Re: Who decides what is "science" and what is not?

topmind wrote:

Zachriel wrote:

topmind wrote:

Zachriel wrote:

topmind wrote:

Robert Weldon wrote:

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Robert Weldon wrote:

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snex wrote:

Jim wrote:

Who decides what is "science" and what is not?

Besides common sense and the scientific method, just who are we to
say
that
ID is not a valid science? Is there any single international
governing
body
that has the final say-so in the matter?

you simply apply logic. if the definition of an endeavor conflicts
with
the definition of science, then that endeavor is not science.

Yeah right.... And who is there to say this is logic and this not?
And why do you think his/her assessment is infaillible?

The rules of logic say whether it is logical or not.

LOGIC appears to be in the EYES of the beholders... Oh, Dear!


No, logic functions under well defined rules, why don't you learn them?

It is not that simple.

For example, suppose somebody says that biology shares many machine or
technology-like traits such as valves, "wires", fluid tubes, etc., and
therefore it is a legitimate hypothesis that biology was also designed
by intelligent beings.

However, others will "weigh" the evidence and say the similarities are
not strong enough. Nobody has ever proposed a decent descrete and/or
logical way to weigh this, nor a descrete or logical way to set a
threashold for "valid hypothesis" (assuming it is descrete).

It is subjective, fuzzy judgement calls. In general, only trivial
things can be subjected to formal logic methods to come to One True
answer.


That would be speculation.
You can conceivably use speculation to
devise a valid hypothesis; but in this case, it is doubtful any
proposed claim would be consistent with the body of known facts about
biology.

Most would agree that it is a fact that some biology has valves, wires
(not nec. metal), fluid tubes, etc. The speculation is whether it
implies a similar origin, NOT the existence of at least some
similarities themselves.


That is correct. There are valid points of similarity that can be
observed. From this we can speculate a similar or common origin. But to
be considered science, you must be able to devise a valid scientific
hypothesis that is reasonably consistent with current evidence and is
capable of making specific predictions of future observations.

And the valid construction of such a proposed claim is what I said was
doubtful.


Well, let's put the future testability issue aside for right now. My
point still stands that formal logic is insufficient.

You seem to be forming a rule where A *and* B must be true to be a
valid scientific hypothesis. B in this case is testability. But we
still need to deal with how to satisfy A for any given hypoth
candidate. There is no formal logic known that properly answers A in
this instance.

I suppose you could argue that if B is unsatisfied, then we don't need
to bother with A. But it is probably not always the case that a fuzzy A
leads to a false B.



Zachriel
http://zachriel.blogspot.com/




-T-

i have a question for T
The SETI folks have physical processes and real data. I have a quiestion about ID. Your claim is that SETI is just as undefined as ID. I maintain that is false. SETI for instance uses real devices like redio telescopes. For this argument I will simplify the input signal data.

I have a book called Matrices Vectors and Linear Programing. A matrix is explicitly an array of items in XYZ fashion. A matrix is any list. specificaly the intersting matracies are arrays of numbers. In my book we could build two different arrays of test data. Some of them would be matracies orthogonal to the data.

and some of these would be UNIT matrices. Such that AxB <> BxA
a signal would be an eignevector <> 0.

This simplified form would say that singularities are signals.


Now can you do the same for ID?
josephus

.

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