Sounds fine to me. Trouble with your hypothesis is, controlled experiments aren't required for the scientific method.
Very interesting. I had always thought that controlled experiments were required for the Scientific Method. I may have been mistaken.
It seems that this source suggests that systemized observations are at the core of the Scientific Method as first laid out by Francis Bacon.
I said before that those who are unwilling or unable to perform experiments are not Scientists. Perhaps a better formulation is those who are unwilling to do experiments are not Scientists. I'm sure Astrophysicists would love to be able to experiment, and perhaps, who knows, one day they will.
Homeopaths and the like have antipathy toward experimentation at all. I think we can guess why this is.
Perhaps I shouldn't have allowed my distaste for Social Scientists to bleed over into fields like Biology and Astrophysics.
And, perhaps I should study my terms more thoroughly before I start ranting.
All in all, I'd have to say Science has correctly labelled Evolution as a Scientific Theory. It has evidence to back it up, but the evidence is insufficient to push it beyond Theory.
I have to agree. I've come around on this issue quite a bit from the discussion in this thread. Others have pointed out the possibility of experiments that could possibly disprove Evolutionary Hypotheses.
Unlike the Creationists, I'm not hung up on the fact that a Theory isn't proven. Few are, actually. I would have to agree that the Theory of Evolution is definitely a Scientific Theory.
I think we'll just have to disagree. I believe that Science, as a discipline, actually originated with the Scientific Method. Certainly, the great leap in progress in Science can be traced to the Scientific Method, I believe.
Observations and Inferences are what Aristotle did and he was later found to be wrong on just about every count with regard to the natural world. A good reason to be extremely skeptical of Philosophers in general, BTW.
Systemizing knowledge, observation and inferences can be done by all sorts of crackpots, like Homeopaths, for example. That alone doesn't make it Science. If you refuse or are unable to test your ideas with the Scientific Method, it's not science, in my book.
That just makes it more difficult to make discoveries in those fields; it doesn't make the field something other than science.
Why is it so important to you that a field of inquiry be identified as a Science? I'm more concerned that without requiring the Scientific Method, we're allowing a lot of crackpots to call themselves Scientists.
Of course, you are actually in the mainstream here with your definitions and I'm out tilting at windmills as long as most Universities have Political Science and other similar departments.
Some people like to draw the line at "Hard" and "Soft" sciences, putting Political and Social Sciences in the "Soft" category. If such a line was to be drawn, I'd like to make it between the experimental Sciences and those that just study things. Most nobody would agree with me, however, that Astrophysics is a "Soft" Science.
Well, that is an eye opener. Although, I don't see that any of these examples were the result of a set experiment to prove or disprove the process of speciation, although it certainly suggests that such an experiment could be devised.
Again, I do feel these things are worthwhile fields of study, but they aren't Science.
Well, then I have to tell you that there is no science all, i.e. any science is not scientific enough. Strictly speaking no experiment can be repeated with exactly the same conditions. It is a common misconception that physics proves something, believed often even by scientists. Strict proof possible only in math within limited domain of logic. So, I suggest you relax your definition of science.
You seem to be laboring under the misperception that I believe that Science produces certainty. It doesn't.
What Science does give us are a set of procedures by which to attack problems. It's more, to my mind, than just trying to be objective or systemizing knowledge or thinking really hard, or even wearing white lab coats. If that's all it was, then all sorts of crackpots could claim to be Scientists.
I believe that Science has at its core the Scientific Method. Others appear to feel differently.
As I said above:
If we don't insist on strict definitions wrt to Science, aren't we leaving ourselves open for all kinds of Psuedo-science and soft "Sciences" that don't come anywhere near the traditions of Science?
Now, why do you feel the definition of Science should include fields where the Scientific Method is not applied?
It might be even neater for them to have 5 or 6 Linux distros on ghosted CDs all customized for these configurations, ready to install in the store.
That might impress people about Linux. Oh, new computer user? Here, have this Lycoris. Linux purist? Would you like Gentoo or Slackware? Server? Have this RedHat or SuSe. All installed free of charge while you go shop the store.
Maybe have Lycoris or similar on all the machines already, to make it really easy for people who don't know enough to express a preference. Maybe try to sell those people the distro itself, so they can have the 30 days of handholding.
I agree with you, except I think that your definition of "experiment" is too narrow.
You seem to be thinking that an "experiment" is something set up in a laboratory, with controlled conditions, etc. A more appropriate definition, I think, is simply making predictions about what will happen, and seeing if your predictions are correct.
I don't know why you would think that I was limiting experiments to the laboratory. I agree with what you are saying here.
Or would you argue that astrophysics is not a science, since we lack the capability to manipulate stars, and all of astrophysics is based on observation?
Yes, Astrophysics is not Scientific, as far as I know - by my definitions, because we lack the ability to perform controlled experiments. It may be based on good Science in so far as we can perform Physics experiments, but Stellar interiors and the like are just observation and inferences.
Again, I do feel these things are worthwhile fields of study, but they aren't Science.
If we don't insist on strict definitions wrt to Science, aren't we leaving ourselves open for all kinds of Psuedo-science and soft "Sciences" that don't come anywhere near the traditions of Science?
Getting back to the article, is it any wonder that people are confused about the place of Science when there are Sociologists doing polls and calling the result science and Psychology departments performing ESP research?
Huh, actually, it's funny that ESP research may be one of the more Scientific endeavours of Psychology departments, because of the possibility of performing controlled experiments, these days (along with Operant Conditioning, Behaviorism and the like).
Unfortunately, evolution skeptics have latched onto this to call these minor changes, and claim that just because minor changes are possible, that doesn't mean major ones are. I.e., one might claim that it is possible for a dark skinned person's children to evolve into light skinned people, but it isn't possible for an amoeba to evolve, no matter how long it takes, into a human. They ignore that every change that happens at the time seems to be a minor change, but over the course of millions of years, those changes add up. The evolutionary result of a creature a thousand generations from now might be unrecognisable.
For the reasons you mention, I think we're on firm Scientific ground with various experiments that show differentiation in populations due to selection.
The Origin of Species through Evolution has not been supported Scientifically, AFAICT. Surely, we can make inferences, but inferences are the start of Scientific enquiry, not their end.
As to what Evolution skeptics may or may not use to advance their arguments, I can only say that I thought the hallmark of Science is skepticism. To my mind, with regard to speciation, a Scientist would say "we don't know".
I do recognize that those Evolution skeptics you refer to typically have a Political Agenda that's anti-Scientific, against serious enquiry and against even presenting information which tends to support Evolutionary Hypothesis in educational settings. That does seem to be good enough reason to oppose those skeptics. I'm concerned that we're diluting the term Science in the process, however.
Of course, the term Science is so meaningless today when all fields of study arrogate to themselves the mantle of Science. Maybe my concerns in the area of correct labeling of Science with regard to Evolutionary theory is a bad place to focus.
Actually, it is the scientific method. Instead of using lab tests to produce a result, your observations are the experiments.
When you have to depend only on observations, then your conclusions are necessarily limited to those "experiments" that have been run and data that is available.
For Science, you need to be able to devise precise experiments with specific predictions.
Observation, classification, inference are all good ways to learn about the world, but they aren't the scientific method.
I'll say it again. I do think that all these fields need to be studied. I don't think they are Science. The fact that today's Scientists are willing to call any study Science, including things like Social Sciences, etc. has helped lead to the confusion that the common man has about Science, I believe.
I will grant that it is certainly harder to disprove evolutionary theories because they don't make such precise predictions as theories like relativity, quantum mechanics, and the theory of gravity which have equations that give a precise mathematical description of what the theory states is going on. But they still make predictions and still can be falsified through evidence.
I'm looking forward to the day that Evolutionary Theory can enter into the domain of Science with Experiments that would back it or falsify its tenants. Just because something is very difficult does not mean that it should not be attempted.
Until that day, it's not Scientific. To my mind, it has the same status of other Studies like Political Science or Economic Science.
Hypothesis: Selective breeding will cause a species to evolve
Support the Hypothesis: Selective breeding caused the species to evolve
Refute the hypothesis: Selective breeding did not cause the species to evolve.
People have been performing selective breeding experiments for thousands of years, and I'm not aware of any speciation that has resulted as a result of those experiments. Are we to conclude from this that "Selective breeding did not cause the species to evolve" and thus Evolutionary Theory is flawed?
What? You need more time for speciation to occur? Then you need to say up front what time limits, what your goals of the experiment are clearly. Otherwise, you are just running the experiment long enough to produce the result you want going in. That's not Science, in my mind.
This is where the principle of uniformitarianism (the present is the key to the past) and observational science come into play....
It is the same with evolution. We can look at various animal groups throughout the fossil record and see how features change as time goes on. We can look at the bone structures of a group of animals and see they are similar. We can even test for breeding compatibility. In the cats, a tiger and a lion are still compatible to produce offspring. But again, we can't set up an example Earth and wait for live to evolve.
This is all reasonable and I find it compelling, but that's not the test.
It's not the Scientific Method. It's more akin to the natural world observations of Aristotle, which were largely overturned by Galileo and the Scientific Method.
The great advance that brought us out of the Dark Ages was the Scientific Method. I'm not willing to sink back into guesswork and inferences and label it Science. Most Scientists would disagree with me, which I guess makes me a crackpot. So be it.
Most Scientists don't use experiments, as I pointed out.
Would be fascinated to hear about your experimental design which could disprove the Theory of Relativity, and the Laws of Gravity and Thermodynamics. Thanks.
Relativity - Devise an experiment that measures the Energy of a mass. If that Energy != Mass*c^2 (and is reproducible and all measurements are verified) then Special Relativity is disproven. I know that Mass is defined in terms of Energy these days, but if it were shown to sometimes be c^1.8 and at others c^2.03 or +(some other factor), then Special Relativity would have to be revised, which is the same as being refuted, in it's present form.
Gravity - Devise an experiment that measures the acceleration of a body toward another due to gravity. If the measure indicates differing values for G for different scale of masses, then the Laws of Gravity do not hold.
Thermodynamics - I can't think of one. Thermodynamics is not a classical Scientific Theory, it's based on Reasoning alone. Entropy and the like are observed to hold, but aren't really based on experiment. I trust the laws of Thermodynamics, and like Math, which seems to have great applicability, I'll use them, but I don't consider it a Scientific Theory.
To devise an experiment to disprove Thermodynamics, you'd have to have a completely closed system, impossible in the real world, as Thermodynamics are statistical laws and might not hold for arbitrarily limited domains. This is why creationists say that Evolution violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics, they don't understand that one area can become more ordered while others can become less ordered at the same time.
Evolution cannot be tested by science, either. To my mind, Evolution is not a Scientific Theory in that you cannot devise an experiment where the results would disprove the tenants of Evolutionary Science. Experiments that can disprove a theory are, to me, the foundation and tradition of the Scientific Method.
I know I'm going to catch hell for saying the above. I know that people are going to trot out all kinds of modern Philosophy of Science types who say that I have it wrong, but I just disagree.
Now, do I believe that Evolution Theory is true and that evolution occurs? Yes, I do. I believe a lot of things that aren't based on Science. I believe that OJ is guilty, for example, based on reasoning. Reasoning alone does not make for Science. Reasoning is what Aristotle did concerning the natural world, and it led him to false conclusions more than once.
You see, one of the problems with Science today, to my mind, is the dilution of the term. We have lots of "Scientists" who rarely, if ever, use the Scientific Method. Holistic Scientists, Environmental Scientists, Cosmological Scientists, Computer Scientists, Mathematical Scientists, Social Scientists, Political Scientists, yes and even Evolutionary Scientists. These, and a hundred others, are terms developed to embue those fields with the highly respected aura of Science and the funding that comes with it.
I'm not opposed to those things being studied, but is it any wonder that people are confused about what Science is? When you abandon the Scientific Method for expediency, it's just a short step to ESP, UFOs and other such claptrap.
Many years ago, I worked as a Systems Manager for Social Scientists and I can tell you, these people built their theories on what they wanted to believe, interpreted their data to make it come out right and discarded any data that didn't support their views. I talked with them about it and they admitted that it was typical in Social Science and it was extremely rare for a Social Scientist to come up with a result that they didn't believe going into an enquiry. That's not Science, that's what the psuedo scientists that are being criticized by this report do. Does this report criticize Social Scientists?
Gateway should also leverage their storefronts. A lot of people think that it's too geeky and they might get arrested or something for carrying an mp3 player.
With simple live demos and free samples, they could show people that it's just music, in a new flexible, portable fun format and explain it all to them face-to-face.
Britney would sing about how great Pepsi tastes...
Yeah, unlike now, when Britney sings about how great Pepsi tastes, the Backstreet Boys wail about BK Burgers and BB King sells Arby's Roast Beef sandwiches.
Seriously, I don't see it being much different. A lot of commercial interests distribute sampler CDs as promotions and those songs don't have ads in them, although there might be ads on the CD itself. That's hardly any different than Radio or TV is today.
Now, if the music industry tells the radio conglomerates not to air artist so-and-so, you can bet your arse you won't be hearing them. If Bobby and Sally Teen USA don't see your awesome band on MTV, then they could only ever be "a great underground band". To Gateway's dismay, great underground bands don't usually make top dollar like the industry puppets do [save your counter-examples, I speak in the general sense].
Granted, any new music that Gateway tries to introduce will have an uphill battle, just like all new music does, but that doesn't mean that they'll starve trying to do this. You know, there is a point between In*Sync and invisible where a lot of music could thrive.
A lot of great music has always gotten around by word of mouth, anyway. I think we're ready for a backlash against the RIAA and Gateway using their storefronts for this might be just the thing to fire it up.
I'm convinced that if somebody put up an alternative Video Music channel to MTV that just played music, all the time, that it would be successful. In fact, MTV was under anti-trust investigation awhile back because they bought up a smaller rival that did just that.
Up front, I'd like to say that many of your criticisms are potentially valid. I really didn't expect to be moderated up so highly. I wouldn't have called it insightful, but maybe interesting.
That being said:
The Marketing/Sales organization always had access to Technicians who really understood the product. Engineers tend to blow smoke about the capabilities and shortcomings of the products. Sales could also tap the best Tech Support people for pre-sales technical support.
Huh? Marketing people never blow smoke and we all know how much they understand.
Well, I was referring to how much Tech Support understands about a product, not Marketing. In my experience, Tech Support has the greatest understanding of the products of anyone in the organization. Marketing should be tied in as closely as possible to this understanding.
But I suppose it's better to put tech support under people you say are dishonest than it is to put them with people who can answer questions when they have to.
Where did I say that Marketing/Sales people are dishonest? Maybe I would agree that Marketing & Sales attracts more dishonest people, but the best in the field are honest people, in my experience.
Tech support needs to be it's own organization with heavy ties to engineering and lots of good advice for marketing. A good tech support group can educate marketing like it does the real users of software. It can also make nice bug reports and helpful suggestions of what customers want from their sofware. Marketing people need to be concerned with the sofwares cost and capability relative to competing software. They might contribute to sofware design by making reports on why people prefer other software and what they like.
Why all the barriers? I have seen why you don't want Tech Support reporting to Engineering. If you do that, the Engineers bury the Tech Supporters concerns about the product and raid their ranks. Marketing and Tech Support need to work hand in glove, I think. Hey, I wouldn't be opposed to Marketing reporting to the Tech Support organization if that makes you feel better.
Sales/Marketing was intensely interested in these areas as it helped them design products.
Did your company have an engineering group? What did they do? The other problem with that company you used to work for is that it might have been driven entirely by marketing.
Now, this is spot on. That company was driven by Marketing and Sales and that was a problem. I should have said that it helps Marketing/Sales with good input into products, but in that company, Marketing did design the products and Engineering realized the designs. That relationship wasn't as good as it could have been.
If you put Tech Support under an Engineering organization then the best Tech Support people always get moved into Engineering before long, leaving only script readers manning the phones.
If you don't give tech support a place to go, they will work for someone else. If your training sucks that bad, and it's driven by marketing, and it does not encourage and reward personal growth, it will fail and you will be working somewhere else. Oh wait, you don't work there anymore do you?
The lack of growth in the position had nothing to do with my leaving, but the company being so Sales driven may have...
Tech Support people in that company had lots of opportunities for growth, however. They could go into Technical Sales, pre-sales support, they could be application engineers, consulting with customers on using the products, they could become Product Managers in Marketing or they could apply for open Engineering positions also. Engineering didn't just automatically get their pick of the best and the brightest like I've seen most places, however.
That's funny that you should say that. The most sensible place I ever saw Tech Support placed in an organization was under Marketing.
I once worked for a company where the Tech Support organization reported to Sales/Marketing. I thought it was odd at first, but there were a lot of advantages. If you put Tech Support under an Engineering organization then the best Tech Support people always get moved into Engineering before long, leaving only script readers manning the phones.
The Marketing/Sales organization always had access to Technicians who really understood the product. Engineers tend to blow smoke about the capabilities and shortcomings of the products. Sales could also tap the best Tech Support people for pre-sales technical support.
Sales/Marketing in this organization also had the Technical Services arm. People from Tech Support could be called upon for custom programming, configuration and consultation with customers for hire. Sales/Marketing was intensely interested in these areas as it helped them design products. It may have led to some products being in somewhat of a kit form, with the real capabilities being revealed through programming, but that was actually a plus. Everybody benefits from having programmable, flexible products.
Sales/Marketing has the most stake in Tech Support, as Tech Support works with the same customers that Sales/Marketing does. A customer who is unhappy with Tech Support is going to take it out on his Salesman. You might as well put the Sales organization into a position to actually do something about bad Tech Support. I've seen many companies where the Salespeople implicitly air the internal dirty laundry about Tech Support, complaining about how they can't get anything out of them, but promising to take it to the highest levels. Better to have the Sales people working together with Tech Support rather than as finger pointers.
Finally, if you think about it, it made Sales/Marketing realize that supportable products was the best way to get and keep customers. There was less Sales/Marketing blaming and rushing Engineering and more working together to get out a product that could be supported.
I've not seen that hierarchy elsewhere. This company had other problems, but that was one of thier highlights.
DOS isn't directly compatible with those no there's no need for strict compliance. I don't know about the others, but DOS programs parse the parameters themselves, so it can be any character(s).
DOS programs may parse parameters themselves, but MS would have had to change the parsing of all their original CLI programs to support '/' easily as a path separator.
Windows today maintains the '/' command parameter in many places, like shortcuts and the RUN dialog, so it wouldn't be trivial to change even now that command.com is deprecated.
Yeah we use VMS where I work... talk about verbose. its1:[really.fugly] only slightly$improved with $ymbol$.
Those slight$improvements in VMS are usually what are called logicals, not symbols. Logicals are really cool, actually. In Unix you have to do the same thing with symbolic links, which aren't as flexible.
OTOH, logicals really are a necessity on VMS because of the drive:[directory.subdirectory] syntax, where they are less useful on a system like Unix.
Using \ instead of/, since \ requires a longer reach on standard keyboards (while this is true, I'm not really serious about this)
I think they fucked that one up - since \ is the path separator, / should be a valid filename character (since it's common (English) punctuation). But since / is invalid in filenames, yes it should be the path separator.
Drawing from Windows' MSDOS roots, which draw from MSDOS' CPM roots, which draw from CPMs' DEC-System 10 roots (CPM was developed by Gary Kildall on a DEC-System 10), the '/' character was already burned in the CLI. '/' is used in DEC Operating Systems, CPM and MSDOS for command parameters.
Unix and it's derivatives uses '-' for this, which sometimes makes it interesting dealing with filenames which start with '-' in them in Unix.
Having drive letters is also borrowed from DEC, but they weren't single letters there, but rather names followed by a colon.
Slashdot Mirror
Very interesting. I had always thought that controlled experiments were required for the Scientific Method. I may have been mistaken.
It seems that this source suggests that systemized observations are at the core of the Scientific Method as first laid out by Francis Bacon.
I said before that those who are unwilling or unable to perform experiments are not Scientists. Perhaps a better formulation is those who are unwilling to do experiments are not Scientists. I'm sure Astrophysicists would love to be able to experiment, and perhaps, who knows, one day they will.
Homeopaths and the like have antipathy toward experimentation at all. I think we can guess why this is.
Perhaps I shouldn't have allowed my distaste for Social Scientists to bleed over into fields like Biology and Astrophysics.
And, perhaps I should study my terms more thoroughly before I start ranting.
Thanks.
I have to agree. I've come around on this issue quite a bit from the discussion in this thread. Others have pointed out the possibility of experiments that could possibly disprove Evolutionary Hypotheses.
Unlike the Creationists, I'm not hung up on the fact that a Theory isn't proven. Few are, actually. I would have to agree that the Theory of Evolution is definitely a Scientific Theory.
Observations and Inferences are what Aristotle did and he was later found to be wrong on just about every count with regard to the natural world. A good reason to be extremely skeptical of Philosophers in general, BTW.
Systemizing knowledge, observation and inferences can be done by all sorts of crackpots, like Homeopaths, for example. That alone doesn't make it Science. If you refuse or are unable to test your ideas with the Scientific Method, it's not science, in my book.
Why is it so important to you that a field of inquiry be identified as a Science? I'm more concerned that without requiring the Scientific Method, we're allowing a lot of crackpots to call themselves Scientists.
Of course, you are actually in the mainstream here with your definitions and I'm out tilting at windmills as long as most Universities have Political Science and other similar departments.
Some people like to draw the line at "Hard" and "Soft" sciences, putting Political and Social Sciences in the "Soft" category. If such a line was to be drawn, I'd like to make it between the experimental Sciences and those that just study things. Most nobody would agree with me, however, that Astrophysics is a "Soft" Science.
Well, that is an eye opener. Although, I don't see that any of these examples were the result of a set experiment to prove or disprove the process of speciation, although it certainly suggests that such an experiment could be devised.
Well, then I have to tell you that there is no science all, i.e. any science is not scientific enough. Strictly speaking no experiment can be repeated with exactly the same conditions. It is a common misconception that physics proves something, believed often even by scientists. Strict proof possible only in math within limited domain of logic. So, I suggest you relax your definition of science.
You seem to be laboring under the misperception that I believe that Science produces certainty. It doesn't.
What Science does give us are a set of procedures by which to attack problems. It's more, to my mind, than just trying to be objective or systemizing knowledge or thinking really hard, or even wearing white lab coats. If that's all it was, then all sorts of crackpots could claim to be Scientists.
I believe that Science has at its core the Scientific Method. Others appear to feel differently.
As I said above:
Now, why do you feel the definition of Science should include fields where the Scientific Method is not applied?
That might impress people about Linux. Oh, new computer user? Here, have this Lycoris. Linux purist? Would you like Gentoo or Slackware? Server? Have this RedHat or SuSe. All installed free of charge while you go shop the store.
Maybe have Lycoris or similar on all the machines already, to make it really easy for people who don't know enough to express a preference. Maybe try to sell those people the distro itself, so they can have the 30 days of handholding.
You seem to be thinking that an "experiment" is something set up in a laboratory, with controlled conditions, etc. A more appropriate definition, I think, is simply making predictions about what will happen, and seeing if your predictions are correct.
I don't know why you would think that I was limiting experiments to the laboratory. I agree with what you are saying here.
Yes, Astrophysics is not Scientific, as far as I know - by my definitions, because we lack the ability to perform controlled experiments. It may be based on good Science in so far as we can perform Physics experiments, but Stellar interiors and the like are just observation and inferences.
Again, I do feel these things are worthwhile fields of study, but they aren't Science.
If we don't insist on strict definitions wrt to Science, aren't we leaving ourselves open for all kinds of Psuedo-science and soft "Sciences" that don't come anywhere near the traditions of Science?
Getting back to the article, is it any wonder that people are confused about the place of Science when there are Sociologists doing polls and calling the result science and Psychology departments performing ESP research?
Huh, actually, it's funny that ESP research may be one of the more Scientific endeavours of Psychology departments, because of the possibility of performing controlled experiments, these days (along with Operant Conditioning, Behaviorism and the like).
For the reasons you mention, I think we're on firm Scientific ground with various experiments that show differentiation in populations due to selection.
The Origin of Species through Evolution has not been supported Scientifically, AFAICT. Surely, we can make inferences, but inferences are the start of Scientific enquiry, not their end.
As to what Evolution skeptics may or may not use to advance their arguments, I can only say that I thought the hallmark of Science is skepticism. To my mind, with regard to speciation, a Scientist would say "we don't know".
I do recognize that those Evolution skeptics you refer to typically have a Political Agenda that's anti-Scientific, against serious enquiry and against even presenting information which tends to support Evolutionary Hypothesis in educational settings. That does seem to be good enough reason to oppose those skeptics. I'm concerned that we're diluting the term Science in the process, however.
Of course, the term Science is so meaningless today when all fields of study arrogate to themselves the mantle of Science. Maybe my concerns in the area of correct labeling of Science with regard to Evolutionary theory is a bad place to focus.
When you have to depend only on observations, then your conclusions are necessarily limited to those "experiments" that have been run and data that is available.
For Science, you need to be able to devise precise experiments with specific predictions.
Observation, classification, inference are all good ways to learn about the world, but they aren't the scientific method.
I'll say it again. I do think that all these fields need to be studied. I don't think they are Science. The fact that today's Scientists are willing to call any study Science, including things like Social Sciences, etc. has helped lead to the confusion that the common man has about Science, I believe.
I'm looking forward to the day that Evolutionary Theory can enter into the domain of Science with Experiments that would back it or falsify its tenants. Just because something is very difficult does not mean that it should not be attempted.
Until that day, it's not Scientific. To my mind, it has the same status of other Studies like Political Science or Economic Science.
Support the Hypothesis: Selective breeding caused the species to evolve
Refute the hypothesis: Selective breeding did not cause the species to evolve.
People have been performing selective breeding experiments for thousands of years, and I'm not aware of any speciation that has resulted as a result of those experiments. Are we to conclude from this that "Selective breeding did not cause the species to evolve" and thus Evolutionary Theory is flawed?
What? You need more time for speciation to occur? Then you need to say up front what time limits, what your goals of the experiment are clearly. Otherwise, you are just running the experiment long enough to produce the result you want going in. That's not Science, in my mind.
This is all reasonable and I find it compelling, but that's not the test.
It's not the Scientific Method. It's more akin to the natural world observations of Aristotle, which were largely overturned by Galileo and the Scientific Method.
The great advance that brought us out of the Dark Ages was the Scientific Method. I'm not willing to sink back into guesswork and inferences and label it Science. Most Scientists would disagree with me, which I guess makes me a crackpot. So be it.
Most Scientists don't use experiments, as I pointed out.
Relativity - Devise an experiment that measures the Energy of a mass. If that Energy != Mass*c^2 (and is reproducible and all measurements are verified) then Special Relativity is disproven. I know that Mass is defined in terms of Energy these days, but if it were shown to sometimes be c^1.8 and at others c^2.03 or +(some other factor), then Special Relativity would have to be revised, which is the same as being refuted, in it's present form.
Gravity - Devise an experiment that measures the acceleration of a body toward another due to gravity. If the measure indicates differing values for G for different scale of masses, then the Laws of Gravity do not hold.
Thermodynamics - I can't think of one. Thermodynamics is not a classical Scientific Theory, it's based on Reasoning alone. Entropy and the like are observed to hold, but aren't really based on experiment. I trust the laws of Thermodynamics, and like Math, which seems to have great applicability, I'll use them, but I don't consider it a Scientific Theory.
To devise an experiment to disprove Thermodynamics, you'd have to have a completely closed system, impossible in the real world, as Thermodynamics are statistical laws and might not hold for arbitrarily limited domains. This is why creationists say that Evolution violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics, they don't understand that one area can become more ordered while others can become less ordered at the same time.
Support maybe, but refute?
Evolution cannot be tested by science, either. To my mind, Evolution is not a Scientific Theory in that you cannot devise an experiment where the results would disprove the tenants of Evolutionary Science. Experiments that can disprove a theory are, to me, the foundation and tradition of the Scientific Method.
I know I'm going to catch hell for saying the above. I know that people are going to trot out all kinds of modern Philosophy of Science types who say that I have it wrong, but I just disagree.
Now, do I believe that Evolution Theory is true and that evolution occurs? Yes, I do. I believe a lot of things that aren't based on Science. I believe that OJ is guilty, for example, based on reasoning. Reasoning alone does not make for Science. Reasoning is what Aristotle did concerning the natural world, and it led him to false conclusions more than once.
You see, one of the problems with Science today, to my mind, is the dilution of the term. We have lots of "Scientists" who rarely, if ever, use the Scientific Method. Holistic Scientists, Environmental Scientists, Cosmological Scientists, Computer Scientists, Mathematical Scientists, Social Scientists, Political Scientists, yes and even Evolutionary Scientists. These, and a hundred others, are terms developed to embue those fields with the highly respected aura of Science and the funding that comes with it.
I'm not opposed to those things being studied, but is it any wonder that people are confused about what Science is? When you abandon the Scientific Method for expediency, it's just a short step to ESP, UFOs and other such claptrap.
Many years ago, I worked as a Systems Manager for Social Scientists and I can tell you, these people built their theories on what they wanted to believe, interpreted their data to make it come out right and discarded any data that didn't support their views. I talked with them about it and they admitted that it was typical in Social Science and it was extremely rare for a Social Scientist to come up with a result that they didn't believe going into an enquiry. That's not Science, that's what the psuedo scientists that are being criticized by this report do. Does this report criticize Social Scientists?
This brought to you:
I'm sorry, but anyone who is so intolerant of others gets in my "Foe" list immediately.
Uhhh... That's pretty intolerant of me, isn't it? Darn, it won't let me add myself to my Foe list!
With simple live demos and free samples, they could show people that it's just music, in a new flexible, portable fun format and explain it all to them face-to-face.
Wait, I'm not Jordan Hubbard... Not even the same middle initial. What was I thinking? Uhh, never mind.
Yeah, unlike now, when Britney sings about how great Pepsi tastes, the Backstreet Boys wail about BK Burgers and BB King sells Arby's Roast Beef sandwiches.
Seriously, I don't see it being much different. A lot of commercial interests distribute sampler CDs as promotions and those songs don't have ads in them, although there might be ads on the CD itself. That's hardly any different than Radio or TV is today.
Granted, any new music that Gateway tries to introduce will have an uphill battle, just like all new music does, but that doesn't mean that they'll starve trying to do this. You know, there is a point between In*Sync and invisible where a lot of music could thrive.
A lot of great music has always gotten around by word of mouth, anyway. I think we're ready for a backlash against the RIAA and Gateway using their storefronts for this might be just the thing to fire it up.
I'm convinced that if somebody put up an alternative Video Music channel to MTV that just played music, all the time, that it would be successful. In fact, MTV was under anti-trust investigation awhile back because they bought up a smaller rival that did just that.
Up front, I'd like to say that many of your criticisms are potentially valid. I really didn't expect to be moderated up so highly. I wouldn't have called it insightful, but maybe interesting.
That being said:
- The Marketing/Sales organization always had access to Technicians who really understood the product. Engineers tend to blow smoke about the capabilities and shortcomings of the products. Sales could also tap the best Tech Support people for pre-sales technical support.
Huh? Marketing people never blow smoke and we all know how much they understand.Well, I was referring to how much Tech Support understands about a product, not Marketing. In my experience, Tech Support has the greatest understanding of the products of anyone in the organization. Marketing should be tied in as closely as possible to this understanding.
Where did I say that Marketing/Sales people are dishonest? Maybe I would agree that Marketing & Sales attracts more dishonest people, but the best in the field are honest people, in my experience.
Why all the barriers? I have seen why you don't want Tech Support reporting to Engineering. If you do that, the Engineers bury the Tech Supporters concerns about the product and raid their ranks. Marketing and Tech Support need to work hand in glove, I think. Hey, I wouldn't be opposed to Marketing reporting to the Tech Support organization if that makes you feel better.
Did your company have an engineering group? What did they do? The other problem with that company you used to work for is that it might have been driven entirely by marketing.
Now, this is spot on. That company was driven by Marketing and Sales and that was a problem. I should have said that it helps Marketing/Sales with good input into products, but in that company, Marketing did design the products and Engineering realized the designs. That relationship wasn't as good as it could have been.
If you don't give tech support a place to go, they will work for someone else. If your training sucks that bad, and it's driven by marketing, and it does not encourage and reward personal growth, it will fail and you will be working somewhere else. Oh wait, you don't work there anymore do you?
The lack of growth in the position had nothing to do with my leaving, but the company being so Sales driven may have...
Tech Support people in that company had lots of opportunities for growth, however. They could go into Technical Sales, pre-sales support, they could be application engineers, consulting with customers on using the products, they could become Product Managers in Marketing or they could apply for open Engineering positions also. Engineering didn't just automatically get their pick of the best and the brightest like I've seen most places, however.
I once worked for a company where the Tech Support organization reported to Sales/Marketing. I thought it was odd at first, but there were a lot of advantages. If you put Tech Support under an Engineering organization then the best Tech Support people always get moved into Engineering before long, leaving only script readers manning the phones.
The Marketing/Sales organization always had access to Technicians who really understood the product. Engineers tend to blow smoke about the capabilities and shortcomings of the products. Sales could also tap the best Tech Support people for pre-sales technical support.
Sales/Marketing in this organization also had the Technical Services arm. People from Tech Support could be called upon for custom programming, configuration and consultation with customers for hire. Sales/Marketing was intensely interested in these areas as it helped them design products. It may have led to some products being in somewhat of a kit form, with the real capabilities being revealed through programming, but that was actually a plus. Everybody benefits from having programmable, flexible products.
Sales/Marketing has the most stake in Tech Support, as Tech Support works with the same customers that Sales/Marketing does. A customer who is unhappy with Tech Support is going to take it out on his Salesman. You might as well put the Sales organization into a position to actually do something about bad Tech Support. I've seen many companies where the Salespeople implicitly air the internal dirty laundry about Tech Support, complaining about how they can't get anything out of them, but promising to take it to the highest levels. Better to have the Sales people working together with Tech Support rather than as finger pointers.
Finally, if you think about it, it made Sales/Marketing realize that supportable products was the best way to get and keep customers. There was less Sales/Marketing blaming and rushing Engineering and more working together to get out a product that could be supported.
I've not seen that hierarchy elsewhere. This company had other problems, but that was one of thier highlights.
DOS programs may parse parameters themselves, but MS would have had to change the parsing of all their original CLI programs to support '/' easily as a path separator.
Windows today maintains the '/' command parameter in many places, like shortcuts and the RUN dialog, so it wouldn't be trivial to change even now that command.com is deprecated.
Those slight$improvements in VMS are usually what are called logicals, not symbols. Logicals are really cool, actually. In Unix you have to do the same thing with symbolic links, which aren't as flexible.
OTOH, logicals really are a necessity on VMS because of the drive:[directory.subdirectory] syntax, where they are less useful on a system like Unix.
I think they fucked that one up - since \ is the path separator, / should be a valid filename character (since it's common (English) punctuation). But since / is invalid in filenames, yes it should be the path separator.
Drawing from Windows' MSDOS roots, which draw from MSDOS' CPM roots, which draw from CPMs' DEC-System 10 roots (CPM was developed by Gary Kildall on a DEC-System 10), the '/' character was already burned in the CLI. '/' is used in DEC Operating Systems, CPM and MSDOS for command parameters.
Unix and it's derivatives uses '-' for this, which sometimes makes it interesting dealing with filenames which start with '-' in them in Unix.
Having drive letters is also borrowed from DEC, but they weren't single letters there, but rather names followed by a colon.