Re: The Intellectual Origin of Positivism

From: Lester Zick (lesterDELzick_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 07/15/04 

Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 22:03:01 GMT

On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 20:19:50 GMT, "Abakus" <abakus@ntlworld.com> in
comp.ai.philosophy wrote:

>
>"Lester Zick" <lesterDELzick@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
>news:40f54d9f.6541670@netnews.att.net...
>> On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 20:05:49 GMT, "Abakus" <abakus@ntlworld.com> in
>> comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >"Lester Zick" <lesterDELzick@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
>> >news:40f3fc31.60344270@netnews.att.net...
>> >> On Mon, 12 Jul 2004 20:08:30 +0000 (UTC), Neil W Rickert
>> >> <rickert+nn@cs.niu.edu> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> >> >Hash: SHA1
>> >> >
>> >> >lesterDELzick@worldnet.att.net (Lester Zick) writes:
>> >> >
>> >> >>Science has no interest in the speculative, whether metaphysical or
>> >> >>philosophical in nature.
>> >> >
>> >> >This is clearly mistaken. There has long been a significant
>> >> >component of speculative theorizing within science.
>> >>
>> >> Scientists take a great deal of interest in speculative theorizing.
>> >> Science - the bottom line - does not.
>> >>
>> >> Regards - Lester
>> >
>> >This opinion seems to stem from a rather obsolete and long deceased view
>of
>> >how science operates. It is obvious to anybody who's done science that
>> >science most of the time involves a two-step process. First a certain
>> >hypothesis is concocted. Then the hypothesis is tested. The generation of
>a
>> >testable hypothesis involves a lot of speculation, imagination,
>> >inventiveness and ingenuity. It is not uncommon to see that many
>scientific
>> >papers end up by saying things along the lines of "it can be speculated
>that
>> >[...]". And this speculation on the present results tends to end up being
>> >the embryo for a hypothesis which is the basis for a following paper.
>>
>> So what? The bottom line in science is still the science and not the
>> speculation.
>
>You are not trying to understand. The speculation is an integral part of
>science.

I never said or suggested that speculation is not a necessary part of
the practice of science. And if you want to learn about the practice
of science, you have to learn about speculation. If you want to learn
about the science itself, you study validated results of speculation
and not speculation itself. You learn geometry the same way by
learning the axioms, theorems, and proofs of Euclid and Pythagoras and
not the speculations they used to arrive at their insights.

Obviously you consider the practice of science the same as science
and draw no distinction between them. If you think I'm not trying to
understand your position it's only because I see a valid distinction
between what is known and how it got to be known.

Regards - Lester

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