Berkeley – or as we call it Berserkely!


>>>For those who claim they don't "live by faith", please post the correct value for the Cosmological Constant (found in the Einstein metric) and enlighten the rest of us. Even Stephen J Gould, who died of cancer yesterday, at the age of 60, and Stephen Hawking both admit to an 'admixture of philosophy' in their respective disciplines. In other words, they begin with assumptions they assume are true but cannot prove. That's "living by faith". You have a fabulous career ahead of you in the natural sciences if you can do what Hawkings and Gould could not.
>>>JLK
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>>Wrong. Science has no need and does not use faith, but the scientific method. You think something works in a certain way. Therefore you postulate an hypotesis that tries to explain - and predict - the world, or whatever it is you are trying to explain, in light of that hypotesis.
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>>If it is shown by repeated experimentation, independent testing, predictions coming to pass, then it becomes a theory, which is the highest point it can reach.
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>>If it is shown that you have a flaw, and all hypoteses and theories are falsifiable, then you discard it, or some aspects of it, and search for a new explanation or solution. Faith not needed or involved.
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>Bzzzzzt! Wrong answer!
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>You didn't read what I wrote, did you? It doesn't matter what your methods are if your assumptions are unproven. And, your description of the 'scientific method' is faulty, establishing that you have never done research and/or never reported the results of any you might have done in a peer-reviewed journal.
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>The 'scientific method' is an idealized description, used mainly by high school teachers, to describe a process that currently doesn't exist, if it ever did. In times past, most 'science' was done by reviewing all relevant liturature (from approved sources - usually peer-reviewed journals, monographs of peers, etc..) on a certain topic to bring one up to the current bleeding edge of knowledge and theories on that topic. Usually, the topic is already described by a theory or sometimes just an attitude about what everyone thinks is right or, negatively, what they absolutely believe what is wrong. Based on that theory a researcher seeks an Operational Definition, a question about the topic that contains within itself a possible solution. Asking questions that are impossible to answer is easy - the trick is asking a question about the unknown in a way that suggest an answer, hence the term. Einstein did this when he proposed his Special Theory of Relativity - he proposed that if a
>beam of light was bent by passing close to a large mass then during the next eclipse a certain star would appear to shift a certain number of degrees away from its free space position just prior to occlusion. What Einstein was proposing was a test NOT TO PROVE his theory right, as some think, but a test to DISPROVE it. If there was no shift in the astral position, or it didn't shift by an amount that he predicted, then his theory was wrong. No amount of testing can prove a theory right, but only one test is needed to prove it wrong. A theory is assumed to be true, otherwise why test it? IF a theory is true then a test designed to prove it wrong will most certainly fail. What we call "Laws" are only theories that have failed repeated attempts in the past to disprove them.
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>But, procedures in the scientific community have changed. The biggest agent of change is the cost of doing research. Those costs have risen astronomically in many areas, besides those envolving big physics projects, and the cash flowing from the Federal Government, via the National Institute of Health (biologica sciences) and National Science Foundation (physical sciences), is responsible. In addition, these two agencies don't fund just any old proposal. They rarely fund replications of any but the most important experiments. Replication is one of the three cornerstones of the old process. With that leg sawed off the process has fallen over on most research. Applicants have to submit proposals to the NIH or NSF that state in advance what they believe the conclusion of their 'reseach' will be. If the conclusions aren't acceptable the research doesn't get funded. This leads to inbreeding of research which magnifies some theoretical positions far beyond their worth. These days,
>even the peer-reviewed journals limit publications to research that supports certain theories, further limiting access. This is one reason why internet publishing is exploding these days - to get around the political censorship. Another is that researchers want to regain control of the rights to their written work. It seems that the journals took copyright control of scientists published research, even restricting the scientists who submitted them from sending monographs to other scientists. Sort of like the music industry today with recording artists.
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>Everyone ridicules scientists who espouse Christian moral and phylosophical views these days... it's very fashionable and many who do so think it they are in a superior intellectual position, or that such activity equates them to it. They forget that almost all of the pivotal foundational work done in most diciplines was done by scientists who espoused a belief in God. It is also interesting to note that some folks claim that prior to the Monkey Trial it was common for atheist scientists to be 'persecuted' by believing scientists, a view promoted by the agi-prop movie "Inherit the Wind", but for which there is only rare and scattered evidence. There is MUCH more evidence these days of the opposite. It is sort of like the Berkerly Free Speech movement of the 60s, will I was attending college. After those radicals graduated they made their 'long march' through the institutions and emerged in recent years as college administrators or in positions of influence. The very liberties
>they claimed they lacked, amid much shouting and protesting, they now routinely deny to folks of more convervative persuations. There is a term for that behavior.
>JLK