Empiricism, as a discipline, still carries a lot of baggage since it had a somewhat explosive separation from religion several hundred years ago. In some sense you could say that it is biased against any claim that is said to over-ride a reductionist paradigm, which would include many of the claims in theism
evidence...
- Thread starter Mr. Hamtastic
- Start date
There you go, big words that I don't feel like looking up. Empiricism-reductionist paradigm. Are there any dumb people words that would fit there?
here's a light hearted spoof of reductionist paradigm
Its the idea that absolutely anything can be reduced to tactile things (or like sense of sight, sense of hearing, etc etc).
Empiricism is the discipline that deals those tactile things.
So in a reductionist paradigm, one would be accepting that empiricism is the highest means for determining truth. Needless to say, while empiricism is certainly valid in certain circumstances (for instance I look both ways before I cross the road) there are numerous philosophical problems when one expands it as an effective container for "reality").
In science, the biggest winner on the empiricism front is physics with advancement going on in leaps and bounds. This has effectively revolutionized other sciences, such as biology (for instance it is commonly held, by some biologists, that life arises from a mere chemical combination, despite the complete lack of evidence for this claim) . Whether or not biology is simply a sub-branch of physics seems to have been glossed over in the wake of so many advancements and discoveries on the molecular level.
Not sure if this makes things any clearer ....
Biased evidence shouldn't be dismissed, necessarily. It might have merit under a more objective eye. Mythology, whether it's religious or secular, still has cultural value and can be used to examine ancient culture if only to evaluate its literature.
Mod note: trolling posts by Roman and LG deleted.
This is typical rhetoric (a type of argumentation that doesn't rely on logic) that is used by those that favor 'post-modern' ideas -the idea that whatever people want to think is true can be as long as they believe it; that truth is discovered through belief.
Such trolling is anti-science.
I would say there is reliable data and unreliable data. Reliable data is repeatable and observer independent. Unreliable data would be something like an anecdotal report of some phenomenon that isn't repeated. Bias comes in when we interpret the data as supporting a favored hypothesis. This is usually overcome in science by independent confirmation, repeated experiments, and peer review of the methods, procedures, and conclusions.
Simon Anders
Valued Senior Member
which you said in reference to....
Which seemed like a surly request for paraphrase. Which is not trolling nor anti-science.
So... Pickett's charge falls under unreliable? Seems like most experiential things would be unreliable by your definition. And wouldn't peer review of a biased piece of data be done by people with a similar bias, thus negating the accuracy? Do pro-evolution biologists have their work critiqued by creationist-biologists? Deliberately?
SA-I understood that to be more of an aside. And yes, it was somewhat surly, wasn't it?
I apologize for the ambiguity. I was actually referring to the post by LG which Ham was asking for clarification on. I wasn't criticizing his request for a paraphrasing but, rather, the unnecessary jargon favored by post-modernists and used, in this instance, by LG.
on a side note, out of curiousity I googled post modern science and came up with this
http://cbae.nmsu.edu/~dboje/postmodscience.html
In science, the postmodern turn emerged as a break from the mechanistic, reductionist, naïve realist, and deterministic worldview of Newtonian physics. Advocates of postmodern science claim that the modern scientific paradigm is giving way in the 20th century to a new mode of scientific thinking based on concepts such as entropy, evolution, organism, indeterminacy, probability, relativity, complementarity, interpretation, chaos, complexity, and self-organization" (Best & Kellner, 1997: 195)
:scratchin:
http://cbae.nmsu.edu/~dboje/postmodscience.html
In science, the postmodern turn emerged as a break from the mechanistic, reductionist, naïve realist, and deterministic worldview of Newtonian physics. Advocates of postmodern science claim that the modern scientific paradigm is giving way in the 20th century to a new mode of scientific thinking based on concepts such as entropy, evolution, organism, indeterminacy, probability, relativity, complementarity, interpretation, chaos, complexity, and self-organization" (Best & Kellner, 1997: 195)
:scratchin:
Simon Anders
Valued Senior Member
Ah, no problem. And, in fact, I should have realized you were referring to something else. It would have been too strange.
I really think theology is an artifical field of study. It's very counter-productive and does nothing to advance humans because it's based the study of a fixed system of beliefs.
People are subject to illusions, hallucinations, mass hysteria, drugs, dreams, alternate states of mind brought about by stress or extreme emotions. That's why subjective observations are not considered reliable evidence. That's not to say such things couldn't be true, or useful, it's just that without independent verification, there is just no way to be sure.
The data itself is usually not biased, but that is also possible. Scientists benefit from disproving each other. The idea is to produce a solid case for your thesis, and collect the data using rigorous methods that negate any possible personal feelings on the part of the researchers. I would say that yes, biologists on both sides of the evolution debate do critique each other's work.
Thoreau
Valued Senior Member
This question is like Bill Clinton asking "Can you please define the word 'you'?" when asked "Did you or did you not have sexual relations with Miss Lewinski?"
That observation is similar to someone witnessing a nuclear explosion and saying,"Pretty Light."
Would you say that theist scientist's work, where it indicates a support to theism, is pishposhed away while Non-theists work which points to something similar is suggested to be incomplete? I hate to bring up rumors, but they do exist, that if a scientist "bucks the trend" of Atheistic thought, they sacrifice their careers. Hard to be objective and truthful in an environment like that, wouldn't you say?
This is almost sane discussion, friend. This subforum and politics will make your brain spin sometimes, as truth falls away into a puddle of whatever you please. It isn't for everyone.
As for your statement, I imagine you think that historians, archaeologists, linguists, poets, and philosophers should all be lumped into your tidy little characterization as well. I'll be interested to know how the collected people not engaged in scientific study, as you define it, feel about their chosen field being counter-productive, and not doing anything to advance humans.
I hope you will bear this in mind.