probably met this criteria too.
Trial and error meets this criteria.
^^^^^
Calling the knowledge production in a hunting and gathering society "science" is like an American calling cricket "baseball". In each case, the observer takes familiar cultural practices and falsely imposes them on a different set of social practices that have some superficial similarities.
Miles
^^^^^^^ CB: I'd say it's closer to an American calling cricket a ballgame, but the analogy breaks down. It's not cultural differences, but the basic human materialist method which has fundamentally common characteristics from the invention of the first tools to the inventions of computer chips. Observation, hyppthesis, test the hypothesis, all done as _social_ labor, and passed down across generations with language and culture. Science is a fundamental aspect of social labor and material culture, which is at the origin of the human species.