Bertvan@aol.com writes
in message <61.3f82efc.2664277e@aol.com>:
>
<snip>
> Bertvan: I agree any science that tries to stifle discussion
> is dead. Contrast this expression of tolerance with what Steve
> Jones, (not our Steve Jones) a biologist says:
I suppose you're characterizing this quote as intolerant.
Could you explain how and where it displays that?
> Steve Jones: I have a problem with scientists who spend most of the time
> looking at their own navels, trying to define what it is they're
> supposed to be studying. It's like a game where both teams stand around
> arguing about what the rules are supposed to be. That's the difficulty
> with the "consciousness" game. Just how do you play it, and where's the
> goal? Is there a goal at all - or even a game? Define what a problem is
> in terms accessible to a layman, and you have the beginnings of a
> science. If you can't, you have nothing but a series of opinions.
>
> My feeling about most people in that field is that they'd find life more
> interesting if they continued to do what most of them started by doing -
> getting their feet wet by doing experimental work.
>
> There's a disease of middle-aged literary men called Hearty Degeneration
> of the Fat; when you get old, you boom about Big Issues. G.K. Chesterton
> was a classic example. Scientists, I guess, have a related problem -
> Anguished Uncertainty of the Elderly is probably a better term. All of a
> sudden you forget that science is the art of the answerable and you
> begin to speculate about things that basically lie outside science
> altogether.
>
> I'm not saying Nick Humphrey does only that; certainly not. But it's
> something we're all in danger of doing. Nick Humphrey is going into
> fields I don't find interesting. The consciousness field, the
> meaning-of-life field - it's always left me cold.
>
> Bertvan:
> I'm glad the great physicists of the last century didn't allow Jones to
> define science for them.
According to Jones, the kinds of approaches he doesn't like
* don't or can't define the problem
* don't do experimental work
* speculate about things that can't, even in theory, be proven
one way or the other
Which great physicists of the last century ignored Jone's advice
and adopted all three of these characteristics in their
aproaches to science?
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon May 29 2000 - 17:20:51 EDT