
The Inquisition followed sound science - kawera
http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/08/04/science/4nuoDzMCAHsY8h67q1hZ6J/story.html
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api
Rather than seeing this as a (relative, historically contextual) vindication
of the inquisition, I rather tend to see it as an argument against excessive
dogmatism and intolerance toward speculation in science regardless of motive.

I don't agree completely with either of these, but I find myself generally
sympathetic especially with the first:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Inquisition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Inquisition)

Note that I'm not arguing for the extreme opposite position either -- that we
should give equal consideration to every hypothesis however outlandish. I'm
just skeptical of excessively dogmatic and totalistic pretensions to
certainty. Science is hard.

Edit: I believe an argument for the thesis of "Against Method" could be made
on the basis of learning theory and the No Free Lunch theorem. Any rigorous
method constitutes a learning algorithm, and each individual learning
algorithm possesses an irregular performance profile across the space of all
available fitness functions. Therefore any given scientific method will find
itself unable to ascertain truths located in regions of state space that it
cannot efficiently traverse.

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flukus
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