Re: Science, Religion, Philosophy.

From: John Wilkins (john_SPAM_at_wilkins.id.au)
Date: 07/30/04 

Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 13:56:25 +1000

Kenneth Doyle <nobody@notmail.com> wrote:

> john_SPAM@wilkins.id.au (John Wilkins) wrote in
> news:1ghqnjq.vmc0kquzhihgN%john_SPAM@wilkins.id.au:
>
> > Kenneth Doyle <nobody@notmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> This discussion might possibly benefit from the observation that the
> >> scientific method is a product of philosophy, not of science.
> >
> > Or perhaps that it evolved from the ways in which science worked best,
> > once freed from the constraints of apriorism - in other words, not so
> > much from the positive contributions of philosophy, as the removal of
> > the negative ones.
>
> I suppose that's possible, but I don't think Popper or Kuhn (for example)
> would agree.

Well, considering that the classical descriptions of the scientific
method lie in the work of William Whewell (1840) and John Stuart Mill
(1843) a century before Popper, not to mention Stanley Jevon's wonderful
1873 book _The principles of science_, and that Newton, Laplace, Fourier
and so on all predate even *them*, and that Kuhn did not describe
scientific method or a *pre*scription for how to proceed, but rather a
*des*cription of how (in his eyes) science *had* proceeded through a
cycle of research/crisis/paradigm shift, I think they most likely would. 

-- 
John Wilkins
john_SPAM@wilkins.id.au   http://wilkins.id.au
"Men mark it when they hit, but do not mark it when they miss" 
                                               - Francis Bacon