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Do Theories Have to be Testable to be Scientific?
"Jeff Utz" wrote in message ... X-A-Notice: References line has been trimmed due to 512 byte limitationAbuse-Reports-To: abuse at airmail.net to report improper postings NNTP-Proxy-Relay: library2.airnews.net NNTP-Posting-Time: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 08:16:35 -0500 (CDT) NNTP-Posting-Host: ![$;F1k-Y'hiac\&8#rjC`%+^ (Encoded at Airnews!) X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1158 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165 "Richard Alexander" wrote in message om... root wrote in message ... Richard Alexander wrote: Historical events are--surprise!--History, not Science, and History is distinct from Science. But it might take science to reveal history. The distinction isn't as clear as you suggest. There is a difference between science involvement and being a science. Many church auditoriums are designed through the science of acoustics, but that doesn't mean that religion is a science. Certain terms have taken on a life of their own. A "quantum leap" or "quantum advance" is used where we would normally say a "huge leap" or a "huge advance." Of course, a true quantum leap is an extremely small thing, the difference, say, in electron orbits. Likewise, saying that something is not scientific has become akin to saying that something is erroneous. I disagree. I would argue that creationism is not scientific, because the hypothesis that creation exists is not testable. That does not mean the creationism does not exist, only that science cannot answer the question whether or not creationism is true. What prevents us from using the logical, systematic, scientific method of investigation to investigate any proposition at all, even a proposition like, "It is true that a magic invisible creator of everything might really exist"? We have an ongoing scientific investigation of the theory that ETs (not in evidence) might really exist. Here is how that theory is being investigated, using the scientific method: Null : of, being, or relating to zero www.m-w.com (as in, "There are no ETs.") --- Testing the Null Hypothesis by John Marcus, MD http://www.setileague.org/editor/null.htm SETI is perhaps the most highly interdisciplinary of sciences, encompassing not only astronomy, biology, engineering and physics, but also psychology, metaphysics, probability, and belief. But it is, first and foremost, a science, one to which we hope to apply the scientific method. [...] The Scientific Method for the Argus search is this: There are no ET's. (null hypothesis). .... [W]e now design an experiment (Project Argus, for example) to try to prove that statement wrong, recognizing that it takes only one clear, unambiguous counter-example to reject the null hypothesis. ... --- |
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