You tell me the simply studying science is not being engaged in science until you do an experiment?

Not exactly. There is a lot to science before you get to the stage of doing an experiment. My definition does not preclude this. It just implies that when you study science, you stick to scientific theories, rather than say mysticism. Otherwise you are studying something else. It does define a field of study in the sense that science is the knowledge that is produced via the scientific method. Studying vs doing just distuinguishes whether you are contributing new knowledge. The distinction I drew is that manipulating a theory via words is language and via equations is maths, but understanding the concept is science.

You dismiss Diamonds work as history

Saying something is history is not dismissing it. Science is not the only form of knowledge or the only branch of philosophy. It is a different kind, that is all. The more you restrict a field of study by raising the bar for what counts as satisfactory 'evidence' the narrower you make the scope, but you end up with more reliable outcomes. I think there is a clear spectrum here with maths at one end, science in the middle and history at the other.

You dismiss Diamonds work as history, not science, and yet he is a biologist and his books are entirely scientific, using very similar methods to those used in evolutionary study

That sentence would make more sense if you used that term 'natural history,' to distuinguish it from the scientific study of natural selection.

methods considered by the scientific community to be valid science

That sentence would have more meaning if you specificed the methods rather than just associating them with certain fields.

Also you have compared your high school text to the ones I have been issued at university, I'll just let that speak for itself.

It doesn't say much if thsoe books don't contradict the high school textbooks. They just avoid the issue, don't they?

Thought experiment is maths as sense has defined maths

No it isn't. It requires people to think about what would happen under natural laws. If it were just maths then there would be no need for a thought experiment. You would just solve the equations. A thought experiment requires people to consider what would actually happen, not just solve an equation. That is what distuinguishes it from maths. When Einstein did his initial thought experiments he completely avoided equations and focused on scientific theory.

are you familiar with the Heisenburg uncertainty principle? It more or less says that all scientific observations cannot accurately describe nature since observing nature influences what is observed.

That is a misapplication of Heisenberg's principle.

Are you familiar with Schrodingers cat? Or Maxwells demon? These are completely non testable experiments because they rely on purely imagined scenarios that could never exist.

Right, they are thought experiments. How much maths is there in deciding whether the cat dies?

The known scientific theories they were based on are only human derived laws that approximate nature, they do not accurately describe it, and thus they are defined by the same description as accurately defines maths.

No, that is what spearates them from maths. Maths is true. Science is an approximation. Also saying that they do not accurately describe nature is meaningless. It's like arguing a piece of string is short rather than long.

And yet everyone considers these to be important scientific experiments?

They are thought experiments designed to teach the concept. They are important edcational tools. For the practicing scientists, the important experiments are the ones that actually attempt to falsify the theories.

To add to this, can you name for me one mathematical field that does not attempt in some way to describe nature?

None of them do. I have already addressed this issue in how mathematicians stick to 'useful' maths. The maths itself does not describe nature anymore than the english language does. You use it as a tool for communication.

There is no reason why new scientific theories won't be 'stumbled upon' in the future

Right, but scientists tend to stumble upon them while engaged in the scientific method. As Kuhn pointed out, theories do not arise from people 'stmbling upon them.' They arise from repeated attempts to figure out why nature does not appear to fit with theory. Even stumbling upon a disagreement between nature and theory itself is usually meaningless as it is discarded as an error on the part of the scientist. It is only when they repeatedly fail to correct that error in their experiments that they start considering alternative theories.

indeed, many scientific theories are stumbled upon all the time, take the discovery of penicillin

This backs up my view. My definition of science does not dictate how theories are developed, only how they are discarded. Furthermore penicillan is not a theory.

from fd " People like to play up the conflict. "

This is my last comment. So, the conflict between Galileo and the Church didn't happen. People just like to play it up.

Go and say your prayers. You need help from somewhere.

freediver wrote on Apr 20^th, 2007 at 11:35am:

Exactly, and there are more scientific methods than what you detail. I have never said anything about studying mysticism.

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You dismissed him though he were not a scientist, and you also say studying history is not scientific, yet history is scientific and Diamond is a scientist.

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There is no way to distinguish natural selection from science. It makes no difference if you call it history, science is science, the methods through which history is studied are scientific, I would go so far as to say the entire field of history is within the field of science.

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I did through my quote of Diamond, in particular specifying between the empirical method of testing which you say is the only scientific method, and the observational comparative methods employed by historians, paleontologists and all the others I listed.

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No, they contradict your definition countless times.

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For one, you fail to demonstrate a single area of maths that is not attempting to describe natural laws, and for another, how is the process of thought experiment not setting up rules and axioms and then defining things within those rules/axioms?

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So you aren't that familiar with it then? This is exactly what the uncertainty principle indicates. Go read up on QM and many new theories that are emerging regarding the inability of humans to actually perceive the reality of nature.

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Isn't maths just setting up a set of rules and then defining and testing logical assertions within that set of rules? This is exactly what a though experiment is.

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They are important scientific tools. There is more to science than null hypotheses and experiment, this is what you fail to grasp.

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Geometry? Calculus? Algebra? Statistics? Trigonometry, even Topology? Every single area of maths is concerned with describing nature, the ones that are not are simply not maths. Maths has to be absolute, the only way to do this is to limit it to the field of the natural.

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There you go again! So a scientific discovery is not science because it is not a theory?
Tell me, are you a scientist? What are your credentials? Have you even studied in the field beyond high school? I have given demonstrations of scientists that disagree with your view, you give me nothing.

You have this idea you want to share with the world, but you fail to find any evidence to back up your idea, I have repeatedly used quotes and examples to back up the claims I make and yet you use not one. Instead you simply tell me you have researched, not good enough buddy, not even close. How can you expect people to take your ideas on board if you cannot even demonstrate that you have researched it? Give me one quote from a scientist that agrees with you on evolution, give me one quote from a scientist that will tell you there is a clear and distinct definition of what science is. You will not find them, because there is NO CLEAR definition of what science is.

freediver wrote on Apr 20^th, 2007 at 2:29pm:


And this is why you fail, and you will always fail. You are a whining crank with nothing to back up your nonsense other than your own slanted opinion.

You are wrong, there is nothing more to it, your views are based on your interpretation of common knowledge, one that scientists do not agree with. You are not a scientist, this much is clear, and as such you have no place to dictate what science is or is not. So long as you continue to say evolution is not science then you fail to understand what both evolution and science really are.

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So how do climate scientists do their work? Climate models are almost entirely based on empirical tests of what happened in the past. Is climate change no longer a scientific theory? Paleontologists, how do they conduct scientific work if you simply cannot study the past scientifically? Diamond uses scientific methods throughout his book 'Collapse' to study the truth about the past, or at least propose scientific theories about it, he cites dozens of other scientists that have done the same throughout. You deny mountains of scientific study the title of science if you limit yourself by this stupid remark.

Diamond disagrees with you, the quote again: "science is something much broader: the acquisition of reliable knowledge about the world."

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It is kind of a strong argument when you fail to produce one single scientist that agrees with you, you can say they agree with you all you like, but without any proof you are just beating your chest...well...beating something anyway. If my saying the community thinks you are wrong is logical fallacy, then what on earth is your statement that your theory does not require proof?

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So the definition of what is the work of scientists is now in the hands of a bunch of whining liberal arts types, not the scientists themselves? Good one mate, you clearly demonstrate where your head is located by saying this.

You whine about the fact that nobody respects philosophy any more, but you miss the fact that true philosophy has been absorbed into all other fields of study, scientists philosophise about their science as do mathematicians and politicians in their respective fields. Those who study philosophy as a pure subject these days are simply the dregs, the ones who's opinions do not matter any more. Because fields of study are defined by the proponents of those fields of study, not by idiots with poor web design skills who fancy themselves philosophers.

Leave the science to the scientists freediver. You just keep on sniffing those farts...

Science is neither the hammer nor the screwdriver, it is what the man holding both the hammer and the screwdriver does with those tools.

Paleontologists aren't scientists? Glad you finally coughed it up.

Climate models are based for a large part on ice cores that are used to accurately study the past, is that method unscientific? Tree ring sampling, used to study accurately what happened in the past. Is that not science?

This is just becoming laughable freediver, Paleontologists not scientists?

You are no philosopher, you are no scientist, you are some guy with an ugly website and some crap ideas that nobody agrees with. Good day to you.

from fd " People like to play up the conflict. "
No only freediver does that.


"Furthermore penicillan is not a theory."

Yes, it was when it was being invented.

Evolution is diffently a theory. Unless you were there when everything came about. And it being a theory it should be taught in science I'm not sure about creation since it is could be consider too religious. As for  intelligent design toss it.

The following quote is from Peter Jay, in "The Wealth of Man," 1st edition, 2000, introduction page XXIII, The Task Defined. It highlights the fundamental qualitative difference between history and science, why science cannot be apllied to historical questions, and why the methods used by historians are not as reliable as the modern scientific method. This is not an attempt to define science or history, it is just an attempt to put his work in the proper philosophical context in a way that is familiar to scientists, historians and economists.

Historians will never become pure social scientists because the need for narrative, the complexity of the matter they study and the impossibility of repeatable experiment all ensure that the human story will never be finally boiled down to a finite list of stable laws.

also, earlier in the section:

"Cultural factors" may be decisive, but it is hard to prove them, and nasty prejudices may lurk in their undergrowth camouflaged in respectabel languge.