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The Logical Leap: Induction In Physics
FrederickSeiler writes "When David Harriman, this book's author, was studying physics at Berkeley, he
noticed an interesting contrast: 'In my physics lab course, I learned how to determine the
atomic structure of crystals by means of x-ray diffraction and how to identify
subatomic particles by analyzing bubble-chamber photographs. In
my philosophy of science course, on the other hand, I was taught by a
world-renowned professor (Paul Feyerabend)
that there is no such thing as scientific method and that physicists have no
better claim to knowledge than voodoo priests.
I knew little about epistemology [the philosophy of
knowledge] at the time, but I could not help noticing that it was the
physicists, not the voodoo priests, who had made possible the life-promoting
technology we enjoy today.' Harriman noticed the enormous gulf between science as it is successfully
practiced and science as is it described by post-Kantian philosophers such as Feyerabend,
who are totally unable to explain the spectacular achievements of modern
science." Read on for the rest of Frederick's review.
The Logical Leap: Induction In Physics
author
David Harriman
pages
272
publisher
NAL Trade
rating
9/10
reviewer
Frederick Seiler
ISBN
0451230051
summary
Explains how scientists discover the laws of nature
Logical Leap: Induction in Physics
attempts to bridge this gap between philosophy
and science by providing a philosophical explanation of how scientists actually
discover things. A physicist and physics teacher by trade, he worked with
philosopher Leonard Peikoff to understand the process
of induction in physics, and this book is a result of their collaboration.
Induction is one of the two types of logical argument; the other type is deduction. First described by Aristotle, deduction covers arguments like the following: (1) All men are mortal. (2) Socrates is a man. (3) Therefore, Socrates is mortal. Deductive arguments start with generalizations ("All men are mortal.") and apply them to specific instances ("Socrates"). Deductive logic is well understood, but it relies on the truth of the generalizations in order to yield true conclusions.
So how do we make the correct generalizations? This is the subject of the other branch of logic induction and it is obviously much more difficult than deduction. How can we ever be justified in reasoning from a limited number of observations to a sweeping statement that refers to an unlimited number of objects? In answering this question Harriman presents an original theory of induction, and he shows how it is supported by key developments in the history of physics.
The first chapter presents the philosophical foundations of the theory, which builds directly on the theory of concepts developed by Ayn Rand. Unfortunately for the general reader, Harriman assumes familiarity with Rand's theory of knowledge, including her views of concepts as open-ended, knowledge as hierarchical, certainty as contextual, perceptions as self-evident, and arbitrary ideas as invalid. Those unfamiliar with these ideas may find this section to be confusing. But the good news is that those readers can then proceed to the following chapters, which flesh out the theory and show how it applies to key developments in the history of physics (and the related fields of astronomy and chemistry). These chapters do a wonderful job at bringing together the physics and the philosophy, clarifying both in the process.
Harriman argues that as concepts form a hierarchy, generalizations form a hierarchy as well; more abstract generalizations rest on simpler, more direct ones, relying ultimately on a rock-solid base of "first-level" generalizations which are directly, perceptually obvious, such as the toddler's grasp of the fact that "pushed balls roll." First-level generalizations are formed from our direct experiences, in which the open-ended nature of concepts leads to generalizations. Higher-level generalizations are formed based on lower-level ones, using Mill's Methods of Agreement and Difference to identify causal connections, while taking into account the entirety of one's context of knowledge.
Ayn Rand held that because of the hierarchical nature of our knowledge, it is possible to take any valid idea (no matter how advanced), and identify its hierarchical roots, i.e. the more primitive, lower-level ideas on which it rests, tracing these ideas all the way back to directly observable phenomena. Rand used the word "reduction" to refer to this process. In a particularly interesting discussion, Harriman shows how the process of reduction can be applied to the idea that "light travels in straight lines," identifying such earlier ideas as the concept "shadow" and finally the first-level generalization "walls resist hammering hands."
Harriman's discussion of the experimental method starts with a description of Galileo's experiments with pendulums. Galileo initially noticed that the period of a pendulum's swing seems to be the same for different swing amplitudes, so he decided to accurately measure this time period to see if it is really true. Concluding that the period is indeed constant, he then did further experiments. He selectively varied the weight and material of the pendulum's bob, and the length of the pendulum. This led him to the discovery that a pendulum's length is proportional to the square of its period. Harriman notes the experiments that Galileo did not perform: 'He saw no need to vary every known property of the pendulum and look for a possible effect on the period. For example, he did not systematically vary the color, temperature, or smell of the pendulum bob; he did not investigate whether it made a difference if the pendulum arm is made of cotton twine or silk thread. Based on everyday observation, he had a vast pre-scientific context of knowledge that was sufficient to eliminate such factors as irrelevant. To call such knowledge "pre-scientific" is not to cast doubt on its objectivity; such lower-level generalizations are acquired by the implicit use of the same methods that the scientist uses deliberately and systematically, and they are equally valid.' One powerful tool for avoiding nonproductive speculations in science is Ayn Rand's concept of the arbitrary, and Harriman brilliantly clarifies this idea in the section on Newton's optical experiments. An arbitrary idea is one for which there is no evidence; it is an idea put forth based solely on whim or faith. Rand held that an arbitrary idea cannot be valid even as a possibility; in order to say "it is possible," one needs to have evidence (which can consist of either direct observations or reasoning based on observations).
Newton began his research on colors with a wide range of observations, which led him to his famous and brilliant experiments with prisms. Harriman presents the chain of reasoning and experimentation which led Newton to conclude that white light consists of a mixture of all of the colors, which are separated by refraction.
Isaac Newton said that he "framed no hypotheses," and here he was referring to his rejection of the arbitrary. When Descartes claimed without any evidence that light consists of rotating particles with the speed of rotation determining the color; and when Robert Hooke claimed without any evidence that white light consists of a symmetrical wave pulse, which results in colors when the wave becomes distorted; these ideas were totally arbitrary, and they deserved to be thrown out without further consideration: "Newton understood that to accept an arbitrary idea even as a mere possibility that merits consideration undercuts all of one's knowledge. It is impossible to establish any truth if one regards as valid the procedure of manufacturing contrary 'possibilities' out of thin air." This rejection of the arbitrary may be expressed in a positive form: Scientists should be focused on reality, and only on reality.
After discussing the rise of experimentation in physics, Harriman turns to the Copernican revolution, the astronomical discoveries of Galileo and Kepler, and the grand synthesis of Newton's laws of motion and of universal gravitation. But this reviewer found the most historically interesting chapter to be the one about the atomic theory of matter; this chapter is a cautionary tale about the lack of objective standards for evaluating theories. This story then leads to Harriman proposing a set of specific criteria of proof for scientific theories.
The final, concluding chapter addresses several broader issues, including why mathematics is fundamental to the science of physics, how the science of philosophy is different than physics, and finally, how modern physics has gone down the wrong path due to the lack of a proper theory of induction.
So, with the publication of Logical Leap, has the age-old "problem of induction" now been solved? On this issue, the reader must judge for himself. What is clear to this reviewer is that Harriman has presented an insightful, thought-provoking and powerful new theory about how scientists discover the laws of nature.
You can purchase The Logical Leap: Induction In Physics from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Induction is one of the two types of logical argument; the other type is deduction. First described by Aristotle, deduction covers arguments like the following: (1) All men are mortal. (2) Socrates is a man. (3) Therefore, Socrates is mortal. Deductive arguments start with generalizations ("All men are mortal.") and apply them to specific instances ("Socrates"). Deductive logic is well understood, but it relies on the truth of the generalizations in order to yield true conclusions.
So how do we make the correct generalizations? This is the subject of the other branch of logic induction and it is obviously much more difficult than deduction. How can we ever be justified in reasoning from a limited number of observations to a sweeping statement that refers to an unlimited number of objects? In answering this question Harriman presents an original theory of induction, and he shows how it is supported by key developments in the history of physics.
The first chapter presents the philosophical foundations of the theory, which builds directly on the theory of concepts developed by Ayn Rand. Unfortunately for the general reader, Harriman assumes familiarity with Rand's theory of knowledge, including her views of concepts as open-ended, knowledge as hierarchical, certainty as contextual, perceptions as self-evident, and arbitrary ideas as invalid. Those unfamiliar with these ideas may find this section to be confusing. But the good news is that those readers can then proceed to the following chapters, which flesh out the theory and show how it applies to key developments in the history of physics (and the related fields of astronomy and chemistry). These chapters do a wonderful job at bringing together the physics and the philosophy, clarifying both in the process.
Harriman argues that as concepts form a hierarchy, generalizations form a hierarchy as well; more abstract generalizations rest on simpler, more direct ones, relying ultimately on a rock-solid base of "first-level" generalizations which are directly, perceptually obvious, such as the toddler's grasp of the fact that "pushed balls roll." First-level generalizations are formed from our direct experiences, in which the open-ended nature of concepts leads to generalizations. Higher-level generalizations are formed based on lower-level ones, using Mill's Methods of Agreement and Difference to identify causal connections, while taking into account the entirety of one's context of knowledge.
Ayn Rand held that because of the hierarchical nature of our knowledge, it is possible to take any valid idea (no matter how advanced), and identify its hierarchical roots, i.e. the more primitive, lower-level ideas on which it rests, tracing these ideas all the way back to directly observable phenomena. Rand used the word "reduction" to refer to this process. In a particularly interesting discussion, Harriman shows how the process of reduction can be applied to the idea that "light travels in straight lines," identifying such earlier ideas as the concept "shadow" and finally the first-level generalization "walls resist hammering hands."
Harriman's discussion of the experimental method starts with a description of Galileo's experiments with pendulums. Galileo initially noticed that the period of a pendulum's swing seems to be the same for different swing amplitudes, so he decided to accurately measure this time period to see if it is really true. Concluding that the period is indeed constant, he then did further experiments. He selectively varied the weight and material of the pendulum's bob, and the length of the pendulum. This led him to the discovery that a pendulum's length is proportional to the square of its period. Harriman notes the experiments that Galileo did not perform: 'He saw no need to vary every known property of the pendulum and look for a possible effect on the period. For example, he did not systematically vary the color, temperature, or smell of the pendulum bob; he did not investigate whether it made a difference if the pendulum arm is made of cotton twine or silk thread. Based on everyday observation, he had a vast pre-scientific context of knowledge that was sufficient to eliminate such factors as irrelevant. To call such knowledge "pre-scientific" is not to cast doubt on its objectivity; such lower-level generalizations are acquired by the implicit use of the same methods that the scientist uses deliberately and systematically, and they are equally valid.' One powerful tool for avoiding nonproductive speculations in science is Ayn Rand's concept of the arbitrary, and Harriman brilliantly clarifies this idea in the section on Newton's optical experiments. An arbitrary idea is one for which there is no evidence; it is an idea put forth based solely on whim or faith. Rand held that an arbitrary idea cannot be valid even as a possibility; in order to say "it is possible," one needs to have evidence (which can consist of either direct observations or reasoning based on observations).
Newton began his research on colors with a wide range of observations, which led him to his famous and brilliant experiments with prisms. Harriman presents the chain of reasoning and experimentation which led Newton to conclude that white light consists of a mixture of all of the colors, which are separated by refraction.
Isaac Newton said that he "framed no hypotheses," and here he was referring to his rejection of the arbitrary. When Descartes claimed without any evidence that light consists of rotating particles with the speed of rotation determining the color; and when Robert Hooke claimed without any evidence that white light consists of a symmetrical wave pulse, which results in colors when the wave becomes distorted; these ideas were totally arbitrary, and they deserved to be thrown out without further consideration: "Newton understood that to accept an arbitrary idea even as a mere possibility that merits consideration undercuts all of one's knowledge. It is impossible to establish any truth if one regards as valid the procedure of manufacturing contrary 'possibilities' out of thin air." This rejection of the arbitrary may be expressed in a positive form: Scientists should be focused on reality, and only on reality.
After discussing the rise of experimentation in physics, Harriman turns to the Copernican revolution, the astronomical discoveries of Galileo and Kepler, and the grand synthesis of Newton's laws of motion and of universal gravitation. But this reviewer found the most historically interesting chapter to be the one about the atomic theory of matter; this chapter is a cautionary tale about the lack of objective standards for evaluating theories. This story then leads to Harriman proposing a set of specific criteria of proof for scientific theories.
The final, concluding chapter addresses several broader issues, including why mathematics is fundamental to the science of physics, how the science of philosophy is different than physics, and finally, how modern physics has gone down the wrong path due to the lack of a proper theory of induction.
So, with the publication of Logical Leap, has the age-old "problem of induction" now been solved? On this issue, the reader must judge for himself. What is clear to this reviewer is that Harriman has presented an insightful, thought-provoking and powerful new theory about how scientists discover the laws of nature.
You can purchase The Logical Leap: Induction In Physics from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Objectivist Epistemology.. professional philosophers.. hands beating on walls..
It's all very moist! But I guess some people really get into reading this type of book. Not for me... I'm happy with saying "nothing can be 100% proven" and calling 2+2 a theory.
While the greek word philosophia literally means "friend of wisdom", the common-day philosopher tends to stare at their naval and wonder if they even exist more than they use anything which might resemble wisdom.
Meanwhile, the engineer is creating ways to save lives, feed millions, and travel to Mars.
I - personally - find it frustrating that we listen to the naval-staring philosopher, and forget what wisdom is in the same moment.
The first chapter presents the philosophical foundations of the theory, which builds directly on the theory of concepts developed by Ayn Rand. Unfortunately for the general reader, Harriman assumes familiarity with Rand's theory of knowledge, including her views of concepts as open-ended, knowledge as hierarchical, certainty as contextual, perceptions as self-evident, and arbitrary ideas as invalid. Those unfamiliar with these ideas may find this section to be confusing.
"Ayn Rand" and "philosophical foundations" should not be in the same sentence. If you like something Ayn Rand says, then I guarantee you can find another philosopher said it only in a far more intellectually rigorous manner.
Stopped reading right there.
Have we finally figured out they're the same thing? Or are we still flinging poop at each other?
Philosophy should keep its grubby hands away from physics.
"It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes." Douglas Adams
If Rand was so good at evaluating theories for arbitrariness and fitness, then how could she ever have promoted something as unrealistic as leaving the fate of humanity to laissez-faire capitalism? Had she never met humans before?
I can imagine people like Einstein and Hawking standing around blowing flecks of spittle in each others' faces arguing, and like one Anon. commenter said, "hands slapping the walls" and just being total fucking retards until they pick this specific book up. Ahhhhhh! Scientists don't hafta be reeeeTARDIIIIIIIDD any MOOOOOOOOORE
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Voodoo priests and priests of other stripes performed the modern role of physicists when we first climbed down from the trees. The modern scientific method evolved from the religions of the past.
And as humans are involved, both religion and science are approximations of reality. Not reality itself.
As far as the here and now, I'll take the scientific method over religion, but I see this as a continuum, not an quantum thing.
I think the role of the philosopher is to question everything. Sometimes it's a rigorous questioning (because, you know, physicists are philosophers too). Other times it's more of a general questioning, less scientific and more...well...philosophical. Philosophical statements should all begin with something like "What if..." or "Suppose that..." or "I've been wondering..."
Philosophy is not about fact. Don't say that modern science is no better than island superstitions. There's lots of philosophical quotes that fit here.
Check out Sokal's Hoax
Infuriate left and right
If only statements like this were problems of only philosophers. The real problem is that scientists are losing the sense of rigor in method as well.
The only litmus test for scientific method left nowadays is if you pass the review of your peers, that is couple of your colleagues from the same grant hunting boat.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Ayn Rand's concept of the arbitrary has its origins in the medieval ideas of substance and accident - the properties that define what something is versus things that don't (you wouldn't separate men into those with, and those without, spots on their bum and expect to deduce any real insights.)
So: sounds like rehashed old stuff from the mob who want to argue that there is no "physical reality".
I await a better one with interest; the present one has been under investigation for hundreds of years, and the root problem remains the initially unprovable hypothesis (which will eventually be found to be . It doesn't go away with hand waving.
Incidentally, the Whipple Museum at Cambridge is stuffed with unreadable and largely unread books on induction in the philosophy of science. It tends to be a career graveyard subject: scientists are too busy to care, philosophers of science just categorise them by principal fallacies.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
At least as a method of increasing knowledge...
"the initially unprovable hypothesis (which will eventually be found to be insufficient and be replaced with a refinement)"
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
With all due respect to the esteemed professor, his claim that there is no such thing as scientific method is a glorified case of the perfect being an enemy of the good.
Without constructing a straw man (I hope), his reasoning seems to run as follows (my paraphrase, and I'll accept that it's probably not 100% rigorous):
- scientific method requires objectivity
- perfect objectivity is impossible, because any specificity in knowledge, or setting aside of knowledge as unrelated to the question being explored, is by definition exclusionary of other knowledge which is potentially capable of engaging with the question.
- because perfect objectivity is impossible, the scientific method is ultimately a question of knowledge excluding preferences.
As I have an English degree in addition to a BS in CS, I'll state that I understand the reasoning but don't accept it. Scientific method doesn't require perfect objectivity, though. Instead, it has to capture the data necessary to addressing the question at hand. So if I'm measuring the time to transfer a given volume of data between sites, I'll look at (way oversimplified) available bandwidth, latency, jitter, existing traffic load, projected load, type of traffic, et cetera. The color of my neighbor's toddler's Crocs doesn't enter into it, as it's low probability that such data will affect either the results themselves or my observations.
If I was measuring the incidence of dirty feet (actual dirt vs perceived dirtiness) in toddlers, the existence of the Crocs is a factor, but unless the data show that the actual volume of dirt is related to the color of the Crocs, it's *still* not a factor.
The claim that exclusion of irrelevant data is exclusive and biased is crazy, and makes modern philosophers look foolish. It also feeds conspiracy theories espoused by people who don't understand how science works....
Induction is also what happens in many varieties of machine learning, which "really work" to some degree.
Hume taught us that induction is impossible. I think it would be completely impossible in a random universe, but since the real world is full of biases, physicists, ML researchers, and others can get a leg up on a number of inductive problems.
People like the articles' author seem to forget that "science" covers a lot of territory, and it is done by scientists - who are humans, with all the flaws and variation and abilities of humans. If you look at the diverse array of activities and people who do science, it is hard to believe that any single "theory" will accomodate all that
As noted philosopher Randall Munroe noted: "Science: it works, bitches."
How about some citations wise one?
Can you earn that "Informative" rating or just make arbitrary statements?
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
I have an inherent distrust of anyone that is basing inductive logic on the underpinnings of Ayn Rand's Objectivism, for the simple reason that I've never . . . *ever* . . . heard of Objectivism as being contributory to *any* philosophy of logic.
Quite the opposite in fact, I've seen logicians use her as examples of how people can be fooled by pseudo-logic which hides implicit assumptions under carefully concealed vagueness and frame shifting.
This smells more like an attempt to rehabilitate Ayn Rand as a genuine philosophical contribution than a book on logic.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
Scientist: "I cannot do much, but I can bake you a reasonably tasty fruitcake if you want?"
Philosopher: "No, I want God."
Emotions! In your brain!
Booo.
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. -- Kung Fu Monkey
or is the general Slashdot crowd getting progressively stupider? Karl Popper solved the problem of the "scientific method" nearly a century ago. It's simple.
The difference between science and non-science is that scientific theories are falsifiable, and non-scientific theories can not be falsified.
It's what separates astrology from physics; in that astrology, to make it blatantly obvious what falsifiability means, never puts its balls on the line.
Physics makes claims such that, if this theory is valid I don't care how many times you throw an apple into the air and it lands on the ground it still doesn't prove it right or correct or anything. I'm only interested if it ever DOESN'T fall to the ground as I predict it must.
How these theories come about, whether they are from observations, experiments, day-dreaming, drug-induced etc. it makes NO difference, as long as they can be falsified.
The end.
# watching all the ships come in, and then watching them go out again... /#
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Check out CBC's 24-part audio series: How to Think About Science.
Especially related to this book is the first episode, in which Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer discuss their 1985 book, Leviathan and The Air Pump. It's an examination of exactly how science is done.
This reminds me of a comic about an engineer at a philosopher conference.
All the so-called great philosophy questions can be answered definitively if you allow for the terms to be properly defined. The profession of the philosopher is to refuse adequate definition to these questions, so that they are unanswerable by design; their work is no better or more useful than religions assertions.
It does deal with "how confident are we that ______ can be used as a reliable model of reality?" On which point we have Bayes' Theorem and various less-than-precise fuzzy analogues such as the rubric we call "the scientific method."
So for those philosophers who worry about some sort of Ultimate Certainty Regarding Truth, I sometimes play the game but am not, in the end, worrying about whether it is Really True that my hands are typing on black keys with white lettering right now -- which is about the level you have to go to before "witch doctor truth" gets competitive with "quantum physics truth" for my attention.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
"first-level" generalizations which are directly, perceptually obvious, such as the toddler's grasp of the fact that "pushed balls roll."
Why is this a fundamental level? Isn't the observed situation a special case (particular ball, surface, pusher and so on) from which the toddler might use induction to conclude that all pushed balls roll?
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
The problem with books like this -- even by physicists -- is that they all too rarely study the right things physicists have done. Induction/inference in epistemology is put on a mathematically sound axiom-based foundation by Richard Cox and E. T. Jaynes. The former wrote a truly marvellous monograph entitled "The Algebra of Probable Inference" (readily available on Amazon). E. T. Jaynes arrived at a very similar result following instead from Shannon's Information Theory (which is a consequence of Cox's prior work, although this is not generally recognized) and later enthusiastically adopted Cox's axioms as the basis for his own opus major "Probability Theory, the Logic of Science". Both are available as a twofer on Amazon (or even as part of a threefer with Sivia's work on Bayesian Analysis).
They have one enormous redeeming value -- they don't refer to any work on philosophy including any by Ayn Rand. These are serious works on mathematics, logic, probability theory, and science, and they contain algebra, not handwaving. Absolutely amazing algebra, by the way. The sum total of philosophy in Cox is his highly restrained observation that his work seems to have solved Hume's basic problem -- deriving the theory of inference so it is on a sound mathematical footing.
Two other places where this general topic is reviewed: David Mackay's superb: "Information Theory, Pattern Recognition and Neural Networks" where he explores the consequences of Shannon's Theorem in cryptography and data compression and reliable storage, then moves on to argue quite persuasively that the human brain and neural networks in general function as a Bayesian inference engine; and my own book-in-writing "Axioms".
rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
It has been said that "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" (Sagan) or that "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" (Truzzi). However, is not the assertion that something -- anything -- is extraordinary itself an "arbitrary claim"? After all, the claim is normally made to dismiss something else as extraordinary. But what is the basis of the claim itself claiming something else is extraordinary? The problem is that the history of science is littered with broken paradigms that asserted what whatever replaced the paradigm was "extraordinary" and therefore could be ignored.
I give a single example. Medicine ignored the concept that stomach ulcers could be caused by bacteria because "of course" bacteria could not survive in such a hostile environment as stomach acid. In this case orthodox medicine claimed that only "extraordinary evidence" could satisfy the assertion that ulcers were caused by bacteria. In point of fact, the evidence was not particularly extraordinary -- it was proven that Helicobacter pylori was the main cause by swallowing it, getting ulcers, then using antibiotics to kill the Helicobacter pylori. And since people with ulcers were very motivated to find a resolution, a cure for most stomach ulcers was distributed and a Nobel prize in Medicine was awarded.
I suggest that the assertion that something is "extraordinary" and therefore requires extraordinary evidence (or proof) is itself an arbitrary claim and should not be regarded. And that we should use the same standards of proof or evidence for everything.
There's is no absolute certainty gravity will work 5 seconds from now. There's no certainty that anything we observe, or even how we perceive space and time is correct. There's no absolute proof reality even exists, that it might simply be in my mind - if I have a mind. Really the choice is between saying we know nothing and going with what our senses tell us to be true. And I will go with the latter not because I can prove it to be true, but because it's the only thing that can give me causality between action and reaction. If not I might as well jump off a cliff and instead of being plunged to my death I might be given eternal bliss because I took a leap of faith. Actually I wouldn't min if all the philosophers who doubt the world did.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Past results have always predicted future outcomes so far. ... You know, I'd probably better explicitly state that this is a joke, or people won't get it.
This is a really interesting question, but I think people are missing some of the points in the alleged criticisms "of the scientific method". It's not that it doesn't work, as it obviously does, but that there exist things for which it doesn't work. Want to know what to get your spouse for your anniversary? Hint: The correct path to answering this question does not involve the use of a control group. Some people get caught up in science as a method and try to use it in cases where it's not really the right tool. They also often don't understand what kinds of certainty science offers. It's entirely true that science is good at answering questions, but if you don't understand why and how, you can come to mistaken beliefs about how good it is, or what questions.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
...by the wildly rhetorical False Dichotomy of "physicists" versus "voodoo priests". Practically an Objectivist signature, that.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
If you look carefully at ancient religions, you'll see that they are concerned with astromicical observations (the heavens control our lives so we'd better pay attention) social conduct (thou shalt not kill) sanitation (huge chunks of old testament law, the whole kosher/halal thing, disposal of the dead) and much besides.
Their first cause - that there exist omnipresent/omnipotent (mostly) invisible being(s) who cause all this stuff to happen - was COMPLETELY wrong, and that paradiegm has proven difficult to expunge, but a large amount of (especially early) religion has proven to be the right thing for the wrong reasons.
It is not all that different than a better scientific theory replacing an earlier, less accurate one.
You are quite correct in disparaging religion in a modern context; it is frankly amazing that something so archaic is still taken seriously by anybody. But in the ancient world, religion was a powerful civilizing influence and laid the groundwork for modern science.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
While I'm sure there will be plenty of people to naysay the book simply because of the mention of the names Peikoff and Rand (and perhaps Feyerabend), it's important to understand that the book is at least attempting to get a discussion started about a very real problem in the philosophy of science. Namely, two seemingly contradictory facts present themselves simultaneously. On the one hand, we have the fact that science is "inductive" and thus by its nature, its statements are never concretely true. On the other hand, we see that science has an uncanny predictive ability, allowing us to lead the comfortable, technologically enhanced lives we lead today. The philosophers' Cartesian doubt is in direct opposition to the faith that we place in the laws of physics remaining more or less constant over time. The question of paramount importance here is, "Why is science so good at telling us the future if its results are always in doubt?" I don't propose to be able to answer this question, but I think the solution probably lies in the fact that science (typically considered a field driven by inductive reasoning) is highly dependent on mathematics (typically considered a field driven by deductive reasoning). In this view, it seems to me the more appropriate question to ask is not, "Why is science so good at telling us the future," but rather, "Why is the natural world described so beautifully in the language of mathematics?" This question, at least to me, is probably one of the most fascinating in the philosophy of science. But as I said before, I am not yet myself sure what the answer to these questions is or should be, but I'm at least glad to see that someone's seriously working on them and trying to bring new viewpoints to the table.
The simple explanation is that Philosophy of science is a Crank.
I've noticed that the biggest idiots out there are also the ones who resort to "Philosophy of Science" BS. When someone who claims scientific credentials starts citing a philosopher, they have immediately moved into the realm of crank-dom. That includes Penrose's every time he stops backing up his opinion with the math. And Hoyle who wasn't even very good at math, and this coming from someone with just a Bachelor's degree.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Science has gotten to where it is today by producing results. The philosophy behind it is like the critic who reviews the obvious success. He only serves to indulge his audience.
I hope Harriman discussed that the period of the pendulum actually does depend quite strongly on the amplitude of swing, a fact which was known when the first clocks were made by Christian Huygens. It is called "circular error".
Versus what? Leaving the fate of humanity subject to the power of those that control the coercive reigns of government? A power which is ultimately derived from the coercive use of force.
Government power should be employed to balance humanity's worst impulses and not allowed to be used as a vehicle to magnify them.
A free market is not possible without the rules that govern it and the police and courts to enforce those rules. But a free market, with rules that protect people from undo coercion and use of force, is the best tool society has in order to give everyone a chance to choose what they value and what values they wish to exchange.
Yes, there are issues of distribution of wealth to deal with, because wealth does tend to become concentrated over time and I think there is a role government should play in re-leveling the playing field in certain circumstances such as when individuals or entities begin to exercise monopolistic power. But when I hear people attacking the free market or capitalist system I am struck by the omission that ultimately they would seek to replace it with a system directly based upon the power of the gun, whereas the capitalist system provides one level of abstraction away from the power of the gun which allows for far more checks and balances in a society.
No system is perfect and there can be tragic violence in any society, but i think the most tragic outcomes over the last couple hundred years of history have occurred when power becomes more centralized and the use of force rather than use of currency to pursue values becomes the norm.
I read that as "great hunting boat", and thought you were talking about Vikings. I was really lost there for a minute.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
Was there ever a time when scientific rigour was higher than now? Or is it just the various media debacles surrounding modern science that makes it seem so? If scientific rigour is affected so negatively by "grant fishing", one has to ask oneself if that science had been done at all before there where grants in the modern sense. I have no idea how it looked in the time between "only nobles and merchants could afford the time to dabble much in science" and the "modern post-doc grant system", or if that dichtonomy even exists. Modern science involves a lot more material requirements, of course, and training and education certainly isn't free...
Emotions! In your brain!
# watching all the ships come in, and then watching them go out again... /#
As read by an Otis Redding cover band composed of robots... Otis preferred a more casual wording:
"Watching the ships roll in / And then I watch 'em roll away again, yeah"
If you actually want to learn about the history of science and get some good insight into how discoveries are made, you should read Asimov's guide to science. Some of the astronomy is a little outdated (although Asimov is very clear what are guesses made by then-contemporary scientists, and what facts are supported by strong evidence and math), but it goes into excellent detail into the process of major discoveries, the procession of different theories and why they were popular, what experiments changed perceptions.
If I could only take one book with me to the other side of the apocalypse, this the Guide To Science would be the one.
I tend to see science through the eyes of evolutionary ecology. Science is an ecosystem of theories feeding on data and producing results. Those that produce better and faster results survive. All new ideas are arbitrary mutations on some level. Science can function perfectly well with nothing but arbitrary ideas fed into it - but it can function *faster* if you prescreen the ideas. Time and money are finite resources, so you have to choose where you point your flashlight. Re-testing well-established ideas is not an efficient use of time unless there is value in improving the accuracy of predictions. Nor is entertaining every crackpot idea that has a backer. Put another way, the profession of science is a bit like farming - nature will evolve you a faster horse if you if you keep going out hunting, but through careful breeding you vastly improve the rate at which the breed emerges.
I'm pretty sure this isn't a new article. After all, we've known Faraday's law since 1831 - the electromotive force is equal to the negative time derivative of the magnetic flux through an area.
What? Read TFS? What kind of time do you think I have?
As someone who very nearly went into philosophy as a career, I can't say that I am too compelled to read this book. My personal focus was the evolution of philosophies, moral relativity, ethics, and dignity. Those I loved, but once I effectively mastered the roots and good numbers of interpretations, I noticed something robustly inane about those whose careers are philosophy: once processionals find a stance, all they do is argue about wording, implication, and hyperbole.
Almost any paper or book that comes out is prefaced with a billion (obvious exaggeration) of prior references which aren't sufficiently quoted and over-simplifications that give the reader only diminutive understanding of other thought processes. Once you become a philosopher by trade (author of philosophy books or a university professor), you must constantly make statements and defend them. You must read other people's assertions and try to tear them down. You must always try to be a winner!... That turned me off because I am someone who likes to work with people to refine ideas and potentially scrap work only to start from the beginning. That can't happen in a world of "publish or perish" or "survival by book sales".
My favorite example is how the *root* philosophy called "utilitarianism" is consistently used as a straw-man argument in summaries of "other philosophies that don't measure up" to whichever author's definition of the "right" ethic. Utilitarianism says, simply, that in every decision the "best" action is the one that produces the most pleasure and the least pain. That's where most people leave it and argue, "Well that means you could kill 10 people if it gives 100 people orgasms." *facepalm*
But later in the evolution of the philosophy of utilitarianism, the ethic morphed with the times. "Produces the most pleasure..." became "produces the most happiness". Even later, within the theory of Preference Utilitarianism, it was further honed to:
In every decision, one must consider the preferences of all those affected by each possible action. Preferences can be conscious or sub-conscious. (Sub-conscious because all heroine addicts actively want to feel the high of heroine, but sub-consciously want to be healthy even more so.) Note also that some preferences weigh heavier than others. The best action is the one in which the actor considers as preferences as possible by as many affected people as possible, and acts according to his/her best estimations of this "utilitarian calculus".
But stuff like that is never mentioned in the descriptions of utilitarianism because, well, the authors want to "win". Win at philosophy... jeez.
... not Paul Krugman. As best I can tell, this classic quote came from a blogger identified as Kung Fu Monkey. You also see it all over the internet, usually unattributed, but all the attributions I've found have been to KFM. If anyone has attributed it to Krugzilla, I can't find it.
I have a thought, that I am happy to share.....
Even ordinary people can have extraordinary thoughts.
In that everyone can think about this stuff. Not just Rand, Aristotle, and the like. No, the layman may make many more mistakes than the professional. Just as the amateur mechanic, photographer and programmer tends to make more mistakes than those professionally trained. And, yes, the school of hard knocks does count in this regards. However, I tend to find that people who do actually think about philosophy, regardless of their station in life, tend to be more humanistic in their approach.
Philosophy is hard work - it takes time and effort to actually 'think'. But, so does exercise. And, like exercise, the more you do it the easier it becomes. All of a sudden you realize that the arguments that most people make (both liberal and conservative) either pro or con to any particular issue are hollow, shallow, full of half-truths and lies.
Our society is such that, As the Jello Biafra tune "Message From Our Sponsor" declares - Finally, the thinking will be done for you.
The only litmus test for scientific method left nowadays is if you pass the review of your peers, that is couple of your colleagues from the same grant hunting boat.
That's nonsense. Peer review is not about proving something is correct, and no scientist interprets it that way. Peer review is primarily about checking that your papers are clearly written and describe your work well enough that other people can understand what you did. It also has a secondary function of helping journals pick the articles their readers are most likely to be interested in (and down the road, most likely to cite). The real test of your work is in other scientists' response to it. And that can take a long time to sort out - years or even decades. Science works slowly, but so what? Speed isn't the goal. The goal is to work out the right answer, however long that takes.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Chatter is initially bright and light hearted
But it’s not long before Storm gets started:
“You can’t know anything, Knowledge is merely opinion”
She opines, over her Cabernet Sauvignon
Vis-à-vis
Some unhippily empirical comment by me
“Not a good start” I think; We’re only on pre-dinner drinks ... or a window on the second floor.
And across the room, my wife widens her eyes
Silently begs me "be nice"
A matrimonial warning not worth ignoring
So I resist the urge to ask Storm
Whether knowledge is so loose-weave of a morning
When deciding whether to leave her apartment by the front door
I think I have a crush on Tim Minchin... maybe it's just the hair.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
> that physicists have no better claim to knowledge than voodoo priests.
http://xkcd.com/808/
*standard philosophical ego disclaimer: I as well majored in philosophy* Changing talk from "pleasure" to "preferences" doesn't change the basis of the argument. They only list such an "old" argument because it is all you need to know about the argument, that it is centered around a type of calculus that determines whether something is morally right or morally wrong. Others, myself included, do not believe such things can be quantified. I instead take a moral pluralism stance on ethics.
lol ayn rand new low for slashdot keep it real editors
... but I could not help noticing that it was the physicists, not the voodoo priests, who had made possible the life-promoting technology we enjoy today.
A hypothesis has been proposed that the important thing explaining the success of "science" isn't its logic or its experimental method. Rather, its real innovation was open publication.
Various historians have pointed out that the "scientific method" (or, more accurately, methods) have been discovered by people throughout history. Thus, lots of "primitive" societies have had locally developed medicine that is effective to various degrees, and such medicine is discovered by the expected observation and experimentation. But most of the groups that developed such methods had one serious limitation: They have generally been controlled by "guilds" that kept their information as a closely-held secret. This is especially clear with medicine, which has existed thoughout history, and is almost always a specialty that requires admittance to the exclusive club. That club might discover various useful medicines and medical techniques, but they rarely shared them with their neighbors, who were treated as competitors.
This attitude has pervaded our history. But, the hypothesis explains, in Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries, an unusual practice developed in Europe. Some of the scholarly types there, including the astrologers, doctors, engineers, and others, developed a practice of publishing their results and distributing the information to anyone who could afford a subscription. Most of the publications ended up in libraries, where they were permanently available to anyone who was literate. The result was that, for the first time in history, European scholars could easily build on each others' work, and nothing was forgotten because it was only known to a tiny group in some remote village.
Our modern science and technology, the hypothesis suggests, is merely a result of several centuries of the "standing on the shoulders of giants" approach, which is merely a rephrasing of the ethic of open publication.
An implication of this hypothesis, if it is true, is that the Western world's current attempt to privatize all knowledge by increasingly more repressive copyright and patent law should lead to a loss of the lead in scientific development. These legal restrictions amount to blocking the use of published information, ending the usefulness of the open-publication model of development. We've already seen what could be the start of this, with the reported uses of patent and copyright law to prevent competitors from building on the "IP" owner's knowledge. For example, medical researchers have been prevented from doing studies comparing a commercial drug with potential replacement drugs, by requiring a license from the owner of a patented drug to use it in scientific studies.
If this hypothesis is accurate, we'd expect scientific development to slowly migrate to countries that don't impose such restrictions on the practice of building on others' patented results. It might be interesting to see if there is evidence to support such predictions ...
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Er...no.
Most science relies on observation. You observe that all male lions have manes (or more famously, all swans are white), and conclude that males of the lion species all have manes. What happens, then, when you find one that doesn't? There are black swans in Australia.
In physics, you can only see local physics. What if the rules change in different parts of the universe? In fact, many theories of the origin of the universe (e.g. the inflationary theory) deal with physics changing shortly after the big bang. And they don't always have a good explanation for why. What if physics changes again? The only basis we have with which to say it won't is observation and guesswork. That's the problem the book is tackling. Can you really base science on mere observation and extrapolation (that is, induction)?
Answer, AFAIAK: Yes, for all practical intents. But this really bothers some people, and they're not all navel-gazing philosophers.
So, yeah, you set your straw man up in the wrong field.
Ayn Rand was missing an important brain organ called a foreskin, her tribe happened to think that the male foreskin was superfluous to requirements and evolution had made a mistake by providing human beings with one.
If we consider the hypothesis that logic is to the left of the decimal point and emotion is to the right of the decimal point and that the approximately 20000 nerve endings from the foreskin plumb into the limbic system, then removing this important brain organ, will make males less emotional and more logical, but sadly however will remove somewhat the variation that evolution needs if it is going to occur.
The reason I hypothesize that emotion is to the right of the decimal point is neurotransmitters are present in ratios, ratios are defined as fractional proportions not integers, reducing the limbic input from the foreskin reduces the complexity of these ratios.
If the people who mainly run our culture are mainly circumcised, then male circumcision produces its own vote for maintaining the status quo, in keeping in power the awful people who run our planet, circumcised people like Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Richard Branson.
I'm a paid philosopher, and I didn't see this mentioned so I thought I'd make it clear: Feyerabend is not a typical philosopher of science. The vast majority of philosophers of science (in the majority "analytic" tradition, anyway) take real science and its successes very seriously. Feyerabend was a deliberate provocateur, and it isn't even clear how seriously he took his own arguments; some suspect he was just pushing devil's advocacy to see how far it would go.
For those who think there is no place where philosophy can inform science, you should let the rest of us know how you already solved problems crucial to science, like the nature of measurement, why we pick simpler theories (and how precisely you measure simplicity), the line between science and pseudo-science (it is not "falsification" - at least, not straightforwardly), the apparently privileged direction of time, the source and nature of physical laws and causation, the nature of explanation, etc. We poor struggling philosophers would really like to know.
Besides, ancient doctrines and "primitive" myths appear strange and nonsensical only because the information they contain is not known, or is distorted by philologists or anthropologists unfamiliar with the simplest physical, medial or astronomical knowledge. Voodoo, Dr Hesse's pièce de resistance, is a case in point. Nobody knows it, everybody uses it as a paradigm of backwardness of confusion. And yet Voodoo has a firm though still not sufficiently understood material basis, and a study of its manifestations can be used to enrich, and perhaps even to revise, our knowledge of physiology. [Against Method, pp. 35-36]
Feyerabend thinks that science and myth are very similar and are of comparable worth. (And note I said comparable, not "equal"; the point is that there are arguments about values that can be had in this regard.)
Are you adequate?
The idea that science is based on induction (something I think many scientists would say is true) is, quite simply, based on a misunderstanding of how science actually works. Much of science doesn't function in anything like the manner of test-repeat-generalize, as is commonly assumed. In fact much science can't be studied inductively (geology, large portions of biology, including much of evolutionary science) because it simply isn't repeatable. Other science isn't based on induction because there aren't adequate tests for it yet (string theory is the obvious example).
In fact things like mechanistic reasoning (discovering a certain causal mechanism) seem to be much important to sciences like biology (as opposed to physics and chemistry). Biologists don't, in general, just run experiments hundreds of times and reason inductively about them. In fact, when you think about how that would go, it sounds ridiculous and nothing like actual scientific practice. Because it isn't.
Explaining how science actually does function (is there only one thing, "science", or are all of the sciences different?) is a very complicated and important question, even if many scientists don't find it interesting and choose to denigrate those who do study it.
And Ayn Rand was a shithead and yes, anyone who follows who is worse: they're credulous in addition to being shitheads.
Scientist: "I cannot do much, but I can bake you a reasonably tasty fruitcake if you want?"
Philosopher: "No, I want God."
That's OK, son. God absolves you of your intellectual duties. Recite the ontological argument five times and the cosmological argument five times.
Induction (not the mathematical kind, but generalization from particulars) and deduction are completely different beasts.
Induction works because the universe has been fairly kind to us so far by exhibiting regularity.
There is no /logical/ reason why anything should remain the same tomorrow as it is today: the charge of an electron, Planck's constant, etc.
Just our assumption that such things don't change has worked out so far.
Science is in fact logical (deductive) in its predictions in the sense that we can we add the regularity of the universe as a premise to the inductive argument to make it deductive:
"IF the universe will continue to permit us, as it has in the past, these generalizations from particulars, both in the direction of the (future behavior will be as past behavior) and space (the laws far away are as they are nearby), and IF we have such and such initial conditions, and such and such laws generalized from past observations of behavior, then the following shall happen ..."
If the universe suddenly does not permit the generalization, then the argument is still logically valid because of its deductive form.
One regularity of the universe is that rules derived from observing some situation tend to apply to similar situations: i.e involving events on a similar scale of time and space, energies on a similar scale, particle or other object sizes and masses of a similar scale, energy levels or field strengths of similar scales, and so on.
If you observe the motions of ordinary objects on Earth, you can make laws that apply very well to the motions of such objects, though perhaps not to sub-atomic particles, or bodies moving at relativistic speeds and so on.
We have been burned enough by generalizing to be suspicious of all generalizations. Are the fundamental constants the same everywhere in space? Etc.
But all such uncertainties can be stuffed in as assumptions to make the resulting claims deductive.
Then either Feyerabend is an idiot, or you are misquoting him, or you misunderstood his argument. The philosophy of science is an epistemology, a theory of knowledge describing what knowledge is, how it is acquired, and how we know we have knowledge.
Any system of logic, science included, requires some small set of foundational premises, some fundamental axioms. We cannot know whether these axioms are absolutely true, but we can compare epistemologies for their explanatory and predictive power and thus compare the quality of the epistemology and its knowledge.
If you accept that there is an existence beyond your own mind, and you can accept that you can perceive even a small fraction of this existence via your senses, then the axioms of the philosophy of science are satisfied, and science can help you understand your world reliably. I think we can all agree that these axioms are simpler and more self-evident than any axioms of the voodoo religion. Further, assuming these simpler axioms, the resulting body of knowledge has more explanatory and predictive power than the axioms of voodoo can produce. Therefore, there is no logical way to conclude that it is better to believe in voodoo than science.
Really, only a world in which I were the only individual and everything I experience were a fabrication, or a world in which our senses would never convey any sort of structure or regularity reflective of this outside world, could someone claim that science has no claim to knowledge. It's so unlikely as to border on the preposterous. Of course, we cannot "know" with absolute certainty that those axioms are true, but we certainly have a pretty good idea.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Peikoff is the current leader of the Ayn Rand institute. Nuff said.
but second I hit "Ayn Rand" I just stopped reading.
ar;dr
More music, fewer hits
>Ayn Rand
Stopped reading right there.
--
BMO
Feyerabend is taken as an extreme in the philosophy of science. Rand is taken as an amalgamation of Aristotle and Locke.
And your response is why I found it important to study the evolution of philosophy. Morality and ethics are different. Negative experience evolved into rules which evolved into mores which evolved into morality and even religion. The process was unintentional. Ethics were chosen from debate (internal and external), contemplation, introspection, and retrospection. The process was intentional. Where morality is bestowed and passed on, ethics are developed after conscious deliberation. Combining the two interchangeably, in my opinion, is like combining the religious faith that God will heal a dying man in a prescription for his care and rehabilitation.
(As an aside, I've always found it tragically humorous how some seriously developed ethics in the past have been so doggedly repeated and mandated that they've turned into religion. Jesus', Confuscious', and Buddha's philosophies on the treatment of others come to mind. The ethics lose a great deal of their value when they're downgraded to the mindless following of inherited morality and the recipients ignore the *reasons* for the existence of the standards they set forth.)
The change from the word "pleasure" to "preferences" unquestionably changes utilitarianism's frequent use as a throw-away straw-man. It was the shallow "pleasure" that people find so unappealing where the use of the word "preferences" went beyond the simple carnal to address the higher desires. It's the use of "preferences" that changes how you would choose to act when those affected are female Muslims as opposed to Christian males.
The effort in the consideration for others and their own preferences is the "good" in the calculus and the final result carries the final value of the action. While it is genuinely impossible to discretely quantify (using whatever unit of measurement) the "weight" a preference of a person has against another person's fully separate preference, we, as insightful, experienced, and empathetic people can make surprisingly accurate approximations of relative value.
What would you say to a measure of moral value that ran something like:
"bit-seconds of negentropy/free entropy"
so the general moral rule is "maximize bit-seconds of negentropy/free entropy".
Definitions:
"negentropy" or "free entropy" is defined for present purposes as a level of organization of matter and energy in a region which is beyond that organization
which would be statistically expected in the region, given the free-energy levels in the region, and given the tendency of things
to reach thermodynamic equilibrium or a lowest free-energy state.
"Amount of organization of matter and energy" is defined as:
A correct and comprehensive informational representation of the state of the matter and energy requires at least a certain number of bits of information.
(Or a program generating a correct representation of the state of the matter and energy requires at least a certain number of bits of information.)
The more complex the state of the matter and energy, the more bits are required to describe that state and/or to express a program of changes that
create that state from simpler states of the same amount of matter and energy. (Chaitin-Kolmogorov complexity theory, loosely paraphrased.)
Statistically, we would not expect complex states of matter and energy to persist, if there is sufficient free-energy in the environment to break
down the complexity over time via spontaneous entropic processes.
If the complex state of matter and energy is resistant (because of its particular form) to being broken down at the thermodynamically statistically
expected rate, then perhaps we should call the state of matter and energy a special and valuable state. The most straightforward examples of
such states are what we would call living systems, and the more complex the life-form or society of life forms, the higher it rates on the complexity
conserving scale of "bit-seconds of negentropy/free entropy".
So we should value life, and more particularly complex life, and more particularly we should avoid reducing it and avoid actions/inactions which
increase the probability that the amount or complexity of complex life persisting will be reduced, or increase the probability that the persistence
time will be reduced.
Via game theory etc this covers all the usual rules such as
"thou shall not kill"
---especially babies and young females (with lots of future bit-seconds to look forward to / generate),
---especially whole societies / species / ecosystems, which all embody massive amounts of sustained excess complexity (information).
"the golden rule - do unto others"
--- a basic requirement for additional societal layers of emergent persistent complex order.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Many people don't realize this because we're taught to almost blindly revere philosophy as an exalted intellectual activity, but Sturgeon's law applies equally to philosophy as anything else: 90% of philosophy is crap. Most philosophy "academics" are morons, as with any field (and how big someone's name is isn't necessarily an indicator).
It doesn't mean all philosophy is crap, which seems to be the implication in the summary; there is philosophy that is good and valuable and helps us lead better lives. The trick is learning to find the good amongst the bad.
It was also philosophers who laid the foundation of modern science and reason in the first place.
"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because philosophy is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water." - John William Gardner
economics is not science. psychology has only recently begun to resemble science, and that would be only what they call behavioral psychology. just to mention, sociology is also not science. marketing is not science.
the scientist may wonder about the light or human mental image formed possibly from our physical perception of light bouncing off their dinner steak, but we still eat it. The philosopher may starve while trying to figure it out whether or not the steak is real.
The philosophy of science is important in court cases over creationism. The question was raised in court over whether creationism is or can be "science". It raises the interesting question: "Can design be tested"? Is searching for sequential primes in DNA an example of testing creationism? Can artificiality be objectively measured? It's thus an important issue for society even if not to a busy scientist.
Table-ized A.I.
... it's taken a while for other people to catch up to this fact.
Universe is a closed loop, so there really isn't a "problem of induction" more like a misunderstanding of the nature of the universe itself.
Rand is really talking about the self-referencing _object oriented_ nature of the universe when she refers to "hierchies of concepts".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_oriented (see: inheritance)
That's because in reality we forget _we are the universe detecting itself_.
The problem comes from our idea that our mind is separate from reality and not unified with it, current scientific worldview operates on the "Separateness theory" of the universe, in reality the universe is holistic. This is how we can find roots of ideas and trace their history since ideas are _made from_ woven out of the structure of the universe itself.
Surprising to me, honestly. Goethe's "philosophy of science" is about as pragmatic as one can be regarding such explorations, and attempts to meander away from the foibles of analytical reductionism.
I have a degree in the Philosophy of Science, and in my four years of study, Goethe was also conspicuously absent.
I know that in the eyes of his contemporaries, his discussions on the observation of nature were thought of as BS, mainly because it was so anti-newtonian that no one could think his ideas and methods were worthwhile ("science for poets" is a way it is often described).
However, I've found his work to be playfully spanning the gap between empiricism and intuition, and I feel that many would benefit from learning more about his writings on these matters.
it's a belief system. a belief that an approximation of reality may just be a little more useful than a stab in the dark.
one man measure good and bad and triangulates scientific approximation.
another learns of good and bad from the first, and triangulates by lying and rising to power.
the third, the triptych believes the original approximation and the original lie and triangulates psychosis, truth beyond reality.
The second man uses this as an excuse to say it was all gods fault.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I am not Feyerabend adept but this book (at least as stated by the review) just present again, old tired, some how rudimentary, point of view, under Ayn Rand terms... and dont really resolve the finner aspects in anarchist epistemology criticism
Looks like this may be mainly one more objetivist promotional text
Doesn't any non-mocking mention of Ayn Rand automatically invalidate any and all arguments you may make in perpetuity?
:)
I was pretty sure that was a rule.
But on topic - its nice for people to be getting these rants out, now we are over the 80s (30 years late) and not everything has to be 'cool' it can be pleasantly airy and abstract again and not get shot down.
I don't actually agree with a lot of his points, but for once: I don't really mind.
If I don't give her enough credit, it's because I stopped reading her political essays after the third or fourth time in a row I saw her do the "people who disagree with my argument just don't get it!" thing. I'd say that's her fault, not mine.
The worst offense was when she said to the critics of her statement that "no rational woman would want to be President" that the only reason they were arguing with her was that they missed the word "rational" in her statement, and she then proceeded to redefine "rational" in just the perfect way to make her argument sound respectable...until you realized it all depended on rational being defined in that batshit-crazy way, and that she was telling you flat-out that you didn't understand reality unless you accepted her definition of "rational".
Also, all monopolies are created by government intervention and if you think even a single monopoly can ever arise in a laissez-faire market you're an idiot? That's such a big whopper it can almost be disproven a priori, yet she has the gall to insinuate it's self-evidently true. She didn't even introduce any historical evidence to support a causal link between government and monopoly in that essay, she just expected us to go with her assertion as though she were a world-renowned historian. Why the hell should I keep reading someone who writes like that, just to eventually get to the point where she (supposedly) engages in actual debate? If she gets a dearth of credit, it's only because she actively discourages it.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
The only litmus test for scientific method left nowadays is if you pass the review of your peers, that is couple of your colleagues from the same grant hunting boat.
That's nonsense. Peer review is not about proving something is correct, and no scientist interprets it that way. Peer review is primarily about checking that your papers are clearly written and describe your work well enough that other people can understand what you did. It also has a secondary function of helping journals pick the articles their readers are most likely to be interested in (and down the road, most likely to cite). The real test of your work is in other scientists' response to it. And that can take a long time to sort out - years or even decades. Science works slowly, but so what? Speed isn't the goal. The goal is to work out the right answer, however long that takes.
So it is a form of sampling...
I am anarch of all I survey.
The real test of your work is in other scientists' response to it. And that can take a long time to sort out - years or even decades. Science works slowly, but so what? Speed isn't the goal. The goal is to work out the right answer, however long that takes.
MAJIKTHISE: We are philosophers.
.
.
.
.
.
.
VROOMFONDEL: But we may not be.
MAJIKTHISE: Yes we are!
VROOMFONDEL: Sorry.
MAJIKTHISE: We are quite definitely here as representatives of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries, and other professional thinking persons.
VROOMFONDEL: Mm-hmm.
MAJIKTHISE: And we want this machine off, and we want it off now.
VROOMFONDEL: We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!
DEEP THOUGHT: Might I make an observation at this point?
MAJIKTHISE: You keep out of this metal nose.
VROOMFONDEL: We demand that that machine not be allowed to think about this problem!
DEEP THOUGHT: If I might make an observation
MAJIKTHISE: We’ll go on strike!
VROOMFONDEL: That’s right. You’ll have a national philosopher’s strike on your hands.
DEEP THOUGHT: Who will that inconvenience?
MAJIKTHISE: Never you mind who it’ll inconvenience you box of black legging binary bits! It’ll hurt, buster! It’ll hurt!
DEEP THOUGHT: [Booming] If I might make an observation All I wanted to say is that my circuits are now irrevocably committed to computing the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.
VROOMFONDEL: That’s a -
MAJIKTHISE: Ahhh! With -
DEEP THOUGHT: But, but the program will take me seven-and-a-half million years to run.
LUNKWILL: Seven-and-a-half million years?
MAJIKTHISE: Seven-and-a-half million years? What are you talking about?
DEEP THOUGHT: Yes. I said I’d have to think about it didn’t I?
So I guess we see science and philosophy aren't in conflict after all...
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
As someone with degrees in both Mathematics & Philosophy, I'll say this -- The Slashdot nerdrage when someone spouts off about science they don't understand, PHB-style, is volcanic. Yet, the Slashdot willingness to spout off about philosophy they don't understand, PHB-style, is equally monumental. A lot of the comments in this thread read as though coming from half-literate rednecks.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I think Paul Davies pretty well put this one to rest.
Having just taken philosophy of science myself, I can't but be amazed at the naivite of this. Induction as a reasoning method is indeed often used, but as an explanation of scientific method and scientific progress has been consistently discredited. While Feyerabend is basically right, though a tad extreme in his assertions, there are other schools: Popper's falsification, Kuhn's paradigms, Lakatos' research programs, etc. These can give one good insight into what science is. However, keep in mind all of this is still philosophy.
If you can afford to read only one book on philosophy of science, then make it Chalmers' "What is this thing called Science?".
What is the first thing you learn in geometry? That there are thing called points, lines and planes. You are told these things don't exist, but then they form the basis of the cartesian coordinate system. The Cartesian coordinate system is tremendously practical. The first thing they teach you in physics is that all measurements have uncertainty. But then the physics teacher starts talking about stuff in terms of the Cartesian coordinate system, and totally leaves uncertainty in the dust. What we need is teach uncertainty and the cartesian coordinate system honestly, like saying that the reason 0.9999999999...... = 1 is because the measurement of 1 is uncertain; specifically numbers, measuring devices and measured devices all vibrate by imperceptible amounts.
If you base your counting system on your fingers or stones, what assumptions are you making about a unit object? Even if one is counting elementary particles, like protons, are we sure that all protons are the same? When one discusses atomic weight, are we sure that there are different numbers of neutrons? Or could it be that some neutrons are heavier than other neutrons?
Also, teaching that there are an infinite number of geometrical squares is not practical, the best we can get in reality is square-like objects.
Do we make these "simplifications" for the sake of the teacher or the student? Wouldn't it be more interesting if we dealt with a messy world, instead of the ivory tower?
Do you prefer an ivory tower language like Java, or a messy language, like JavaScript?
I won't bother with many of the claims made in this review, and I'm not interested in this book, either.
The only evidence I need is that the author makes sweeping claims about philosophy of science by citing exactly one philosopher, the generally reviled Feyerabend. If the author, either of the review or the book, were serious, they would engage with the field as a whole. They would also know that philosophy of science, as practiced in analytic departments, has taken a strong stand against post-modern relativism and has able, articulate and competent writers with scientific backgrounds: Bas van Fraasen, Hilary Putnam, Nelson Goodman, Philip Kitcher, Harvey Brown, Eliot Sober, Nancy Cartwright, Patrick Suppes... I could go on.
There are real issues as well: about deductive and inductive logic, Bayesian confirmation, biomedical ethics, clinical trial structure, physical interpretation, but of course our authors prefer to dwell the disputed (and here, unsurprisingly, mischaracterized) claims of a single figure. A contrarian figure that, if anything, stands opposed to the mainstream consensus in philosophy of science, positivistic (e.g., the Vienna Circle, Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, Moritz Schlick, and so on) and post-positivistic: that science works, works best, and likely describes real, knowable entities.
It's plenty clear both authors don't have a clue what they are talking about. That Ayn Rand is brought up only underscores this. I suggest no one wastes their time on this obvious trash. If you want good, relevant, interesting philosophy of science, any of the above-mentioned authors would do fine.
It's as if neither Kuhn or Peirce had never written a word, this book. You could only have written it if you wilfully ignored all philosophers of science except Feyerabend. What about Lakatos, Musgrave, Hempel, Hanson, Popper, Latour, Laudan, Thagard? Just to name the A-List. And been completely in the dark about the division of induction/deduction/abduction pioneered by Peirce and followed through by many logicians since. And it leaves out the roles of Bayesian reasoning or model logics (non-standard logics in general). Or the Feyerabend of induction, Taleb. It's cringeworthy in it's bootstrapping approach to history of science and reasoning.
Given that this is slashdot there is no need to talk about NSLs, BBNs, black swans etc as they are frequent topics, but most people don't care about philosophy of science, so here goes
The big mystery in philosophy of science is how measurements and small theories continues to work through periods of high level conceptual change. Since the pioneering work on conceptual modelling in science by Karl Pearson, there has been an understanding that scientists model a simplified version of the world (because experiment taking in everything is impossible, the working scientist chooses what is important, and therefore ignores the rest). Grammar of Science by Pearson is at archive.org and still worth reading after a century. The formation of these conceptual model of the world play a vital role in any scientific work, and the rules by which they are constructed, and verified, are paramount even in the "soft" sciences such as history or sociology. Information science works with a conceptual model of the world that is pretty shaky and periodically revised - google Design Science for the "problems at the core of IS" stuff.
The problem (completely missed in this Randroid text) is that these models are constructed within an epistemological worldview, and that there are periods where there is a disconnect between models formed by participants in the worldview and experimental evidence goes against the groundwork of the model-forming. That's what's going on in all of the historical moment that this book brings up. And while collecting data (which is pretty much what they are talking about when they use the word induction) these conflicts are noticed.
Thomas Kuhn brought the historical treatment of scientific method to the fore in philosophy of science, and began with a detailed examination as to what actually happened at periods of time when such events happened, in particular the Copernican Revolution. You can read the scholarly debate in Isis if you have a JSTOR subscription where you work. This caused a lot of flurry as he was seen to be implying that the role science took for itself as absolute arbiter of truth was rocky (he wasn't), People created rejoinders to his work one way or another, and Feyerabend's writing and teaching (which was more or less continued in a pragmatist fashion by Laudan) can be seen as an extension of that kind of questioning - e.g. if science is so progressive, why was the ether taught in physics books?
Kuhn's work has been carried on in the direction he took by Paul Thagard who realised that there are such conceptual revolutions going on in everyone's life all the time. Studies on how children (and adults in some cases) learn about astronomy show that in many ways the history of science is recapitulated in the mind of the individual. His book Conceptual Revolutions revisits some of Kuhn's cases and looks at how the recreation of the conceptual framework is done in a way that permits the work of science to continue.
Given that Feyerabend stopped teaching in the late 1980s it shows the currency of this work. And turning from the renowned anarchic epistemologist to the Randian philosophical little-leaguer Peikoff beggars belief.
If as philosopher (world renowed my ass: appeal to authorithy) starts by saying science is false and as bad as voodoo priest, and OBVIOUSLY science as a self corrective process worked to bring us here, then you don't need to have a 101 level in philosophy to say the philosopher however good his argument are , is not speaking of this common things we call REALITY.
Frankly I am SICK of hearing philosopher telling me my work (and the one of other scientist) is as crap as somebody chanting to baron Samedi to put a curse on somebody, all while they enjoy the fruit thereof. No scratch that, I am SICK of people PAYING ATTENTION to what amount to people spending their time thinking of vacuous pure logic thematic, while at the same those guy have contributed next to NOTHING to the modern world well being in the last 1000 or 2000 years.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Minor nitpick, not about any of your ideas but about the words you use to express them: the phrase "philosophy of science" denotes the field of philosophical investigation which asks questions about science (what is it, does it work, how does it work, why does it work, etc); not the philosophical theory which underlies science, as you seem to be using it.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
What happens, then, when you find one that doesn't?
You publish a paper, get some new theories named after you and become well known. That encourages other people to make expeditions to hellish lands filled with poisonous monsters to find other interesting cases. Most likely a guy already published a paper ten years before saying there's nothing that forces all swans to be black from more in-depth research into them.
I'd just like to comment, to all of those arguing about why science is better than non-science of some sort or another, or more particularly why philosophy is worthless compared to science: you are doing philosophy right now. Yes, even if you are arguing against philosophy, in doing so you are doing philosophy; specifically metaphilosophy, which is the philosophical investigation of philosophy itself.
Any investigation, argument, or debate, taken far enough, has to end up in philosophy. Your fellow physicists may disagree about some details of your pet theory but agree with your underlying assumptions and methods; other physicists from very different schools (e.g. string theorists vs anyone else) might disagree with some of those underlying assumptions and methods but at least you all agree on some general, vaguely defined scientific methodology, something critical, mathematical, empirical, and realist. But if you're trying to defend such science against voodoo or whatever, you end up doing philosophy, just as much as if you wanted to defend voodoo against science.
Philosophy is not a side in any battle: it is the battlefield. Some people on that battlefield, such as most philosophers in the English-speaking world since around World War II, are trying vigorously to build a defense of science, sometimes by directly battling those who attack science, and sometimes by suggesting ways science itself could change to be less vulnerable to attack. You might say philosophers produce nothing of value in the world, but we're the ones down here coming up with ways to convince people that what you scientists are doing is worth all those grant checks that fund your work. You might as well say that pure mathematics is worthless; why, it doesn't even make claims about the world at all, all it does is provide abstract tools for scientists to do the real work with...
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
If you look at the diverse array of activities and people who do science, it is hard to believe that any single "theory" will accomodate all that
Thank you for sharing your "theory" about the subject.
Causing problems and pain results in more complexity than not doing so, therefor ...
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Now, I firmly believe in the philosophical soundness of science, and I look with extreme skepticism on hard line constructionists who claim that material truth is somehow subject to social forces, which seems about as sound to me as saying that nightfall is caused by defects in the human eye. Though the comparison of scientists to voodoo priests does tend to overstate the division (since no one who is halfway reasonable will seriously make such a contention, for the reasons the author of this book seems to understand. It smacks slightly of a straw man argument) there indeed runs a real and dangerous constructionist bend to philosophical thinking. And by the same token I disagree with scientists like Feynman (and don't get me started on Feynman) who refuse to justify, to themselves, the theoretical underpinnings of science on the grounds that its none of their business. Science is a car not worth driving if you don't know how the engine is put together.
In short, I believe that science and philosophy are essentially combined endeavors, and that each has a great deal to teach the other. The segregation and aggressive humantization of philosophy in this century notwithstanding, philosophy can be relevant and objective on a level approaching that of physical science (or at least biology!) if it is practiced correctly. It is only the exact nature of this connection that requires probing, and urgently so.
While I believe in the existence of this connection, Ayn Rand is certainly not it. It pains me to see so many scientists and mathematicians fall prey to the tinker-toy Artistotelian phenomenology which Ayn Rand half-heartedly gropes at, because not only does it give philosophy a bad name in science, but it gives science a bad name in philosophy. The arguemtns against the inscrutability of material facts are NOT put forward with any kind of elegance or especial insight, but are rather a frothy-mouthed reduction of the very fringe of objective epistemology. In serious philosophical circles, Rand is looked upon with a great deal of skepticism, and building a scientific philosophy out of her flawed phenomenology is as ludicrous as deriving the scientific method from a Gary Schwartz paper.
I attribute no small amount of the stigma which physicalist thought is accorded to Rand's sloppy philosophy. While philosophers like Foucault present well reasoned foundations for their ideas, and adhere to basic rules of academic decorum, Rand is little more than a jumped-up pamphleteer, and when given the choice between which school to subscribe to, no one with a reasonable philosophical aesthetic would join Rand's cult of amoral ideologues unless they had some ulterior purpose. It is very difficult then, to be an epistemological objectivist and be taken seriously when all the work in that school is done by Randian "objectivists."
In short, I applaud the author's desire to secure a sound fundamental theory for science, since it seems unlikely to me that science should be the one human enterprise devoid of a mature rational analysis, but lament his rather sophomoric choice of Rand as a model. More refined scientific philosophers have made far better arguments for the validity of scientific enterprise than Rand's pigtail-pulling anarchy ever could, and it makes the discussion happening on this board largely moot in that the arguments go deeper than the mere fact that objective epistemology/phenomenology is being posited, something far smarter people than me have ably defended.
Wow. What a waste of a life.
Here's a hint for writers and readers in the US: in the rest of the world, Ayn Rand is not considered a serious philosopher or writer.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. -- Kung Fu Monkey
I read the Illuminatus Triology, you insensitive clod!
Greetings! If scientist A, who has been at a site of interest, tells scientist B where to look for something interesting - should scientist B take a look at the suggested location or take an arbitrary look for the application of his old knoledge to synthesise som possible new knoledge of some news that by chance can occur or both? How about combining science, politics, art, knowledge.. and speculation for producing philosophy. The same goes for science as such, however the speculation would have a lesser scope.. And yes, induction and deduction rely on definition (choice, axiomatisation, decision) /Bliiixt
"Peer review is primarily about checking that your papers are clearly written and describe your work well enough that other people can understand what you did. "
First of all to clarify: I was speaking about natural sciences: physics, biology and chemistry. Though you are absolutely correct describing necessary conditions of review, the list is missing the main component: in addition to "to understand", readers should be able also to reproduce the results of the paper (at least theoretically), if the paper is experimental, and theoretical conclusions of the theoretical paper need to be verifiable or falsifiable.
And that is what is missing a lot nowadays.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
"Was there ever a time when scientific rigour was higher than now? " Depends on how you measure.
Scientific community (in hard sciences, at least) is the machine which ultimate result is scientific knowledge.
If the machine's power grows far enough, it's net productivity could grow even if the effectiveness of it goes down with time. In other words, less and less percentage of published work is useful in any way, but because the total volume also grows, the useful part still grows albeit at lesser speed.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
This is an addition to my previous post because the barest notion of Galileo in sway to his contemporaries makes me gag. I'm not buying Feyeraband's dipshit tractor beam, as explained by a well conceived post that actually shed more light than most others.
Technically, by Newtonian standards, even the moon orbits the sun more so than the Earth.
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/98953.html
First of all, the moon's attraction to the sun is double the moon's attraction to the earth. Then check out the last comment that the moon's orbit is nowhere convex inward (to the sun). He's putting forward the claim that in geometric terms, the moon's path would be right at home on the Indy left-turn 500. Even if a car pulls to the outside to pass, the left turn still dominates. They could do this without ever turning the steering wheel in the rightward direction. More left, or less left. Drift a bit to the inside, then a bit back to the outside. That's how the moon orbits the sun.
If a pair of cars take turns passing each other on the outside, are they orbiting each other, or are they still going around the track? From the car cam perspective, your main adversary looks a lot like a satellite.
In the king's ballroom, your GF thinks you're spinning around her, but your host thinks you're spinning around the dance hall. How Galileo ever sorted this out in his mind is beyond me.
“It is pleasant, when the sea is high and the winds
are dashing the waves about, to watch from shore the struggle of another.”
Lucretius, 99-55B.C
But does causing problems and pain result in more homeostasis within complexity, which is really what the measure
being proposed seeks to optimize? No.
Causing problems and pain would in general reduce life expectancy, unless it is in some kind of a training scenario,
where the goal is to increase the future ability to overcome bigger problems.
The word complexity is very tricky.
In general, anything involving a high degree of randomness may be considered complex, but we only care about particular
complex forms, those which manage to conserve (embody) a large degree of embodied information. Note that it does not count
for a complex form to be conserving a different long bitstring in each moment. That's just a highly entropic state by any other
name. The complex form has to be conserving (embodying) precisely the SAME sequence of bits i.e. the same information,
over time, to meet the "bit-seconds of free entropy" value test.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
When voodoo gets us to the moon, or doubles average human lifespan in just a century, or allows organs from corpses to save the lives of people who are sick, then maybe Feyerabend can say voodoo and science are comparable. Science has actual worth. Myth is entirely valueless. Science involves logic. Myth involves making shit up. They are unrelated, and we can only compare them in the sense that science makes it clear that myth has been useless for tens of thousands of years.
In short, Feyerabend is an imbecile and no one should pay any attention to him.
I'm afraid I cannot accept your attempted distinction, or rather, I do not think the distinction is meaningful. Science is itself a sophisticated philosophy, so speaking of the "philosophy of a philosophy" is self-referential and rather meaningless. The definition of science is self-descriptive and sufficient to answer all questions about what it is, what it does, how it works and why, etc. (indeed, any philosophy covering metaphysics and epistemology must be so descriptive).
However, science's fundamental connection with philosophy is lost on most people, and so we speak of the "philosophy of science" to frame the discussion on the foundations of science, the epistemology and metaphysics, rather than the body of knowledge that science has produced.
Incidentally, it turns out that Feyerabend really is an idiot:
Simply because we have not yet devised an adequate set of fixed rules to classify science does not imply that there are cannot be any such set of rules. Science is full of "working definitions" that serve only as placeholders to further the discussion. At some point when the terminology itself is inhibiting progress, these working definitions must then be revised, generalized, or restricted. The original, imprecise definitions still have utility however, and to throw up our hands and call it all relative and meaningless because all knowledge is not self-evident or known a priori is the height of stupidity IMO.
Incomplete knowledge does not imply the absence of any knowledge. Working definitions are merely reflective of incomplete knowledge, not the absence of knowledge as Feyerabend implies.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Are you saying there is no dichotomy?
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
Your objection seems to overlook the point I was making.
There is a philosophy, as in some system of philosophical propositions, underlying science; or you could say that science is an application of some set of philosophical conclusions; or that science, as an ideal methodology rather than as a sociological phenomenon (you might say "true science" as opposed to "whatever people labelled 'scientists' do"), is itself a philosophy in this sense. This is actually a contentious claim, but we both seem to agree on it so I won't harp on that.
Then there is a branch of philosophy which asks "what are the philosophical underpinnings of science?", since it appears that many proposed answers to that question can be met with examples of things we want to call great examples of science, yet which do not adhere to the proposed philosophical characterization of science. And then, as you say, epistemology and metaphysics etc say things about the validity of those underpinnings, once we identify what they are. I personally don't think this is such a tricky philosophical problem to name what philosophical assumptions distinguish science from non-science (in other words I disagree with Feyerabend), and that epistemology and metaphysics do us just fine in investigating whether and why those assumptions are the right ones, but nevertheless there is a field devoted to the study of such things anyway.
The only point I'm making is that while the phrase "the philosophy of science", understood literally outside any history of that phrase, could be used to mean the first of those two things ("whatever philosophical positions actually underly science"), which is how you seem to be using it, it is traditionally used to mean the latter thing ("the branch of philosophy asking questions about what underlies science") instead, and that talking about "the philosophy of science" meaning the former thing could throw off someone used to it meaning the latter. As a philosopher by training, I am accustomed to the latter sense of the phrase, and so I had to reread your post a few times before I understood that you weren't talking about a field of philosophical investigation, but rather about a set of philosophical propositions. I thought it might be helpful to point that out for future usage in case other people end up more confused than I was.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
I understood your meaning, but perhaps I didn't explain myself well as to why the "science" and "philosophy of science" are the same.
Suppose we have an axiomatic formal system X. X must fully define what it means to be an entity within X, and the relations between all entities of X. So to speak of the "philosophy of X" seems like nonsense to me, because X is self-descriptive and self-contained. Any question you may wish to pose about X, is answered by X's definition.
The only exception are questions about how X may relate to other formal systems. So we may create a formal correspondence from X to Y, but this is an embedding of X within Y, so the domain of discourse is now Y. This is not then "the philosophy of X", but a theorem in Y [1].
No matter how you frame it, the domain of discourse is well-defined. A term like "philosophy of X" poses questions either already answered by the definition of X, or tries to interpret X in the context of some other domain which has not been specified by "philosophy of X". Thus "philosophy of X" is ill-defined at best.
This is how I see science and "philosophy of science". Either all such questions are answered by our current working definition of science, and so philosophy of science frames the discussion on its underpinnings as I used it, or the question is framed in an implicit context outside the domain of science, and so we are discussing something altogether different.
[1] This is how computer science works in the domain of logic and programming languages, arguably, the most rigourous fields of philosophical discourse.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
It still seems to me like you are not understanding the distinction I am making, and are making other (valid) points tangential to what I'm talking about. You are working from the assumption that we have a single agreed-upon uncontroversial definition of "X", and that "the philosophy of X" just means "X"; when my point is that "philosophy of X" is often used to mean the field which asks "what is the definition of X?"
I agree completely that whatever philosophical principles genuinely underlie the activity called science ("the philosophy of science" in the sense you seem to use it), those principles are identical with science proper, and science proper is defined as just those principles, whatever they are. I further agree that asking if and how those principles are justified is, as you say, doing something else, namely epistemology and metaphysics. But that's not what I'm talking about.
There are many people who ask, rightly or wrongly, "what is the correct definition of science?" Many philosophical questions are really quests for proper definitions. Nobody sat down a few hundred years ago and said "We define 'science' to be such-and-such, and henceforth will proceed to derive conclusions from these definitions", thus beginning the field of science. We just have all these people who came to be called scientists who are all doing this activity which we came to call science; but what it is that all those scientists do, which distinguishes what they're doing from other things that we don't call science, seems to be a contentious question, at least amongst some people. The field of study wherein people ask these questions is what it usually called "the philosophy of science". The phrase is analogous to "the philosophy of education" or "the philosophy of art"; those phrases don't name a particular philosophy that underlies education or art, but rather a field that asks questions about philosophies which may underlie some form of education or art.
A clearer analogue would be if you said something like "economics says that [whatever]", instead of something like "the theory of supply and demand says that [whatever]". Economics itself doesn't say anything, it's a field of study; various theories in that field say things. One is a set of questions; the other is a set of answers. Everything you're saying is true of "the philosophy of science" understood to mean the set of answers to epistemological and metaphysical questions which constitute the scientific method; my point is that it is not usually understood to mean that amongst people who commonly use that phrase, but rather they use it to mean the set of questions about "what answers to epistemological and metaphysical questions constitute the scientific method?"
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."