The Most Important Part of Science

[Pythagorean]

Can you give an example of something meaningless that philosophers care about?

Meaning is subjective. Somebody could just as easily come up with something that physicists care about that is meaningless... to someone.

 

[DanP]

Can you give an example of something meaningless that philosophers care about?

Just about everything they do ?

 

[Andre]

The most important part of science, to stick to it. Science only, no guts feeling, no ideals, no politics, No relaxation of standards when dealing with the attractiveness versus the correctness of any conclusion, no decisions about what 'the right balance is between being effective and being honest'.

The most important part of survival is health, get out of threatening situations and treath injuries first, seems not to play in RISSWFP

It may be hard to harmonize the most important part of science with the most important part of survival.

 

[disregardthat]

Meaning is subjective. Somebody could just as easily come up with something that physicists care about that is meaningless... to someone.

Meaningless can be interpreted in many ways. Some more operational interpretations are; useless, impossible to understand, or genuine nonsense.

Either way, the fact that a group of people care about something, write about it and think about it automatically makes it meaningful. These same things might be meaningless to others, but surely; higher mathematics is meaningless to a 3-year-old, but that's not the point.

What I find is that many consider some or all philosophical problems and topics to be genuine nonsense or erroneous thinking, rather than only meaningless to their view (thus not granting it respect as a meaningful subject at all); a perspective which I think the joke portrays.

...

Can you give an example of something meaningless that philosophers care about?

Just about everything they do ?

...

The most important part of science, to stick to it. Science only, no guts feeling,

I think you will find that that "gut-feeling" is an important part of being a research scientist. The same might go with attractiveness. To search for attractive simplicity and elegance is not irrational and anti-scientific just because it has it's roots in aesthetics (and it might have practical advantages). Of course these feelings only serve as inclinations, and not as reasoning.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

It's a joke meaning scientists only care about what is meaningful, philosophers don't care if it's meaningful. And that's the nicer interpretation.

That may be so, but it's not what I meant. I suppose scientists are no less prone to lousy ideas than philosophers are. But I perceive a difference in the way they react to those bad ideas. Scientists will toss them out.

 

[Andre]

(...)

The most important part of science, to stick to it. Science only, no guts feeling...

I think you will find that that "gut-feeling" is an important part of being a research scientist. The same might go with attractiveness. To search for attractive simplicity and elegance is not irrational and anti-scientific just because it has it's roots in aesthetics (and it might have practical advantages). Of course these feelings only serve as inclinations, and not as reasoning.

Right, the last sentence that's it. I think we agree. There is no doubt that "gut-feeling" (experience) can play an important part in processing and problem solving, but is that the science as intended?

What I intended to say is if science is the process of finding out how things work then it's conclusion should be about how those things work and nothing else. If it is found out that there are more ways that things could work, a selection/decision should not be made based on gut-feelings, aesthetics, occam razor, desirability of a pet-solution or we would still be dealing with a flat earth, phlogiston, aether and things like that. There has been a lot of gut-feeling going on trying to cling on to those erring concepts.

 

[dreiter]

Grant money.

Hah!



My answer: logic. Try and do science without it. ;)