Science as Method.....

Daniel Bunn Coming in here as a Christian, the fact is that the Bible cannot be considered entirely metaphysical. It recounts historic episodes like the flood, the day the sun stood still, and the day it went backwards. It has a "valley of the dry bones" coming to life and people raised from the dead. Religion has some rather interesting things to explain from a scientific position. As yes, I'm steeped in Science. 35 years associated in Civil Engineering in one form or another. D B Science is a method of exploration and observation. The philosopher who exemplified this is Hume. Daniel Bunn You clearly have your favorite definition of what "science" is. And you even go so far as to mention Hume as a philosopher who, you think, exemplifies your favorite definition, that being "a method of exploration and investigation." Hume´s not a bad start, and has some good strong points. Yet, he also argued against causality, along with trying to push the crass fallacy that miracles can´t happen because witnesses of miracles are unreliable and ignorant. They violate scientific laws, I believe he already asserted as part of that. Crass ideological circular reasoning. And he´s been treated with kid gloves in general, or just used as a source of what is in fact a fallacious ideologial doctrine. However, what you demonstrate is how "science" has tried to play by its own terms. "Methods" that just exist might apply to technology historically, which goes far to explain why the term "science" emerged. It appears to be a term that pleases technophiles as well as having popular flare. From my thinking below, I might give a short conclusion here, "The process of observation and investigation involves thinking and making logical coherence at one level or another. A "method" thus, can even in a tinkering technology sense, can be identified as a basic philosophical form. Thinking matters. The key appears to be that technophiles try to focus on the physicality of "methods", and lose sight of their own philosophical activity. That also limits their awareness as thinking about more complex levels of physical objects and processes like Einstein requires extensive philosophical awareness of it as a full philosophical method, scientific and naturalist in focus. The implications of Freud´s work help indicate how that makes empiricism crucial. You mention Hume, whose own proto-psychological observations impressed me, along with his perception of the importance of emotional life, and the process of meaning and abstraction. But, Freud helps illustrate how Hume was an empiricist, and how that is the higher order classification of scientific natural philosophical method itself. It covers both physical and non-physical philosophical observations and investigation. As biologist turned philosopher M Pigliucci notes, "Science is a kind of philosophy." I mentioned Thomas Aquinas, who made fundamental tweaks on ancient Greek philosophy, from Aristotle, the student of Plato, student in turn of Socrates, primarily. Aquinas requires a little further commenting," The thinking about that conclusion gets laid out as follows: However, the reason "science" had to get renamed in the 1800s, was that it isn´t just a technological method of tinkering. It isn´t just random that you seem to have identified Hume for some of his qualities. Einstein makes a good case for identifying the issues involved. Einstein had excelled at math and physics, not inventions like Edison, we might note. He was thinking about those kinds of things. Thinking is a philosophical process, not merely technical investigation. Einstein´s dad Hermann was an engineer, which made have helped Albert´s imagination and affinity. At 12, he developed an original proof of the Pythagorean Theorem in math. At 15, Einstein wrote a paper on the "...Ether in a Magnetic Field". That´s not primarily observational investigation, although it is based on the history of observational scientific natural philosophy. Physics, like the other "sciences" also specifically, is itself directed to physical objects and processes. All told, that´s why Newton was still called a natural philosopher. That´s basic History of Science. We also observe that Einstein´s affinity for math and physics learning also involved his being open and interested in Kant´s Critique of Pure Reason. In brief, Einstein´s famous process of approaching light involved him imagining being on a beam of light. His philosophical activity would have involved him interrelating his speculative scenarios with his math and physics knowledge, not merely observing. Einstein was taking others´ work that had involved experimental observation in his own thinking processes. The formula for kinetic energy E=1/2 mv2 would have been one element in his mind. Einstein was, after all, able to produce his anno mirabilis while working in a patent office. He was a classic scientific natural philosopher. Freud the neurologist helps illustrate the alternatives from another angle. Freud had patients with pain, but no organic disease. He learned from some therapeutic relaxation techniques, and applied those. He asked his patients to relax, touch their painful area on the arm or whereever, and allow their thoughts to flow freely. He took notes, and traced his patients´ associations as they recalled in steps through trains of thoughts to painful childhood moments, and called his first theory The Seduction Theory. The patients´ recovery during and from this practice led him to label events like "abreaction" as emotional connection in remembering, and "catharsis," as the alleviation that resulted after adequate abreaction. That´s confirmed by the modern understanding of child abuse and dysfunctional family dynamics. Freud used his notes to identify non-physical entities like the "id" and the "ego." Not microscopes or experiments. Thus, Freud´s and others´ thought processes in these acts of observation and investigation are not scientific physical methods, but more broadly "empirical" methods. Since the recognition of logical coherence between the patients words and the therapeutic psychological healing and Freud´s efforts alone required thinking, it is not itself a technical process, but a philosophical one. Just like math and physics, in their domain. The process of observation and investigation involves thinking and making logical coherence at one level or another. A "method" thus, can even in a tinkering technology sense, can be identified as a basic philosophical form. Thinking matters. The key appears to be that technophiles try to focus on the physicality of "methods", and lose sight of their own philosophical activity. That also limits their awareness as thinking about more complex levels of physical objects and processes like Einstein requires extensive philosophical awareness of it as a full philosophical method, scientific and naturalist in focus. The implications of Freud´s work help indicate how that makes empiricism crucial. You mention Hume, whose own proto-psychological observations impressed me, along with his perception of the importance of emotional life, and the process of meaning and abstraction. But, Freud helps illustrate how Hume was an empiricist, and how that is the higher order classification of scientific natural philosophical method itself. It covers both physical and non-physical philosophical observations and investigation. I mentioned Thomas Aquinas, who made fundamental tweaks on ancient Greek philosophy, from Aristotle, the student of Plato, student in turn of Socrates, primarily. Aquinas requires a little further commenting, but he can be acknowledged as an essential proto-scientific philosopher like Einstein. Aquinas addressed Aristotle´s First Cause argument, which was limited by Aristotle´s ancient Greek esoteric First Cause assumption of a co-eternal Universe and esoteric god. Aquinas took Zeno´s Paradox of the mathematical appearance of infinite divisibility of space between two points. He noted the absurdity of that in reality, ie empirical physical reality. He then made his powerful five arguments for God, including the argument from motion. He apparently lacked the confidence to draw the conclusion that his refutation of infinitely small in relation to the the Biblical assertion of the Judeo-Christian Creator God. That correlates further with his empirical formulation of the empirical Motion argument of the First Cause. He declined to argue for the Creation of the Universe. He was discreet, but overly so, I´d say.