Empiry

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@sfu.ca>]

> I think that Tycho Brahe should be considered based upon his
> revolutionary suggestion that going to the lab to take some measurements
> was the way to decide on the validity of opposing comological theories.
> His suggestion took us from relying on past authority (frequently
> wrong/or not quite right) to placing our faith on what we could prove by
> experimentation.

This quote from another thread indicates to me that there is a
confusion between the concepts of experimentation and observation.
They are not the same thing. If one wishes to refer to both as a
class, I have suggested use of the now disused word "empiry". I
have introduced this word in classes to embrace both classes of
scientific activity. I think it is more important to do so now
than it has ever been before. My reason is simple. A new form of
scientific investigation, computer simulation, is now being called
"computer experiments", and "computer laboratories" are appearing
in even otherwise scientifically respectable universities.

It cannot be emphasized too strongly that computer simulation (an
area in which I have done quite a bit of work myself) is *not*
empiry. Nature contributes nothing to the process; it is purely
artificial.

A last comment: "GIGO"

Leigh