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Very interesting post published 17th April 2009 on The Scientist Magazine's blog touches on the application of issues I've raised in my previous posts here. Some of those who have left comments on that article have suggest that the biocentrism concept is "egocentric".
However if one analyzes what their comments are saying, their egotism quickly emerges. That same 'brand of egotism' I wrote about in my Science and Egotism post back in February. In a nutshell, they say, if WE can not make sense of something, it can not be true. Some even take this to a further extreme; 'If science can not test it, it can not be so.' This argument is often seen in the wording; "You can not prove it, so you can not say that!" This argument only means that what is being said, is outside the realm of science. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines the scientific method this way;
"principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses" (accessed 05/03/2009)
Inherent within this definition is the limitation that what is to be tested must be falsifiable. This clearly identifies limits as to what is, and is not, within the realm of science.
I encourage you to read the post and judge for yourself. I, for one, am willing to admit that human intelligence and understanding, as well, has it's limits (inherent within our anatomy) that prevents us from a complete "understanding of everything."
How biology is central to constructing a more complete and unified theory of the Universe.
1 comment:
The definition of "Scientific Method" from Merriam-Webster lays out both an Inductive and a Deductive process. The first part is hypothesis building through induction. The second part is deduction where said hypotheses are tested for their veracity. These two parts always work in tandem. Induction always expands or augments our working hypotheses while deduction helps us to understand if what we're seeing is consistent with our hypotheses. I think the problem is that some of us confuse the scientific method with science and still further some of confuse science with reality. In the final analysis, neither science nor the scientific method determines reality. Rather, reality determines science. The scientific method only helps us to better understand reality through scientific constructs.
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