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Do I dare call you "Nightwolf"? Or call you "Wolfie" in a german accent?
To be perfectly literal, that depends on how daring you are, although I imagine you'd have to be rather cowardly to fear translating my handle from one language to another. "Wolfie" might require somewhat more temerity, and anyway is not in a German accent; that would be "Volfie." Just so long as you refrain from calling me "Natchwolf" as the gibbering simians on other boards have done, you'll probably be fine.
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Anyway, by breaking your silence you have started down the wild path that all of us are on now. Enjoy your stay.
I'm not likely to post here much, and in any case I haven't broken any silence; I had 4 hours to kill last Thursday and found this thread by doing a Google search on the terms
science tentativity. The other posters offerred little of interest, but I read through your posts and then responded.
For the most part, I'm unlikely to post here much longer, as I am always busy with my own bulletin board, with my schoolwork (I'm a physics major) and with the book I'm writing on psychometrics, though I seem to have developed a cold and have thus been spending my Saturday in a rather
lighthearted manner.
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However, the theory that the molecular mass, charge, and polarity of water factor into it's boiling point is testable. Therefore, the scientific method is in effect throughout. It is also not 100% fact that we are able to measure atomic masses, polarity, and charge.
Yes.
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It is all tentative down to the metaphysical position of a non-Descartian universe. That is, we can't tell if we are living a "dream within a dream" and therefore we assume that we are not.
This actually highlights one of the weaknesses of the scientific method, as it is unable to deal with solipsism. Really, the entire scientific method is over-formal; science strictly speaking cannot proceed if there is only one individual around with the necessary biological endowments to apply it, because corroboration cannot occur in this case. The limitations of science are great enough that many (such as Michael Shermer in
How We Believe) go so far as to say that the "God hypothesis" is insoluble. Strictly speaking, the question of God's existence is not scientifically insoluble, though it is much easier to evaluate with rationalistic processes that do not depend so heavily on observation. This is why I'm scornful of thinkers like Hawking, who are so dependent on evidence from the senses that they wander blithely into Positivism and then when it is pointed out that they have done so can only answer, lamely, "What's wrong with Positivism?"
Reason is itself something like a "sixth sense," and this is readily apparent when comparing individuals of greatly differing intelligence levels. For instance, only those who have passed through Piaget's "Concrete Operational Stage" realize that five pennies are still five pennies even after you've shifted them around, and Francis Galton encountered an African tribe (The Damara) with such severely limited intelligence that they were unable to confidently say that 2+2=4. It's readily apparent that Reason can grant information just like any other sense can, and thus in my opinion ought to be included, at least informally, in any objective method for reaching the truth.
--Mark
This message has been edited by Nachtwolf, 10-02-2004 04:14 PM
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