re science and methodology was homeopathy tradition in article apr cs rochester edu fulk cs rochester edu mark fulk writes science has not historically progressed in any sort of rational experiment data theory sequence most experiments are carried out and interpreted in pre existing theoretical frameworks the theoretical controversies of the day determine which experiments get done overall there is a huge messy affair of personal jealousies crazy motivations petty hatreds and the like that determines which experiments and which computations get done what keeps it going forward is the critical function of science results don t count unless they can be replicated the whole system is a sort of mechanism for generate and test the generate part can be totally irrational as long as the test part works properly i think we agree on much however the paragraphs above seem to repeat uncritically the standard kuhn lakatos feyerabend view of progress and rationality in science since i ve addressed these issues in this newsgroup in the not too distant past i won t go into them again now what is wrong with the above observation is that it explicitly gives the impression and you may not in fact hold this view that the common perhaps even the correct approach for a scientist to follow is to sit around having flights of fancy and scheming on the basis of his jealousies and petty hatreds it further at least implicitly advances the position that sciences goes forward and it is not clear what this means given the context in which it occurs by generating in a completely non rational and even random way a plethora of hypotheses and theories that are then weeded out via the critical function of science though why this critical function should be less subject to the non rational forces is a mystery if experimental design hypotheses creation and theory construction are subject to jealousies and petty hatreds then this must be equally true of the application of any critical function concerning replication this is what leads one ala feyerabend to an anything goes view true the generation part can be totally irrational but typically it is not anecdotes concerning instances where a hypothesis seems to have resulted in some way from a dream or from one s political views simply do not generalize well to the actual history of science gary h merrill principal systems developer c compiler development sas institute inc sas campus dr cary nc sasghm theseus unx sas com mcnc sas sasghm
