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Pseudoscience

Jim;

Yes it may be that Thagard's definition lets in too much. And you've
hit a problem I also noticed: In his article he is not real clear
about who the 'community of practitioners' is or how you get to be
one. So is Phys-L 'the' community of scientists who make those
decisions or is it some larger group? I can't answer that question.

But I think there are two key things Thagard is pointing out about
good scientific process:

1. Rational behavior means acting on the BEST AVAILABLE evidence AND
being open to the possibility of new evidence showing us where we are
wrong. It is perfectly rational and acceptable scientific behavior to
work with incomplete theories even when we know they are flawed IF
there are no better alternatives. This is true now and true
historically. So I see nothing wrong with Phys-L participants
abandoning astrology on current evidence and later deciding to return
to it on the strength of new evidence. And Kepler was perfectly
rational and scientific in thinking his laws were right (although we
now know they have to be modified a bit). Thagard would also claim (I
think) Kepler was also rational and scientific in thinking astrology
was at least interesting to study, although WE would NOT be rational
in thinking that today, given current evidence.

2. There is progress. Surely we know more than we did 100 years ago.
Surely we are building on prior knowledge, even when we discard that
prior knowledge as false (Copernicus' framework was a stepping stone
to better theories; a useful intermediate step). Another philosopher
of science, Paul Feyerabend, advocates in an article titled 'How to
defend society against science' that we should teach ALL theories in
school, teach every idea that is recorded in the history of man.
Creationism, evolution, everything we can find and with equal time
devoted to each. He argues that this approach would strengthen
students critical abilities. I have some sympathy with this idea but
I think the more fruitful approach (and I think the history of
science actually proceeds this way) is to present students with the
best ideas we currently have to offer and encourage them to find the
problems and difficulties with that. Learn the theory before you
criticize it so that you know what it is you criticize.

kyle

--RcCaHGSMMSQCaLMKZJOeRZPYHWTORP
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 10:07:10 -0700
From: Jim Green <JMGreen@SISNA.COM>
Subject: Re: Pseudoscience
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed

One problem with the following thoughts is that is would include almost all
"scientists" before Galileo and many after him.

Another difficulty is that it would disregard all thinking on a subject
after some elite group decided that it was worthless.

As a result a group such as Phys-l could come to the conclusion that
astrology was worthless -- mostly because it tired of talking about
it. I would say that any field should be studied as long as there is
someone willing to do it and someone to pay for the effort.

After all Rumford (for example) was disregarded for many years, but he
turned out to be correct --- although many even today don't accept his
findings. <g>

Jim Green

Thagard says:

"A theory or discipline which purports to be scientific is
pseudoscientific if and only if:

1. It has been less progressive than alternative theories over a long
period of time, and faces many unsolved problems; but
2. the community of practitioners makes little attempt to develop the
theory towards solutions of the problems, shows no concern for
attempts to evaluate the theory in relation to others and is
selective in considering confirmations and disconfirmations"

Thagard points out (and rightly so I think) that by this definition
we can forgive Copernicus, Kepler and the lot for casting horoscopes
(which almost all astronomers at that time did); at the time the idea
was new, untested and there was little in the way of alternative
psycological theory which was any better. Today, in retrospect, we
can see that astrology is a dead end, unproductive and so should be
abandoned as a scientific endeavor.

An interesting problem Thagard's definition solves is a question
about deciding when a theory has been tested enough to make a
conclusion as to its validity. We want scientific theories to be
testable (this is an idea due to Karl Popper). The problem is,
Astrology IS testable. There are several groups who have tried to do
statistical analysis correlating solar system arrangements at birth
to jobs later in life etc. The correlation is always relatively low,
of course, but one could argue that the right tests have just not
been done (we should go into more detail etc). So, as scientist,
should we keep testing these ideas? How deeply should we probe
astrological theory? Thagard says to abandon it altogether for the
above reasons.

kyle
-----------------------------------------------------
kyle forinash 812-941-2390
kforinas@ius.edu
Natural Science Division
Indiana University Southeast
New Albany, IN 47150
http://Physics.ius.edu/
-----------------------------------------------------

Jim Green
mailto:JMGreen@sisna.com
http://users.sisna.com/jmgreen
-----------------------------------------------------
kyle forinash 812-941-2390
kforinas@ius.edu
Natural Science Division
Indiana University Southeast
New Albany, IN 47150
http://Physics.ius.edu/
-----------------------------------------------------