Re: [asa] POLL: How do you define "Science"?

Rich Blinne wrote:
> A cute "definition" is currently going around the Internet:
>
> Science: If you don't make mistakes you are doing it wrong. If you
> don't correct those mistakes you are really doing it wrong. If you
> don't accept you're mistaken then you are not doing it at all.
>
> Rich Blinne
> Member ASA

There is a lot of truth in the above essentially colloquial restatement
of Popper's falsification principle. To my mind, as well as
falsification science always involves mathematics and logic with at
least one exception. The exception that comes to mind is what is often
called stamp collecting ie gathering what ever data is considered
relevant about a particular subject and doing classifications.
Sometimes data is highly theory laden but sometimes you record whatever
the instruments you have will supply and try to analyze that. Back in
the dark ages when I went to high school. botany, zoology and geography
were taught more or less as huge numbers of facts and a little bit about
categories to fit the facts into. One might call such proto science.

One might ask how the human sciences like sociology and psychology
involve math. Practitioners of the human sciences should have a good
grasp of probability/statistics and logic.

eg A=>B does not mean that A is necessarily the cause of B
     Things like R A Fisher's analysis of variance can help filter noise
out of observational data and things like latin squares can also help
with design of experiments when not all combinations of factors can be
tried in an experiment.

I also found the survey impossible to answer.

Dave W (Member ASA)

Greg will probably not be happy with the above.

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Received on Thu May 29 19:23:47 2008