Pauliesonne
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Scientific method - being itself, ironically, a system of beliefs grounded in faith in positivism.
How come we never talk about positivism?
- Thread starter Pauliesonne
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You cannot say that around these parts. It acknowledges the necessity for revolution.
Scientific method isn't grounded in faith in positivism. I think you could make a better case that positivism is grounded in faith in scientific method.
You make it sound like science is a basis for a particular philosophy.
Utter nonsense.
It's not necessarily nonsense... which came first, the science or the philosophy? Seems to me positivism is rather heavily based in scientific method and/or scientific method is heavily based in positivism... I'm not sure you could really seperate them?
l0rca
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It seems to depend on your idea of positivism.
If you think of science as immediately telling of the truth of reality, you may have entered a realm where blind faith in science is just as bad as blind faith in religion.
If you think of science as a constantly, generally positively-revising, investigation into reality based on sense-based knowledge, then you're on the right track, in my opinion.
If you're a nominalist, then you're scewed, but it sure does feel good to pay attention to what mind wants but can't quite figure out, you silly yet cool philsophical dude you.
I can't think of any other signiciant and skeptical degrees of stance of science without getting sort of redundant. I can think of a couple of rationalist ones, but they're not hard to imagine anyway.
Auguste Comte (full name Isidore Marie Auguste François Xavier Comte) (January 17 (recorded January 19), 1798 - September 5, 1857) was a French positivist thinker and came up with the term of sociology to name the new science made by Saint-Simon.
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Comte
He pretty much made positivism. Science came first.
If you think of science as immediately telling of the truth of reality, you may have entered a realm where blind faith in science is just as bad as blind faith in religion.
If you think of science as a constantly, generally positively-revising, investigation into reality based on sense-based knowledge, then you're on the right track, in my opinion.
If you're a nominalist, then you're scewed, but it sure does feel good to pay attention to what mind wants but can't quite figure out, you silly yet cool philsophical dude you.
I can't think of any other signiciant and skeptical degrees of stance of science without getting sort of redundant. I can think of a couple of rationalist ones, but they're not hard to imagine anyway.
Auguste Comte (full name Isidore Marie Auguste François Xavier Comte) (January 17 (recorded January 19), 1798 - September 5, 1857) was a French positivist thinker and came up with the term of sociology to name the new science made by Saint-Simon.
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Comte
He pretty much made positivism. Science came first.
Science is a branch of philosophy/rationale/logic.
Science is based upon the belief that what is observed is real. Yet it is not - since what a scientist studys is the order inherent within conscious experience... and not the order inherent within the actual reality of interacting bodies.
This is very significant, since the actual content of scientific theories is influenced by the bias towards the belief in the reality of interacting bodies - even though they cannot be experienced (observed).
Positivism is more akin to a religion than a philosophy. Science - since it's methods mirror a love of such a philosophy - requires reform.
You misunderstand me. There is no scientific basis for positivism or any other particular philosophy; however, nothing prevents faith in science (which is a non-scientific matter) from being incorporated into a philosophy, and I think there is a certain sense in which that could be said to be true of positivism - though the qualifiers that would need to attach to such a proposition are beyond the scope of this post.
I'm not sure what you mean by "rationale" here, but I can't imagine that your assertion that science is a branch of philosophy or logic would find much support among philosophers, logicians or scientists.
Naming it and it existing are two different issues. From my reading (relatively limited) it seems to me that positivism and scientific method are not really that fundamentally different. Just because a different way of looking at it was proposed later on doesn't mean the thing it was describing didn't exist before then.
UserGoogol
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Not really. Science makes no explicit claims that the things it attempts to describe are "real." It merely claims to have theories which seem to describe whatever it is. A person could use the scientific method to examine the universe of a video game, for instance, even though Super Mario is not (by most people's understanding of the word) real.
l0rca
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http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=304631
I don't know much about positivism either. But I do know that you do not need to know about positivism to form an intelligent opinion on science. I think that node on e2 says it well- it's a nice approach, but a bad philosophy overall. I've already commented on why I think that, so I won't again.
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Er,.... not so.
^This^
If I throw a ball, the theory of gravity predicts where it lands. There is no assumption that either the ball or gravity are real. The entire structure of ball, gravity, me and the theory can all exist as my fantasy, a simulation, the real world or whatever. The predictions of the theory and the actual motion of the ball will be the same regardless.