The "I" in an egocentric sense rules but to state implicitly or explicitly that knowledge is external to the "I" or Man specifically, is what I am speaking to (no pun intended).

An example may help; in modern physics we can glean the search for quantum particles as the basis of matter and life in general. this knowledge is "external" to man whether via laboratory experiment with or without machines which plumb the depths of supposed "matter".

One can theorize that man is included in these findings but it falls short with an implicit pallor. the search has been to exclude the human being from any and all scientific research. this is such that the search strengthens the human being's "I" because of the negation of preconceptions in this work which is admirable. somewhere in modern research there is the problem of the instrument (via man) which interferes with the findings, no matter how small.

But the difficulty is that any real knowledge must include the human being in the equation, up front; and not a passive receiver of data via his senses or machines. His thinking has to enter actively into the experiment in order to come about from this inbred passivity of thought.

Pretty vague, that last sentence, I know, but you and I have spoken to the "phenomena" which speak for themselves and deny the theorizing of the modern scientific thinker . Goethe knew this as he denied "theory" in science but included that which was within Man ( his inner thinking) in his presentation of science.

Time for clearer presentation....


As said previously, modern science denies thinking and thoughts and demands the external measurement as the pillar or base of work. The words meander on but only the "data" count, literally.

And so there is a "strength of self" obtained by divorcing one's self from the work which is an "egocentric" pathos which denies thinking.

The active approach, with the phenomena includes Man's thinking process within the search; the human being completes the science and merges external and inner with his thoughtful capabilities. And in this the "Ego', paradoxically manifests selflessness.

First of all, science isn't governed by a handy pamphlet with ten rubber-stamped rules. Secondly, if science has done some large verdict on the nature of "truth", I have certainly never heard of it.

If you're looking for believers in scientific realism, I suspect you'll find them in the philosophy faculties.

Before we go any further you'll have to give specific instances; the term "scientific realism" is meaningless without a further look .

Secondly give a justification of "atomism".

And as noted in my original post the "scientific thought forms " are diffuse, in the hands (ideas) of all, inclusive of the common man . Oh, there are exceptions but the stringent and terse shackles of these thought processes is the "river of comprehension" to which we are involved.

Our educational processes are the very thinking involved in the scientific thought forms ; top to bottom. Its not hard to realize and at base we can speak to materialism; the idea that we are ourselves no more than matter (whatever that is) and can only speak to a cosmic materiality .

Its everywhere, not hard to see, and it moves into our culture as an unchallenged and dismal view upon the human breath . If looking for philosophers we move among men like Kant and Hume who deny knowledge as of itself, the entire materialist ethos of the English philosophers such as Hobbes ,Locke, Spencer, Francis Bacon and even the transplanted Englishman the living illness, Karl Marx.

Of course within the States or the Americas Dewey stands tall in pragmatism, or the theory of "we cant know the answer but lets pretend like we do" and go from there. And I will note William James the psychologist who psychologizes (among the many) a psychology without a soul but best known and followed here is B.F. Skinner( perfect for the pragmatic American).

All of them have done their best do maintain that you and I are a material atom(s) and the consequence is that all of culture will die the dismal heat death, with no traces. No soul, no spirit as the nature of modern times is to destroy all of man's inner nature .

I read the above and it sure feels creppily destructive of me but the advent of materialism brought forth the individual man, free from the chattles of a clairvoyant spirituality, in order to move onto that transformed earth which does contain the culture of the soul and spirit, not lost in that heat death.

The leader will be science but of course this will come about by the laboratory scientist making note of the spiritual in his work and in this the laboratory will become a sacred mass of a cosmic viability.

Science does come to the table with a strong lens of "scientific objectivity" that removes the I from the conversation quite explicitly.

This is probably overstated, but I welcome you to present some books as evidence.

Scientific objectivity is almost universally misunderstood by people who tries to understand it through a lens of philosophy.

In science the term is very practical and down to earth. It is the ideal that empirical claims should be possible to test and replicate independently of personal opinion.

Which can be simple (Joe's miniature of the Eiffel Tower will tend to behave very similarly when dropped, regardless of who watches) or complicated (finding out if the Eiffel Tower is pretty would likely require the researcher to find very clever ways to reduce the impact of personal and cultural biases).

But it's just that, an ideal. It is as possible to attain as removing the influence of the carpenter on the finished wall.

Here is an apt quote from A.E Chalmers brilliant little method book "What is this thing called Science?" where he addresses common misconceptions about science:

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the point you're making. The "I" in this case is pretty much removed in the sense that the individual ought not to play any particular role in the experiment. In other words, there is no science if "I" cannot be taken out of the experiment.

I don't see what that quote has to say about "I". You're chasing the notion of science being "true" which is an entirely different thing than the thing I quoted you saying.

Yeah, then you have misunderstood both me and the quote. Because if you read either as somehow meaning that you can ignore the influence of yourself when doing science, I honestly don't know how you read it.

You could start by explaining what you mean by "removing the I" as we're probably not talking about the same thing.

In my view method in science is a direct result of acknowledging that you can't remove yourself or your influences. If you could, I can't really see why you would need method, it would actually become paradoxical to require it.

There is no scientific experiment that I can run but you cannot (ignoring differences of access to resources and that sort of thing). I do not need to be the one who runs the experiment. And if you did the same experiment, you should get the same results that I did. In this way, there is no I that is part of the experiment and I have been removed from it.

You can't remove yourself from the overall trajectory, sure. As in, you are making active decisions about what to study or not study, and those decisions influence the direction of science. But it's not necessitated on a specific I to progress.

Your position still seems overstated to me. Can you explain how the thing you quoted addresses the question as you understand it?

Even for the simplest type of "spherical cow" experiment where the resulting dependent variable is a single number given by a measurement device, you still actively choose to follow someone's experiment design and accept their approach towards answers. That's very much an I.

This is not splitting hairs either, it goes right to the core of science. Something as "basic" as the interpretation of gravity on a falling object has changed enormously in the time of natural philosophy / science. Today physics indicate that it is anything but basic, but an interaction that we suspect results from a fundamental force of the universe and an outcome of its origin. And quite contrary to a view that the people involved should not matter, what we see is what you always see at the forefront of science: Different interpretations, disagreement, debate, conjecture and even disagreement on what constitutes good method. Our acceptance of a "spherical cow" experiment is the result of such social processes in the past, it did not appear out of thin air.

And we haven't even mentioned complex experiments or theories, where factors can't be ignored / distilled or we choose not too and the dependent variable is given in a format that require interpretation, concessions and estimates. You, as a mathematician, know this better than me. Think of going from a set of data to function / equation. Once we leave the comforts of classroom data-sets behind, it can require a considerable amount of interpretation to find the function that bests represents the data. And there isn't necessarily one answer that is best for all situations.

Scientific realism is the view that there are ideal theories that perfectly describe a real universe, and that science can find these theories. The "sciencey-sounding" version of objective truth, if you will.

This is very much a simplification, as there are of course many nuances to scientific realism, like you would expect for a philosophical position.

Contrary to what the name might imply, my anecdotal experience is that scientific realism is a very rare view among scientists. The chief reason is probably that it is not really a necessary nor useful position, science being a practical subject at heart. It's a bit of a Russel's Teapot.

I would also say that there are practical aspects of scientific realism that haven't really been thought through, like the computational aspect of it all. It seems to rely on some naive understanding of science as a set of simple equations where few variables can perfectly encapsulate complex phenomena. Not to say that simple equations can't yield incredibly impressive results, but it doesn't take much of a dive into science to understand they do so by simplification, not perfection.

I think you are most definitely splitting hairs to try to make some sort of "deep" philosophical point. I consent to the idea that science is ultimately a human venture (without humans, or at least some sort of sentience of some type), it's hard for there to be science as we understand it.

But that's a far cry from saying that the I is deeply embedded into every experiment in a way that the I cannot be removed from it. It is not an I, it is a *someone*. And again, all experiments that are scientifically valid must not be dependent upon the specific person conducting it. It's not at the core of science that the I is central to the venture. In fact, if you want to go this route, it's far more apt to say that *we* are central to science, and that *we* are core to it. Science is not an individualist pursuit, but a communal one.

You claimed that "Pretty much any method101 book is going to discuss the "I" fairly extensively." But you haven't produced a single reference. (The reference you did produce did not talk about this at all.) Your point would be stronger if your claim were verified in some way. Until then, it really does seem you're overstating things.

If you are truly interested in the subject, you can read Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", one of the most cited works on scientific method of all time (and indeed one of the most cited books in science overall). The scope of the book is broader than method alone since it talks about the nature of scientific progress, but is certainly relevant to the subject. It will certainly explain to you why similar or identical data suddenly mean different things.

I have no objections to describing science as a group effort, but to make a dichotomy between that and individual effort is ill-advised and unnecessary.

Ultimately I think a view that somehow you can or should ignore the "I" when doing science is destructive. At best it leads to intellectual arrogance, at worst it would make people abandon outcomes that question accepted theory.

If you can't actually quote it saying what you're saying, I don't have sufficient reason to accept your philosophical perspective as valid or meaningful.

Asking for citations with no intention of checking them is pointless. But sure, here are some excerpts. Everything outside quotes are my words:

Science is more than interpretation of data, it is also about the individual that sees:
On the importance of guiding opinions with more than just established theory:
On how subjectivity will influence science:
On the importance and dangers of individuality in science:

I will note that I am not presenting a philosophical perspective, merely a practical one.

By viewing science as a result of the work and opinions (however qualified) of people, we
a) Avoid treating it like gospel. Science needs to be questioned.
b) Are made aware of how we as persons influence scientific research. It isn't the spectrometer that designs the experiment, interprets the data or writes the article.

I'm sort of annoyed you two didn't have this argument in one of my playground threads. :P

This seems to establish much more clearly a we-ness and not an I-ness of science.

No, this is philosophical. It may have practical implications (I guess... though even this seems like a bit of a stretch to me), but your presentation is definitely philosophical.

If you position were indeed about practicality, you would be talking about the actual application of ideas. You would be saying things like "science needs to be questioned" and "science is performed by humans" not things like "The I is central to science"

I think your presentation is pretty far off base even if your core ideas aren't that objectionable.

I wouldn't object to you excerpting it and moving it there.

I'm in on this and not finished. The original aspect spoke to science and the "spirit" or "higher worlds" which belongs in RGT and perhaps SMP (but not so much).

What is the playground( not politics and society I hope) ?

This is the playground. And I was kidding. Mostly. Kind of. A bit.

I agree that your approach is definitely more RGT.

Your anxieties seem to stem from this mistaken belief. Exceptional/heroic individuals will always be the primary drivers of cultural progress. There is no need to distract yourself with the deficiencies of the scientific method unless it’s to extract wisdom with which to use in your individual development.

I love science. Trying to characterize in order to make that necessary "jump" to a science which brings forth Man as a soul/ spiritual being. Its not all about me but should I leave the field in order to make myself "king of the mountain" ?

If these difficulties or deficiencies hurt , then you should resign from the field and stop giving putative advice on how to lead one's life.

If we can't speak to the scientific method then what good is all this ? In my "world of wisdom" to go for the ego of another is the prime evil to which is tragically and diffusely apparent in this culture of the west.

Tersely , science is always in motion, not fixed, but is in the midst of a decadent materialism, or lack of a spiritual comprehension. Don't take this personal, it can really hurt to approach these matters which are not easy or simple but fascinatingly complex.

I ask you, who can stand to see his training and studies of 40 years be usurped by a few words on a screen ? It hurts ...

Why is that a necessary jump in your mind? Does science need to be the vehicle for spiritual development?

Kuhn is very much a believer in the group aspect of science, he merely points out both the impact and necessity of the individual as well. As I told you earlier, your attempt to make this a dichotomy between individual efforts and group efforts is not necessary, because there isn't one.

I'm not overly interested in a taxonomic debate on whether my position is philosophical or practical. Ultimately it is vested in method, which is about scientific techniques. I think any technique that ignores the individual's influence on scientific work is a bad technique.

The "I" wording is merely there because I responded to Carlo, which claimed "the I was removed from science" (paraphrased). Carlo obviously goes for very holistic approach to things in general, and I went with the flow. A more reductionist approach would perhaps have been more precise, but this isn't an essay for a review. It's a discussion on an internet forum and I know Carlo does not like reductionist approaches.

I think a healthy approach is to view science as a good (but far from perfect) source for knowledge. Mostly it is descriptive, not normative. So it won't really tell how to lead your life, but there can be good stuff in there for how to approach or resolve something.

I think my main objection for descriptions of science as somehow "mechanical" or "non-human" stems from my interaction with scientists. Anecdotal perhaps, but I have met a few. Mostly they are very curious, very passionate, highly engaged and genuinely excited about answering things. If you are not, it will tend to burn you out quickly. It might not always shine through in articles and essays, but I think most people who have been engaged in research are well aware that it still very much a human and passionate endeavor. A group effort for sure, but more like a bunch of territorial cats haphazardly ending up in the same direction than robots on an assembly line.

I mean, I'm an amateur musician. When it comes to the clash of subjectivity, making music with people is a walk in the park compared to writing a scientific article with someone.