[FoRK] Practicing Science: No Ideology, No False Agenda?

[Dr. Ernie Prabhakar]

Hi Jeff,

On Jan 8, 2008, at 2:23 PM, Jeff Bone wrote:
>>> http://informationparadox.blogspot.com/2008/01/science-no-ideology-no-false-agenda.html
>>
>> I'm curious -- how many people on this list have actually spent  
>> time as practicing scientists?
>
> Define your terms...
>
> I'd note for the record that *doing* science doesn't require  
> anything particular other than just, well, *doing* it.

Well, at the very least, it would require implementing some definition  
of the 'scientific method', which includes peer review, right?

> Was Einstein "practicing" science when he was working in the patent  
> office in Bern?  Was Newton "practicing" science while working at  
> Woolthorpe?

Until they write something down to be reviewed by their peers (however  
formally or informally), I'd say they were only "theorizing" -- which  
is necessary, but not sufficient, to qualify as "science."

> Was Ramanujan "practicing" science when scribbling in his notebook  
> at the Madras Port Trust Office?  (Is math a "natural" science?)

Not by the usual definitions, no. Most definitions of the scientific  
method require some form of experimentation.

> I'll admit that part of the difficulty in discussing science is in  
> distinguishing between the epistemological method per se and the  
> institutional community and practice that has evolved in academic  
> and commercial research.  They are clearly two different things.  I  
> consider it somewhat arrogant on the part of the academicians and  
> journalists to assert that the latter is in any sense more important  
> than the former.

Are you asserting that the former is more important than the latter?

>  Major shifts in mankind's understanding of the world have often  
> been made by scientists working solo, outside any institution and  
> often outside even the cultural scientific establishment.

That's only half-true.  Scientists "working solo" may be operating  
outside *institutional* establishments, but in all the cases I know of  
they are still part of the "cultural" network of science, exchanging  
letters and ideas with other investigators in the same field. That's  
one of the things that differentiates chemists from alchemists, as I'm  
sure you know.

So are you really arguing that there is some "transcendent"  
abstraction called "pure science" which in its "essence" has "no  
ideology or false agenda" -- as opposed the actual "establishment" of  
science as embedded in institutions and funding agencies, which often  
does?

-- Ernie P.