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From: mojo@reed.UUCP (Eddie [Ex-Delivery Boy])
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Definition of science and of scientific method.
Message-ID: <6617@reed.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 15-Jul-87 14:48:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: reed.6617
Posted: Wed Jul 15 14:48:00 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 18-Jul-87 04:07:32 EDT
References: <6693@allegra.UUCP> <1664@tekcrl.TEK.COM>
Reply-To: mojo@reed.UUCP (Eddie [Ex-Delivery Boy])
Organization: Are you kidding?
Lines: 29

In article <813@klipper.cs.vu.nl> biep@cs.vu.nl (J. A. "Biep" Durieux) writes:
>5) Science starts (or: sciences start) from the results of the philosophers'
>work (unhappily the philosophers aren't ready yet, so those results are
>not as sure as they should be, and certainly not as sure as they are often
>thought to be by non-philosophical scientists) exploring the world.

I don't think _philosophers_ are a prerequisite for science.  While the
scientific method itself presupposes a sort of pragmatic rationalist
empiricism (hey, I can generate buzzwords! :-), I think this is in many
ways the default state for the human mind.  Certainly people were
trusting their senses, and to a lesser extent their reason, before the
concept of philosophy was so much as a gleam in the eyes of Whatever Gods
There Be.  And I would hazard a guess that the question "Why do I get
burned when I stick my hand in the fire to pull out the mammoth steak I
dropped" predated "Do I exist".

>6) The definition of "science", and of scientific method, is by its very
>nature a philosophical, not a scientifical matter. Otherwise one would
>get paradoxes like:

Think so?  I think philosophy is much more prone than science to create
paradoxes like the Occam's Razor one you cited.  But that could be opening
a whole new can of worms.

Anyway, Biep, thanks for condensing this whole thing.  I was catching
fragments of it but not enough to follow the issues, really.

>					Biep.  (biep@cs.vu.nl via mcvax)
>Unix is a philosophy, not an operating system. Especially the latter.