What is science?

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"opposing" opinion? I think / hope you mean "new opinion" - this is not a contest.

If that is the outcome of the examination, then ocf course one rejects the opinion for the moment and moves on.

Not every new idea shifts the balance of evidence enough to count.

Suppose, for example, you tell me that certain whales have vestigial rear limbs.

I, as a Linguist, have few data on whales, which are not central to my investigations.

This goes into interesting allegations, neither rejected nor adopted,

But suppose you tell me Basque is related to Mogogodo, citing the words for "garbage", "brew beer" and "tower".

Comparingh this to what is al;ready in the data stack on Basque, Mogogodo, language relationship and lexical change, I rate this as highly improbable and will probably not follow it up.

If however you claim that some dialects of Flemish operate a tional system, and provide clear and conclusive examples, onto the stack that goes with only some reservations as to exactly how "tonal system" should be defined.

science
n. system of knowledge gained by systematic research and organized into general laws; specific field of systematic knowledge; skill, proficiency
Science
Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is, in its broadest sense, any systematic knowledge that is capable of resulting in a correct prediction or reliable outcome. In this sense, science may refer to a highly skilled technique, technology, or practice.

Science could be interpreted as elements of the universe questioning itself, however such absolutist and reductionist reasoning is hardly very scientific - you have at least assumed it is an ongoing process which many believers in 'science's' infalability seem to overlook.

peace j

Hey dere, Red.

Experience shows that those who have chosen definitions that can be used as a put downn will NOT change.

Still, never hurts to try if yyou have the energy.

"Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Poet at the Breakfast-Table, 1872

"Science is a great game. It is inspiring and refreshing. The playing field is the universe itself." -- Isidor Isaac Rabi (1898-1988) U. S. physicist. Nobel prize 1944

"Science is a series of judgments, revised without ceasing." -- Pierre Emile Duclaux (1840-1904) French biochemist, bacteriologist

"Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge." -- Carl Sagan

"Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it." -- Albert Einstein

"Science is all those things which are confirmed to such a degree that it would be unreasonable to withhold one's provisional consent." -- Stephen Jay Gould

"Science is an imaginative adventure of the mind seeking truth in a world of mystery." -- Sir Cyril Herman Hinshelwood (1897-1967) English chemist. Nobel prize 1956

"Science is built up of facts, as a house is built of stones; but an accumulation of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house." -- Henri Poincaré, Science and Hypothesis, 1905

"Science is facts; just as houses are made of stone, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house, and a collection of facts is not necessarily science." -- Jules Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) French mathematician

"Science is merely an extremely powerful method of winnowing what's true from what feels good." -- Carl Sagan.

"Science is not belief, but the will to find out." -- Anonymous

"Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated." -- George Santayana (1863-1952) U. S. philosopher and writer. The Life of Reason

"Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club." -- Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95) English biologist. "The Method of Zadig" in Collected Essays IV

"Science is organized knowledge." -- Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) English philosopher. Education

"Science is piecemeal revelation." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes 1 (1809-94) U. S. poet, essayist, physician

"Science is simply common sense at its best that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic." -- Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95) English biologist

"Science is that great body of knowledge and understanding that flies people to the moon; Religion is that dismal pit of ignorance and belief that flies people into buildings." -- Mark Barner, addressing faculty and students on the day after September 11, 2001

"Science is the cemetery of dead ideas." -- Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life, 1913

"Science is the desire to know causes." -- William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English essayist

"Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiastic superstition." -- Adam Smith (1723-90) Scottish economist. The Wealth of Nations, 1776

"Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another." -- Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) English philosopher, author

"Science is the literature of truth." -- Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) (1818-85) U. S. humorist

"Science is the process of crash testing ideas: you ram the idea head-on into a brick wall at 60mph, and knowledge is gained by examining the pieces. If the theory is solid, the pieces are from the wall. Then we build a bigger wall." -- Joe Huntsman

"Science is the record of dead religions." -- The Oscariana of Oscar Fingall O'Flaherty Will Wilde 1856-1900 for George Bernard Shaw

"Science is the systematic classification of experience." -- George Henry Lewes (1817-78) English writer and critic

"Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don't know." -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English philosopher, mathematician

"Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact." -- H.L. Mencken, Minority Report: H.L. Mencken's Notebook, 1956

Fnord's intriguing though by no means exhaustive catalogue graphically point up the futility of discussing anything past a certain depth with people of other mind. With some of those one could talk long and productively; with others you could have a more shallow conversation. And from some one would simply walk away at the earliest opportunity.

Flea? The standard trope is gadfly, which is a role I try to play. Actually, though wasp would work better. I certainly do not feed on misinformation and misapprehension. I am trying to protect that which is of value and apply a salutary corrective.

Nor am I looking for an excuse to write.

A. I don't need an excuse, I can write even if everything anyone says is good and true.

B. I am not Sand that I should yell "idiocy" at every word below the level of PhD quality - and some above.

But - let us avoid acrimony and not - AGAIN - point up your complete lack of understanding of faith, which stems from your having been trained to ignore your own applications of faith. Let us consider two materialist sciences, Pat and Mike - no - my apologies to the Irish - they will be Acoustic Phonetics and Discourse Analysis.

You will understand, I pick those two at random, as examples of what happens again and again in science.

Acoustic Phonetics looks at the physics of sound. It references meaning only to the point of asking if THIS noise and THAT noise are "the same word" It does not consider how words are used. We are measuring and doing a chemicAl analysis on the tool, not watching the craftsman at work.

Discourse Analysis looks at the ways words and larger units are used in context. Meaning and how it is expressed are central. How do two people interact when conversing. It is concerned with sound only to the point of asking if THIS noise and THAT noise are "the same word", or to look at intonation as it carries meaning. If one speaker say toMAYto and one toMAHto, that is of no relevance.

NOTICE - each field ignores as irrelevance evidence vital to the other. If I say to the Discourse Analyst, "Wow, did you hear how he aspirated his final [k] in the fourth paragraph, he will just look at me. It is of no significance. It is undata. Same thing if you point out to the Acoustic Phonetician that "to" is almost always unstressed and "too" usually stressed. So what is your point? he asks.

NOTICE - some areas are overlooked in the gap [NOT that gap, please] between the two. I have made some very fruitful studies of the use of pause in discourse in various languages. It relies on methods fro Acoustic Phonetics, it is looking at discourse, like discourse analysis, and almost nobody does it. AP won't touch it - too texty. DA won't touch it - too phonetic.

I put it to you that mainstream popular science - well done by real scientist not mech techs - and theology - well done by serious thinkers and enquirers who know God - are just so - two fields of, yes, scientific inquiry, which look to different evidence and whose outputs rarely overlap. With, again, a number of areas - like what exactly is qi if it is, which fall between the two stools, too immaterial to fit in A and too insentient to interest B.