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From: Sir Frederick Martin on 5 Jul 2010 23:22
On Mon, 5 Jul 2010 19:11:53 -0700 (PDT), Immortalist <reanimater_2000(a)yahoo.com> wrote:

>Attitudes to science range all the way from uncritical admiration at
>one extreme, through distrust, resentment, and envy, to denigration
>and outright hostility at the other.
>
>Scientific inquiry is continuous with the most ordinary of everyday
>empirical inquiry. There is no mode of inference, no "scientific
>method," exclusive to the sciences and guaranteed to produce true,
>probably true, more nearly true, or more empirically adequate,
>results. As Percy Bridgman put it, "the scientific method, as far as
>it is a method, is nothing more than doing one's damnedest with one's
>mind, no holds barred." And, as far as it is a method, it is what
>historians or detectives or investigative journalists or the rest of
>us do when we really want to find something out: make an informed
>conjecture about the possible explanation of a puzzling phenomenon,
>check how it stands up to the best evidence we can get, and then use
>our judgment whether to accept it, more or less tentatively, or
>modify, refine, or replace it.
>
>Science has managed to discover a great deal about the world and how
>it works, but it is a thoroughly human enterprise, messy, fallible,
>and fumbling; and rather than using a uniquely rational method
>unavailable to other inquirers, it is continuous with the most
>ordinary of empirical inquiry, "nothing more than a refinement of our
>everyday thinking," as Einstein once put it. There is no distinctive,
>timeless "scientific nethod," only the modes of inference and
>procedures common to all serious inquiry, and the multifarious "helps"
>the sciences have gradually devised to refine our natural human
>cognitive capacities: to amplify the senses, stretch the imagination,
>extend reasoning power, and sustain respect for evidence.
>
>The core standards of good evidence and well-conducted inquiry are not
>internal to the sciences, but common to empirical inquiry of every
>kind. In judging where science has succeeded and where it has failed,
>in what areas and at what times it has done better and in what worse,
>we are appealing to the standards by which we judge the solidity of
>empirical beliefs, or the rigor and thoroughness of empirical inquiry,
>generally. Often, to be sure, only a specialist can judge the weight
>of evidence or the thoroughness of precautions against experimental
>error, etc.; for such judgments require a broad and detailed knowledge
>of background theory, and a familiarity with technical vocabulary, not
>easily available to the lay person. Nevertheless, respect for
>evidence, care in weighing it, and persistence in seeking it out, so
>far from being exclusively scientific desiderata, arc the standards by
>which we judge all inquirers, detectives, historians, investigative
>journalists, etc., as well as scientists. In short, the sciences are
>not logically privileged.
>
>Defending Science-Within Reason: Between
>Scientism and Cynicism - Susan Haack
>http://www.amazon.com/Defending-Science-Within-Reason-Scientism-Cynicism/dp/1591021170

Where are the alien 'little green men' when you need them?
'We' need some new perspectives!

Humans are so loaded up with their hubris boosting stories,
that 'objectivity' is not available.
First, last, and always 'we' are hunter-gatherers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherers
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