From: turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin)
Newsgroups: sci.med,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Prescientific traditions, again (was: Re: Her
Followup-To: sci.philosophy.tech
Date: 8 Jan 1993 10:11:07 -0600
Organization: CS Dept, University of Texas at Austin
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: im4u.cs.utexas.edu

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Cross-posted and with followups directed to sci.philosophy.tech.

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In article <1993Jan7.142222.594@news.wesleyan.edu> RGINZBERG@eagle.wesleyan.edu (Ruth Ginzberg) writes:
> I'm sure you don't mean to say that there was no science prior to 
> the last three centuries.  You indicate pretty clearly in other
> parts of your article that you do not believe that.  Perhaps the
> problem is in your interesting and unusual concept of a 
> 'definition'.  Let me be more clear:  Could you give me a
> *procedural* definition of science such that I can then look at 
> practioner P within tradition T and determine correctly whether
> or not what s/he is doing is science? ...

I *could* give you a hundred such definitions, but I am leary of
doing so for the purpose you express.  Permit me to explain why,
with an analogy.  Consider the practice of architecture.  Was the
first person who realized that shelter could be created by
bundling tree branches an architect?  In some sense, she or he
was the seminal architect.  But today, this would not count at
all as architectural design.  Indeed, any architect today who
designed a home without some minimal planning for heat and
cooling, plumbing, etc., would be considered incompetent.  I
suspect that if such a person applied himself as an architect and
was later sued by his clients, that experts might say phrases
such as "he does not qualify as an architect."

Does this mean that there is some fine line that places
everything done before the advent of modern methods as "not
architecture"?  Undoubtedly one could draw such a line, but to
what purpose?  The point is *not* to generate a definition that
would let a universal observer decide whether a person at any
place and any time is engaged in architecture, but to recognize
that our architectural knowledge has advanced considerably and
that someone who *here* and *now* designs buildings in ignorance
of what is *here* and *now* basic architectural knowledge is
incompetent as an architect, even if their behavior might be
considered sterling architectural design if moved backward in
time a few tens of millenia. 

While I am leary of drawing such lines for historical
categorization, I think it is possible to describe how our
knowledge has progressed and why various activities and notions
*today* count as good architecture or not, or to move to the
subject at hand, why various activities and notions *today* count
good science or not.  I think many of my past criticisms have
been very specific in this regard, and I would also point to a
recent post where I describe more general kinds of errors. 

I wrote:

>> Drawing lines is a pragmatic activity.  I am not going to argue
>> vehemently with anyone that, for example, Copernicus counts as
>> science but that Galen does not.  

Ruth Ginzberg responds:

> However you *DO* argue vehemently with others on the net about 
> various other practitioners. Why is it OK with you to allow that 
> Copernicus & Galen might be difficult cases, but that virtually 
> any living, or non-Western, practitioner is *not* a difficult
> case, but rather an obvious one (& that those who make this
> determination differently than you do are obviously incorrect)?

I see two very different kinds of categorization involved.  I
have little problem saying that anyone today who is unfamiliar
with diagonalization arguments is incompetent logician, or even
that anyone unfamiliar with rudimentary statistics vis-a-vis
experimental design is an incompetent scientist.  But I would
argue with anyone who would say that therefore Aristotle was not
a logician and Linnaeus was not a scientist.  As to where the
lines should be drawn in Aristotle's time or Linnaeus's time, I
simply lack the historical knowledge to say.  (Indeed, I am
dubious that drawing such lines is generally a worthy historical
task.)

I will summarize my answers to Ruth Ginzberg's questions.  (1) I
cannot give a *universal* procedural definition of what counts as
science as a function of a particular practitioner's time and
tradition.  (2) I am dubious of the purpose of searching for such
a universal function, and I think it is irrelevant to the
criticisms I have made of *current* advocates of various notions.
(3) I think a specific procedural definition can be given
relative to our time and current knowledge, though as a general
project it would be a large task and would probably need revision
by the time it is finished.  For example, I think Popper's work
is (in part) an attempt at this, was quite worthwhile, and is now
a bit dated.  (4) I have tried to keep the criticisms I have made
specific and show why, in the context of what we now know,
certain methods and arguments are fallacious.  I have no doubt
that as time and science progress, so will the methodological and
argumentative standards. 

Russell
Xref: sparky sci.med:23601 sci.skeptic:22163