This means that really existing science does not correspond to the ideal definition of science, not that there is no difference between science and other forms of acquiring knowledge. Which is what the assertion that "babies are doing science" would entail. "Knowledge" is also being used equivocally here -- I know how to coordinate my body in a completely different sense than I know (or rather don't know in my case) the mechanical and physical laws that allow that coordination. The first can be done by a guppy. The latter is science.
There is no essential difference between a baby learning to use its body and interact with its environment and a puppy doing the same thing. Except that the latter will do it much faster. In a battle of wits between a three-month-old human and a three-month-old golden retriever, the retriever is going to kick ass. The baby doesn't even have the neural sophistication to move around.
--- On Tue, 9/1/09, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> - that scientific (funding and
> intellectual) trajectories are anything
> but systematic, progressive or data
> driven,
> - that hypothesis generation and testing
> - even when not largely
> determined by funding or
> new-technological opportunities - are wildly
> contingent on who the researcher is,
> - that research methods - while more
> formal than much of the rest of the
> process - are always selected from across
> a range of options where the means
> selected have as much to do with personal
> preferences and the vagaries of
> research programs as with anything else,
> - that the actual practice of scientific
> research/data gathering is at
> least as much a craft practice tied to
> very specific boundary maintenance
> practices as it is a systematic
> activity,
> - that data analysis seeks statistically
> meaningful results more than
> anything else, even if those results end
> up generating a rewriting of the
> intent of the work - the hypotheses being
> tests - when preparing manuscripts
> for publication.
>