Re: PotM Re: A Typology of Scientism

Michael Siemon <mlsiemon@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <1j3xb8m.ws7lcx1qyvh4pN%john@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
john@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (John S. Wilkins) wrote:

Michael Siemon <mlsiemon@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <h57ubk$g2u$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Garamond Lethe <cartographical@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

...

The choice between the two is, so far as I know,
universal. The above is evidence of reliable,
non-scientific knowledge.

I'm not sure what you are doing isn't merely a subset of the
scientific method and not some wholly different method of
obtaining knowledge.

I mean..
You've got hypotheses: Eg. "'loue' should really be 'lute'."
You've got occham's razor: "Which is the more likely assumption
based on our knowledge of writing at the time?"
You've got tests: Comparisons with earlier scripts (if the purpose
is to find the original wording), and audience feedback (if the
purpose is to find the most popular alternative).
And there's no reason any of these findings couldn't be replicated
and fact checked by peers.


I was wondering if anybody was going to raise this point (and it's a
good one).

I'm going to draw a distinction here between "science" and
"scientific". Most human activity that involves mental models that
improve over time can be described as scientific. There's a
scientific way to learn how to play chess, tennis or the piano.
Cooking can be made scientific. Debugging is definitely scientific,
and as you've outlined above, so can literary criticism.
...

Well, the more general term is something like "critical reasoning" and
in post-medieval European history it arises first in the context of
legal studies -- the type case being Lorenzo Valla's proof (and I use
the word advisedly...) that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery.

It is also true that use of such critical methods in history is some-
times presented as the "science" of historiography. And there is some
point to that. It is indeed related work on texts that you use for
your example (and that is heavily used in studies, by believers and
non- believers alike, of the text of the Bible as well as of ancient
texts in general). There are gray areas here, with some "hard science"
using more historiographical/genealogical methods (classical
paleontology for example) than classical physics (though string theory
and cosmo- logy make these frontiers of physics a bit more like
literary criticism than 19th & 20th century stuff! :-))

Nonetheless, I would call the similarities "family resemblances" a la
Wittgenstein rather than seeking some underlying "identity".

I have a slightly different take: for my money, the historical sciences
(what Whewell called the "paletiological" sciences, and what some call
the "special" sciences) are just as scientific as the general sciences.
Moreover, Burkhard's point about creativity can be accommodated within
my view as learning what is at the edge of the novel in order to neither
alienate the audience nor to bore them (jazz is something you have to be
*educated* into).

The use of trial and error reasoning with critical thinking is, I think,
a universal, and what we call "science" is a set of institutions in
which this plays a central role. Some "sciences" (e.g., economics) do
almost none of this, and many arenas outside the "sciences" do it very
well indeed (engineering, some medicine).

Hmmmm; I don't think that this _is_ a "different take" :-), other than a
possibly broader use of "scientific" than my own preference. As a kind of
test case, consider engineering [hey; you raised this...] vs "science".

Quite aside from its foundational roots in physical science, engineering
does in fact use critical methodology (though, sometimes in teaching some
purblind future "engineers" I despaired of that...) But the focus of
engineering is (or seems to me, as a quasi outsider) to provide the best
(i.e., surviving critical evaluation) methods for doing this, that or the
other. Whether or not we really understand how T.T.O.T.O actually works.

I think you'll also find that a good many scientists are no more
critical about the implicit information they rely upon than engineers.

Whereas (physical) science is fundamentally attempting to get at that
underlying substrate (I hesitate to call it "reality", but I suspect that
the physicists really do so...) Engineers try to take a simplification of
what the physicists think, reduce it to "practical" rules for "ordinary"
purposes -- and then prefer not to think about it much. Within that
context they indeed have peer review and critical evaluation and all that
good "critical reasoning" stuff. But that, to me, does not make it
"science". Good engineers can be good physicists, and vice versa -- but
the overlap of subject matter is in tension with the focus or motivation
of the disciplines as such. Which is why I like the "family resemblance"
description. I take "science" to be, at root, the uncovering of "causes"
or "universals" in "nature", whereas engineering is perfectly happy when
dealing with epiphenomena. [and if that description is risible, go ahead
and demolish it, it's just an off-the-cuff statement of my prejudices...]

Engineering involves considerable research, much of it as a fairly
technical kind. I wokred for five years in a civil engineering
government department that built my state's roads. They did a lot of
research and testing of materials, construction methods, and so forth. I
think you'll fidn that *some* of what we typically think of as "science"
is done in most professions that work with the real world. Consider the
making of paints in the renaissance...


Oh, and economics _does_ do a lot of critical thinking; the problem there
is that the _context_ is wildly unrealistic and divorced from what most
of us think is relevant. Some of Mitch Coffey's wilder divagations stem
from the body of critical reason in economic theory. Your reference to
jazz is actually pertinent here... :-) If economists only performed in
night-clubs, we would all (I think) be much more enthusiastic about their
work.

Maybe. The difference between economics and music is that sounds are
real things. Money is an abstraction of an abstraction of an abstraction
of a heterogeneous collection of physical properties ranging from metals
to energy and space. You can't have a science that deals with Borges'
Celestial Emporium.
--
John S. Wilkins, Philosophy, University of Sydney
http://evolvingthoughts.net
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre

.

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