

The science wars - gnosis
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Science_wars

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NY_USA_Hacker
In undergrad school, a prof in the philosophy department offered a course in
'The Philosophy of Science'. Since I was a double major in math and physics, I
signed up for the course. Hearing about this, my physics prof said: "Get your
Ph.D. first and philosophize later." That attitude seemed too skeptical to me,
and I continued in the course.

First, the readings didn't describe 'science' as I had been learning it in
physics.

Second, the prof teaching the course was really mostly a 'religion major' who
really didn't know science well even at the level of freshman physics (where
I'd been the best student in the class).

Third, the prof had guest lecturers for several of the class sessions. For
one, there was a reading for the class. I tried the reading; I honestly tried.
When I found a page I just had to conclude didn't make any sense, I skipped a
few pages and started again. Soon I was at the end of the reading having found
nothing that made any sense. At the start of the class, the guest prof, whom I
respected, mentioned the reading, said he'd tried the reading, and summarized:
"Let's forget about the [reading]." Agreed!

Fourth, soon there was a test: The prof and I came to similar opinions: I
thought that his test was total BS, and he thought the same for my answers.

I dropped the course.

Basically, my physics prof was correct: At least in practice, to philosophize
about science, first learn some science.

There can be a reason: The king of science is physics. Can't just sit alone in
a small, closed room, figure out the philosophy of physics from nothing and
then figure out physics from nothing. Instead, physics took brilliant people
hundreds of years, and there were many starts with nearly all false and only a
tiny fraction good. Can't just guess at what makes the good starts and,
instead, just have to study them and then, maybe, see patterns and then
philosophize.

The big deal about physics is that the good stuff works really, really well.
To philosophize about that fact, first need to understand the physics. Then
when trying to develop a philosophy, some results from physics say this and
some say that; a good philosophy has to 'accommodate' these results; and to
cook up such a philosophy need to know the results. Net, as the course showed,
some of the most famous people philosophizing about science didn't know enough
about physics even to get started.

Of the major sciences, physics is the easiest. Chemistry and biology are more
difficult to make into 'science'. For the efforts at science in the article,
f'get about it: First, it's super tough to make those fields into sciences.
Second, it's easy enough to see that the people in those fields are not better
at science than the people in physics but much less good because they know
next to nothing about the best example of science. physics. Third, got to be
quite 'dense' as a human not to see that the people pushing 'post modernism'
in science have an agenda that is more political than scientific.

So, struggles about 'post modernism' cannot constitute a "war" about science.

Net, for the article, f'get about the article.

'Disclosure': I graduated with 'honors in math'; in physics had the right
number of courses but in one case had the wrong course. So I didn't quite
finish a physics major. My Ph.D. is in some topics in applied math. Since much
of that math is good for physics, maybe someday I'll return to physics!

