Icosahedron
SOC-14 1K
Feel free to close this thread if it veers off track, but in my time zone the original thread seemed to be opened while I was in bed and closed when I woke up, and I never got chance to contribute.
IMO (and note those important initials):
1. Scientists do not claim that their discoveries are absolute fact (and Blix made this statement several times in his posts).
Anyone who makes such a claim is
a. not a scientist (but perhaps a journalist, teacher, popular science author, or simply a man on a bar stool) or
b. is a scientist using 'peer-shorthand' who is stating "this is the situation (to the best of our knowledge using the current hypothesis supported by the latest experimental data)" and is omitting the cumbersome stuff in brackets because either he is talking to other scientists who recognise that the stuff in brackets goes without saying, or he is talking to a journalist who is holding a stopwatch on him or post-editing his statement.
Remember that unless you are holding a scientific paper in your hand, what you read about science is not direct from the horse's mouth, but has passed through the chinese whispers of at least two people (a journalist and an editor) before you read it...
2. If a historian and an artist are in disagreement over matters of history, who is more likely to be correct? Whose opinion should an unbiased carpenter accept?
Similarly, if a scientist and a historian are in disagreement over matters of science, who is more likely to be correct?
3. I assume that the 'contradictions' Jaytay3 mentions in the original thread refer to whether or not hot jupiters can exist, and whether or not retrograde motion is commonplace?
These are not 'contradictions' but corrections, since both views are not held simultaneously.
Historians are no more exempt from this misunderstanding over corrections than scientists. If a historian makes a statement that "X was not practiced by the people of Y prior to 430 BC (to the best of our knowledge using the current hypothesis supported by the latest experimental data)", and then someone digs up archaeological evidence that 'contradicts' the current hypothesis, the history books are rewritten (corrected).
And how often do the history books include the cumbersome bit in brackets?
IMO (and note those important initials):
1. Scientists do not claim that their discoveries are absolute fact (and Blix made this statement several times in his posts).
Anyone who makes such a claim is
a. not a scientist (but perhaps a journalist, teacher, popular science author, or simply a man on a bar stool) or
b. is a scientist using 'peer-shorthand' who is stating "this is the situation (to the best of our knowledge using the current hypothesis supported by the latest experimental data)" and is omitting the cumbersome stuff in brackets because either he is talking to other scientists who recognise that the stuff in brackets goes without saying, or he is talking to a journalist who is holding a stopwatch on him or post-editing his statement.
Remember that unless you are holding a scientific paper in your hand, what you read about science is not direct from the horse's mouth, but has passed through the chinese whispers of at least two people (a journalist and an editor) before you read it...
2. If a historian and an artist are in disagreement over matters of history, who is more likely to be correct? Whose opinion should an unbiased carpenter accept?
Similarly, if a scientist and a historian are in disagreement over matters of science, who is more likely to be correct?
3. I assume that the 'contradictions' Jaytay3 mentions in the original thread refer to whether or not hot jupiters can exist, and whether or not retrograde motion is commonplace?
These are not 'contradictions' but corrections, since both views are not held simultaneously.
Historians are no more exempt from this misunderstanding over corrections than scientists. If a historian makes a statement that "X was not practiced by the people of Y prior to 430 BC (to the best of our knowledge using the current hypothesis supported by the latest experimental data)", and then someone digs up archaeological evidence that 'contradicts' the current hypothesis, the history books are rewritten (corrected).
And how often do the history books include the cumbersome bit in brackets?
